Last Christmas (17 page)

‘Christmas Eve, it’s Christmas Eve,’ Noel could hear Kipper intoning in the children’s playroom from his study where he was surfing the net. Ruby was sitting with a blanket, sucking her thumb and watching her favourite programme. Any minute now there would be ructions because Paige wanted to watch
The Snowman
, which was on for the zillionth time. Back in the dawn of time they had had a copy on video, but when James was a toddler he had ‘posted’ it in the video machine and it had never been the same again.

From the kitchen he could hear carols wafting up the stairs. Cat was peeling the vegetables for tomorrow over a cosy cup of coffee with his mum and, though Noel had offered to help, she claimed to be on top of things. Cat had a way of looking at him when she said that which made him feel like an insignificant worm. She always denied it but sometimes Noel felt there was a great female conspiracy going on against him. In the office he was feeling more and more sidelined, and at home he felt thoroughly useless. The one thing Cat was always nagging him about, namely to mend the shelf in the lounge, was the one thing he never seemed to get round to doing. He couldn’t quite explain to himself why that was but being nagged reminded him of his mum, and the more Cat nagged, the less likely he was to do it.

Christmas always seemed to make things worse somehow. Sometimes Noel suspected this Happy Homemaker thing had gone to Cat’s head somewhat. It was almost as if she felt she had to live the way her alter ego did. Instead of his real, gorgeous, homely wife, Noel felt he was getting the cardboard-cutout, dressed-in-a-Santa-outfit, slightly deranged version currently gracing the cover of
Happy Homes.
The Christmas lists had started appearing in September and she’d been shopping regularly since then. All the Christmas cards had been posted promptly on 1 December, the presents bought, wrapped and hidden in the loft by the end of November, the turkey ordered from the organic butcher on Clapton High Street three months in advance. She’d made the cake at half term, mince pies in November, and spent the previous week baking sausage rolls. Who on earth made their own sausage rolls anymore?
I do
, had been Cat’s firm response. The money she was bringing in was, of course, incredibly helpful, but sometimes Noel wistfully wanted his old wife back.

She’d been such a frightening whirl of efficiency, Noel had felt almost gleeful when he discovered she hadn’t managed to make a Christmas pudding. Apparently Cat’s mum was supposed to do it but had forgotten. Cat had actually returned from Sainsbury’s stressed and empty-handed a couple of days earlier, and hadn’t taken kindly to Noel’s roar of laughter when he’d heard that she’d abandoned the trolley mid-shop. Maybe there was something he could do. He looked at his watch and saw it was only just midday. Sainsbury’s was bound to be a nightmare, but at least if he bought a Christmas pudding he might feel slightly less useless.

Noel went down to the kitchen to find his mother relating some hilarious anecdote from his childhood about him pooing his pants, which Cat clearly found very funny. It riled
him how well Cat got on with his mother, who did nothing but find fault with him and the children.

‘What’s my lovely granddaughter up to?’ Another bone of contention. Why did his mother insist on favouring Ruby so obviously? She’d done the same trick with his little sister when he was growing up and it still rankled.

‘Watching Kipper,’ said Noel, bracing himself for the inevitable comment about how much television the children watched. For once, it didn’t come.

‘If you don’t need me, dear,’ Angela said to Cat, ‘I’ll just go and see if Ruby wants company.’

‘No, that’s fine,’ said Cat. ‘I really don’t need any help now.’

‘So, nothing I can do?’ Noel hovered, feeling like a spare part.

‘Noel, you know the last time I let you loose in the kitchen it was chaos,’ said Cat. ‘I think everything’s sorted. Apart from the sodding Christmas pud of course.’

‘Well, I could hunter gather—like, go out in search of one if you want,’ offered Noel.

‘I think you’d be wasting your time,’ said Cat. ‘Besides, I need you here.’

‘For what precisely?’ Noel’s irritation got the better of him. ‘I’ve been hanging around all day. You need me for precisely nothing. I’m going to the pub.’

‘I didn’t mean—’ Cat looked stricken, but Noel was too cross to stop now. He stormed out of the house in a state of ire. Honestly. She was the limit sometimes. It was bloody hard to live with someone who was so sodding perfect. A soothing pint was all he needed to calm his nerves.

The pub was thoroughly miserable. Lots of people had obviously come in on their way home from work and the place was packed. ‘Wonderful Christmas Time’ was blaring out from the loudspeakers. Yes, wasn’t he just having one
of those. After a solitary pint squashed between a drunk solicitor, who was attempting to chat up the barmaid, and a couple of brickies, who looked like they were settling in for the rest of the afternoon, guilt kicked in and Noel decided to call it a day. He headed out into the cold December afternoon and decided to wander up to the little minimarket on the corner to see if they happened to have any Christmas puddings. By some happy miracle, there was one small pudding still sitting on the shelf. At least he could do one thing right.

‘Elves, this way! Fairies, that!’ Diana Carew’s voice boomed out across the village hall as half a dozen feverishly excited children rushed out of the changing rooms in costume. Marianne paused from administering face paint to an overexcited three-year-old who was going to be a puppy (since when were there puppies in the stable, she wondered). She had a headache and was not looking forward to the rest of her evening. Luke had refused to come to the Nativity, claiming family duties. She sighed. It would have been nice if he could have supported her in this one small thing. But apparently there was only so much time in his busy life and it didn’t extend to attending the Village Nativity play.

