Home for Christmas

Chapter 1

I was certain my heart skipped more than just one happy beat as I stood on the drive with Tink, my beloved King Charles spaniel, and waved off the last of that year’s paying guests.

‘Come on, then, my love,’ I said cheerfully, bending to stroke her silky ears. ‘We’ve got a party to get ready for and some celebrating to do!’

My best friend Jeanie, who, a few months before, had returned to Wynbridge, ostensibly to help her aunt and uncle run the Mermaid pub, but really nursing a broken heart, had spent weeks organising a Hallowe’en party, and I, being more adept with a sewing machine than both her and our other friend Holly, was in charge of costumes.

‘Let’s go and find your wings,’ I said to Tink, and she yipped in response.

Once we were transformed, we set off on foot, rather later than planned. We received more than a few double takes along the way, but that was only to be expected, because it wasn’t every day that you saw a lion walking a flying monkey along the pavement in a Fenland market town.

‘I was beginning to think I was going to have to send out a search party,’ said Jeanie, looking pointedly at the clock behind the bar as she let us into the spookily decorated pub. ‘I thought you’d got waylaid moving back into the house.’

I handed over the bag containing her costume with a smile.

‘I haven’t even been inside the house yet,’ I told her as she locked the pub door behind us. ‘I had hoped to be on time, but my mane scuppered the schedule.’

I had triumphantly teased my thick blonde curls into an unruly lion’s mane, but it had taken more product than I’d ordinarily use in an entire year to achieve the wild result.

‘Well,’ said Jeanie, as she cocked her head and looked at me appraisingly, ‘I suppose it was worth you being a bit behind time, because you look amazing.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, twizzling the tail on my costume and hoping my whiskers weren’t going to come unstuck, ‘and so will you by the time I’ve finished with you. Let’s get you changed before it’s time to let everyone in.’

As Jeanie was working behind the bar that evening as well as hosting the party, I’d had to adapt her costume so that she could move freely. The silver lurex catsuit was a somewhat slinky take on the Tin Man, but it achieved the overall impact we’d been hoping for and gave her the ability to walk without the necessity of an oil can.

‘Can we tighten the chin strap up a bit?’ she requested as she pushed the plastic funnel that I’d sprayed silver further back on her head.

‘Here’s the third musketeer,’ said Jeanie’s uncle Jim as he came up the pub stairs ahead of Holly, who was going to complete our ode to Oz. ‘Hey,’ he then tutted, ‘that’d better not be my funnel.’

Thankfully the arrival of the Scarecrow with a flying monkey of her own saved Jeanie from having to confess that it was.

‘Oh my god!’ Holly laughed as she stepped into the room. ‘You two look hilarious.’

‘You’re pretty amusing yourself,’ I couldn’t help but giggle.

‘The straw’s a bit scratchy.’ She wriggled as I admired the attention she’d paid to putting the finishing touches on the costume I’d started off for her. ‘I hope I’m not allergic.’

Jim shook his head and left us to it, and Holly put her little rescue terrier, Jasper, down to readjust some straw which was poking out of the bottom of her patched trousers. He and Tink greeted each other ecstatically.

‘You’ve got Jasper’s wings on upside down,’ I pointed out. ‘He’ll never take to the skies like that.’

‘I knew there was something wrong with them,’ said Holly, rolling her eyes and scooping him back up again. ‘Can you help me sort them? And then we’d better take some photos for me to send to May.’

‘Oh yes,’ laughed Jeanie. ‘She’s bound to want to see, isn’t she?’

Holly had only moved to the area a few months before Jeanie returned to town, but the three of us had quickly become firm friends. Sometimes, when Jeanie and I were reminiscing over school days, we’d forget that Holly hadn’t been around for ever and would have to fill her in on what we were talking about.

Holly’s life had changed beyond all recognition since she’d divorced and met her new partner Bear and his flamboyant actress mum, May Madison. May had a great fondness for dressed-up dogs, hence the photocall. Just like me on the work front, Holly was also following her creative passion and her heart’s desire. And talking of hearts…

‘So,’ said Jeanie, turning to me with uncanny timing, ‘tell me why you assigned us these characters for the party tonight, Bella?’

I could have fobbed her off with the explanation that in Oz, Dorothy had three friends and that the character each of us was portraying was accidental, but I knew she wouldn’t believe me. It was time I came clean about the choices I had made.

‘Because I thought they genuinely suited us,’ I therefore told her. ‘As in, they match where we’re all at in our lives. Thanks to you two, I’ve found my courage this year in starting to further expand my business, and Holly has certainly been using her brain to make a success of her work, which ties in with the Scarecrow.’

Holly’s debut book, Tall Tales from Small Dogs , which she had both written and illustrated, featured a dachshund called Monty and a bull terrier named Queenie, who, in real life, belonged to May and Bear respectively. The book had been a bestseller from practically the moment it hit the shelves.

‘Which leaves…’ I said, biting my lip.

‘My heart,’ huffed Jeanie, with her hands planted firmly on her hips.

‘Your heart,’ I echoed softly. ‘It’s about time it got some exercise.’

