Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 2: The House on Willow Street, The Honey Queen, Christmas Magic, plus bonus short story: The Perfect Holiday

‘Come on, Silkie,’ she said briskly, then she turned and headed away from the house. Soon, the beautiful sweep of Avalon Bay opened out in front of her and picking up speed she strode down the drive. There was a lot to do today. She didn’t have time to get lost in the past.

Zach’s bedroom smelled of teenager: socks, some new, desperately cheap aftershave he adored, and the musky man/boy scent so different from the little boy smell she used to adore.

‘Time to get up, love,’ she said, giving his shoulder a shake and putting a cup of tea on his bedside locker.

A grunt from under the covers told her he was alive and sort of awake.

‘I’ll be back in ten minutes with the cold cloth if you’re not up,’ she warned. She’d used the cold cloth on her sister too. Years ago, the threat of a cold, wet flannel shoved under the covers had been the only way to get Suki out of bed of a morning.

Kitty was easier to wake. Tess kissed her gently on the cheek and made Kitty’s favourite cuddly toy, Moo, dance on the pillow for a minute, whispering ‘Time for breakfast!’ in Moo’s bovine voice.

By eight, both of her children were at the table, Kitty chatting happily and Zach bent over his cereal sleepily.

Silkie, happy after her walk and breakfast, lay under the kitchen table, hoping for crumbs.

The next hurdle for Tess was making Kitty’s lunch while simultaneously eating her own breakfast and checking that whatever she’d taken out of the freezer the night before was on the way to defrosting for dinner.

‘Why don’t we fall off the Earth if it’s round and it’s in space?’ Kitty wanted to know.

Tess considered this. ‘It’s gravity,’ she said. ‘There’s a magnetic pull …’

She stalled, wondering how to explain it all and trying to dredge the facts from her mind. Kitty asked a lot of questions. At least the heaven and angel phase was over, but she feared that ‘Where do babies come from?’ wouldn’t be far away.

‘Can you explain why we don’t all fall off the Earth, Zach, love?’ she begged her son.

He looked up from his bowl. ‘Gravity, Newton, Laws of Physics. Don’t ask me, I dropped physics last year.’

‘What’s physics?’ said Kitty. ‘Is it a person who can see the future? Julia says her mum’s always going to physics. She says they might win the lottery, but only on a Wednesday night. Do we do the lottery, Mum?’

‘No,’ said Tess. ‘But we should,’ she added, thinking of their bank balance.

‘We could do it on Wednesday,’ Kitty said, ‘with my pocket money.’

‘You’ve spent all your pocket money,’ teased Zach.

‘Have not.’

‘Yes you have.’

‘I have money in my Princess Jasmine tin,’ Kitty replied haughtily. ‘Loads of money. More than you.’

‘She probably does,’ remarked Tess, putting a plate with two poached eggs in front of her son. Zach’s appetite had gone crazy in the past year and he hoovered up food. Since breakfast was considered the most vital meal of the day, she was trying to get him to eat protein each morning, even though he said eggs made him ‘want to puke’.

‘No puking,’ Tess instructed. ‘You’ve got games today.’

When she’d dropped Kitty off at school and deposited Zach at the bus stop, she came home and spent half an hour tidying the house before she left for work. She loved her children’s rooms in the morning when they were safely in school. Even Zach’s teenage den, with its lurking, smelly sports socks balled up under the bed.

On all but the most rushed days, she felt a little Zen enter her soul when she went into the rooms of the two people she loved best.

The added peace came from the fact that her darlings weren’t actually there, so she could safely adore them and the idea of them – without being asked for something or told she was unfair, that all the other kids had such and such, that really, if she could only lend him some pocket money, an advance …?

Kitty had been right at breakfast: she probably did have more money than Zach. He was forever lending fivers to other people or spending on silly things.

Kitty’s bedroom was still a shrine to dolls, soft toys with huge eyes and Sylvanian creatures with complicated houses and endless teeny accessories that were forever getting lost.

‘Mum, I can’t find the cakes for the cake shop!’ was a constant refrain in the house and Tess had spent ages on her hands and knees with Kitty, looking under the furniture for minuscule slices of plastic cake, with her daughter’s lovely little face anxious at the thought of Mrs Squirrel not being able to run her cake shop.

This morning, Tess did a bit of sorting out in the Sylvanian village, then moved on to close the half-opened drawers and tie back the curtains before tidying the dressing table There was growing evidence of the emergence of Kitty’s tweenage years with silvery bracelets and girlish perfumes in glittery flacons clustered on the table. Moo, Kitty’s cuddly cow, loved to greyness, had a place of honour on her pink gingham heart cushion and it was Tess’s favourite job to make the bed and enthrone Moo on the cushion, ready for that night.

It didn’t matter that on the way to school Kitty could loudly sing along in the car to questionably explicit pop songs that made Tess wince: as soon as it was time for bed, Kitty morphed back into a nine-year-old who liked to snuggle under her pink-and-yellow-striped duvet, hold Moo close and wait for her bedtime story with the clear-eyed innocence of a child.

Once it was all tidy, Tess gave the room one last fond glance and moved on to Zach’s room. Zach’s domain was painted a lovely turquoise colour, but these days, none of the walls were visible because of posters of bands, footballers and Formula One drivers.

The rule was that Zach had to put clean sheets on his bed once a week and run the vacuum cleaner over the carpet. Since Tess had found the Great Cup Mould Experiments under the bed, he had to rinse out any mugs on a daily basis – and he was actually very good about doing it.

Seventeen-year-olds didn’t like their mothers tidying up their bedrooms. It was all part of the process of growing up. Like the part that said mothers had to let go. Tess knew that. Had known it from the first day Zach stopped holding her hand as they walked into the village school.

‘Ma – let go of my hand!’

He’d been seven and a bit at the time. Tall for his age, dark shaggy hair already ruffled despite being brushed into submission minutes earlier at home.

Tess had let go of his hand and smiled down at her dark-eyed son, even though she felt like crying. He was growing up. So fast.

‘Am I embarrassing you?’ she asked with the same smile that always shone through in her voice when she spoke to her son.

Because she adored him so much, she was determined that she would not be a clingy mother, not make him the vessel for all her hopes and dreams.

‘Yes!’ he’d replied, shrugging his schoolbag higher over his shoulder as a sign of his macho-ness.

Tess had watched him march into the classroom without giving her a second glance.

Ten years on, he still hugged her. Not every day, not the way he had as a small child. But he was an affectionate boy, and now that he towered over her, he’d lean down and give her a hug.

He called her ‘Ma’.

‘See ya, Ma,’ he’d say cheerily as he was about to leave the house for school.

He reminded her of his grandfather, her own beloved father. Zach had the same silver-grey eyes with lashes so black it looked as if he wore eyeliner. He had her father’s patrician features too, and his gentleness. For all that he played prop forward on the school rugby team, Zach Power was a gentle giant. All the girls in Avalon loved him. The ones he’d been to primary school with gazed at him with a combination of fondness and attraction. Tess could see that too: he also had the charisma of his father, the indefinable characteristic that would make women look at him always.

For the past two months he’d hauled the bins to the gate on Thursday night for the Friday-morning collection, trying to fill Kevin’s shoes. Every time he did it, Tess battled the twin emotions of pride and sadness.

Huge pride at him behaving like the man of the house, and sadness that it was necessary.

From the hallway below, Silkie yelped, eager for her next trip out – she knew her daily itinerary as well as Tess did.

Tess grabbed Zach’s laundry basket and went slowly downstairs. Silkie was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking forlorn.

‘I’ll put the washing on and we’ll go.’