Marianne knew the evening was going to be a disaster. Most of her reception class, who were playing a variety of angels, stars and animals, were so hyped up on the chocolate cake that Diana had foolishly provided they were going to be impossible to keep quiet. They were excited enough about Christmas as it was, and were overtired—clearly most of them had been having lots of late nights already—and the hour-and-a-half long performance was going to be beyond them. Lord knows how the preschoolers were going to manage, but that was Pippa’s department.
She helped out a couple of days a week and had volunteered to look after the littlies, as she called them.

‘That’s me done,’ Marianne said, following her small charge out into the hall.

‘Wonderful,’ boomed Diana. ‘Right, we need our mice up on stage, and everyone else to be backstage. Chop chop. Your parents will be here soon.’

Diana’s version of the Nativity had to rate as the most bizarre Marianne had ever seen. It followed the story of a little mouse who on Christmas Eve was sent to his room for not sharing his toys with the poor little mice who lived down the road. The mouse then encountered a magic fairy (with her half a dozen very tiny fairy companions, who did a rather long and baffling dance) who took him on a journey to discover the true meaning of Christmas, by way of Santa’s workshop, some selfish children, a poor little matchgirl, Bob Cratchit, various animals, and who eventually found himself in Bethlehem. Mary (an insufferable child who turned out to be Diana’s granddaughter) and Joseph got about ten seconds on stage and the only carol Marianne recognised was ‘Little Donkey’. Despite various suggestions from the Parish Council to shorten it over the years, according to Pippa, Diana wouldn’t be budged. So the Village Nativity was now set in stone as an event to be endured rather than enjoyed.

Marianne and Pippa were in charge of the backstage area, a small anteroom at the back of the hall. The children were herded in like excited puppies and Marianne’s headache began to get worse, along with an anxious feeling that was growing in the pit of her stomach. She was going straight from the show to Luke’s grandfather’s for another Nicholas family gathering.

‘So, are you all set for tonight?’ Pippa said, while she absent-mindedly replaited a fairy’s hair.

Marianne grimaced.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I’m not looking forward to it at all. Luke’s relatives are all so stiff and ghastly. I’ll feel like a fish out of water.’

‘Ralph Nicholas can’t make you feel like that, surely?’ said Pippa. ‘He’s a sweetheart.’

‘Oh, he’s fine,’ said Marianne. ‘It’s just Luke’s mother I have to contend with.’

‘Ah, mothers-in-law,’ said Pippa. ‘What would we do without them? Actually, that’s not fair, Dan’s mum is a gem. I couldn’t manage at all if she wasn’t.’

A call came for the fairies to go on stage and Pippa and Marianne watched from the wings as the children yawned their way through the dance. Despite Diana’s best efforts (she stood at the back doing every move with them—‘it’s a wonder she doesn’t leap on the stage,’ snorted Pippa), two of the fairies bumped into each other, one sucked her thumb and another spent the whole time in tears. And there was still over an hour to go.

The play dragged on, a combination of folly and high farce, but eventually, to Marianne’s relief, it was finally over.

‘One down, one to go,’ she said with a grimace, as she and Pippa got the children ready to meet their parents. People were shouting ‘Happy Christmas’ and there was much merriment about how long the show had taken.‘Even by Diana’s standards, that was bad,’ said Pippa. ‘God knows where she’s going to take it next year.’

Eventually all the children had gone and it was time for Marianne to go home and get ready. Pippa had rushed off in a whirl, grabbing her own children and getting ready for festive celebrations with various family members. Marianne envied her. She’d elected to stay here this Christmas rather than go home, but right now she was wishing for her own bed and a cosy family Christmas where she could be who
she was without let or hindrance. She made her way down the lane to her cottage. Snow was falling gently. Oh well, at least being in the country she was in for a white Christmas.

Cat was feeling out of sorts. She’d spent all morning cooking in the kitchen with Angela and come out to discover that the children had trashed the house. Before his little strop, Noel seemed to have spent the whole morning on the computer and done little to help. Honestly. He was the limit sometimes. Couldn’t he see that things needed doing? Why did she always have to point it out? It was that frustration that had spilled over and led her to make the bitchy remark earlier.

She was guiltily aware it wasn’t altogether true. It was just that when Noel was in the kitchen, he seemed to fill the space and ruin the peace and tranquillity of her ordered way of working. There were occasions when he’d cracked open a bottle of red, put some music on and insisted on dancing with her as they cooked, when he actually made cooking more fun. But then there was the clearing up afterwards. She should probably lighten up a bit about that, but it was so hard when you always felt you had to take responsibility for managing everything.

It was also frustrating to be the only one to write all the cards (though Noel at least had consented to put them in the post) and he’d shown scant interest in choosing Christmas presents. She’d been so busy with doing the extraneous extra pieces for the family—and his family to boot. Why Great Auntie Priscilla had to have bedsocks, and Cousin Ivy’s third grandchild needed a bath toy, Cat didn’t know. But she did know that Noel never paid any attention to that kind of thing and it was Expected. So
she
had to do it.