Christmas Is All Around

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

On Sunday, Charlotte called her mom.

This was a task she generally avoided; the conversations often ended with her resisting the urge to tear her hair out, and she tended to put calls on her calendar monthly, treating them like dentist appointments—unavoidable obligations. At least, thanks to Ava’s recent intel, she knew that the parental unit was currently on cordial terms, so she could get away with a single phone call and trust that her life updates would be shared, rather than having to call her father too.

“Charlotte, darling ,” her mother said dramatically as soon as she answered the phone. “I’ve been so worried.”

Charlotte—sitting at the desk in the guest room at Ava and Kit’s, scrutinizing the painting she’d just finished—frowned. “Why?”

“The press ,” her mother replied. “Have they been hounding you terribly? I told your father I wanted him to find whoever that ‘anonymous source’ is and ensure they never work again—”

“Mom, I don’t want anyone to lose their job!” Charlotte interrupted, alarmed. Whoever the “anonymous source” was wouldn’t be on her Christmas card list anytime soon (were she the type of person to send Christmas cards), but she didn’t take it as far as destroying someone’s career for, basically, sharing gossip. She also found her mom’s histrionics a bit hard to swallow, given that her mom’s concern at the time had extended only as far as a cursory text telling her not to leave her apartment looking schlubby, as there might be paparazzi around. “I’m fine—I’m at Ava’s; it’s been a nice excuse to have a longer-than-usual vacation for the holidays.”

“Hmm,” her mom said, sounding suspicious. “I thought you could never take time off for Christmas because your little shop is so busy.” This was reliably how she referred to Charlotte’s career—in a slightly dismissive way—and Charlotte inhaled slowly, trying to keep her temper.

“I can work from anywhere, you know,” she said, forcing some semblance of cheerful patience into her voice. “Especially since I have an assistant now.”

Her mother was quiet for a long moment, then said, “Sounds like business is booming.” Charlotte didn’t think she was imagining the begrudging tone of this, and she sighed, rubbing her temple and eyeing her glass of water, wishing it was whiskey instead, for all that it was—she glanced down at her phone—3:24 on a Sunday afternoon.

“It’s always so great to catch up, Mom,” she said, feeling very grateful that this was not a video call, because she had an inconveniently honest face. “We’re having a great time here—Kit’s parents are visiting, and we’re taking Alice on all sorts of holiday outings.”

“I don’t think Alice needs holiday outings,” her mother replied, sounding very skeptical about this program of events. “I think that baby needs a sedative.”

Charlotte privately thought her mom had a point, but instead said, “No, she loves it! Ava’s taking her to meet Santa next weekend.”

“I hope she likes him better than Ava did at that age,” her mother said dubiously. “We took her to some awful ‘breakfast with Santa’ event, and she screamed so loudly that we were asked to leave by one of the elves.”

Charlotte suddenly had an alarming premonition of what Alice’s visit to Santa would be like, and decided to start feigning a cough now, so that by the time the day rolled around, no one would question her need to sit this one out.

“Well, it’s always good to chat, Mom,” Charlotte said breezily, already wondering why on earth she’d initiated this call. “Is Dad there?”

“No, he’s in LA at the moment,” her mother said idly, sounding as though her husband’s presence or absence was not of particular import to her. Typical.

Charlotte frowned. “Aren’t you in LA?” Her parents now lived there most of the year, despite her mother’s insistence that California was for heathens and that the only real culture was in New York.

“No, of course not, darling,” her mother said, as if Charlotte should keep tabs on her whereabouts at all times. “I’m in Vermont.”

Charlotte blinked. “Why are you in Vermont ?” Did her mom even know anyone in Vermont?

“I’m on a writing retreat,” her mom said impatiently, as though this should have been obvious. “Unlike some, my art cannot flourish with all the… noise around me, constantly, this time of year. I’m living in a converted barn on a local family’s property, and one of the sons of the family has been bringing me meals in a little basket. It’s very charming—you should see the flannels he wears!”

“Um,” said Charlotte, saying a quick prayer for the virtue of this hearty New England farm boy. Her mother might be past sixty, but her feminine wiles were not to be underestimated.

“But I’ll be home next week, and I’ll be sure to tell your father that you say hello,” her mom added. “By the way, are you open to commissions right now?”

“Not until after the holidays, and I have a long wait list,” Charlotte said warily. “Why?”

“Jamie Dyer is looking for someone to do custom invitations for the launch party for his new show,” her mom replied.

Charlotte suppressed a sigh. Dyer was one of her mom’s friends—a fellow playwright who had written several successful shows that had involved a surprising amount of nudity. “He’s welcome to get in touch, but I can’t make any promises.” It always felt a bit… icky when her mom made requests like this. They felt like a naked ploy to try to drag Charlotte back into the world of film and theater, where the rest of the family was comfortable and Charlotte was decidedly not .

