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

‘So how’s work, Eleanor?’ her grandmother asked after they’d all be served and Ella had asked for a much smaller portion so hers had been passed round to her grandfather.

‘Great, the company’s not doing quite as well as it could but if we can land this new account we’ll be sorted for the fiscal year. It’s a mobile phone company.’

Her grandmother made a face as if to show she thought that all sounded very clever and important.

‘I’ll work on it while I’m out here.’ Ella added as her phone rang, almost on cue, and she nipped outside to answer it.

‘Bloody phones,’ her grandfather muttered.

‘You all right, Mum?’ Maddy asked when Ella was out the room. She’d noticed she was just pushing the moussaka around her plate and seemed restless, on high alert trying to do everything to please Ella. The kitchen, Maddy noticed, was spotless. Not that it was usually dirty, but it was gleaming. And on the side board her mum had put out the nativity set they’d had as kids and a tacky plastic angel with fibre optic wings that Maddy hadn’t seen for years twinkled in the low lighting. They always did a kind of haphazard Christmas. Her mum would throw a big party at the taverna on Christmas Eve and do a mix of Greek and English food and all the locals would come, but on Christmas Day it was just their family and they’d have lobsters and fresh fish, and her mum would decorate the place with lights and glass bowls of pomegranates, she’d scatter olive branches and hellebore flowers along the mantle piece and string mussel shells that she’d gilded with gold leaf along the windows and glass hearts, almost too delicate to touch, in front of the mirror.

The nativity set though, Maddy didn’t even know her mum had kept that. It was only seeing it now that she realised how much their Christmas trimmings had changed. Or perhaps, she thought, watching her mum watch Ella as she talked quietly into her phone outside, her mum had consciously created new traditions.

‘Fine, honey.’ her mum said, ‘It’s nice isn’t it? To have all the family around.’ Maddy watched her take a breath in through her nose and almost reset herself before reaching forward and tucking Maddy’s hair behind her ear.

CHAPTER 9 (#ulink_f5aa5789-f51e-5dc0-bd55-fce4df1bb224)

ELLA

What was with all the hair touching?

Ella was in a foul mood when she walked back into the kitchen.

The phone call had been from Amanda’s husband. He’d wanted to know how she was going to proceed. He was filing for divorce.

‘You know they’re together now?’ he’d said, his cut-glass accent splitting through her, and she’d hung up.

Inside she noticed the nativity set for the first time and it made her feel even worse. The idea of Maddy and her mum laying it out every Christmas together, the little sheep with one broken leg and the horse that she’d etched her name in the bottom with a safety pin and the Jesus that Maddy had drawn a moustache on with felt tip pen and that she’d tried to wash off with Mr Muscle before her mum saw it. She wanted to box it all up and carry it upstairs and stuff it in her suitcase.

As she sat down she felt all eyes on her. Her mum watching expectantly. ‘Everything all right, Ella? Can I get you anything? I can heat up the moussaka if it’s gone cold, if you want?’ she asked, and her polite willingness to please her made Ella even more annoyed and defensive. She didn’t want to be the guest.

But why would she expect any different? It had always been like that. Ella being picked up from the airport, sitting in the back while Maddy tuned the radio to songs her and her mum knew the words to and Ella had never heard. Never knowing where anything was kept in the cupboards, unsure who the locals were, no idea what was happening in the programmes they watched on TV. She always felt like the guest.

‘So Maddy, what was the cash flow problem?’ Ella asked as she shook her head at her mum’s offer to reheat the pasta and played with a slice of aubergine with her fork.

‘She smashed a boat onto some rocks in the storm earlier in the week. Blew her life savings.’ her granddad said without looking up from where he was hoovering up his moussaka. ‘Fabulous food, Sophie, as always, just fabulous.’

‘It’s for the best,’ her mum cut in as she leant over and picked up the salad bowl, passing it round the table. ‘London wouldn’t suit Maddy at all.’

‘I am here.’ Maddy said, arms outstretched. ‘I am at the table you know? And I think I could handle it. I’m not nine any more.’

Her grandmother looked up warily at her mother, gave her the kind of look that suggested that Maddy was right and her mum was wrong. Ella watched the dynamics round the table like she did a boardroom meeting, sussing out allegiances. Her grandfather just gave a snort and went back to his food, pouring himself more wine and offering top ups which were declined by everyone but Ella.

