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

In Arrivals her Blackberry buzzed like a starving baby bird. A hundred messages from Adrian about the Obeille mobile phone account. No one could do it but her. They were floundering. They were going to lose it. He knew she was on holiday but could she possibly…

Nothing from Max.

On the ferry journey she ignored the view of the endless blanket of blue, unable to see where the sky met the sea, the birds swooping as they caught the breeze like kites, the olive covered mountains that crept up the horizon as the boat chugged, and kept reaching into her bag and flicking her home screen to life just to make sure that she hadn’t missed a call.

The ferry port was a tiny white building and a snaking queue of taxis. Ella strutted fast past the meandering tourists to make sure she was at the front. As she tapped her foot waiting for the two drivers at the front of the line to stop arguing she could feel a trickle of sweat down her back and glanced up at the unseasonable sunshine. She looked over the road at the familiar line of palm trees combing the air as a welcome breeze picked up, the weatherbeaten coffee stall where people stood at the counter and drank thick coffee from tiny glasses rimmed with gold, the scratch of grass where a group of men played backgammon in the shade of the palm, and thought how usually there was a driver holding a sign with Max’s name on it. Why, she wondered, was she on frenetic London time, impatiently chivvying the taxi drivers along, when really she was in no hurry to reach her destination.

When Ella was finally in the car, the driver chatted away almost to himself as she stared out the window watching the landmarks whizz by; a strip of beach lined with a couple of tourist bars, most closed for the season, the school on the bend that she’d been so jealous of Maddy going to while Ella was sitting scholarship exams for a boarding school where she was forced to play lacrosse in the snow and eat liver the colour of petrol.

She was still looking out at other little shops and cafes along the drive she recognised when the driver turned up the road to her mum’s village. Ella had to look back to check the sign was right, it seemed too soon. The road was rutted and the drive bouncy. She felt a bit sick as they jumped along, the lush vegetation gleaming in the bright sunshine. As they turned the corner into the main square, she saw Christmas lights hanging from one street lamp to the next and bunting flickered in the breeze around the square. Out in the bay three great statues of boats sat ready to light up at dusk as part of the Christmas decorations. Ella paid the cab and wandered out past a row of shabby white houses on her right draped with the odd sprig of parched brown bougainvillea. Bypassing the church on her left and the shuttered-up tourist shop, she was being pulled to the view ahead of her like the grubby looking dog that limped past, its nose sniffing along the ground leaving a line like a snake track in the red dust.

A half moon bay curved like a sleeping cat below her. Frothy white horses glistened in the late afternoon sunlight as if flecked with diamonds and rolled over plump, pale pebbles that rattled like bones as the water pushed them, chattering, up the beach. Little fishing boats, the colours you’d paint them in primary school, bobbed on their moorings, just a couple of them like knitting grannies, nodding up and down as the waves gently tumbled. It was impossible to see where the sky met the sea.

She realised that she had never been here in winter before. She was used to two weeks of bubbling sun, flocks of tourists and the roaring hum of cicadas. But as she looked out over the horizon, flecked with prickly pears and plants like aliens, fronds jutting out at crazy angles and precariously perched on the side of the rocks, she realised how silent it was. How quiet. How exposed. How perhaps this was a terrible mistake.

‘Ella?’ A familiar voice said.

She turned to look in the direction of a dirty big garage, the green doors padlocked and the neon sign flickering. Her younger sister was walking towards her, looking as cool and calm as she always did. Hair pulled into a messy bun, long tanned limbs hanging weightlessly, freckles over her nose, gap between her front teeth that she could slide a penny into. Young, gangly, immature, beautiful Maddy.

‘Hi.’ Ella said, feeling suddenly sweaty and awkward in her now crumpled shirt and pencil skirt that she’d been wearing at the office. Her feet pinched in her Louboutins, the polished leather dirty with dust. ‘I just arrived.’

‘No kidding.’ Maddy raised a brow. ‘Does Mum know you’re coming?’

Ella felt instantly defensive. ‘No. I wanted it to be a surprise.’

Maddy gave her a look that Ella interpreted as both mocking and bemused. ‘She’ll be surprised all right. Isn’t it your anniversary? Is Max here?’

Ella shook her head. ‘Yes, but we went out last night because he had a big deal come up at work,’ she lied, the rehearsed words rushing out too quickly. She paused, took a breath to calm herself down. ‘He’s flying out later,’ she added and instinctively her hand wrapped around her phone and she looked down to check it again. No messages. In fact barely any signal at all. She could feel Maddy watching her, looking her up and down. She wished that she’d changed into something more casual before getting on the plane. She felt foolish in her work clothes and it was making her defensive. ‘Can you take me to her?’

Maddy scoffed. ‘I’m not your servant. You know where she lives.’

Ella couldn’t at that moment admit that no, she actually didn’t know where she lived. She had never walked from here to the taverna, was unfamiliar with the network of back streets. When they came to stay they stayed at the five star hotel at the next beach where bougainvillea pouring like cherryade over the balconies, the waiters knew their names and there were aperitifs in the bar at six. Max always hired a boat and they would zoom up to the jetty, an arcing wake behind them, and she would step out wearing a sparkly maxi dress and a big sunhat and Max would tip one of the little kids on the jetty to tie up the boat and make sure it was secure because, while he liked to mess around, showing off in his speedboat, he wasn’t the best sailor and had no idea how to moor or when to drop anchor.

