It’s a Wonderful Life: The Christmas bestseller is back with an unforgettable holiday romance

Beth, I just love this story. And the spreads you’ve worked up are really wonderful. I know we’ll get a lot of interest in this one, I’m only sorry that I won’t be able to take you all the way through, but as you know, my own little arrival is about to put in an entrance. It’s been great working with you, and I’m sure you’ll be in good hands with Vanessa.

I’m wishing you great success for your little angel. You deserve it so much.

Much love

Karen x

It’s great that Karen likes my new idea, not so great that she’s gone on maternity leave during the biggest crisis of my career. Just as I pick up another version of the spread, and decide it’s as rubbish as the rest, I’m sidelined by my mother ringing.

‘So, what are your plans for Christmas?’

Typical Mum, straight to the point as usual.

I swear she asks this question earlier and earlier every year. Just in case Daniel and I have made devious plans to escape the Holroyd Family Christmas and booked a week away somewhere. As if we would. As if we could.

‘Mum, it’s August!’ I protest. I scrumple up the sketch and throw it on the floor, where it joins all the other discarded pieces of paper. I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t normally find it this hard to get my ideas down.

‘And soon it will be September and you’ll be too busy to talk to me.’ My mum does such a good line in passive aggression. I not only speak to her every other day, I’m usually round her house once a week. I am after all the dutiful one of the family. This is my job, while my erstwhile brother, Ged, takes gap years aged thirty-six and at thirty-eight my sister Lou lurches from one disastrous love affair to another. I’m the one who did things right: had a family, moved close to Mum and Dad.

They still live in the cosy cottage where I grew up in the small Surrey town of Abinger Lea. Our house is about a mile away from them. Initially we stayed nearer to London, in the house Daniel’s mum left him, but then when the children came along I needed some help and it seemed like a no-brainer to come here. We like being close to the countryside while having good train links with London, which has been useful for my work. Daniel used to work in an inner-London comprehensive, but he’s just about to start a job in the slightly larger town of Wottonleigh, which is only three miles away. That’s going to make life a lot easier.

It’s not as though I don’t like being near my parents, it’s just that sometimes I wish I wasn’t the ‘good’ sibling. It’s a feeling I’ve had more often than not lately. Mum and Dad are perfectly capable, but I seem to always be doing them little favours, like dropping Mum off into Wottonleigh when Dad’s busy playing golf, or going to the art classes I finally persuaded him to take (he’s always had a creative side, but he keeps it under wraps). And I seem to be on constant call to help them sort out their computer problems. I feel rubbish for being so resentful, particularly as they were always so great about babysitting when the kids were small, but sometimes I feel stifled by the fact that I’ve never quite managed to move away from my family.

Belatedly I realise Mum is still in full flow.

‘Anyway, as I always like to say, fail to prepare—’

‘Prepare to fail. I know, Mum,’ I say. ‘Anyway, we’ll do exactly what we do every year and come to you. I don’t know why you feel you have to ask.’

I’ve occasionally tried to change the ‘Christmas Plan’ by suggesting that I take the slack for Mum and have them all over here, as it’s not as though we don’t have the room. But she always knocks me back, and I’ve given up trying, even though the kids get more and more stroppy about it each year. Sam is going to be eighteen next year and Megan’s fifteen. They’re not little kids any more, and I think Mum forgets that sometimes, and doesn’t quite get that they have other things going on in their lives, particularly around Christmas time. The trouble is, Mum loves doing Christmas, so even though I have a family of my own, I don’t get a look in. The only time I was allowed remotely near the turkey was the year Mum had had a hysterectomy, and even then she sat directing operations from the lounge. Nightmare.

‘I just wanted to check, dear,’ Mum says, ‘in case you might have had other plans.’

I refrain from snorting. I know far, far better than to make other plans.

‘You’ve no need to worry, Mum, we’ll be there,’ I say, and put the phone down.

‘Who was that?’ Daniel wanders in from the garden, where he’s been working hard cutting the grass. Sweat is pouring off his brow, and he’s taken his T-shirt off. I take a minute to enjoy the view. At forty-two my husband bears a distinct resemblance to Adrian Lester, and is still pretty trim and sexy for his age. Sure we argue like all couples do, and in term time when he’s busy I sometimes wish we saw more of him. The great thing though is that despite the ups and downs of married life, I still fancy the pants off him, and that’s dead lucky at my age. I know so many women who moan constantly about their husbands. While we have our disagreements, Daniel and I still get on pretty well, and at this particular moment I am rather wishing we were alone in the house. Shame the kids are upstairs.

‘Mum,’ I say, in answer to his question. ‘I’d put your shirt back on before the kids see you, they’ll be horrified.’

Daniel looks upwards to their bedrooms.

‘I doubt they’re going to be downstairs in a hurry,’ is his wry response, and I laugh. It’s the summer holidays. They’re teenagers, it would probably take a bomb to get them up before lunchtime. He comes and gives me a kiss. I feel a little lurch of desire, and regret even more that the kids haven’t gone out for the day.

‘Ugh, you’re all sweaty,’ I say jokingly, pushing him away.

‘Just the way you like me,’ he teases. ‘What did your mum want?’

I roll my eyes. ‘To ask about Christmas. Honestly, it’s only August.’

‘Oh, come on, you love it,’ says Daniel, ‘the Holroyd Family Christmas is legendary. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t go to your mum and dad’s.’