She sat back, arms crossed in front of her, wine glass dangling from between her fingers and surveyed the frown on Maddy’s face. Noticed how the lines in her forehead were just starting to stay even when she relaxed and her cheeks were more chiseled, less babyish. It almost surprised Ella that Maddy wasn’t nine any more.

Glancing to her right she noted just how much her grandmother looked like her dad. She wondered if they’d told her mum that they’d had dinner with him and Veronica last time they were in England. Her mum looked tired. Her tan faded. Her food, though, from the small forkfuls Ella had tasted, was just as beautiful as always. Her mum was glancing over at Maddy as if trying to tie her where she was with just a look. But Maddy looked like a bird, too big for its nest.

The feeling that her mum had never looked at her like that was as unexpectedly sharp as Amanda’s husband’s comments on the phone. And it made her say, ‘I’ll lend you the money’, without really even thinking about it. Then she added as casual a shrug as she could manage.

Her mum’s head whipped round. Maddy’s eyes flicked up. Her grandmother’s eyes closed for a second too long. Her grandfather kept eating.

‘You won’t.’ her mum said, quickly.

‘Oh my god that would be amazing.’ Maddy visibly jumped from her seat but then sat down again because her and Ella didn’t ever hug or exchange physical contact in any way.

‘Why can’t she go, Sophie?’ her granddad asked through a mouthful of salad.

Pushing her hair back behind her ear and then leaning forward to serve herself some salad, seemingly buying herself some time, her mum said, ‘London would swallow her up.’

Maddy huffed out a breath as though that was preposterous.

Her grandmother leant forward, elbows on the table, and rested her chin in her hands. ‘You can’t keep her here forever, Soph.’

‘Again people, I am here.’ Maddy rolled her eyes. ‘And again, I’m not nine any more.’

‘You don’t have anywhere to stay,’ her mum said.

Ella took a sip of her wine, watched Maddy flounder as she considered her lack of lodgings. Saw her grandmother raise a brow but go back to her food, as if she’d already got more involved than she might usually. Then Ella dabbed a spot of wine from her mouth with her finger and said, ‘She can stay at my flat. Max isn’t there.’

‘Really?’ Maddy had to roll her lips together to contain her smile.

Ella shrugged as if it was nothing. She wanted to think of herself as a selfless, successful big sister who could come in and save the day. Not someone who just wanted to get her younger sister out the way so that just for once, she could have her mum all to herself and see what happened.

The fact that her mum was shooting her a fierce look at that moment would have to be ignored for now.

As Maddy was topping up her wine and toasting with her granddad – who then reached over and touched the top of Ella’s glass with his, saying, ‘Good on you,’ – another male voice cut across the room.

‘What are we celebrating?’

Ella turned in her seat to see who it was and saw a guy lounging against the doorway in cargo shorts and a light blue shirt, his sleeves rolled up seemingly to purposely reveal a tattoo of a compass that traced halfway up his right forearm. Hair shaggy, dark and wet, either recently washed or he’d just come out of the sea. Stubble not quite obscuring a razor sharp jaw. Nose like a horse’s. Long and aquiline with a small hook, a nose like that and you had to either stand proud and tall or wither and die. Eyes too dark to see from this distance but clearly looking her way.

No way could it be, she decided.

If it was, then this could be really embarrassing.

I hope it’s not him, Ella thought.

An image of herself at fifteen. Puppy dog eyes and a plump little waist.

Cocky, bad-tempered Dimitri who would click his fingers sullenly for the ropes of their boats and Maddy would ask him if he wanted her lemonade, giggling, while Ella crossed her arms over her waist where she was sitting in her bikini and try and look at him from under her eyelashes like she’d seen Princess Diana do in her interview. He would sneer at them and stalk away, hanging around watching with his gang of friends, whispering and laughing as they scurried past.

As he sauntered into the kitchen, all louche and relaxed, she realised young, moody Dimitri with his condescending looks and smug smiles was neither young and skinny any more nor had he stayed in Athens where she had hoped he was happily settled – never to be seen again. She pursed her lips and put her shoulders back as he came closer, dark and handsome and butterscotch tanned.

‘Dimitri, you remember Ella don’t you?’ Maddy said. She had the wine glass up to her lips so Ella couldn’t see if she was smiling.

Dimitri sat himself down in the seat her mum had just vacated like he owned the place, flipped it round backwards and leant against the frame. Then he cocked his head to one side and seemed to study her.

Green.