Coming Home For Christmas: Warm, humorous and completely irresistible!

Marianne let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. She’d been so sure Gabe would say yes straight away. She felt unkind, but Gabe was right, they did have enough to deal with.

But when Gabe spoke to Joan his resolve lasted all of five minutes. Marianne could hear from Gabe’s responses how insistent she was being.

‘And there really is no one else?’ he said eventually, pulling a face at Marianne.

‘… No of course I don’t want her to relapse,’ he added, which made Marianne’s blood boil, as if Gabe were responsible for Eve’s illness.

In the end, she saw him give a helpless little shrug and say, ‘Of course she can stay here.’

He put the phone down and turned to Marianne, who was looking at him in horror. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but what else could I do?’

Cat was online researching recipes. She wondered what she was going to do now that A Shropshire Christmas wasn’t going to be filling the screens of the nation. After her latest long chat with Anna about it, they’d concluded she’d go ahead with the book any way as her publishers were still happy to be on board. In the meantime, Cat would pursue other avenues.

‘You could always try a reality TV show,’ suggested Anna.

It had been a joke when Marianne mentioned it, but to Cat’s horror, Anna was serious.

‘I’m sure Paige would love me to, but I don’t think so,’ said Cat with a snort. ‘Besides, I couldn’t leave the kids that long.’

It seemed to Cat sometimes, her kids needed her more the older they got. As well as Mel’s AS levels, which of course were a huge priority, James had GCSEs to contend with. Not that you’d know, he was so laid back about them Cat felt she had to be on top of him all the time, making sure he was getting some work done.

‘You worry too much, Mum,’ he said. ‘It will be fine.’

And it probably would be, James had such a happy-go-lucky nature, things probably would turn out well for him whatever happened. And though he had given up on his own career as a teenage TV chef, which had sprung up on the back of Cat’s TV work, he always had that to fall back on if all else failed.

Paige was another matter entirely. Her life was one long drama – even making GCSE choices was turning into a daily argument, with Noel’s mild suggestions that Textiles and Tourism weren’t perhaps the most academic subjects she could take, causing an explosion of ‘You don’t understand anything!’. True Mel had been quite explosive at that age, but Paige was taking it to a whole new level. Most of her tantrums related to her phone, to which she was addicted. She was always on snapchat and ask.fm, neither of which Cat remotely understood. Every time she got to grips with a new technology it seemed to change, and she and Noel waged a constant and wearying war of attrition against it.

Ruby, who at ten, was still reasonably straightforward, was even more techie than Paige. It exhausted Cat to be constantly telling both of them to get off their phones, only to find Ruby ten minutes later hooked up with the iPad. Honestly, technology, it was the bane of a modern parent’s life.

Who was it who’d told her when she’d moaned about dealing with the difficulties of toddlers and babies, ‘It will get worse’? They’d been right. Despite the turmoil Lou Lou had wrought upon their lives, Cat found looking after her relatively uncomplicated. She went to bed when she was put there, was asleep by seven, and didn’t answer back.

Cat found a file for a Christmas cake that she’d come across a while ago, and printed it off, before starting to type, ‘Thinking about making a Christmas cake takes a lot of forward planning. In an ideal world, you should make it in October, but those of us with lives to live have been known to squeeze it in in November …’ without much enthusiasm. She felt so much less interested in the book now it wasn’t going to be a TV series. How very shallow of her. But she enjoyed the buzz of being in front of the cameras and was going to miss it.

Don’t be daft, Cat, she scolded herself. It’s only one show.

But what if it wasn’t? What if all her TV work dried up? After all, she was in her mid forties and a woman. Time and TV weren’t on her side. She felt it herself in her daily life. Whenever she was out with Lou Lou, inevitably all the talk was about the baby, and no one noticed her, but it was more than that. She knew her teenage self would be furious by her middle aged disappointment, but she never even got wolf whistled anymore. And last time she’d been in London, a man in his thirties had politely given her his seat in a manner which had made her feel both old, ugly and decrepit.

Useless to tell herself that looks didn’t matter; she had age and wisdom on her side. Useless to know that Noel still found her sexy. A TV director no longer thought she could cut it. She was getting wrinkles, going grey, wore glasses, and had an unsightly ring of tummy fat that resolutely refused to go. She felt fat, old and frumpy. And worse than that, she felt invisible.

Chapter Five (#ulink_8c325093-1d1e-587b-85b7-cee11b615b1f)

Marianne heard the key in the lock and Gabriel’s voice saying with false cheer, ‘Here we are, home at last!’

She got up from the sofa, where she’d been reading to the twins, to greet Gabriel, Eve and Steven, who had insisted on going to the hospital to pick his mum up. The twins followed Marianne curiously, and clung to her legs, looking at this strange woman whom they’d last seen some months ago.

‘Eve, how lovely to see you,’ Marianne said with forced enthusiasm, giving Eve what she hoped felt like a welcoming hug. The hallway seemed narrow and constricted. Suddenly there were too many people in it, and Marianne had a pang of trepidation about what they were doing. Was this really the right environment for Eve? But then again what was the alternative? She clearly had nowhere to go, and it wasn’t her fault she was ill. Giving Eve somewhere safe to come was the right thing to do, however hard it was going to be. Marianne and Gabriel had discussed it at length, and agreed they’d have to make the best of it. But it was a little odd having your husband’s ex to stay in the house they’d once shared.

Eve clearly felt the same.

‘This is weird,’ she said, looking quite nervy. Weight had never been an issue for Eve, but Marianne was shocked at how thin she had got.

‘I hope it’s not too weird,’ said Marianne, giving her as welcoming smile as possible and trying not to feel too concerned about the size of the enormous suitcase Eve had brought with her. Marianne’s heart sank. Just how long was Eve planning to stay? Gabriel shot a grimaced look at her, and she felt slightly reassured. ‘Come on, why don’t you come and sit in the kitchen and have a cup of tea.’

But as they walked into the kitchen, Dolly, who was one of the nosiest lambs they’d ever fostered, chose that moment to come out of her basket and investigate who was there. She came straight up to Eve and nibbled at her leg. Eve promptly screamed and threw her arms in the air, hitting Gabe so hard on the nose it started to bleed. While Marianne went to grab a tissue, Dolly took advantage of the confusion to bolt out of the door.

‘Dolly, no!’ shouted Marianne, but it was too late, the lamb was pelting round the hall causing chaos. In the space of seconds she had knocked over a couple of vases, and chewed some carpet. She took a quizzical look around her, and decided upstairs looked like a fun place to be.

‘Steven stop her!’ shouted Marianne, as she shoved some tissue at Gabe who was standing with his head back pinching his nose, while Eve continued to scream like a banshee.

‘Dolly, stop!’ yelled Steven as he went tearing after her, followed by the twins in hot pursuit, deciding it would be really fun to join in the chase. It took ten minutes, a lot of thumping and shouting from upstairs, but eventually Steven came back into the kitchen triumphantly holding a wriggling Dolly in his arms.