This is true. There was the year Dad accidentally set fire to his beard when he dressed up as Santa, and the year that Mum cooked the turkey with the giblets in by mistake, not to mention the year when Lou and Ged had a massive row and Lou ended up in floods of tears in the kitchen with me and Mum comforting her. Oh wait. That happens nearly every year. Perhaps Daniel is right. I suppose it wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t go.

The Christmas Day routine in our family never varies. Mum and Dad come back from church at 10.30 – some years if I’ve been nagged enough I join them – and we go round for drinks at eleven – Dad always believes in opening the bubbly early. Mum has usually been up since 6 a.m. slaving over the turkey so we can eat promptly at 1 p.m., making sure we have plenty of time for lunch before the Queen’s Speech, after which Dad makes us all sing the National Anthem. Depending on the levels of drunkenness (in which Mum disapprovingly doesn’t take part) this is either hilarious or excruciating. After that it’s a free-for-all with presents, and we collapse in front of the TV till Mum starts producing turkey sandwiches and Christmas cake. By this time Dad, Daniel and my brother Ged will have usually managed to demolish a bottle of port between them before Dad insists it’s time for Christmas charades, the bit of Christmas Day which I absolutely loathe. Everyone else always gets into the swing of it, but I’ve always hated it, ever since I was little. Dad gets really involved: I blame the fact that his job in insurance always suppressed his creativity, so he insists on letting rip at home. I hate standing up in front of other people and performing; I always find charades a massive trial. Maybe that’s why I’m an artist. I prefer to channel my creativity from behind an easel. Growing up hasn’t made it any more fun. I long for a charades-free Christmas, but I won’t be getting it any time soon.

‘It would just be nice to be at home one year, don’t you think?’ I say half-heartedly, but I know Daniel doesn’t really get it. His family are so different from mine. He was very close to his mum, who died shortly after we met, but he doesn’t get on well with his dad. They’re barely in touch. He very rarely talks about it, though I do know his dad was pretty useless when he was little. It makes me sad, because Daniel has so much love to give, and as an only child he has no family of his own since he lost his mum. From what he’s told me he had very quiet Christmases growing up, so he’s always loved being part of our family celebrations.

‘Nah, that means we’d have to do all the hard work. Come on, Beth, it will be fine.’ He comes over and gives me a big hug. ‘You’ll enjoy it – promise.’

Lou

I’m lying in bed with Jo one Saturday morning in August when Mum rings up.

‘Hi,’ I say, suddenly feeling immensely guilty. She doesn’t know about me, or about Jo. As ever, when I speak to her on the phone if Jo’s about I feel like there’s a big red sign on my head saying ‘Your daughter’s a lesbian!’ which she can somehow see. Which is ridiculous. One day I’ll tell her. One day. When I’m sure she won’t flip out and I won’t be cast from the family home. She and Dad are so old-fashioned I have no idea how they would take it. So I’m not going to be telling them any time soon.

‘Who’s that?’ says Jo, tickling my feet.

‘Mum,’ I mouth, trying not to giggle. I get up out of bed, not wanting to be distracted, not wanting to feel that I have to behave myself. Oh God, I wish it wasn’t like this. I wish I could tell my parents and my family who I really am. I haven’t even told my sister Beth. I want to, and she keeps hinting that Jo and I should come round, but I’ve let her think ‘Joe’ is a boy, and now I don’t know how to get out of it.

Jo of course doesn’t understand this. Her parents are perfectly relaxed with her being gay, in a way I can’t imagine mine ever being. So much so that it took me till my late twenties to really admit to myself that I was into women not men. At school being a lesbian was pretty much a dirty word, and I thought I was odd for being attracted to girls. So I continued to have awkward sex and fumbled encounters with men I didn’t fancy, until one day I realised I couldn’t go on with it.

But I still haven’t told my family, and now I don’t know how to. It’s pathetic to have got to thirty-eight and not come out to my parents, and I know Jo doesn’t understand it, but I can’t see a way to get around it.

I tune into what Mum is saying. Oh. Christmas. Of course. We have to have the Christmas conversation in August in my family. It’s bloody nuts.

‘Yes of course I’m coming for Christmas, Mum. Where else would I go?’

‘And you haven’t got anyone you want to bring?’ She dangles the question. Christ – does she know? Has she guessed by some kind of telepathic Mum power?

‘No, no one,’ I say. ‘But don’t worry – I’ll be there.’

‘Jolly good,’ she says. ‘And how are things at work now? Any better?’

I sigh. ‘Not really. We’re all still in limbo, just waiting to hear.’

I work in credit control and the company I’ve just joined is in trouble. They’ve told us there might be redundancies but, surprise surprise, no decisions have been made yet. The waiting isn’t fun at all.

‘Well, you keep me posted,’ Mum says, and I promise I will.

I get off the phone and get back into bed with Jo, lovely Jo, with whom I’ve spent a blissful spring and summer. I put my arms around her, trying not to think about work. I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it. For now, Jo is all that matters. We’ve had such a good summer; we’ve even spent a fabulous week in Greece together. I still can’t believe someone like her would be interested in me, and have to keep pinching myself because I feel so lucky.

‘What did your mum want?’ she asks.

‘She just wanted to know about my Christmas plans,’ I say.

‘Christmas? Now?’