No she’d never arrived in the town via the backstreets.

Well, not in the last ten years anyway.

CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_f6131dd7-da2d-5e90-95bd-36226cdb29c7)

MADDY

Maddy could tell something was up. Ella never went anywhere without Max. Ever since they’d got together she clung to him like a limpet. As if, if she let go he might disappear into a puff of smoke and she’d be left sitting on a pumpkin with lots of mice running around her.

She looked immaculate as always. Her clothes worth more than Maddy earned in a year. Her expression was disparaging, haughty. Like there was no way she would trudge through the streets on her own to get to their mum’s.

Maddy swallowed.

Dimitri once said, ‘Why do you let her get to you?’

And Maddy had shrugged, looked away and said, ‘I don’t know.’ But she did know. Because on the one hand Ella terrified her and on the other hand Maddy so desperately wanted to be her, or at the very least be liked by her again.

‘Come on, I’ll take you.’ Maddy said in the end, conscious of her dust coated hair and make-up free face.

Ella took a couple of steps forward, tottering awkwardly over the pot holes in her killer heels. ‘What is wrong with the bloody roads?’ she huffed.

‘The road is paved up here, it’s not usually like this,’ Maddy said, defensive of her island. ‘It happened in the storm.’

Ella made a face as if it’d happened just to spite her.

‘People lost their houses.’ Maddy narrowed her eyes.

Ella looked away.

They trudged on another couple of steps, Ella taking tiny steps in her leather boots and dragging a Louis Vuitton case behind her.

‘Do you want me to take that?’ Maddy said as they got to the top of the sloping cobbled path that led down to the beach, the jetty and the taverna.

‘No I can manage.’ Ella said, the sharpness of her tone making Maddy flinch.

CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_9e1dfaac-59c4-59e4-8e5e-aee586eacd2c)

ELLA

There is no way I’m letting her make everyone think I can’t even carry my own bag.

Ella bit the inside of her cheek. Her shoes were rubbing, her shirt was sticking to her back, her bag was getting increasingly heavy as she tried to stop it running away with itself on the sloping road.

Maddy loped ahead of her, all sun-kissed beach-babe, scuffing her trainers on the cobbles almost trying to show Ella how casual and laidback her life was.

I gave all this up because of you. The thought popped into her head as suddenly as the view of the taverna appeared before her, and, as she pushed it away, she found herself caught. Staring, involuntarily, at the sprawling building. She hadn’t looked at it in years. Really taken it in. Seen the terrace that led out into the sea like it was floating on the water and the lattice of vines that stretched up along one wall and over the roof. Gone were the rattan mats that had been nailed onto the awning as a makeshift defence against the rain and used to bash and shake in the wind, terrifying them in their beds at night. In their place was a sparkling new roof, beautiful terracotta tiles that curved like waves and thick new wooden beams that her mum had strung with coloured lights that swayed gently in the breeze. The stone walls had been whitewashed since she’d last been there and The Little Greek Kitchen had been slapped on the side in yellow paint.

Maddy had come up with the name and Ella remembered being so jealous. Her suggestions had seemed so lame in comparison.

‘Are you coming?’ Maddy had paused ahead of her to look back.

‘Yes, I was just readjusting my bag.’ Ella said, making sure she hadn’t seen her gawping at the view and focused on hauling her case down the set of steep steps that joined them to the road leading to the taverna.

It was the smell that knocked Ella for six. Warm pastry cracking and bursting in the oven and cheese melting into a soft, spongy goo. Summers spent sitting on the veranda of a villa they rented stuffing little filo pies into her mouth and jumping into the pool while her dad barbecued and her mum sat in the shade rubbing sun cream into Maddy’s tiny arms, wearing an old white linen shirt and no make-up, and looking stunning. It was on this island that Ella had dipped Maddy’s toes into the sea when she was a baby, it was where she’d reluctantly agreed to go on the donut rides that she hated so that Maddy would have someone with her, where she’d taught Maddy to play the card game Slam! and let her beat her just to be nice, and where, on the plane on the way home, she had held Maddy’s hand and listed all the good things they were going home to when she cried about the holiday being over.

As Maddy and her mum stood side by side now, Maddy having gone over and tapped Sophie on the shoulder, Ella could see that their likeness had only got stronger as they got older. That even in looks now, she was the odd one out.

‘What is it?’ Sophie frowned, rubbing her hands clean on a tea-towel. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’

Maddy nodded towards the doorway.

Ella was standing between her granddad who was snoozing in an old armchair and a big bunch of conifer leaves that had been thrust into a pot of oasis and decorated like a Christmas tree, white lights sparkling, tiny rainbow coloured baubles winking as they bobbed in the breeze, and on the top branch the big gold star from their youth bound on with wire.

There was always a joke that Ella got all the worst bits of both of her parents. Her dad’s pale skin that burnt with anything less than factor fifty. Her mum’s unruly hair. Her dad’s thick eyebrows. Her mum’s ankles. Her dad’s constant battle with his weight that had him in the gym every morning. Her mum’s belief that love always won out in the end. Was she still waiting? Ella wondered as she glanced at the star glinting on the top of the tree, remembered her dad bringing it home in a tatty brown paper bag, pulling it out like a magician pulling flowers out of a hat. They hadn’t had much spare money for decorations but he’d said with absolute authority that you couldn’t have a tree without a star and picked it up from the market stall outside his office.