“I’ll let him know,” her mom said, sounding a bit distracted. “I have to run, Charlotte—inspiration has struck and I must seize it!” Without a further word of farewell, the line went dead. Charlotte stared down at her phone.

“Love you, too,” she muttered, tossing it onto the bed. Why had she even bothered? This was, more or less, what all her conversations with her parents were like—they were very eager to tell her about their lives, which were of course endlessly fascinating, and not remotely interested in whatever was happening with their younger, more disappointing daughter.

She knew why she’d bothered, though: it was Graham. Their conversation the night before, the pain that clearly still lingered from his dad’s death, had made her feel… well, guilty. She still had both of her parents, and she spoke to them only once a month, if that. Why should she get to have two living parents when Graham and his sisters didn’t?

She’d have to talk to them again in a few weeks, because Ava always called their parents on Christmas morning, and they were then subjected to five to ten minutes of guilt-tripping about their presence, together, on one side of the ocean, while their “poor, ailing, unappreciated” (Peter Lane, Christmas 2022) parents languished together at home.

It was exhausting.

Not, however, as exhausting as what John had in store for her the following day.

“But why ?” Charlotte asked plaintively on Monday morning, staring at the kitchen chaos displayed before her.

“Because it’s tradition!” John said brightly, handing Charlotte an apron that said O Christmas Cheese! and featured an illustration of a block of cheese bedecked with ornaments, topped with a star. “Nothing says Christmas like mince pie!” He was already wearing an apron of his own that said Fizz the Season! above an image of a champagne bottle and a Christmas tree holding hands.

“I think this is why I don’t like Christmas,” Charlotte muttered, tying the apron around her waist and sending Ava a helpless look. “Don’t you need help with the baby?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” Ava said cheerfully, a glass of prosecco in one hand while she spoon-fed Alice mashed-up banana with the other, despite the fact that it was not yet eleven a.m. (“Because it’s Christmas.”)

Drinking at inappropriate hours of the morning was one of the only things about Christmas that Charlotte actually liked, so she poured herself a glass as well, and prepared for the forced labor ahead.

“We need to get the mincemeat from the fridge,” John instructed eagerly, and Charlotte spotted an opportunity.

“Actually, I’m a vegetarian,” she said virtuously, adopting a look of reluctant apology. “So I’m afraid my morals won’t permit me to help you with this.”

“There’s no meat in mincemeat!” John said brightly. “So you needn’t worry!”

“She’s not worried,” Ava called from her spot by the kitchen island.

John patted Charlotte sympathetically on the arm, then paused, frowning, before asking, very gently, “Charlotte, love, you know that beef comes from a cow, don’t you?” He asked this in the tone of someone afraid that they might be the one breaking the news to a child that Santa didn’t exist. “Because you were eating an awful lot of that Sunday roast at the pub yesterday.”

“It was a cheat day?” Charlotte suggested, but then a merciful god intervened and the doorbell rang.

“I’ve got it!” she screeched, bolting for the door; she’d forgotten that there was an easily alarmed baby in close range, and a moment later an indignant squawk could be heard, followed in rapid succession by an extremely creative bit of swearing from Ava.

“I don’t think that’s the sort of language you want to be teaching Alice!” Charlotte called over her shoulder as she raced into the hall, skidded to a halt in her socks, and opened the door. She hadn’t paused to consider who it would be, but was expecting the UPS guy, or perhaps Ava’s mail carrier, with whom she’d had several conversations since her arrival and who always called her “love,” but she was decidedly not expecting it to be…

Graham.

“You!” she said, and realized as soon as she said it that she sounded like a character in a bad melodrama encountering an accused murderer.

“Hello,” he said, lifting a brow. “I was going to text you, but I was walking by and thought I’d just stop by to see when you wanted to go to Sloane Square this week.”

“You were walking by,” she repeated suspiciously.

“Yes,” he repeated, mimicking her tone. “I know that Americans don’t understand the notion of using one’s own two feet to get places and that you likely want to haul out one of your shotguns and take aim at anyone on your doorstep.”

“Shut up,” she said, laughing in spite of herself. “I live in New York—how do you think I get everywhere?”

“From what I’ve gathered from the time Eloise made me watch an entire season of Sex and the City , you wave down one of those absurd yellow taxis.”

“Exactly how many pieces of media did your sisters force you to watch?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “Were you ever allowed to leave the house, or did they keep you chained to the sofa?”

“Thank you for your concern—no one appreciates how I’ve suffered.” He offered a mournful shake of his head, and Charlotte refused to reward him with a laugh, despite having to bite the inside of her cheek to prevent it.

Instead, she asked, “Would Wednesday work for Sloane Square? I have a meeting with my assistant tomorrow and I’m in mince pie hell today, but Wednesday is free.”

