Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

‘And not even a Birkin bag to go back to,’ Guy commiserated and she flushed angrily.

‘I hate you, Guy Martland!’

He ignored her and instead said invitingly to me, ‘Sure you won’t come? You can sit on my lap.’

‘No thanks, I need to sort out early dinner,’ I said, though actually, now it came to it, I rather fancied a bit of time to myself, too.

And it was bliss. I had a quick tidy through the house, plumping up the cushions in the sitting room and pausing to put a few more pieces in the jigsaw puzzle. I can’t imagine why it was taking everyone so long to finish, and I know it annoys Guy when he finds I’ve had a go, but there’s something quite irresistible about a large jigsaw, isn’t there? Oriel was right.

After that I retired to the kitchen with my laptop and updated the notes for my cookbook with things that I’d tried and tested over Christmas, talked to Merlin and then went out with him for a little walk up the track.

A skin of ice had formed on the water trough in the paddock, and I broke that into jagged pieces like clear toffee and hooked them out onto the ground, before we left. Lady was pawing the snow to expose the grass beneath, ignoring the haynet, but Billy was up on his hind legs against the fence having a good go at the bottom of it and Nutkin was thoughtfully chewing a mouthful from further up.

There hadn’t been any fresh snow for ages, so perhaps the worst was over and soon it would start to thaw? Then I, and the rest of the uninvited and unwanted members of the party, could leave. .

Somehow, that was no longer quite such an enticing thought.

The Little Mumming expedition returned in two Land Rovers, the pub party fairly merry, especially Coco. Still, Michael had at least remembered my request to bring back yet more sherry supplies for the elder members of the party, who were getting through it at a surprising rate.

George helped Tilda, Noël and Old Nan out of his Land Rover, though Richard and Becca jumped down unassisted from Guy’s, being still pretty spry. Then he rounded them all up and drove them into the house, a bit like a friendly but worried sheepdog.

I took the chance to thank him for his lovely present and he beamed and in turn thanked me for mine.

‘Won’t you come in?’ I asked.

‘Only as far as the mistletoe — if you insist!’ he said meaningfully, and winked at me — and for a minute, I admit I was quite tempted!

‘Oh, it fell down, so we had to put it in a vase,’ Jess said very quickly, appearing suddenly by my side like a sombre Jack-inthe-box. Tilda had dragooned her into a short black dress over tights for church, though she’d completed the outfit with big black lace-up boots and a long coat. ‘You can’t stand under it any more,’ she added, ‘so it doesn’t count.’

‘Pity,’ he said good-humouredly, though now he was close enough I’d spotted the faint imprint of a perfect lipstick bow on one of his lean, pink cheeks in an odd raspberry shade that reminded me of Oriel, so he’d obviously been spreading his net wide again.

But he didn’t go away totally disappointed, because I fetched one of the turkey and ham pies from the kitchen wrapped in tinfoil to take home for him and Liam. He opened the corner of the foil to look at it, and I thought he was going to go down on his knees in the snow and propose right there and then.

‘What’s he got that I haven’t?’ demanded Guy as he drove off.

‘Sincerity?’ I suggested.

I’d laid the table for Sunday dinner in the dining room, which was easier than the kitchen for such a large party, and then afterwards I cleared up and left them in the sitting room with coffee, sherry, mincemeat flapjacks and the last remnants of the Christmas cake, while I changed into leggings and tunic jumper and took a Red Riding Hood basket of lunch down to the studio, accompanied by Merlin this time.

I didn’t go straight there, though: first I walked on a bit past the lodge so I could update Laura on my suddenly becoming an artist’s model.

‘It’s weird, because he stares at me while he’s drawing, but it’s sort of impersonal. Not that he doesn’t keep looking at me at other times too — Michael and Jess are convinced he fancies me.’

‘How do you know he’s staring, unless you keep looking at him?’ she asked astutely.

‘He is a bit hard to ignore when he’s in the same room,’ I admitted. ‘In fact, he’s a bit hard to ignore when he’s in the same house: the atmosphere sort of changes.’

‘Hmmm. .’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps he does fancy you?’

‘He might a bit, but having been widowed and then jilted, I don’t actually think he wants to — and anyway, he still thinks I’m up to something.’

‘You are, in a way — trying to find out the truth about your gran,’ she said. ‘And I think you’re more attracted by Jude than you’re admitting, because you’re afraid of falling in love again, too!’

‘A bit of physical attraction is neither here nor there! He’s not my type and, going by Coco, I’m not his! It’s really embarrassing playing Viola to Jude’s Orsino, though,’ I said, and gave her a graphic description of our play-acting.

‘Michael is Sebastian, my twin brother, so he gets off with Coco as Olivia in the end, but desperately wishes he didn’t, poor man. He’d feel much safer with me. But at least the play’s keeping Coco fairly amused. She managed to lock herself in an attic earlier today and had a panic attack, and I seized the moment to give her a talking to about her laxative consumption and confiscated most of them.’

‘Wasn’t that a bit high-handed?’

‘It was for her own good. If the snow doesn’t thaw soon, I might even get a bit of meat on her bones and colour in her cheeks before she goes home.’

‘So I take it there’s still no chance of escape yet?’

‘No, but in any case, I don’t think Jude would let me go until he’s finished with me.’

