Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

‘Yes they do — Noël needs to know,’ he said stubbornly. ‘He’ll be delighted and so will Tilda and Becca, not to mention Jess, because they’re fond of you already. I don’t think you’ll manage to escape us so easily, after that.’

‘You’re not really going to tell him!’

‘Just watch me!’ he said, then looked down at me thoughtfully and asked quietly: ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about, Holly. . in confidence?’

‘No, nothing at all!’ I snapped and he seemed strangely disappointed.

What on earth else can he have expected me to confess to? Being the lost heir of the Romanovs, perhaps?

I escaped to bed after that, where I tried to distract myself from the scene in the kitchen by reading a bit more of the journal, though I wasn’t expecting any more revelations: I knew the outcome.

Granny seemed to have stoically thrown herself into the role of minister’s wife and if there was some talk in the congregation about the sudden wedding and the disparity in their ages, they seemed to have accepted it.

I was just nodding over another long, long passage about Gran’s undeserved good fortune and the mercy of God when I heard a loud yell from Michael’s room next door, followed by a loud crash and a more feminine scream and exclamations.

I leapt out of bed and rushed onto the landing and then paused with my hand on the doorknob to his room, suddenly wondering if I was interrupting something I shouldn’t be!

Jude, who was closest, arrived from the other direction and I could see from his expression he’d got the same idea — and that he thought I was coming out of Michael’s room, not going in!

‘Sorry,’ he said abruptly. ‘I thought I heard a scream.’

‘You did, but it wasn’t me.’

Michael’s door swung open and Coco stormed out, the near-transparent folds of her negligee clutched around her.

‘Forget it!’ she said viciously over one shoulder.

‘Coco?’ I heard Michael say, before she slammed the door behind her, cutting him off.

‘What?’ she said, catching sight of us. ‘Look, I was sleepwalking, all right?’ And she brushed past Jude and vanished.

He gave me one of his more unfathomable looks and followed her.

When Jude came down this morning he didn’t mention the Coco episode — and neither did I. I was hoping that, on reflection, he would keep his discovery about who I really was to himself, too.

When he came back in from the stables I was just making a stuffing for the pike, to an old English recipe I’d found in one of my books. I’d never cooked one before, but waste not, want not. I’d run out of sausage meat for the stuffing, but had defrosted some of the last of the excellent pork sausages from the freezer and removed the contents, which would do just as well.

Jude must have been warm from mucking out, because he pulled his jumper off and the T-shirt underneath came with it. . I was still staring at him, slightly mesmerised by the play of muscles across his broad back, when he turned and caught me.

‘The thaw seems to have well and truly set in,’ I said quickly, concentrating my attention back on what I was doing, though when I risked another glance up he was giving me that intent look from his deep-set eyes under a furrowed brow again, the slightly suspicious one that should have been dispelled now he knew about Gran.

‘Holly, I hope you’ll remember what I said last night: if you want to confide in someone, you can trust me.’

‘Mmm. .’ I said, totally puzzled. Confide what, exactly? He already knew all my secrets — even, now, that I fancied him!

‘What on earth is that you’re stuffing?’ he asked in a totally different voice.

‘It’s a pike Becca caught last year and shoved into the bottom of your freezer. I strongly believe that if you kill living creatures, then you should eat them. So we are.’

‘I didn’t even know it was in there!’

‘That’s because you never delve deeper than the surface layer of convenience foods.’

‘True. By the way, I’ll be back for lunch today,’ he said, which was a surprise. Perhaps inspiration had flagged?

After breakfast I went out in the snow again with Guy, Jess and Michael, because as Jess pointed out, it might not be around much longer. She was right, too, because it was now subsiding faster than an exuberant soufflé that had overreached itself.

Coco had come down late and in a mood of silent sulkiness, which I put down to a combination of post-performance boredom and the result of whatever happened — or didn’t happen — between her and Michael last night. She was certainly giving him the cold shoulder.

Michael snatched a moment to unburden himself while we were climbing to the top of the paddock with the sledges. ‘Coco came to my room last night!’

‘Yes, I know — and so does Jude. We both heard the screams and yells and came out onto the landing. She said she was sleepwalking!’

‘Sleepwalking nothing!’ he replied. ‘One minute I was fast asleep, and the next she’d tossed the duvet off and jumped on me, stark naked!’

‘No!’ I gasped. ‘That was pretty brazen.’

‘So I yelled — as you do, if someone jumps on you when you’re asleep — and automatically threw her off. She landed on the floor and screamed. . and that really woke me up so I realised what was happening and tried to calm her down.’

‘I don’t think it worked, Michael!’

‘No, especially when she came on to me again and I made it clear I didn’t fancy her in the least,’ he said ruefully.

‘I expect that would make her angry,’ I agreed. ‘Not many men would have turned her down!’

‘Perhaps not. .’ He paused and glanced at me, ‘but the thing is, Holly — well, I’m gay,’ he confessed. ‘That’s really why my marriage broke up.’

‘Really? Yes, I suppose that would make a bit of an irreconcilable difficulty,’ I said, surprised, and he laughed.

We’d reached the top of the paddock now and I put down my sledge. ‘But if you don’t mind my asking, Michael, why did you get married in the first place?’

