Last Christmas (5 page)

Noel breathed a heavy sigh. All thoughts of a cosy evening were gone forever. It was nearly eleven, he may as well go to bed right now, otherwise he definitely would be asleep on the sofa by the time she got in.

Cat went back inside the brightly lit A&E department and sat down on the incredibly hard chair she had spent most of the evening on. Did the person in the NHS responsible for chairs have a particularly sadistic streak, she wondered? Every chair she had ever sat on, in every hospital she’d ever been in, had been incredibly uncomfortable, and usually she’d had to sit on it for hours. She glanced at her watch. It was gone ten thirty. What a waste of a bloody evening. She’d been planning to spend it cuddled up with Noel on the sofa, conscious she’d spent far too many evenings glued to the computer of late.

Trust Magda to manage to slice her finger to the bone. Cat hadn’t realised any of her knives were sharp enough.
If it had been anyone else, anyone at all, Cat would have felt sorry for her, but Magda’s litany of woes and trauma had left her all empathised out, and, while she had felt duty-bound to sit her down and wrap up the finger after Magda had come round from fainting at the sight of her own blood, Cat had taken her to the hospital while gritting her teeth. It was the only decent thing to do, but for once Cat wished she didn’t always feel obliged to do the decent thing and had the audacity to tell Magda to either get useless Sergei to take her in his shiny motor, or send her off in a taxi. In the end, Magda’s look of woe, and the sudden flash-forward she’d had to Mel in a few years time, hurt and alone in a foreign country, had been enough to make her rearrange her life at lightning speed. Sometimes having a conscience was a damned inconvenience.

Twenty minutes later Magda emerged, her finger bandaged thickly, her arm in a sling, milking the moment for all it was worth by flirting outrageously with the house officer who’d been unfortunate enough to be assigned to her. He looked so completely overwhelmed, Cat immediately felt sorry for him. Magda was a force to be reckoned with.

‘Doctor says I must not work for week,’ announced Magda. ‘Very bad for finger. Cleaning. Ironing. I must not do.’

‘I bet he does,’ murmured Cat, thinking frantically ahead to the next week. How many meetings did she have? And could she cancel any of them? She had a feeling Magda’s poorly finger was going to prevent her from doing anything remotely like the job Cat had been paying her to do for the last six months. She wished she had the nerve to sack Magda, but trying to find a replacement at short notice was going to be nigh on impossible. Cat was having enough trouble juggling all the demands on her with the cookery book she
was working on, as well as the blog and the regular column. She simply couldn’t afford to lose Magda—even a useless au pair was better than no au pair. She’d just have to bite her lip and put up with it.

Cat drove silently through the drably dark inner-London streets, not having the energy to strike up a conversation. Even at this late hour it was hideously busy. Cat screamed to a halt behind a night bus disgorging revellers who’d obviously been living it up in town, reminding her of how her life used to be when she wasn’t weighed down with the cares of the world. How she envied those young men and women spilling out onto the streets, living their carefree lives of partying and a kebab before bedtime.

Once that had been the way her weekend was too. Once a lifetime ago. Now it was reduced to trips to Casualty with useless au pairs and returning to find the house in darkness. Magda declined the offer of the food Noel had prepared for them and disappeared to her room to hold excitable conversations in Latvian.

Cat sighed. She didn’t feel all that hungry now. She put Noel’s cold offerings in the fridge, and made her way upstairs. Deep snoring from her bedroom indicated that Noel was already in the land of nod. They had so little time together. And now they’d lost another precious evening. Sometimes Cat worried they would end up having nothing to say to each other by the time the children eventually left home.

She went into the children’s rooms, picking up toys, smoothing over duvets and, in Ruby’s case, planting a kiss on her cheek. Paige and James both thought they were too big for kisses, and, though once or twice she’d stealthily managed to sneak kisses on them when they were asleep, James had a tendency to roll over and shout ‘Gerroff!’ and Paige had been known to sit up in a semi-wakeful state and
balefully declare, ‘You do not kiss me,
ever
!’ before falling back to sleep again. Cat stood and looked at them and allowed a blissful contentment to steal over her. Despite the stresses of her day, the sight of her children asleep could never fail to lighten her heart. As an only child she’d always longed for the hustle and bustle of a big family. At moments like this it actually felt worth it.

Satisfied that her children were all well, she snuck back to her husband and undressed silently in the darkness. Noel’s snoring had slowed down to more rhythmic breathing. She knew from past experience that he was so deeply asleep he’d need a bomb to wake him up. The feelings of contentment dissipated as she climbed into bed next to him. Noel moved towards her in his sleep, but otherwise didn’t stir. Cat shut her eyes feeling defeated and lost. One day her life would run on an even keel. One day…

Gabriel strode through the frosty fields that clung around the edges of the hills surrounding Hope Christmas, a cold wind whipping through him. One of his sheep had gone missing and he’d been up early looking for her. Pippa, as ever, had stepped into the breach with Stephen but, having found his errant sheep stuck flat on her back in a ditch, her pregnancy making it difficult for her to get up, Gabriel was now in a hurry to get back so he could at least take Stephen to school. Some days he found the weight of responsibility so crushing he didn’t know how much longer he could stagger under it.

