The Little Christmas Kitchen: A wonderfully festive, feel-good read

They may have been seeing a massive spike in business at the taverna because of the unseasonably high temperatures, but the flip side was the wild thunderstorms that had swept part of the back roof off and flooded the outhouses – costing her mum pretty much the entire summer’s profit.

Dimitri leant up against the island unit, twisting the top off the beer he’d obviously grabbed from the fridge outside on his way into the kitchen, and said, ‘Is it as much as, say, a plane ticket to London?’ His expression dancing with mischief.

Maddy narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Yes Dimitri, yes it is that much, perhaps a little bit more.’

He sucked in his breath.

‘Who’s going to London?’ her granddad asked as he lowered himself into the ratty old armchair in the corner of the room.

After the divorce, when her mum had moved permanently to the island that they’d holidayed on every year, buying the taverna that sprawled out into the bay, gradually Maddy’s grandparents stopped going back to England. If anyone ever commented on how odd it was that they’d changed allegiance, relocating to move near their ex-daughter-in-law, they always said it was because they couldn’t bear to be so far away from her cooking. But really it was just because they loved her, and at the time, not so much now, she struggled to manage without them. They downsized to a pied-a-terre in Nettleton, the village both her mum and dad had grown up in, and shipped all their furniture from their big country house over to Greece where the majority of it didn’t fit in the little villa they’d bought. Now it was dotted about in various places – Maddy, for example, had their Chippendale writing desk and Dimitri had inherited a glass 1950s cocktail cabinet that sat next to the fruit machine in his bar. Her granddad’s armchair sat in the taverna kitchen, an incongruous addition to the rustic industrial chic look that her mum had going on.

‘No one’s going to London, Granddad.’ Maddy went over to the kettle and flicked it on to make him a cup of tea before he could say that no one took care of him properly.

She could feel her mum watching her. ‘Why are you talking about London?’ she asked.

‘I’m not. Dimitri was.’ Maddy said, too quickly, as she reached up to get the tea bags from the shelf.

‘You don’t want to go to London, do you Maddy?’ her mum said, slight panic in her voice as she went on, ‘Why would you want to go to London? It’s Christmas. You can’t go to London.’

‘Are you going to London, Madeline?’ Her grandmother looked up from where she was helping her mum spoon feta into the cheese pies. ‘If you are could you pick me up some chocolate digestives?’

Maddy had to exhale slowly to calm herself down as she made the cup of Earl Grey. ‘For god’s sake. No one is going to London.’ she said through gritted teeth as she walked over to her granddad and slammed the tea down on the doily that covered his little side table.

‘You’re a little angel.’ Her granddad smiled, then looked at the cup and added, ‘One of your mum’s lemon biscuits would really go down a treat.’

Maddy rolled her eyes and went back to the shelf to grab the biscuit tin. When her granddad reached in and took a couple he said, ‘Are you singing this week Maddy?’

‘Friday, at the bar.’

‘I hate the bar.’ He scowled

Dimitri shouted over, ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘You make it so I hate it, Dimitri. It’s not for people like me.’

‘Rubbish.’ Maddy laughed, the atmosphere lightening, ‘You could come to the bar. You’re not that old.’

Her granddad scoffed. ‘Maybe. Maybe just to hear you sing, then I’ll leave.’

‘Maybe I won’t let you in, Mr Davenport.’ Dimitri said with one brow raised.

Her granddad laughed. ‘I was in the war, kiddo, I could fight my way in.’

‘You weren’t in the war,’ her grandmother scoffed. ‘You were behind a desk filing papers.’

‘That was still the war.’ he said crossly and sat back in a sulk with his cup of tea. ‘Madeline…’ he added, ‘if you went to London you could see your father.’ His bruised ego deliberately trying to stir up trouble.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Michael.’ Maddy’s grandmother slapped him on the arm.

Her mum sucked in a breath. Maddy closed her eyes for a second and then scowled at Dimitri who made a face of laughing apology and sloped out the door with his beer.

‘That’s it.’ she said, ‘I’m going to work.’

Maddy grabbed her bag from the hat stand in the corner of the room – another of her grandparents’ antiques – and her mum wiped her hands on her apron and came over to where she was pulling on her trainers by the back door. ‘You’ll be back to help with the evening shift?’ she said, reaching forward to tuck Maddy’s long fringe behind her ear where it had slipped in her hurry to get her shoes on and go.

‘Yes,’ she snapped, but then paused when she saw her mum smile and said more softly, ‘Yes, I’ll be back. I need the money,’ she added with a laugh.

‘I’m sorry you lost your savings, Maddy,’ her mum added, taking her glasses off her head and putting them on so she could look at Maddy properly – straighten out her jumper so it didn’t hang off her shoulder and fix one of the pulls in the wool. ‘You’re so pretty, and you look so scruffy.’

