Last Christmas (8 page)

‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ she began. ‘The good news is that we have nearly 15,000 signatures on our Downing Street petition,’ (this raised a cheer) ‘the bad news is that I can’t get hold of anyone from the Post Office to come and meet with us and discuss a compromise. So we’ve decided to take the issue to them. And we’re planning a trip to London to visit the Post Office headquarters, as well as presenting our petition at 10 Downing Street. We’d like as many of you to sign up for this as possible, of course. Thanks to Ralph Nicholas, who has several friends in the media, we’re hoping to get some national coverage to raise our campaign further.’

‘Blimey,’ said Marianne, ‘that sounds impressive.’

‘Good for Vera,’ whispered Gabriel. ‘I never knew she had it in her.’

‘Well, you know what they always say about the quiet ones,’ said Marianne. The room was so packed her and
Gabriel’s chairs were so close together their knees were nearly touching. She shifted a little in her seat to move away from him. She didn’t want him getting the wrong idea.

The meeting soon broke up, with people going to sign up for the London trip and promising to write more letters of protest. Marianne found herself agreeing to take minutes of the next meeting, while Gabriel, having confessed to an interest in Photoshop, discovered he was now going to be running an entire poster campaign.

‘Honestly, this village is hopeless,’ said Gabriel. ‘Give an inch and they take a mile.’

‘That’s what public service is all about,’ sniffed Miss Woods, as she stumped by with her stick. ‘We need more altruism in this world, not less.’

‘True,’ said Marianne, laughing. She picked up her coat and started heading for the door.

‘You’re not staying for a drink?’ Gabriel felt a sudden stab of disappointment.

‘Oh, um,’ Marianne looked awkward.‘I hadn’t really given it any thought.’

‘It doesn’t matter if you’ve got plans,’ Gabriel said in a rush. ‘It’s just everyone else is going and I thought—’

‘No, I don’t have any other plans,’ said Marianne, ‘a drink would be lovely.’

They made their way into the Hopesay Arms, the friendly local, which was cram-full of regulars and so busy it was three-deep at the bar.

‘I’ll get these,’ offered Gabriel. ‘What’s your poison?’

‘Half of lager,thanks,’said Marianne.‘I’ll look for a table.’

‘This is cosy,’ said Gabriel when he arrived eventually at the fireside table that Marianne had found.

‘Oh, I didn’t want you to think…’ Marianne blushed. ‘This was the only place I could find.’

‘Here’s fine,’ said Gabriel. He sipped at his beer, and there
was a momentary awkward silence, before he said: ‘So, how does Hope Christmas compare to London, then?’

‘I love it,’ said Marianne. ‘Even though I grew up in London, I’ve never really felt like a city person. From the moment I came here I felt like I’d come home. Does that sound odd to you?’

‘Nope,’ said Gabriel. ‘I moved to London for work originally, then stayed for Eve’s sake, but my heart was never there. Not really. I always felt I was living in the wrong place, having the wrong life. Now…’ he paused for a moment.

‘Now?’ she prompted.

‘Well, even though Eve’s gone and everything,’ said Gabriel, ‘at least I feel I’m living the life I’m meant to be living. Does that make sense to you?’

‘Perfect sense,’ said Marianne.

The evening flew by, and, before Gabriel knew it, it was nearly eleven.

‘I’d better go,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the teenage daughter of my neighbour babysitting and she’s got school in the morning. I’d better let her get home.’

‘Oh, I assumed Pippa must be babysitting,’ said Marianne.

‘She couldn’t. She and Dan were meeting a possible new supplier tonight.’

‘I’d better be off too,’ said Marianne. ‘It’s way past my bedtime.’

‘I’ll walk you home,’ offered Gabriel.

‘There’s no need,’ protested Marianne. ‘Honestly, I’m a big girl.’

‘And I’m a gentleman,’ said Gabriel. ‘And, as your fellow Lonely Heart, I insist on walking you home whether you like it or not. I have to protect you from any potential lotharios out there intent on breaking your vow of chastity.’

‘All right then,’ said Marianne, ‘if you insist.’

They got their coats on and made their way down the High Street towards Marianne’s cottage. It was a bright starlit night and the moon was full, the kind of night that was made for lovers, Gabriel suddenly thought. And whereas in the pub the warmth of the fire had led to a kind of cosy intimacy with Marianne, out here in the cold he was suddenly pulled back into the reality of both their situations. They really were two Lonely Hearts offering one another companionship. That was all. They walked the short distance back to her cottage in near silence. The intimacy from the pub seemed to have vanished somehow.