“Mince pies?” She could practically see his ears perk up. This was mystifying. She was honestly beginning to think that there was something badly wrong with the entire population of this island.

“Yes,” she said darkly. “John is insisting that we make them. I’ve taken to the bottle to cope.”

“You’re drinking at eleven in the morning because of mince pies?”

“They’re disgusting.”

He looked as outraged as if she’d just insulted a member of his family. “They’re fucking not!”

She closed her eyes wearily. “Jesus. What is wrong with you people?”

“You’ve never had a proper one,” he said confidently. “There’s no chance you’d think they’re disgusting if you’d had a good one.”

“I do not believe that such a thing exists.”

“I’m going to arrange to have you deported.”

“Please don’t tease me with false promises. I could be in the States in eight hours and have a decent taco for dinner.” She sighed dreamily. “Maybe I’ll call immigration on myself.”

His mouth curved up then, his eyes gleaming as he looked at her, and she felt something warm unfurling in her stomach, the odd sensation that the air between them had come alive. Perhaps this accounted for the fact that she then said the first thing that sprang to mind, without pausing to consider, and that thing was:

“Why don’t you come in?”

Which is how, somehow, she ended up spending the rest of her morning drinking an entire bottle of prosecco and making mince pies with Graham Calloway .

“ Hello ,” Ava said, glancing up from her attempt to quiet her offspring by shoving a spoon in her mouth, and then doing a legitimate double take when she realized who Charlotte had just led into the kitchen. “What a delightful surprise.”

“I stopped by to ask your sister a question but feel obliged to step in and help defend the culinary reputation of my country,” he said, leaning over to examine Alice’s banana-covered, scowling face. (Charlotte personally thought he was quite brave to willingly come into such close contact with her, given her penchant for unexpected flailing fists.)

“Do you want to help?” John asked brightly, sounding delighted by the prospect, given the decided lack of enthusiasm of the other current occupants of the house—namely: outright disdain (Charlotte), mild disinterest (Ava), conspicuous absence (Simone, who was occupied by some sort of complicated nail-and-skin-care routine in their flat upstairs), and, of course, somewhat resentful ignorance (Alice).

“I’d love to,” Graham said, with a smug smile at Charlotte.

“He’s going to give you an appalling apron,” Charlotte said, leaning her hip against the counter and trying not to enjoy the sight of Graham in this familiar domestic setting, surrounded by her family.

“The more appalling, the better,” Graham said brazenly, though he did falter somewhat when John eagerly handed him an apron that said Making Spirits Bright! in horrifying mommy-blogger script, with an image of martini glasses clinking directly beneath the words.

“Famous last words,” Charlotte said cheerfully, then reached for the prosecco bottle. “Bubbles?”

“No,” Graham said somberly. “I need to focus on my craft.”

“That’s the spirit!” John said happily. “It’s nice to have a man in the kitchen with me—these ladies, god love them, don’t know their way around a rolling pin.”

“Perhaps we should just wait for Kit to come home and have him help you instead,” Ava offered, now trying to clean Alice’s face with a wet wipe while Alice attempted to launch herself out of her high chair.

John grimaced, then hastily hitched his smile back into place. “Kit’s a good lad, but he is a bit… overenthusiastic in the kitchen.” No one could argue with this assessment.

Charlotte, resigned to the fact that she was not going to be able to escape this activity entirely now that Graham was here, busied herself setting out the ingredients John requested, so that nothing involving actual culinary skill was asked of her. This seemed a satisfactory arrangement for everyone—John and Graham were conferring in serious tones about the desired thickness of the pastry, and Ava was humming tunelessly to Alice while topping up her glass of prosecco. Charlotte drifted toward her sister.

“I talked to Mom yesterday,” she said, reaching out to stroke a careful finger down Alice’s impossibly soft, fuzzy head, then neatly dodging Alice’s attempt to smear her with a bit of banana she’d secreted away in a tiny fist.

Ava raised an eyebrow at her, an expression that definitely had less range than it had pre-Botox. “Why?” Ava’s relationship with their parents was less fraught than Charlotte’s was, although in their adolescence, the situation had been reversed, Ava having been much more rebellious than Charlotte. They, obviously, were delighted by Ava’s later career choices. Ava’s teenage rebellion had always seemed to Charlotte some sort of desperate ploy for their parents’ attention, whereas Charlotte simply didn’t care. She’d learned at age nine what happened when her parents paid too much attention to her, and she had lurked quietly at the edges of various family dramas ever since.

“I was feeling guilty, I guess,” Charlotte said, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot and draining the last of her glass of prosecco. Against her will, she glanced over her shoulder at Graham, who was joking with John as he stirred the contents of a mixing bowl. He’d rolled his sleeves up, and she made a very conscious effort not to look at his forearms. He looked… relaxed, she realized. It was as though every time she’d seen him previously, even in the company of the sisters that he was clearly so fond of, he’d been carrying some unseen weight, and she realized it now only in its absence.

