A Proper Family Christmas (2 page)

The cost of the renovation had become a small bone of contention. It was true that the original estimate of costs had more than doubled and it had taken twice as long as it should have done. But it was worth every penny to have created such a showpiece. The perfect family should have the perfect home. And money was really no object for the Buchanans.

Back from the shopping trip to London, Annabel decanted eight bags from the back of her Porsche Cayenne into the hallway. Izzy was sulking, having been refused a trolley dash round H&M because Annabel wanted to beat the traffic. While Izzy went straight to her bedroom, Annabel headed into the kitchen. She flicked on the Nespresso machine, which coordinated perfectly with the Smallbone of Devizes cabinets. The cleaning lady had arranged a pile of post neatly next to the fruit bowl.

As the Nespresso maker gurgled away in its corner, Annabel filleted envelopes. Bills went straight into a pile for her husband. A society wedding invitation was placed for high visibility on the shelf above the Aga. A leaflet about local council elections went straight into the bin (Annabel and Richard would be voting for their friends). A flyer from Harrods announcing a ten-per-cent-off day for black card holders was also filed in the rubbish. Christmas cards from suitably impressive senders joined the wedding invitation as Annabel wondered briefly whether the tinsel along the edge of the shelf was
de trop
. That was Richard’s doing, of course. The mix of metallic green, red and gold clashed horribly with the kitchen colour scheme.

The rest of the house was decorated for the season in suitably tasteful style. There were three Christmas trees. One in the stairwell in the hallway, dressed in silver and white. That one was almost twelve feet high. Another stood in the corner of the dining room – a mere nine footer with blue baubles. The third, and most spectacular, was in the ‘great room’ with its double-height ceiling and inglenook fireplace, which was where the family would gather to open their presents on Christmas Day. The perfectly shaped Norwegian fir was dressed in silver and gold.

Annabel carried her coffee into the great room now and took a moment to look at her handiwork. The coordinated decorations. The beautifully wrapped presents beneath the tree. The glow of the logs in the fireplace. It was like a page from a glossy magazine. The only hint of whimsy was the old teddy bear, wearing a tattered tutu sewn by Annabel’s mother Sarah some forty years earlier, which always took the place of the traditional fairy on top of the tree.

Yes, the scene was set for another perfect family Christmas.

The very last thing you expect when you wake up on a British May bank holiday weekend is that the sun will be shining. The good citizens of Coventry certainly hadn’t expected it. Neither had the BBC weatherman who had assured the people of the Midlands on the previous evening’s news that the Bank Holiday weekend would be ‘business as usual’. That is to say, it would be grey at best. Likely wet. With a fifty-two per cent chance of a hurricane.

Well, he was wrong.

Ronnie Benson squinted at her alarm clock. Then she squinted at the window. Was that actual sunlight coming in through the curtains? It couldn’t be.

‘Sun’s shining,’ she told her partner Mark with a tone of some surprise.

‘Won’t last,’ said Mark, turning over his pillow and settling down to sleep through it.

‘Get up, you lazy sod,’ said Ronnie. ‘It’s your turn to make the kids’ breakfast.’

‘They’re not up yet,’ said Mark.

‘Yes they are,’ said Ronnie. ‘Listen.’

She put her finger to Mark’s lips so that he could concentrate on the sound floating up the stairs. The unmistakable strains of the
SpongeBob SquarePants
theme tune. That meant their six-year-old son Jack was up for sure.

Mark groaned.

‘Five more minutes,’ he pleaded.

But Ronnie prodded him until he slithered out from beneath the duvet and walked like a zombie towards the bedroom door. Just as he got there, Ronnie said, ‘If it’s going to be a nice day, we should go out, don’t you think?’

Mark turned to look at her as though she had suggested that he take this sunny day as the perfect opportunity to repaint the whole front of the house. With a toothbrush.

‘Go out?’ he echoed.

‘Yes. To Warwick Castle or something.’

‘We always go to Warwick Castle.’

‘Then somewhere different. Kenilworth? Stratford? I don’t know. But we should go somewhere. Look at it, Mark. This might be the only good weather we get all year.’

Mark had to concede that Ronnie was probably right about that. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll go on a trip.’

‘Good. We’ll take a picnic. I’ll call Mum and Dad and see if they want to come with us.’