‘Who’s gonna see me, Mum?’

Her mum paused, smoothing the fabric of Maddy’s jumper back into place, then she took her glasses off and said with a sigh, ‘London’s not that great you know. I know it seems so. And I know your sister makes it look like it is, but it’s just a place, Maddy.’

Maddy looked down at her dirty trainers. ‘I know.’ she said, rolling her lips together and thinking about all the money she’d had to hand over for the giant dent she’d put in the yacht. ‘But it’s just a place I wanted to go.’

‘Well if it’s any consolation, I’m glad you’re staying. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without you.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’ Maddy lied, and then dashed out the back door to work.

If it was summer, going to work was no hardship. Maddy worked on the boats, jumping from one to the other in a bikini top and frayed shorts, feet roughened from running on pebbles and over hot tarmac, face golden, hair thick with salt and bleached at the tips, laughing and shouting, oil streaking her arms, smelling of sun cream and swimming in the sea till sundown. But in the winter she worked in Spiros’ garage – a shabby white building with green doors that were cracked and broken at the bottom – sanding, re-painting, fixing engines that tourists had given a beating during the holiday season. She had to listen to Greek folk music as it blasted out of a paint splattered radio and every day shake her head when Spiros asked her why she wasn’t married yet and had no babies.

Spiros was on the mainland today though, delivering an engine, so Maddy was on her own. She put her own music on and flung open the windows that Spiros kept closed because the sun made the place too hot. But Maddy could cope with the heat if it meant having the view – probably one of the best on the island, out over the Mediterranean, a sheer drop down on the cliff edge and, at this time of year, accompanied by the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks.

As she leant on the window sill, looking down at the navy water, she pulled a letter out of her pocket. The headed paper said Manhattans, the double t shaped like the Empire State building. The job offer made it clear that the backing work was only for Christmas and that while there might be occasions where she was required to perform solo there was no guarantee of this, they reserved the right to replace her at any point. The address was in Soho. 15 Greek Street. She’d thought it was fate when she’d written back to accept.

This was her dream – of big cities and men in suits, of money and bright neon lights, of martinis in Soho House and cocktails at the Ritz.

Her sister had emailed seemingly just to brag that they were celebrating their anniversary at Claridge’s. Maddy had Googled the restaurant, Fera, and picked what she would have ordered on the menu. The ‘dry-aged Herdwick hogget, sweetbread, cucumber, yoghurt and blackberry’ purely because she didn’t know what hogget was and presumed that her sister would know. She wanted clothes from Topshop that she didn’t have to order online and to go to Selfridges and see a whole floor devoted to shoes. She wanted to see the Carnaby Street Christmas lights for real, not just on her sister’s Instagram.

But most of all she wanted to sing somewhere that wasn’t her mum’s taverna or her friend’s bar. Somewhere where she had been picked to go on stage because someone thought she had talent, not just because they were related to her. She wanted someone to verify what she hoped, that she was a bit better than average, and whoever that was going to be, she wasn’t going to find them in a tiny bar on a Greek island in winter.

This letter was the first rung on her ladder.

It was possibility.

It was bits of paper falling from the window down into the sea.

CHAPTER 5 (#uf7fb221c-a86c-573f-af6c-b81296a8345f)

ELLA

The stewardess was wearing a Santa hat. The captain wished them a Merry Christmas after he hit the runway a little too fast. And everyone was handed a Quality Street as they exited the plane. Ella waved a hand in refusal, then paused as she stood at the top of the metal stairs. It wasn’t hot like mid-summer hot but it was certainly warm enough to make her wish she wasn’t wearing 100 denier tights. She breathed in through her nose, pushed her sunglasses up on her greasy hair and had to steady herself on the banister for a moment. The smell of airline fuel, the hiss of the bus brakes, a great wide sky – the type you don’t get in England. The type that stretches on and on and up into infinite possibility. A wisp of cloud like chalk on a blackboard.

She hadn’t been to Greece without Max for over a decade. And suddenly he seemed like a beautiful shield reflecting the attention and keeping her at a nice, safe distance. She felt like she’d left her armour at the Pimlico flat and was standing there naked.

‘Can you keep moving please, don’t stop on the stairs,’ the stewardess called out.

But Ella didn’t move forward, she apologised but stepped slightly to the side so that people could squeeze past her and covered her face with her hands and breathed in again. She took a massive breath and made herself run through some recent job successes, pictured her lovely flat, conjured an image of her and Max curled up on the sofa together watching Gogglebox – him stroking her hair and snorting away with delight as the commentators had the same opinion as him about The Voice while she checked Max’s accounts, looking up occasionally when he really guffawed. She forced herself to remember that Max had probably left her a hundred voicemails while her phone had been on flight mode. She took her hands away and looked again at the view and this time felt much less naked.