Staying Away at Christmas

Contents

Title Page

Staying Away at Christmas

A French Affair

Chapter One

Also by Katie Fforde

Copyright

Staying Away at Christmas

Katie Fforde

Staying Away at Christmas

‘IF YOU COULD
just stop moaning for a minute and keep a look out for the turn,’ said Miranda to her eldest daughter, ‘I don’t want to miss it.’ She was creeping down the Devon lanes looking for the holiday home they’d had such fun in that summer. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon but it was already dark. And these winding country roads were bad enough to navigate in the light. ‘I know you don’t want to be here, you’ve told me, but could we at least get there before we have the whole argument again?’

Isa, who was sixteen, sighed. ‘I just think if we couldn’t go to Granny’s it would have been better if we’d stayed at home for Christmas. Then at least we’d be able to see our friends.’

‘I know, darling, but we’re here now. Is Lulu still asleep?’

Isa looked over her shoulder at her sister. ‘Yup. Shall I wake her?’

‘Let’s get there first.’ Miranda glanced at Isa, feeling guilty for what could have been the wrong decision. ‘We’ll make it fun, really we will.’

Isa grunted. ‘Well, it wasn’t all that great at Dad’s last year.’

‘You got lovely presents, though,’ said Miranda, secretly relieved that the gifts showered on her daughters by their father and his new wife didn’t make it a great Christmas.

Isa sighed. ‘Yeah.’

‘Are we nearly there yet?’ came a voice from the back seat. Lulu had obviously woken up.

Isa giggled. ‘Silly! And yes we are, if we don’t go wrong.’

Miranda relaxed a little. Now Lulu was awake, Isa would be less teenagerish, although at sixteen, she was entitled to be.

‘I think it’s here.’ She slowed to a stop by a narrow turning, barely visible from the road. ‘Do we agree? This is the last turn?’

‘Yes!’ yelled Lulu, filled with ten-year-old confidence. ‘There’s the white stone in the hedge!’

‘Well spotted, Lu,’ said Isa, and Miranda turned into the lane.

After what felt like at least a mile of uneven driveway, they pulled up in front of a converted barn, framed by two little bushes with fairy lights on them.
The
light above the door was on, and there was a wreath on the door.

‘Oh wow!’ exclaimed Miranda as she struggled with the key. ‘Sheila’s really made it Christmassy.’ As the door opened she said, ‘Come on girls, it’s lovely and warm inside.’

Together they went into the hall and from there into the huge room which was a kitchen first, a sitting room in the middle and a dining room at the end. The kitchen was separated by a half wall so you could cook and still chat to people in the sitting room but you didn’t have to look at the dirty dishes while you ate. In the summer they’d kept the French doors at the end open and watched the swallows in the evenings. It had been a brilliant holiday.

‘It looks amazing!’ said Lulu, running into the place that, ever since the summer, had somehow felt like it was theirs. ‘I wasn’t expecting a Christmas tree!’

Miranda wasn’t either, although Sheila, the woman they’d hired the house from, had said she’d do her best to make it Christmassy. There was not only a tree but other decorations as well, and with the several sets of fairy lights which Miranda had packed, they’d soon make the house festive.

It was hard being a single parent at Christmas when everything on television and in every magazine assumed everyone was part of a family with two parents. It was all right – sort of – when they could go home to Miranda’s parents because they recreated something similar to the Christmases Miranda and her sister had shared as a child. But that year her parents had been invited to spend Christmas with old friends and when Miranda discovered this, and that her mother was planning to refuse, when really, she yearned to have a Christmas off, Miranda said she was taking the girls away and it would be a great adventure.

The girls had not been enthusiastic but eventually Miranda’s best friend had said, ‘You know what? You go through a lot of Christmasses in your life – some are better than others. Get over it.’

Now, Isa volunteered to light the wood burner while Miranda and Lulu chose bedrooms and got the cases upstairs. They were still doing this when Isa called urgently up the stairs.

‘Mum! There’s a car in the drive!’

As the drive was only for their house, Miranda came downstairs. There would be a knock on the door, someone would be lost and she’d have to try and remember the way back to the main road.

There was no knock. The door opened and a teenaged boy, a shock of dark hair that was at once modern and romantic, and made him look like he should be famous, came in.

‘Oh!’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

Isa, who was wearing long woollen tights and a very short skirt, hooked one leg round the other in a gesture she’d had from childhood. ‘We’re, like, staying?’

‘What’s the problem, Dan,’ said a deep male voice from behind.

‘It’s like, occupied.’

Miranda placed an arm around Isa’s shoulders, not so much to protect her daughter from a dangerous stranger but to support her in the presence of a boy when she hadn’t had at least three hours’ notice.

‘Hello!’ she said, knowing she was embarrassing her daughter but unable to stand there in silence. ‘Can I help?’ She looked beyond the beautiful boy to the man, who was tall, dark and clearly tired. He was obviously related to the boy but the beauty had been eroded by time and care.

‘We’ve rented this house for Christmas,’ he said, his jaw firmly set. ‘And you’re in it.’

‘We’ve rented this house too. I mean, you’ve probably got the wrong house.’

‘No!’ He glared at her. ‘I’ve got very clear directions. This is definitely the right house.’ That he had made a mistake was
not
a possibility.

‘Why don’t you come in and we can sort this out?’ said Miranda, fairly sure she and her daughters were in no danger from more than irritation.