When they got there, Gabriel felt suddenly awkward. Suppose she thought…?

‘Must get in, early start and all that,’ Marianne gabbled. ‘Thanks for a lovely evening.’

She almost dived into her cottage. Gabriel was relieved. She clearly hadn’t been expecting anything. Which was good. As he had nothing to offer her. Nothing at all.

‘More wine, Angela?’ Catherine waved the bottle in front of her mother-in-law almost with bated breath. So far this was the first meal since her arrival that hadn’t been peppered with snide comments and sharp asides to Noel. It helped that Magda had gone out for the day, so Angela couldn’t harp on about why Catherine had to work and needed an au pair (especially such a lousy one) anyway. Thankfully, though Sergei had outstayed his welcome by two days, Catherine had managed to chuck him out before her mother-in-law’s arrival. Seeing as Angela had yet to forgive Cat and Noel for the year they’d lived in sin, she’d have been horrified to discover Magda cohabiting with her foreign boyfriend in the same house, corrupting her grandchildren, even if she appeared to heartily dislike said grandchildren.

‘No, thank you, Catherine,’ sniffed Angela. ‘I don’t like to overindulge in the middle of the day.’

But it doesn’t stop you knocking back a bottle of sherry in the evening, thought Catherine uncharitably, and shot Noel a knowing look. He raised his eyes to heaven in the helpless manner he always employed when his mother was around. Cat wished he’d stand up to her more.

‘I’ll have some more, thank you,’ said Cat’s mother, whom they’d invited over to help dilute the toxicity of Angela’s
presence. ‘I think I’m past the age where I care about overindulging.’ She flashed an understanding smile at her daughter, as if to say,
You’re doing fine.
Cat smiled back. Not for the first time she felt incredibly grateful to have such an easygoing, wonderful and utterly generous mother.

The meal continued in silence until Ruby and Paige started kicking each other under the table.

‘Stop that you two!’ hissed Cat, trying not to draw Angela’s attention, whose views on children’s behaviour at the dinner table were more than a little Victorian. Luckily, Angela had chosen that moment to quiz James about which school he might be thinking about going to, a thorny subject as Noel and Cat were keen for him to try for a grammar school five miles away, which had a much better reputation than the local boys’ school, while James of course wanted to go where his friends were going. They’d already been through this once with Melanie, but her friends had roughly divided in half as to where they went, which had softened the pill of saying goodbye to her best friend somewhat.

‘She started it!’ said Paige, sticking her tongue out at Ruby.

‘Did not!’ said Ruby. ‘Paige, you’re a fucking shit!’

The silence at the other end of the table was so deafening Cat felt as though she’d entered some awful time capsule where things were frozen in perpetuity.
Oh my God.
Where on earth had Ruby learned language like that? She battled the urge to laugh. Really it wasn’t funny.

‘Ruby! You do not say words like that ever!’ Cat shouted as sternly as she could. Great, now Angela would have all her worst fears about how terribly her grandchildren were being brought up confirmed.

‘James does,’ whined Ruby.

‘Don’t tell tales,’ Cat and Noel said automatically. ‘Go to your room at once.’

Ruby stormed out of the room sobbing, while Cat and Noel scolded their son, who took himself off to the lounge, kicking the door as he went, complaining about how unfair the world was.

‘Angela, Mum, I’m so sorry about that.’ Cat tried and failed to recover her poise. ‘I had no idea they even knew words like that. It’s so difficult nowadays to stop them learning this stuff. I know it was different when we were young.’

‘I have to say I am a bit surprised,’ said Cat’s mum, with an asperity that was unusual for her.‘I thought rather better of your children.’

‘Oh, piffle. It’s not as if children have only just learnt to swear,’ said Angela. To Cat’s utter amazement, she was grinning. ‘I seem to remember being called in to Noel’s school because he’d been writing rude words in the boys’ loos. Do you remember, Noel?’

Noel looked as though his teeth were set on edge.

‘I don’t think you’ve ever let me forget it,’ he said.

Cat let out the breath she’d been holding without realising. That had been a close call but miraculously—presumably because the guilty party had been Ruby-Who-Could-Do-No-Wrong—Angela didn’t seem at all fazed by the incident. So much so that within minutes she was insisting that Ruby came back and sat down again, and even went into the lounge to try and persuade James to come back.