The broken heart Jeanie had returned to town with had been carefully glued back together, but she hadn’t yet tested it out, even though there was someone wonderful still keenly waiting in the wings to whisk her back off her feet.

‘And we know just the man—’ Holly began to say, but Jeanie cut her off.

‘But what about your heart?’ she said to me bluntly. ‘You could just as easily have been the Tin Man. Your heart could do with a proper workout, too.’

‘My colouring’s all wrong for silver,’ I said lightly, while focusing on fiddling with the rearrangement of Jasper’s wings.

‘Jeanie does have a point, though…’ Holly started.

Thankfully, just at that moment, Jeanie’s aunt Evelyn stuck her head around the door and cut Holly off, so I didn’t have to convince my friends that my own major organ was perfectly healthy. I was genuinely very happy with my single status; that said, I was willing to indulge in a quick dalliance if the right opportunity happened to come along.

Jeanie, on the other hand, had always been more content when she was one half of a pair and, unlike me, had been willing to risk the heartbreak of a committed relationship not working out; therefore she was the one who now needed some encouragement to have a look around the love department again. I was fine staying out of it.

Mum’s awful experiences with the two father figures in my life and then losing my decades-long devoted grandparents within weeks of each other ensured that I preferred to keep the few men who entered my life at arm’s length. From what I’d witnessed and felt the sting of, it didn’t matter how relationships ended – the heart was always compromised in some way and, for me, it simply wasn’t worth the risk of putting it on the frontline and getting it broken.

‘I take it you’re aware of the time, Jeanie?’ Evelyn said, having looked over what we were wearing with nothing more than a slight twitch of her lips. ‘Ten minutes until opening time, and I can hear there’s already quite a crowd outside clamouring to be let in.’

Jeanie looked thrilled. She’d put a lot of effort into promoting the party and had really gone to town on the pumpkin decorations, bloated body balloons and spooky streamers.

‘Can you take our picture, please, Evelyn?’ Holly politely requested, before the woman who was always on the go disappeared again. ‘Then we’ll be straight down.’

With the three of us, five if you included the dogs, hamming it up for the photos, I just knew it was going to be a night to remember.

‘So, tell me again,’ said Holly, her voice raised so I could hear her above the din which had escalated as the pitchers of creepy cocktails had been enthusiastically emptied and refilled, ‘when are you moving back into the house?’

We were standing at the end of the bar, which was crowded with mummies and warlocks, vampires and ghouls, because there wasn’t a seat to be had. Tink and Jasper, having been admired, had been taken back upstairs so they didn’t get trodden on, and I hoped they were having a snooze rather than causing havoc.

‘First thing tomorrow,’ I said excitedly. ‘I’ll give the place a quick clean and then move my stuff from the apartment back downstairs and unpack everything else.’

My grandparents had spent their entire married life living in the beautiful house which, thanks to their generosity, now belonged to me, and I adored it. Renting the main part of the property out to visitors for nine months of the year meant I could afford to keep it and also that I generated an income while I properly got my dream business off the ground.

‘I daresay you’re going to appreciate the space to spread out in now that you need to make so many extra fairies.’ Holly smiled.

‘Yes,’ I said, and swallowed as my heart switched from thumping with excitement about moving back in to trepidation about the extra workload. ‘I hope I haven’t overcommitted.’

My online business, Away with the Fairies, had recently really taken off and, with Jeanie’s and Holly’s encouragement, I had signed up to sell a selection of peg and pipe cleaner fairies at various local festive events. I usually stuck to bespoke, one-off commissions sold via an online retailer, but was now branching out.

Unfortunately, however, thanks to some deep-seated teen trauma, I was feeling more nervous than I deserved to be about selling direct to the public. That was also why I was still dithering over whether to accept an offer to lead a workshop at the Cherry Tree Café. I was definitely channelling the Cowardly Lion about that, not that Holly was aware of my mortifying past experience. That was something I hadn’t got around to filling her in on.

I felt a pang of envy as I recalled how the café’s co-owner Lizzie made teaching crafts look so easy, but I daresay she hadn’t been laughed at by classmates during a high school presentation and lost her confidence in front of a crowd as a result.

‘You’ll manage it all somehow,’ Holly said with a sincere smile. ‘I know you will.’

Her unshakeable faith in me was both genuine and reassuring.

‘Thanks, Holly,’ I nodded, trying to sound stoic. ‘You’re right. I’ve got this.’

‘Cheers to that.’ She beamed, clinking her glass against mine.

‘Cheers,’ I said back. ‘And Bear will be back soon,’ I reminded her. ‘You’re in for such a wonderful winter with him staying with you here in Wynbridge.’

As a garden restoration expert, Holly had told me, her partner didn’t work during the harshest winter weather. Not outside, anyway.

‘I can’t wait to see him,’ she said, raising her glass again. ‘Now I’m properly settled, it’s going to be the best Christmas ever, even if it will be a squeeze for the two of us and the dogs in the railway carriages.’

‘Christmas!’ I sighed dreamily, feeling warmed as the thought of it filled my head and made me forget my former worries. ‘I’m so excited for it this year.’