The man grunted. ‘Hang on, I’ve left my youngest in the car. She’s asleep. I’d better check she hasn’t woken up.’ He went back into the darkness.

‘Come in,’ said Miranda to the boy, unrepentantly hospitable. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

The boy followed her into the kitchen. ‘It looks really Christmassy. I wasn’t expecting that.’ He scowled. ‘Dad bought a fake tree – we probably won’t need it.’

‘Dad’ appeared a few moments later with a girl of about seven.

‘Well, come in, do,’ said Miranda. ‘Then I’ll ring Sheila. She’ll know where you’re booked in. I know she has several houses she rents out.’

She felt confident that all would be well and was pleased that the fire was going and that the house looked so welcoming. It wasn’t her house of course,
but
she had a strong sense of ownership. It was why she’d wanted to come here for Christmas. It was like home, having spent their summer holiday here, but without the depressing absence of her husband, which her real home still held, even after two years.

She smiled and held out her hand. ‘I’m Miranda, this is my daughter Isa, and here’s Lulu.’

The man frowned. He didn’t seem happy to be put in a social situation with strangers when he was expecting to move into his holiday home. ‘I’m Anthony Berkley, this is my son Dan. And this is Amy. But we won’t take up your time having tea. I think maybe you should be getting your things together. I assure you, this house is ours for the Christmas period.’

Miranda didn’t react but carried on making tea. It would keep her going until the moment this man and his beautiful family had gone and she could open the wine. ‘I’ll ring Sheila –’ she said.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Anthony, pulling out his phone and clicking on a number.

As Miranda would have taken a while to find the number she felt obliged to forgive him for his high-handedness.

He moved out of earshot which Miranda found rather rude. It was a shared problem, after all. She decided
to
abandon the tea. She found the bottle of wine which was part of the welcome package and the corkscrew. Possession was nine tenths of the law and having a glass of wine in her hand would definitely declare her ownership.

Dan stood still, watching what was going on but not speaking. Isa, who was probably dying inside, Miranda felt, was fiddling with some of the decorations. Although Miranda felt a strong antipathy to Anthony, once everything was sorted out and he and his family were in the right rental property, which would probably be nearby, it might be nice for Isa and Lulu if they arranged to meet up in a couple of days’ time. It would be some sort of a social life and it would stop them missing their friends so much.

Anthony stalked back into the kitchen looking furious. ‘She’s coming over,’ he said, ‘to sort things out.’ He looked enviously at Miranda’s wine.

Miranda considered offering him a glass but his referring to Sheila, who worked so hard to make everything nice for her tenants, as ‘she’ had annoyed her.

‘Don’t think,’ he said, ‘the fact that you have a glass of wine and I haven’t will make it so I have to move and not you.’

Miranda took a sip. She might as well take advantage.

Lulu had sloped off to the living end of the room and put the television on and to Miranda’s relief Isa went to join her. Amy soon followed and then Dan. A discussion about what to watch went on briefly and then a familiar theme tune was heard followed by general sounds of approval.

Had the situation been remotely normal, Miranda would have said something along the lines of ‘It’s good they seem to be getting on’, but the situation wasn’t at all normal and Anthony’s prickly attitude wasn’t helping.

Shortly afterwards, the back door opened again and Sheila appeared, looking harassed, notwithstanding a trail of tinsel in her hair, which didn’t seem to have been put there on purpose.

‘I’m so sorry! And I would have been here sooner only we’ve got a family party going on.’

‘So sorry to have troubled you,’ said Miranda, who felt awful dragging her out here on Christmas Eve.

‘Can you sort it out, please?’ said Anthony, just the right side of rude. ‘This muddle? How two families seem to have been double booked into the same property?’

Sheila produced a book and put it on the kitchen table, then ruffled through the pages. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said to Anthony. ‘I thought you’d changed your mind and cancelled.’

‘Why did you think that?’ he demanded.

‘You didn’t pay your balance. I asked you for it but you never sent it,’ said Sheila.

Anthony peered over her shoulder. ‘Oh God, I really thought I had.’

The hot air leaked out of him slowly but inevitably. Possibly sensing this, Sheila took the upper hand. ‘I’m afraid if I don’t get the balance, the booking isn’t confirmed. I sent you at least three emails telling you this.’

‘God, what a mess,’ he breathed. ‘I’m afraid my secretary left and I got a new computer at the same time. A lot of things fell through the cracks.’

‘Well,’ said Sheila, ‘I could offer you a little two-bed but I haven’t been in it since October and it hasn’t got a wood burner or a fireplace or anything.’

‘That doesn’t sound very festive,’ said Anthony and for the first time smiled somewhat ruefully.

Miranda felt a moment of relief – and triumph – that she had been in the right. And then the spirit of Christmas kicked in and she made a decision. Before
she
could change her mind she said, ‘You could stay here.’

Anthony looked at her, frowning slightly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, there are four double bedrooms, you could stay here. We could both have the house for Christmas.’

‘We couldn’t possibly impose –’ Anthony began.

‘Otherwise it’s the two-bed with no wood burner,’ said Miranda.

‘That I haven’t been in since October,’ finished Sheila. ‘You only need pay half each this way,’ she added, glancing at Miranda, possibly guessing that this was a consideration for her.

Anthony looked at Miranda as if for the first time. He’d done nothing but huff and puff since he’d arrived and now all the huff and puff had gone out of him. ‘We should ask the children,’ he said.