‘If you still had a proper job…’ Eve had been wont to cry. She never fully understood what had prompted him to ‘drop everything’, as she put it, and leave his comfortable job as a marketing consultant, which he had loathed, to retrain at agricultural college so he could take over the
running of the farm from his father. How to explain that it was in his blood? He’d grown up farming sheep and had only left it behind because his parents feared for the future of their industry and had wanted him to have a job with more security. But Gabriel had never really taken to city life and had always known that one day he’d go back. When his parents announced their retirement it seemed like the perfect time to do so. He’d loved it from the first, but Eve had never settled.

‘If you could be a proper wife…’ had often been on his lips, but he’d never been cruel enough to say it. Eve, his poor little Evie, couldn’t help who or what she was. She’d never been cut out for country living and found the life oppressive. Everyone had warned him he couldn’t change her, but Gabriel had been too stubborn to listen, and now he was paying the price.

Where was she? How was she managing without him? He hadn’t heard from her in weeks and the sense of loss was still so raw that the pain caught him short sometimes, and he’d find himself blinking away sudden tears that came when he least expected them. Shit. He had to be stronger about this. Stephen needed him. Gabriel couldn’t afford to let him down.

Mind you, sometimes his son showed such astonishing strength, Gabriel had to pinch himself to work out who was the child and who was the parent. Stephen seemed to have a knack for knowing just when Gabriel was hurting most, and would sometimes come up and hold his hand, and say, ‘It’s okay, Dad’ in a way that tore at Gabriel’s heart. It was at such moments Gabriel’s sympathies for Eve’s suffering would evaporate and be replaced with cold, harsh fury. How could she have done this to them?

The fury returned briefly as Gabriel strode across the frozen wastes of the land thinking of the life that he’d so
badly wanted to share with her. It didn’t seem fair. None of it did.

‘I think you’ll find life isn’t very fair,’ a voice greeted Gabriel, as he approached the stile leading to the lane that ran down the side of his house.

‘What?’ Gabriel jerked himself back to the real world to find himself staring into the welcoming smile of Ralph Nicholas, out walking his dog. Where had he sprung from so suddenly and silently?

‘Jeez. I must be going mad,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’m talking to myself now. Sorry.’

‘No matter,’ said Ralph. ‘I know you have a lot to deal with.’

‘How?’ Gabriel was a little more belligerent than he meant to be. He was uncomfortably aware that his family situation was the talk of the town and hated being the centre of attention. He’d barely ever spoken to Ralph Nicholas, who hardly spent any time in Hope Christmas anymore. How on earth did he know what was going on in Gabriel’s life?

‘There’s not much that happens in this village that I don’t know about,’said Ralph.‘Incidentally,do you think it unfair when a fox gets one of your sheep?’

‘No,’ said Gabriel, ‘because I do everything I can to prevent that. If a fox catches a sheep, it’s usually bad luck.’

‘And if you’ve done everything you can to help your wife,’ said Ralph, ‘don’t you think you should just accept there’s nothing you can do for her? Some people cannot, or will not, be helped. It’s just bad luck.’

Gabriel looked at Ralph in astonishment. How had this relative stranger plumbed the depths of his heart so conclusively? He’d never even talked to Pippa about how he really felt about Eve.

‘I feel I’ve failed her,’ said Gabriel slowly. ‘I wanted to look after her and I couldn’t.’

‘But you can look after your son,’ pointed out Ralph. ‘I’ve always found a new hobby very helpful for a broken heart.’

‘I don’t have time for hobbies,’ said Gabriel.

‘Well, maybe it’s not a hobby you need,’ said Ralph. ‘But perhaps you could use the considerable talents you have for protection into something that you
can
do something about.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look around you,’ said Ralph, encompassing Gabriel’s fields and the hills they bordered with a sweep of his arm. ‘We take all this for granted. Assume the immutability of it all. But nothing stays the same forever. In case you hadn’t noticed, Hope Christmas is under threat. There are moves afoot to change all this.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’ said Gabriel. ‘What can I do?’

‘I’d say the post office is as good a place to start as any,’ said Ralph. He whistled loudly and his dog, a grey wolfhound, came lolloping up to them. ‘Best be off then,’ he said.

Gabriel walked on down the lane, shaking his head. He’d heard Ralph Nicholas was eccentric, but not that he was so utterly barking. What did that mad old man know anyway? No one was planning to do anything to Hope Christmas. Why would anyone want to destroy something as beautiful as this? Ralph Nicholas must have got it wrong. And, even if he hadn’t, Gabriel had enough problems right now without worrying about the future of his village.