Ronnie’s mother made fantastic picnics. Having her parents tagging along was worthwhile for that alone, but Ronnie also knew that her mother would appreciate time with her grandchildren and vice versa. Especially on such a lovely day.

Mark nodded.

‘So, if you could just make sure that Jack has a bath and that Sophie knows she’s not going out with her friends …’ Ronnie issued more instructions. ‘There’s a white wash to go on. The dishwasher needs unloading. Oh, and a cup of tea would be lovely.’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

Mark gave her a brief salute before he headed downstairs. Once the door was closed behind him, Ronnie turned her own pillow over to find the cool side and sank back down for another forty winks.

Jacqui and Dave, Ronnie’s parents, were delighted to be asked along for the ride. Of course, they would have to bring Ronnie’s grandfather too. Bill, now eighty-five and not entirely in possession of all his marbles, could not be left on his own.

Granddad Bill was a handful. While at Ronnie’s house Mark made sure his son was washed and tried to persuade Sophie that a day spent with her family would not ‘ruin her life’, Jacqui had to help her father-in-law, Bill, bathe and dress. He used to take great care of his appearance. These days, he insisted on wearing the same Coventry City FC shirt every day. On his feet he wore carpet slippers, which he said were the only shoes that didn’t hurt his feet.

All the same, even without the complication of choosing an outfit, it took almost an hour to get Bill out of his bedroom and into his favourite chair in the kitchen. Then there was a picnic to be made. While Jacqui was dressing Bill, Dave went to the supermarket and came back with French bread and a rotisserie chicken. Jacqui made quick work of the chicken, turning it into sandwich filling. She knew her grandson Jack would be delighted. Neither she nor Dave could remember if Sophie was a vegetarian that week.

She can eat the bread,
was Ronnie’s response to Jacqui’s worried text on the subject.

It was eleven o’clock before the whole family was ready for their big day out but amazingly, the weather was holding. If anything, it was shaping up to be too hot. Jacqui and Dave drove to Ronnie’s house for a quick conference over coffee before they set off. They’d yet to decide where to go. Warwick and Kenilworth castles were both well loved but way too familiar. Jack wanted to go anywhere else he might pretend to be a knight. Sophie pronounced every suggestion ‘lame’ and made it clear that she would rather stay at home, basking in the glow from her computer screen.

It was Jacqui who came up with the suggestion of the fete at Little Bissingden.

‘One of the girls at work went last year. She said it was good fun. Lots of things for the kiddies.’

Sophie rolled her eyes.

‘And you don’t have to pay to get in.’

Ronnie was sold. The Little Bissingden fete it was. They piled back into two cars (Jack insisted on travelling with his grandparents) and headed for the small village that put on a very English extravaganza each year.

Jack was delighted by the old-fashioned entertainments. He threw his all into ‘whack the rat’ and forced his father on to the greasy pole. Jacqui and Ronnie enjoyed watching the local children give a display of country dancing. Dave found a beer tent for Bill. ‘He needs to be in the shade,’ was Dave’s flawless reasoning. Even Sophie seemed to be having a reasonably good time. She took a fiver she had wheedled out of her dad and toured the nick-nack stalls. She bought a bracelet made out of an old fork, melted and then twisted into a circle. It suited her ‘emo’ aesthetic.

But what everyone, at least the women, looked forward to most of all was the guided tour of the village’s Great House. From the outside, the place looked like something from a novel. The gardens were beautiful too. There was even a small maze. Mark paid two quid and took Jack round it. Meanwhile Jacqui and Ronnie were just itching to get a look at the inside of the house itself. To see, as Jacqui put it, ‘how the other half lives’.

Having conquered the maze in minutes, Jack and his father would have been happy to carry on trying to win at ‘whack the rat’ but as the appointed time for the guided tour drew near, the bank holiday weather finally returned to form and the skies above Little Bissingden darkened. Sensing that the rain would arrive at any moment, Ronnie and Jacqui insisted that everyone in their family go round the house.

‘But what about Bill?’ Mark asked. ‘We won’t be able to get his wheelchair in there. I’ll stay with him in the beer tent.’

‘That’s all right, Mark,’ said Dave. ‘I’ll stay with Bill.’

‘No, really, I’m happy to,’ Mark tried. ‘You want to look round the house.’

‘I don’t want to deprive you …’ said Dave.