‘According to Jeanie,’ Holly laughed, ‘you’re excited for it every year.’

‘Well, of course I am.’ I grinned. ‘And I know she’s told you why.’

I had so many special memories attached to the festive season. It was the one time of year that Mum could properly stop working, and we’d spend the whole of the holidays staying with her parents in the house which was now mine. I’d always spent the school holidays with my grandparents because of Mum’s epic workload, but Christmas was the one time we’d all be there together, and I had loved that.

We embraced every festive tradition, and I had enthusiastically carried them all on. I’d even added a few of my own, and in just a few short weeks the entire house would be transformed into a veritable grotto. Both inside and out.

‘Hooray for Christmas!’ I cheered, as I pictured myself setting up my advent calendars, decking the halls and snuggling down with Tink under a fleecy blanket with a mug of hot chocolate from the festive station in the kitchen to watch Christmas movies.

Holly and I both jumped as the pub doors crashed open and in marched the Wicked Witch of the West, Glinda and Dorothy, a.k.a. three Wynbridge firefighters who must have just finished their shift. At the sight of what they were wearing, I did a double take.

‘I don’t believe it!’ Holly burst out laughing. ‘What are the odds of that?’

I laughed along with her, amused by what an unbelievable coincidence it was that we should have all picked the same film to celebrate the spooky season. That was, until I caught sight of Jeanie’s unhappy expression.

‘Look out,’ I warned Holly, in the hope that we could duck away before Jeanie reached us, but, squeezed in with everyone else, there was no hope of that.

‘Which of you two told them?’ Jeanie demanded. I was doing an extremely convincing impression of the cowering Lion as she loomed over us. ‘Did you let something slip about our costumes, Bella?’

‘No,’ I insisted, vehemently shaking my head, ‘I didn’t say a word to anyone.’

‘Is that Tim?’ Holly giggled, her cocktail hitting its mark at the most inopportune moment. ‘Is that Tiny Tim, your high school sweetheart, dressed up as Dorothy, Jeanie?’

‘Yes, it’s Tim,’ I said, confirming what she was witnessing when Jeanie didn’t answer and as I tugged at Holly’s straw-filled sleeve to try to rein her hilarity in.

‘He’s not my tiny anything,’ Jeanie tutted, which made Holly snort and laugh all the harder. ‘Not anymore.’

‘I don’t know why you’re so resistant to our match-making…’ I started to say, but she quelled me with a look.

‘Given that Jeanie and Tim were a couple back in the day’ – Holly hiccupped – ‘surely we’re trying to rekindle rather than matchmake, aren’t we?’

‘Holly—’

‘That was years ago,’ Jeanie muttered, firing more daggers in my direction.

Tim spotted Jeanie and attempted to walk through the crowd towards her. He’d only taken a couple of steps in his bright ruby slippers before he turned his ankle over and blurted out a few very un-Dorothy-ish phrases. He tried to regain his composure, but it didn’t really work given that he was wearing a dress that was too short for his tall frame.

‘Evening,’ he said, having firmly yanked down the hem ahead of limping the final few steps. ‘Don’t we all look grand?’

He leaned heavily on the bar with a pained grimace, and his wig slipped to one side.

‘You idiot,’ said Jeanie, unable to stop herself from smiling as she leaned over the bar and readjusted his hairdo.

‘What do you mean, “idiot”?’ Tim grinned back, the pain in his ankle forgotten in the face of Jeanie’s reaction to him as he batted his fake lashes. ‘I think I’m a dead ringer for Judy G.’

‘We need more photos,’ said Holly, pulling out her phone as Glinda and the Wicked Witch joined us and, absent monkeys aside, completed the cast.

I gave an involuntary shudder. I’d always been scared of the Witch, and knowing that it was an annoying lad I had been at school with called Owen under the green face-paint was little consolation.

‘It’ll have to be later,’ said Jeanie, her eyes still on Tim. ‘I’ve got folk to serve. We’re swamped back here.’

‘Need a hand?’ offered Tiny Tim, who was anything but. ‘I can still remember how to pull a pint.’

‘No, thanks,’ Jeanie said lightly, finally looking away. ‘I don’t trust you not to stand on me in those heels.’

‘Wait!’ he said, bending down to pull them off and narrowly avoiding his forehead clashing with the bar. ‘They’re going,’ he said, thrusting first one shoe at me and then the other. ‘They’re gone.’

‘I don’t want them,’ I objected, handing them to his hairy fairy-queen companion.

‘Oh, come on, then,’ Jeanie relented, looking at Tim again. ‘I’ll tell you what measures are in the cocktails, and then you can start refilling the empty pitchers.’

Holly and I nudged one another as Tim smoothed down his wig and joined her behind the bar. Everyone in the place knew that he was still the man for Jeanie, except her, but I hoped an evening working together and having a laugh might open her heart a little and help her see what the rest of us could.

As for what she’d said to me earlier about my heart, it really was perfectly fine. Left to my own devices and away with the fairies suited me down to the ground.