‘That sounds. . dodgy. But interesting.’

‘As a model in the studio, idiot!’

I’d made Jude a sort of hot chopped-up version of the roast turkey dinner, like giant toddler food, and put it in one of the wide-mouthed Thermos flasks from the kitchen to keep it hot.

One good thing about him is that even with half his mind on his work, he still appreciates my cooking. I shared the flask of coffee, sitting next to him with a certain quiet companionship on the wooden model’s dais while he ate it.

Merlin sat between us, alternately leaning first against me, then Jude, then back again, and sighing a lot.

‘What’s the matter with this stupid dog?’ Jude asked eventually, puzzled.

‘Conflict of loyalties, I think. He feels he should be with you, but he doesn’t really want to leave me. Ideally, he’d like us both to stay in the same place all the time.’

‘But I notice when it comes to the crunch, he more often follows you than me.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘but he’ll forget all about me when I’m gone. I am going to really miss him, though!’

I put one arm around Merlin and gave him a hug.

Jude watched me with an absent expression I was becoming familiar with and said, ‘Hmmm. . must do some sketches of you two later. But first, back to work again — I’m making an armature to support the sculpture. The maquettes are on that table over there, if you want to see.’

He got up and went back to constructing something substantial and vaguely horse- and human-shaped in bent metal rods, pushed into a large hollow support on a fixed base.

There were three small models on the bench, one in clay, one seemingly twisted from wire, and one constructed with snippets of tin stuck together with blobs of wax.

Weird.

I went back to sitting on the edge of the dais and watched him for a bit to see if he might want me for anything, since he’d been so insistent I go down; but I think he’d forgotten me again. Maybe he’d just wanted his lunch brought?

He didn’t seem to feel the cold at all. Although it wasn’t that hot in the studio he’d stripped off his jumper and the thin T-shirt beneath was stretched across an impressive array of muscles I remembered all too clearly from my private viewing of them on Christmas Eve, tapering down to a slim waist and hips. .

I was just thinking that although he was a giant, he was a very well-proportioned and fit-looking one, when he looked up and gave me one of those dramatically sudden, heart-stoppingly sweet smiles, before going back to work again.

I don’t think he realises he’s doing it! But I expect it’s only an expression of sublime happiness, blissed out in the act of creation.

Now that feeling rang a bell in the distant recesses of my memory. .

From time to time he made a random comment, evidently thinking aloud. Once he said, ‘I must arrange a way for Jess to speak to her parents, when we can get out of Little Mumming,’ and later he told me my lines were nearly as beautiful as Lady’s. I took that as a compliment.

Eventually, when I could see the light outside was starting to go, I got up, and Merlin uncoiled himself to come with me. ‘Jude, I’m going now. You won’t forget to come back for supper, will you?’

He looked up absently. ‘No, okay,’ he said, but I wouldn’t put money on him remembering, unless his stomach insisted.

When I got back Becca and Jess had long since brought the horses in and Guy had driven Old Nan and Richard home in Jude’s Land Rover.

The kitchen was in a bit of a mess because Jess had been showing Tilda how to make microwave meringues and chocolate cake in a mug. I promised to write the meringue recipe down for Tilda. I could imagine endless plates of them appearing at the lodge, garnished with the ubiquitous squirty cream and, perhaps, sliced strawberries in summer.

‘We found Coco in your room earlier,’ Jess said, ‘searching for her Fruity-Go.’

‘That’s because there are hardly any left in my handbag,’ Coco said sulkily. ‘I only wanted a few more.’

‘I’m afraid I flushed them all away — cutting out the middle woman, as it were,’ I confessed and then she slightly hysterically accused me of wanting to ruin her figure, her career and her entire life.

Tilda told her she should be grateful someone cared about her health, but if she found herself constipated she would brew her up a nice dose of senna pods.

That seemed to have a remarkably calming effect.

Jude did remember to come back for supper, which was just sausage rolls, tomatoes (the very last of the salad), smoked salmon sandwiches and more microwave cake and meringues (with swirls of squirty cream, of course). We’ll all be as fat as pigs by New Year.

Guy had noticed some additions to the jigsaw and accused me of putting them there, as if it was a crime. When I admitted my guilt, he said pettishly that since I was so good at it I might as well finish the whole thing.

He and Coco have so much in common, it’s a pity they didn’t make a go of it!

I told him I’d got it for everyone to share and we’d all done a bit of it, even Coco (probably the upside-down bits in the wrong place), so he could stop throwing his rattle out of the pram.

‘Hear, hear!’ said Becca.

Honestly, hurt male pride over something as trivial as a jigsaw? And okay, beating him at snooker and then Scrabble first probably didn’t help. .

I would quite happily have continued playing Monopoly, Scrabble or Cluedo with the others all evening, but no, Coco had us all practising our scenes in the play again, though mainly she just wanted an audience to watch her unintentionally hamming it up with poor Michael. I think it’s called overacting.

However, I caught the bug and started hamming it up a bit myself — and then, to my surprise, Jude began playing up to me, so it was not such a drag as it might have been.

I fell asleep last night on another of those long, moralising passages from Gran’s journal, this time describing what Mr Bowman said in his prayers (which obviously he must have said aloud, since she wasn’t telepathic) and how grateful she was that he hadn’t turned her away like her parents had.