“You don’t normally waste much time on feeling guilty,” Ava said idly, her attention drifting down to Alice, who scowled up at her mother. “I’ve always admired that about you, you know.”

Charlotte, mid-reach for the prosecco bottle, blinked at her sister. “What?”

“Mom and Dad are… what they are,” Ava said, with a vague hand gesture that somehow perfectly encompassed the never-ending drama of their parents’ lives. “They mean well, but they’re, you know, pretty self-involved.”

“Ha,” Charlotte said. This was an understatement.

“But you’re never bothered by it,” Ava continued. “You don’t let them guilt-trip you about the Christmas thing—if it weren’t for you, I would have caved years ago and started flying to California for Christmas, no matter what my show schedule looked like. But you’re just so… steady.”

Charlotte topped up her glass and took a slow sip, considering. “I didn’t realize you saw me that way.” She’d never been sure how much attention her sister paid to her, period. She loved Ava dearly, but her elder sister was undeniably the more melodramatic of the two, the one comfortable with a spotlight, the one who never hesitated to make her own needs known. Charlotte, by comparison, had always felt like she bobbed along just below the surface, living her life as she pleased—which was itself definitely a luxury—but not attracting much in the way of notice from her family. She’d spent a large chunk of her life ensuring that she wasn’t someone that needed much notice. But maybe Ava had been paying attention all along.

“Well, I do,” Ava said, reaching out her own glass to clink against Charlotte’s. “So now that I’ve flattered you, do I get to tell you that you need to let our erstwhile mince pie baker over there blow your back out?”

“We’re just… business partners,” Charlotte said, which did not sound convincing even to her own ears. Ava gave her a vaguely pitying look.

“If that’s what the kids are calling it these days,” Ava said doubtfully, and then laughed as she dodged the prosecco cork that Charlotte tossed at her head.

Charlotte cast another surreptitious glance over her shoulder at the forearms on display and sighed.

“No,” Charlotte said definitively a couple of hours later. It was nearly one; Ava was simultaneously trying to give Alice a bottle and also check on her phone to see what time the Thai restaurant around the corner opened for takeaway, because the kitchen was not in a state that was remotely conducive to preparing lunch.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Graham demanded. He took a bite of the mince pie in his hand, and his eyes fluttered shut, a rapturous expression on his face. Charlotte, who was already somewhat in denial about the fact that she spent a disturbing amount of time trying not to imagine what having sex with this man might be like, did not find this to be helpful. “It’s delicious.”

“No,” she repeated firmly, taking another small bite of her own mince pie and grimacing. “It’s weird. The texture and the flavor combined.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Graham told John solemnly. “And might I induce you to share your recipe?”

John beamed at him. “Of course! I’ve spent years developing it, but you seem trustworthy.”

Graham placed a hand upon his heart. “I promise you, I will guard it carefully.”

John smiled fondly at him; Charlotte was mildly outraged, merely on principle. Was there anyone this man couldn’t charm? “John,” she said wheedlingly, “don’t you think that’s a bit reckless? We barely know him,” she added in a stage whisper, nodding in Graham’s direction. “He could be a criminal. You can’t entrust a criminal with your mince pie recipe.”

John looked unmoved. “Charlotte, love, his family’s lived in the same house for three hundred years. I think we’d know by now if he was a criminal—he wouldn’t be hard to track down.”

“Besides,” added Simone, who had been waltzing in and out of the kitchen all morning, apparently as the mood took her, “I don’t think John should allow your romantic entanglements to cloud his mince pie judgment.”

“Romantic—”

“Thank you, John,” Graham said loudly, cutting off Charlotte and leaving her to splutter incoherently in an outraged fashion. “If you’ll just let me pop my number in your phone—”

John happily handed over his iPhone, Graham typed away, and before Charlotte quite knew what was happening, he was being sent off with a Tupperware of mince pies, promises to text the recipe posthaste, and repeated inquiries from Ava about whether he was sure he had to leave before lunch.

“I’ve a meeting in the City this afternoon, unfortunately, and then I’m headed down to Eden Priory for the night,” he said apologetically, shrugging back into his coat in a languid, elegant way that was extremely irritating, because it had never occurred to Charlotte until this moment that there was a sexy way to don a coat. Something dark crossed his face at this, like a thundercloud scuttling across the sky, but it was quickly erased. His glance flicked toward her and snagged on her face. “I’ll see you Wednesday?” he asked, in a slightly lower tone.

“Yes. The afternoon?”

“I’ll pick you up at two,” he said, and then with a wave he was gone.

And Charlotte was left in his wake with a messy kitchen to clean, and forty-eight hours in which to try to convince herself that she wasn’t counting the minutes until she’d see him again.