‘Wonders will never cease,’ Cat remarked to her mother later, as they were loading the dishwasher.

‘What’s that, dear?’ Her mother was looking a little distracted, looking at a teatowel as if she’d never seen one before.

‘Angela, earlier,’explained Cat.‘I thought she’d be apoplectic about Ruby swearing like that. I couldn’t believe she’d seen the funny side.’

Mum looked at her in a bemused fashion.

‘Sorry, when was that?’ she said.

Cat looked at her, puzzled.

‘You know, earlier on,’ she said. ‘Ruby said a rude word and we told her off, and then rather than Angela being angry she told a funny story about Noel. Surely you can’t have forgotten already?’

‘No, no, of course not,’ said her mother, but she had a slightly perplexed look on her face. ‘Right, where do you want these?’

She lifted the washed plates from the table where Cat had left them.

‘In the cupboard they normally go in,’ said Cat.

‘Which is?’

‘That one,’ said Cat, pointing to the relevant cupboard. ‘Mum, are you all right?’

‘Never better, dear,’ said Mum brightly. ‘Oh, of course, silly me. They go in here, don’t they?’

‘Yes,’ said Cat, with a prickle of unease. Was it her imagination, or was her mother becoming more and more forgetful?

‘Have you seen this latest about the new eco town?’ Pippa was practically exploding as she sat at her kitchen table reading the local paper.

‘No, what?’ Gabriel had just dropped by to pick up Stephen. He’d been out in the fields since early that morning, tracking down his flock, ready to bring them indoors for lambing. Most of the farmers round here left their sheep on the hillside, but Gabriel preferred having his under cover: when, as had occasionally happened, he’d bred from different stock, the occasional large lamb was born, causing complications that were more difficult to deal with out on the hillside. A couple of sheep were still missing though. He was going to have to go out again tomorrow.

‘That bloody Luke Nicholas,’ said Pippa, practically spitting with venom. ‘Can’t think what Marianne can ever have seen in him.’

‘Why, what’s he done?’

‘Just announced that his eco town is going to have a brand new supermarket up the road, which conveniently his company is also building. I bet some money’s changed hands with a dodgy councillor over that. It says here that the supermarket is going to be donating a new leisure centre for the eco town. No wonder they got planning permission.’

‘A leisure centre doesn’t sound very green and, come to that, nor does a supermarket,’ said Gabriel.

‘Not unless they harness all the energy from the exercise bikes to power the place,’ snorted Pippa. ‘The whole thing is mad. We don’t need a new town this close to Hope Christmas. Besides, I’m sure that land he’s building on used to be designated a flood plain. Do you remember that Christmas a couple of years ago when it rained so heavily? The fields round there were waterlogged for weeks.’

‘Doesn’t it all still have to be approved, though?’ said Gabriel. ‘Surely he can’t just steamroller the thing through?’

‘Why shouldn’t he?’ said Pippa. ‘He’s got money and influence, hasn’t he? I tell you, that bloody town is going to kill Hope Christmas stone dead. What with that and the post office, I despair, I really do.’

Something stirred inside Gabriel. Something that Ralph Nicholas had said to him weeks ago about keeping hold of the things you loved. He looked out at the hillside, towering over the house in the gathering gloom. Gabriel had lived in Hope Christmas for most of his life, and he realised, somewhat to his surprise, that he loved it with every fibre of his being. He couldn’t bear the thought of it being under threat. He’d been so preoccupied with his own personal problems
he’d given less thought to those of the people around him. Hope Christmas was built around a community that in many cases just about eked out a living. Losing the post office would be a blow, but the eco town could prove the nail in the coffin.

‘Can’t we challenge it somehow?’ he said. ‘I seem to remember reading somewhere that there are a lot of protests about eco towns elsewhere. Maybe we should try and find out a bit more.’

‘Ooh, Gabe,’ teased Pippa, ‘you’re becoming quite the environmental campaigner, aren’t you?’

‘Well,’ said Gabriel, ‘I think you’re right. If we don’t act now, it might be too late. Maybe it’s time to widen our campaign to saving Hope Christmas itself.’

‘What do you propose to do, then?’ said Pippa, her interest piqued.

‘I’m not sure yet,’ said Gabriel. ‘But I think I might just pay Ralph Nicholas a visit. I wonder how much he knows about what his grandson is up to.’