‘Debbie knew I was gay because she was my best friend and we shared a flat — but then she suddenly changed and thought she could change me, too. I wanted a family, so I think I let her persuade me it would work and we got married and had our little girl.’ He smiled sadly. ‘For a while I thought we might be able to make a go of it. But then she fell for someone else — and so did I. And I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ he added, sounding surprised. ‘My being gay is still a bit of a secret.’

‘I expect you haven’t really talked it over with anyone before, that’s why. And of course I won’t mention it to anyone else, but why does your being gay have to be a secret?’

‘I usually get the romantic lead roles and I just don’t feel audiences would take me seriously if they knew I was openly gay, even though I’m sure most people in the business have a good idea.’ He ran a hand through his light brown hair, which ruffled attractively, and smiled ruefully. ‘I don’t know! I’m just certain that I’m not ready to step right out of the closet yet.’

‘I understand — and anyway, your private life should be just that. But poor Coco!’

‘Poor me, you mean!’

‘She’s mad with you, though I’d have thought she’d still want to keep on your right side, because of getting into acting.’

‘Yes, but she isn’t very bright, is she?’ He sighed. ‘I think she’s going to be a real pain now that the play’s done and I’ve turned her down — but maybe with this thaw they’ll clear the roads soon?’

‘And then we can all go home,’ I agreed briskly and he gave me a look.

‘Not quite all of us, I don’t think, if Jude has anything to do with it!’

I felt my face going slightly pink. ‘If you mean you think there’s something going on between Jude and me, then you are quite wrong!’

‘No, I’m not: the way you keep catching each other’s eye is a dead giveaway, not to mention all those cosy hours alone in his studio, when he made it quite plain he didn’t want any other visitors. I can’t imagine why you’re both in denial.’

‘Don’t be silly!’

‘I’m serious! In fact, I think I’m in imminent danger of having my nose punched if he catches me in anything even remotely resembling a compromising situation with you again.’

I remembered Jude’s expression of black rage when he’d briefly thought I was coming out of Michael’s room last night and shivered. ‘There may be a little physical attraction between us—’

‘Like the way the air crackles between you whenever you’re together?’ he said helpfully.

‘—but that’s all,’ I finished. ‘In fact, he more or less told me the other day that losing his wife made him never want to fall in love again — and I feel exactly the same way. It hurts too much when you lose them.’

‘Aren’t you two ever coming down?’ called Guy from the bottom of the hill and I climbed onto the red sledge and pushed myself off with such force that I shot down past the astonished horses and nearly went into the fence at the bottom.

I’d made the pea and ham soup and fresh soda bread, so we had that for lunch along with cheese, pickles and chutney. My stocks of staples like cheese and butter were dwindling rapidly, so really it was just as well that the thaw had set in.

Despite my coaxing, Coco refused to come into the kitchen with us and eat anything, saying she must have put on pounds over Christmas because of my meanness and she needed to get back in shape for her next modelling assignment, so apart from Michael it was just family. . of which I was a member, even if it appeared that Jude had thought better of telling the others.

But, hard on the heels of that thought, he suddenly looked around the kitchen table and announced, ‘There’s something I feel it’s important you all know, though Holly doesn’t want me to tell you.’

‘You’re getting married — hurray!’ cried Jess and his sallow skin flushed a bit.

‘No, it’s not that sort of thing, Jess,’ he said. ‘I’m not starting to announce my engagement on an annual basis. In fact, perhaps you should go somewhere else while we discuss this — it’s very personal to Holly.’

‘Oh no — I’ll be quiet, I promise!’

‘If you’re going to tell everyone, you might as well include Jess,’ I said resignedly.

‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘Well, Holly’s been reading through her gran’s diaries while she’s been here and discovered that she’s the granddaughter of Ned Martland.’

‘What, Holly’s grandmother is the mill girl Ned—’ began Noël, astounded, then stopped suddenly.

‘Seduced and abandoned, yes,’ I agreed, ‘though actually, she nursed him back to health, she wasn’t a mill girl.’

‘Oh dear,’ Tilda said, rather inadequately.

‘Understatement of the year, Tilda,’ said Becca.

‘So you can see why she was a bit reluctant to mention it and claim relationship with a family like ours,’ Jude said.

‘Not that I blame you for what Ned Martland did,’ I said quickly, though of course sometimes I had a bit. .

‘I certainly didn’t intend to sound disparaging about your grandmother,’ Noël apologised. ‘And in fact, I am extremely happy to meet you at last, m’dear!’ He exchanged a meaningful look with Tilda and continued, ‘Many’s the time I’ve said to Tilda that I wished I could have found Ned’s girl after he was killed.’

‘Then why didn’t you?’ I asked bluntly.

‘Well, the thing is, there was a dreadful fuss when he told my parents about her and the baby, especially since he was engaged to the daughter of Lord Lennerton at the time, who was going to give him a job so he could work his way up to the board. It looked like he was finally about to settle down, so our parents were pleased — which made finding out about your grandmother even more of a blow.’

‘But he knuckled down and did what they wanted?’

‘Not exactly. We didn’t know much about his girl, except that she was from a working-class background — not even her name. But the thing is, my brother Alex and I could see Ned had genuinely fallen in love with her, and we thought he should marry her anyway, not pay her off like our parents wanted him to do.’