Gabriel strode on down the lane to Pippa’s house, where Stephen was contentedly munching his Cheerios.

‘Shall I take them in today for you?’ he asked his cousin, who was looking distinctly harassed.

‘Would you?’ she said. ‘Lucy isn’t too well today. It would be a great help.’

‘It’s my pleasure,’ said Gabriel, and it was. He chased
Stephen and his cousins down the lane to school, whooping and laughing as he pretended to be a monster chasing after them, and a pale weak winter sun emerged from behind the cold grey clouds. It gave him heart somehow. Maybe his future wasn’t so bleak after all.

‘Ah, Mrs Tinsall. Thank you for taking the trouble to ring me back.’ The voice of the school secretary boomed down the phone, bristling with disapproval that she was speaking to a mother who actually went out to work. Cat had taken advantage of a break in proceedings during the discussion of the cover design for the June issue of
Happy Homes
to check on her messages and clocked to her dismay that she’d missed a call from school. It always panicked her when the school rang.

‘No problem,’ said Cat, her heart racing. Why was the school ringing her at 3.45? Mum had offered to go and get the kids for her so that she could go to the meeting, Magda claiming her injured finger prevented her from carrying bags and holding the children’s hands to cross the road. ‘Is dangerous, Cat-er-ine,’ she’d said in the annoying singsong voice she always used when she wanted to get out of something. ‘I do not want to be danger to the children.’

‘I have your children sitting in my office,’ said the secretary, ‘and I was just wondering if someone was planning to come and pick them up any time soon.’

‘
What?
’ Cat went cold all over. It was her worst nightmare. It would take her at least an hour to get back, even if Bev (who was gesturing to her to wind up the call) let her go.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she was gabbling now. ‘My mother was supposed to come. Oh God. Erm. I’ll try and ring her. See where she is.’

‘I’d appreciate it if you did,’ said the secretary, not noted for her diplomatic skills, ‘I’m not paid to babysit your children.’

Cat put the phone down and said to Bev,‘I’m really sorry, this won’t take a minute, can you excuse me?’

Bev rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be long.’

Cat went into the corridor and punched in her mum’s number. She was shaking like a leaf. Suppose Mum was ill? Or had had a fall? She was normally fit and healthy, but Cat had to remind herself from time to time that her capable mother was now seventy-three. Something
must
have happened to prevent her from picking the children up. She never made mistakes like that.

On the third ring, her mother picked up. ‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Mum, are you okay?’

‘Well, of course I am,’ said Mum. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘I was worried about you,’ said Cat, trying to remain calm. ‘You haven’t picked the kids up from school.’

‘
What?
’said Mum.‘That was today? I thought you wanted me to do it tomorrow.’

‘No, Mum,’ sighed Cat, ‘I rang last night and said today.’

‘You said tomorrow,’ replied Mum tetchily.

‘I did?’ said Cat, convinced that she hadn’t got it wrong.

‘Yes, you definitely said it was tomorrow,’ said Mum. ‘I even wrote it down.’

‘Sorry, my mistake then,’ said Cat, trying to make light of it, but seething inside. She felt guilty about feeling so cross with Mum, who rarely let her down, but panic was making her agitated. ‘Can you get there now? The school are pretty frantic and I’m stuck in a meeting.’

‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ her mother promised.

Cat rang back the school, mollified the secretary, and went back to her meeting with relief. It was hard enough juggling work and home commitments without disasters like that befalling her. Thank goodness it was so rare, otherwise she’d
really
be in trouble.

‘Glad to see you’re more cheerful.’ Pippa walked into Gabriel’s kitchen pushing Lucy’s buggy, followed by Stephen and her two boys, Nathan and George. She’d offered to return his favour from the morning and pick the kids up from school. Gabriel had accepted gratefully as he’d spent the morning fence-mending and had got seriously behind on his domestic chores.

Gabriel paused from whistling ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ and realised with a jolt that since his meeting with Ralph Nicholas that morning he had been feeling a lot more chipper. He’d gone to work with a will and being out in the fresh frosty air had invigorated him. Even coming back to an untidy, silent house hadn’t caused him as much internal wrestling as it normally did. He’d got down to tracking down the socks that always mysteriously vanished under Stephen’s bed with an enthusiasm he hadn’t felt for ages. Maybe Ralph was right. He just needed to focus on the stuff he
could
do.

‘Good day at school?’ he asked his son, who nodded his assent before running off to watch TV with his cousins.

‘Cup of tea?’ he asked his cousin. ‘You look tuckered out.’

‘I am a bit,’ said Pippa. ‘Lucy’s a lot better now, but we did have a bad night with her.’

‘I don’t know how you cope with three of them,’ said Gabriel.

‘Well, what else am I going to do?’ said Pippa laughing. ‘Slit my wrists? By the way, have you seen this?’

She shoved a leaflet in his hand.