Noel sat in the boardroom at a budget meeting feeling something akin to despair. Matt Duncan was doing a great brown-nosing job agreeing with everything that Gerry Cowley was saying, however stupid it might be. It also appeared Noel was more out of the loop than he’d thought, as Matt seemed to have access to figures and documents that Noel hadn’t ever seen. That had meant that Noel had been unable to answer half the questions asked about this year’s sales projections. He’d looked like a real tit. Which is what Matt was after, presumably. Noel half expected Gerry to morph at any moment into Alan Sugar, point at him and say, ‘With regret, my friend, you’re fired.’ Not that he was getting paranoid or anything, but it was clear the writing was on the wall.

Luckily, for the time being, no one was paying too much
attention to him as Karl Dear, the finance director, was having a row with Alan Thompson about the budget his department had been given. Alan was arguing that without sensible funding he couldn’t actually build the new freezer stores that Asda had commissioned, and did GRB really want to lose that account, while Karl was patiently and patronisingly telling Alan that no one was immune to the wintry storms blowing over the economic wastelands left behind by the credit crunch, however big the deal they’d wangled. So he was just going to have to compromise like the rest of the company.

Noel was busy doodling on his sketch pad. One of the projects he’d got involved in recently had been to design the heating systems for a new eco town, up in Shropshire. Eco towns were hot property at the moment and everyone was vying for a piece of the action. The company were hoping that if they could make this one work it would lead to more of the same, so the stakes were very high indeed.

There had been talk originally of creating sustainable housing from old workers’ cottages close to the village of Hope Christmas, but that had been eschewed in favour of the brand new shiny eco town that the likes of Matt Duncan were keen to build. Noel had been unfortunate enough to have spent an evening in the company of Matt and Luke Nicholas, who ran the local building firm tasked with creating the new town. Having spent a glorious morning strolling around Hope Christmas, which Noel had instantly fallen in love with, Noel couldn’t for the life of him see why an eco town was even needed so close to such a wonderful place.

Hope Christmas was already eco friendly. Its shops and restaurants sourced their produce from the local farmers, who held their own market in the village square every Thursday. There was a fabulous bookshop and a great
antiques market, which was a real treasure trove. Why anyone needed to replace it was beyond Noel. The whole thing had seemed like a huge waste of money to Noel, and he hadn’t made himself popular by saying so.

Noel still felt sure that the cottage route would have been a better fit for this, but he knew throwing suggestions around like, ‘Prince Charles has done a good job of this kind of thing in the Duchy of Cornwall’, wouldn’t get him anywhere. Prince Charles’ vision of sustainable developments that incorporated the notion that keeping the existing communities alive might actually be a good thing didn’t cut any ice in Matt’s shiny world. He was after the glory and so, suspected Noel, was Luke.

The meeting was breaking up, with nothing very much resolved. It was clear that economic conditions were causing nearly all the company’s projects to be scaled down, except for the eco town, as Noel realised when he looked through the figures once again when he was back at his desk. Now why didn’t that surprise him?

Marianne felt hesitant as she drove up the drive of Hopesay Manor. She hadn’t been back for two months. Not since that dreadful night on Christmas Eve. She’d only glimpsed Luke once in the street since. As usual with Luke, his business seemed to be taking him up and down the country, and it seemed that he was rarely at home, preferring to spend more time in his bachelor pad in London.

Marianne had some stuff of his to return. She could have taken a chance that Luke was away and dropped it round at his place, but she couldn’t bear the thought that the blonde bimbo was still hanging about, although Pippa reckoned he’d moved on to the next one by now. On Christmas Day Marianne had toyed with throwing most of his possessions in the lake at the front of Hopesay Manor,
but she hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to. And then she’d hoped that, by keeping them, maybe Luke would have to call round to pick them up. Pathetic, she knew, but she couldn’t help that sneaky little hope that he’d still come back. Terrible thing, hope, it kept you going against all the odds, even against the constant battering that Pippa was prone to giving Luke, who as far as Pippa was concerned was systematically trying to destroy all that was good about Hope Christmas.

It was hope that had brought her here now. Hope that if she gave Luke’s things to his lovely charming grandfather, maybe Ralph could smooth the way not only for a meeting, but also for the happy-ever-after reconciliation that Marianne knew she shouldn’t be contemplating, but couldn’t help thinking about. So, here she was, standing like an idiot in front of that imposing door. The first time she’d come here had been the best day of her life. The last time, the worst. What would happen to her here today?