Suddenly I spotted my name on one, written in a bold hand I recognised from all those handwritten additions to the Homebodies manual. I was just about to pick it up when I firmly stopped myself, because I wasn’t a child like Jess, unable to keep from fondling my presents!

I cast the ash from the fire onto the icy patch outside the back door, just as Gran used to, and let Merlin out into the still-dark world. At least it seemed to have stopped snowing, though it had frozen hard again overnight.

In the stable both horses were still half-asleep, but Billy bleated plaintively at me. I gave them all extra Christmas chunks of carrot, then left them for Becca to do later, as she had told me she would. It was bitterly cold out there, the icy wind holding a threat of snow, so perhaps it would be better if they stayed indoors today. I worried even more about Lady now I’d grown to love her, and I was even getting attached to Billy. Still, that was a decision I could safely leave to Becca and Jude now.

Merlin and I were both glad to get back indoors again, though even as I was kicking off the snow from my boots and giving him his breakfast, I was thinking about the day’s cooking.

There was breakfast to prepare too and everyone would come down at intervals, getting under my feet if I wasn’t careful. I couldn’t serve it in the dining room, since I wanted to lay the table for Christmas dinner, so I decided to put a cloth on the small round table in the sitting room and put the toast rack, butter, marmalade and jam on that, then people could collect Holly Muffins like the ones I’d made at Jess’s request the other day and take them in there to eat.

But first things first: the monstrous turkey was stuffed, foil-covered and stowed in the biggest of the ovens, with a lordly antique blue and white dish to receive it when it was finally roasted, which had matching gravy boats and lidded vegetable dishes.

The previous night I’d taken the chipolata sausages wrapped in bacon, sage and thyme stuffing, giblet stock for gravy and bread sauce out of the freezer (‘here’s some I made earlier!’), and now I prepared the sprouts and put them in a plastic bag in the fridge. The parsnips and potatoes were soon peeled and sitting in cold water and the pudding provided by the Chirks could go in Jude’s industrial-sized microwave. .

When that was all done I lifted tomorrow’s salmon out of the freezer, along with the last packet of filo pastry I’d brought and a packet of prawns to make today’s starter, and left them on a stone shelf in the larder to defrost slowly, the fridge now being a little full.

Once I’d emptied the dishwasher I checked my list and timetable and I seemed to have everything well in hand. As it was still extremely early, I sat down with a well-earned cup of coffee for a few quiet minutes before starting breakfast.

A few minutes was literally all I had, because then Jess suddenly appeared, still in her pyjamas and dressing gown, bringing her stocking with her to show me what she’d got. She laid it on the kitchen table and began pulling out the contents.

‘I woke Uncle Jude up first and he said it was his sock and he’d like it back when I’d finished with it, only without the pink ribbon.’

‘It has to be his, really, no-one else has feet that big.’

‘He said he wasn’t Father Christmas when I asked him and I think I’ve seen some of the things in Mrs Comfort’s shop, so maybe Mummy actually remembered this year and asked Granny to make me one?’

‘She must have done, there’s no other explanation. What did you like best?’

‘Oh. . the wolf, I think. Or maybe the bracelet. . When do you think I can open the rest of my presents?’

‘When everyone else has come downstairs and had breakfast, I expect.’

‘Uncle Jude said he was getting up, he might as well, now I’d woken him.’

‘You can give Merlin his present now, if you like?’ I suggested, as a slight sop.

‘Oh yes!’ She jumped up eagerly. ‘You know, sometimes I think giving presents can be nearly as good as getting them.’

‘Definitely!’

Merlin was suitably gratified and, after nosing off the loosely-wrapped paper, retired to his basket by the Aga, where he could be heard chomping away at one end of the rawhide bone while I was cooking bacon and eggs for two sustaining breakfast muffins each. Then I sent Jess upstairs to put some clothes on.

‘Granny likes me to wear a dress on Christmas Day,’ she said disgustedly.

‘Oh, do we dress up a bit?’ I asked. ‘I don’t often wear a dress in winter either, if it makes you feel any better, but perhaps I should go and change later.’

‘It would feel fairer if you had to do it, too.’

‘Okay, but you’d better put your jeans on now and give Becca a hand with the horses, if you wouldn’t mind? That would be a great help.’

‘Unless Uncle Jude’s down first and does it,’ she said hopefully.

‘If he is, then perhaps you could help me lay the dining-room table, instead.’

But by the time she reappeared Becca was in the kitchen finishing her breakfast and there was still no sign of Jude. When they’d wrapped up warmly and gone out to the stables, I fetched the last packets of muffins from the freezer: I’d underestimated how hungry everyone would be this morning and we’d already eaten two apiece. There was still plenty of other bread, both loaves and buns and several of those long-life part-baked baguettes so we wouldn’t run short. I might make soda bread one day for a change, too.

No-one else appeared, so after pottering round a bit more, ticking things off my list, I went upstairs and changed into a dark-red velvet dress and flat, soft, black leather ballerina slippers. Cooks spend so much time on their feet that they tend to prefer comfort above style — and anyway, killer heels would have made me a giantess. Though here I wouldn’t have stood out quite so much, because Coco is only two or three inches shorter than I am and Jude positively towers over me.

The colour of the dress flattered my light-olive skin and dark hair, which swung smoothly against my neck. That’s the only advantage of having thick, straight hair: it obligingly hangs where you put it, like a heavy curtain. I added a little makeup and then, remembering Sam’s comment, a slightly Nefertiti-ish dark line around my eyes and a bit of lippy (I’m not exactly high maintenance). Then I tried looking mysterious in the mirror, but I can’t say it really came off.