Ronnie made the executive decision. She told Mark, ‘You’re coming with me. You might find it interesting. Might give you some ideas on how to do our kitchen.’

‘If we win the Euromillions. I don’t need any ideas,’ said Mark. ‘We’re having whatever I can lay my hands on. I told you.’

Ronnie pouted. Mark was a kitchen fitter and the fact that Ronnie would be getting other people’s offcuts rather than the bespoke kitchen of her dreams was a sore point. She dreaded having to live with some stranger’s plain white cupboards and dark grey worktops instead of the classic country-style kitchen she preferred.

Ronnie cheered up a little when Jack tucked his small hand into hers and said, ‘I’m coming with you, Mummy. Do you think they’ve got a dungeon?’ Her smile faded again when Jack’s father answered.

‘Almost certainly. That’s what all those posh types like to do of a Saturday evening, isn’t it? Go down into the dungeon for a nice bit of spanking.’

‘Spanking’s not nice,’ said Jack quite vehemently. ‘You’re not supposed to spank people. You’re supposed to give them a “time out”.’

Jack’s school was very keen on making sure its pupils knew their rights with regard to corporal punishment.

‘For heaven’s sake, Mark,’ Ronnie scolded.

‘Just having a laugh,’ said Mark.

Sophie rolled her eyes extravagantly. ‘Don’t think about entering
Britain’s Got Talent
as a stand-up, will you, Dad?’

So, Jacqui, Ronnie, Mark and the children joined the queue for the tour, which started at the Great House’s ‘scullery’ entrance. At the appointed hour, the lady of the manor appeared at the door. She was wearing an elegant tea dress that might have been pinched from the set of
Downtown Abbey
. Ronnie couldn’t immediately work out how old the woman was, but she was definitely younger than Ronnie had expected and she felt a stab of envy at the thought. Somehow it was harder to take the idea that people had so much more than she did when they seemed to be her contemporaries.

‘Welcome, welcome,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Annabel Buchanan and I’m so glad you could all make it here today.’ Her smile sank a little as she did a headcount of the crowd that had gathered to see her home. ‘Gosh, there are a few more of you than I expected. I suppose it’s because of the weather. Never mind. You’re all
very
welcome. Please come on in.’

Annabel Buchanan stood to one side to let her visitors pass.

‘I’d be grateful if you could all do your best to really, really
properly
wipe your feet on the mat before you step into the boot room. Some of the floors in the older parts of the house are very, very delicate and we’d like to keep them dry.’

As the rain started to fall, Ronnie pushed little Jack ahead of her. Eager as he was to get a look at the dungeon, Jack neglected to wipe his feet. Ronnie caught Annabel Buchanan frowning as Jack realised his error and dutifully stepped back onto the mat and did a comic shuffle. Stuck-up bitch, thought Ronnie. It wasn’t as though she would be cleaning her own floor anyway. Ronnie gave her own shoes a desultory wipe on the enormous doormat that led into the boot room. Boot room! She was rewarded with a tight smile.

‘Of course, in the house’s heyday, this would have been the back door,’ Annabel Buchanan began once everyone was inside and squashed into the vestibule with its carefully arranged rows of Hunter wellies, pristine Barbours and unusually clean dog basket.

‘Bet it still is the back door and all,’ Ronnie whispered to her mother. ‘Can’t have plebs like us coming in the front, can she?’

‘Ssssh,’ Jacqui hissed at her. ‘She’s been good enough to open her house.’

‘Not much point having a house like this if you can’t show it off, is there?’ Ronnie commented.

‘Ssssh,’ said Jacqui again. ‘I want to hear what she’s saying. I’m interested in the history. Imagine what kind of a family must once have lived here.’

‘I think I know what kind of family lives here now,’ said Ronnie.

Izzy Buchanan had been dreading the village fete for months. As far as she was concerned, it was the very worst day of the year. She hated the stupid stalls selling cheap old crap and the way all the adults in the village pretended to be having so much fun on the greasy pole. The funniest thing about it was when someone fell off and broke an arm. But she especially hated the fact that this year her family home was going to be one of the attractions. What on earth were her parents thinking of? For what seemed like weeks before the fete, Izzy’s mother had followed her round the house, nagging her every time she so much as looked as though she was going to put her school bag down in the wrong place.