I put in the garnet earrings that were Alan’s last present (I found them hidden, gift-wrapped, weeks after his death), with feelings of sadness and regret, rather than my usual mixture of grief and anger. And I suddenly realised, with a pang of loss, that since I had arrived at Old Place I no longer had the comforting sense that he was walking beside me. I suspected he had gone for good, leaving me to go on entirely alone. .

It was just as well my eyeliner was waterproof. I dabbed my eyes with a tissue and then ran down to the kitchen and wrapped a big white apron from the drawer over my dress. I cooked lots of bacon and eggs, which I’d just put on a hot, covered dish ready for the next Holly Muffins, when Jude finally arrived, his dark hair still wet and curling slightly from the shower. He was wearing a loose blue chambray shirt with a T-shirt under it and jeans, which was a lot more than he’d been wearing the night before. . I felt my face going hot, but hoped he didn’t notice.

‘Sorry I’m so late, but I fell asleep again after Jess woke me up and—’ He broke off and examined me critically. ‘Have you been crying?’

‘No, chopping onions — I wept buckets.’

‘Right,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I meant to be down early to see to the fire and get more wood up from the cellar, as well as do the horses so you and Becca didn’t have to, but I’m afraid I dozed off again.’

‘I expect you’re still jet lagged, but I’d be grateful if you fetched more wood up because I haven’t got round to that yet and the log basket’s almost empty. Becca and Jess are doing the horses now, so they should be in soon — we’ve already had our breakfast.’

‘I think the smell of the bacon is what finally woke me up and got me down here,’ he confessed.

‘I’m doing bacon and egg muffins, and toast too if anyone wants it, but they’ll have to eat it in the sitting room, because I don’t want you all under my feet while I’m cooking the Christmas dinner.’ I stood poised over the cooker, spatula and warm plate in hand. ‘Do you want one muffin or two?’

‘Two, at least. Do you want me from under your feet as well? Only you might want some help, even unskilled labour.’

‘I have it pretty well in hand, thanks — I’m very organised, you know.’

‘Yes, I’d noticed that,’ he said gravely, with a glance at the menu charts and timed to-do lists I’d pinned to the kitchen corkboard.

‘Michael’s also offered his help as skivvy and he’s very handy around the kitchen.’

‘I’m also handy. . even if I don’t know much about cooking. I’d like to learn some time.’

‘What, you’d like to learn to cook?’

‘A man gets tired of ready meals,’ he admitted.

‘Well. . I suppose you could help a bit.’

As the rest of the party straggled down, I ushered them firmly back out of the kitchen while Jude ferried tea, coffee and muffins to the sitting room.

‘Noël’s the last,’ he said, coming back in with a tray, ‘he said he just wanted one.’

‘Just as well, we’re on to the very last muffin after that. I don’t suppose Coco ate one?’

He grinned. ‘She did, actually, but then she dashed out to the downstairs cloakroom, so I hope she isn’t sicking the whole thing back again.’

‘I think she uses alternative methods to control her weight,’ I said and he looked slightly baffled.

‘Laxatives — I don’t suppose the muffin will even touch the sides going down. What a waste of good food!’

He looked startled. ‘Really? I’d no idea, I just thought she didn’t eat enough.’

‘She’s so painfully thin that maybe we should lock her in the dining room after lunch without her handbag, until she’s digested something?’ I suggested.

‘Is that where she keeps them?’

‘It is, according to Jess.’ I swiftly assembled the last muffin and put it on a tray with a little pot of tea. ‘Could you take Tilda’s tray up? Then I expect she’ll come down. She’d better, because I can hear Jess and Becca coming back in, and Jess is so desperate to open her presents she’ll probably explode if she has to wait much longer!’

‘She was really excited about that stocking you did,’ he said and looked thoughtfully at me. ‘She thought her mother had asked Tilda to do it — it was really kind of you to think of it.’

‘It was Mrs Comfort’s idea really — and don’t tell Jess it wasn’t her mother,’ I warned, just as Jess burst through the door.

‘Uncle Jude, Uncle Jude, can I open all my presents now?’ she yelled, flinging herself at him.

‘By the time you’ve washed your hands and changed, you’ll be able to, because your granny will be down,’ I said. ‘I’ve put my dress on, so you need to keep your end of the bargain.’

She pulled a face and rushed out again and off up the backstairs like a herd of clog-dancing baby elephants.

‘You look very nice in your red dress, Holly,’ Jude said, as if the compliment had been drawn out of him with hot pincers, and then took himself off.

Since most of me was covered with a Victorian frilled apron, I expect he was just being polite to make up for nearly scaring me to death last night. . Though come to think of it, he hadn’t seemed terribly repentant at the time.

Men are so weird.

If you’re terribly organised you can easily spare time for other things even while cooking the Christmas dinner, so when I was called into the sitting room for an orgy of present unwrapping everything was fine to be left, though I remembered to take my pinny off first. Merlin, his rawhide chew firmly clenched in his jaws, came with me.

Jess was in charge of ferrying the presents to their recipients and, to my surprise, I ended up with quite a pile, though they included Laura’s, which I’d brought down with me when I changed earlier.

‘There’s another one here for Merlin,’ Jess said.

‘You’d better unwrap that one for him,’ Jude suggested, so I knew the rubber ball inside was from him. Merlin retired under the nearest table with his booty, where the occasional squeak of rubber as he clamped his teeth on his ball, or the squidgy squish of rawhide chewed soft, could be heard during any pause in the conversation.