She doesn’t exactly love the idea. Not because she imagines Annabelle and William rifling through her private things – she has absolutely nothing to hide – but because the flat is hers, hard won and cherished, a place of refuge after her divorce. The thought of the Huntleys marching in and occupying it, even just for one night, feels very wrong to Lena. However, she’s starting to think it would be preferable to the alternative.
She finishes the call rather curtly and gazes out at the snow-covered landscape, almost willing more snow to fall. Just enough, she thinks, to keep them here for a couple more days. So she can avoid the Huntleys.
Lena knows it’s mad to think like this, and that it’ll be awful for Shelley and Pearl if they can’t fly home for Christmas. So it’s selfish of her really. So horribly mean to wish they’d be snowed in.
She also knows she should tolerate Annabelle and William with an eye roll and not let them get to her. After all, in April, Lena is marrying Tommy at High Gables and Annabelle has already booked the string quartet. Lena’s parents and siblings will all travel down to the Berkshire pile from their red brick terraced house in Manchester. It has already been decided that there will be a formal sit-down meal, which Lena wouldn’t have chosen, and of course all of Team Huntley will be there: the braying brothers and the glossy wives, and their children – not that Lena doesn’t like children, but these are atype, feral-with-privileges, tangle-haired and grubby-faced, but with cello lessons and cricket whites and a surefire entry into Eton.
Fucking hell, she breathes out loud. People shouldn’t feel that way about their forthcoming wedding, but Lena is havingthe kind of wedding she never wanted to have. How did she allow this to happen?
Still, it’s too late to do anything about it now, she decides, her gaze fixed on the distant hills all swathed in snow. Christmas comes first. That’s the first hurdle to get over.
And now, as if by magic, fat snowflakes start to fall, coming thicker and faster by the second. And Lena’s heart lifts as she watches from the window of the cosy room.
‘Thank you, snow,’ she whispers. ‘Thank yousomuch.’
33
CHRISTMAS EVE
By the following morning the snow is falling so hard that Shelley decides this must be a blizzard. Has she ever been in a blizzard before? Possibly, although you’re pretty much insulated from the weather in London. It doesn’t lash at you in the same raw way as it is now, the snow driving into her frozen face as she hurries towards the hen house.
By the time she’s fed and checked on the hens, and is back at the cottage, everyone is up and gathered just inside the front door, staring out. ‘You’ll need to start digging now if we’re going to have any chance of getting home,’ Frida barks at Roger. But it’s Niall who responds.
‘Frida, we might as well try digging to the centre of the earth for all the good it’ll do. Look how fast it’s falling.’ He hands around mugs of coffee and a hot chocolate for an excitable Theo, who at least seems delighted by the fresh snowfall.
‘Yep, without a doubt,’ Roger agrees. ‘Frida, we’re just going to have to accept this…’ As tempers flare between the Sampsons, Shelley, Lena and Pearl go to confer in the lounge.
‘This is it,’ Shelley announces. ‘We’re all stuck here for Christmas. There’s no way around it, is there?’ She has calledMichael’s new mobile already, and assured him, stoically, that they’ll all be fine. But she doesn’t feel fine as she imagines Joel’s reaction.
‘Haven’t you told him yet?’ Pearl asks with a grimace.
‘That he’ll have to manage Christmas Day with the kids and his parents, all by himself?’ Shelley rubs at her face, as if that might erase the terrifying vision of Joel juggling the making of a proper turkey-stock gravy while sautéing sprouts and hoisting out the turkey, stuffing, roast potatoes and pigs in blankets from the oven, all at the correct time. And what about the home-made cranberry sauce that his mother always expects? ‘No, I haven’t dared to call him yet,’ she says, shuddering. ‘I don’t know how he’s going to cope…’
‘He’ll just have to,’ Pearl insists. ‘There’s literally nothing we can do now.’
‘You could dispense instructions over the phone?’ Lena suggests, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Literally talk him through making Christmas dinner, like the emergency services when someone’s having a baby at home?’
Shelley musters a weak smile. ‘Maybe his parents will pitch in. The kids too. They might even peel a potato!’
‘It could even be good for them,’ Lena suggests.
‘Maybe. You do realise my name will be mud, though?’ Shelley wishes she didn’t care about how she’ll be viewed by her own family and in-laws. But she can’t help it. For seventeen years her overriding aim has been to be a good mum, and guilt comes over her now in a wave. But gradually, as snow continues to fall, a sense of acceptance begins to settle over the group. Because really, what other option is there? They can hardly be helicoptered out of here, and there is certainly no sign of a thaw.
Before tackling breakfast, the three women and Niall escape the intensity of the cottage by walking Stan to the lochside. Here, as they stop at the water’s edge, they try to figure out howtheir somewhat unlikely group might manage Christmas Day together. ‘If it was just us,’ Lena offers, ‘it’d be great.’
‘Y’know, I think it actually would,’ Shelley agrees. ‘And maybe you were right when you said it might be good for them. They’re just going to have to get off their backsides and all pull together for once. And perhaps I’m being unfair on Joel, assuming he won’t be able to cope.’ She bends to ruffle Stan’s soft black and white fur, reminding herself that her husband seems to have changed, since she ran away to Scotland. And that the new improved Joel has been nothing but pleasant on the phone – even offering to pick them up at the airport. It hardly seems possible that this is the man who let her drag a Christmas tree down the street, all by herself. So yes, of course he can roast and carve a turkey and dish up sprouts. ‘It’s funny,’ she continues. ‘When we booked this trip, if I’d thought there was even a chance that I wouldn’t be back home for Christmas, then I’d have said no way?—’
‘And now here we are, trapped together in the frozen wastes,’ Niall remarks with a grin.
‘And actually, it doesn’t feel like a disaster…’ Shelley breaks off, gazing across the loch to the snowy peaks beyond. ‘It feels…okay.’
‘Christmas is only a day, after all,’ Niall offers with a shrug.
She chuckles. ‘Funnily enough, that’s what my husband always says. That I make far too much fuss, wanting everything to be perfect and the house all decorated. But yes, itisonly a day. And anyway, there’s nothing we can do to change things.’ She turns to Pearl. ‘But what about Brandon?’
Pearl brushes a fresh flurry of snowflakes from her auburn hair. ‘I’ll miss him. I’ve never had a Christmas without my boy…’ Like Shelley, she’s dreading calling home to break the news. ‘But with Abi there…’ She doesn’t want to say,It wouldn’t be the same anyway. Not like our Christmases have always been.But it’s true. ‘Maybe it’ll be good for them to have the place to themselves,’ she continues. ‘And actually, it’ll be fun to spend it with all of you.’
Lena wraps an arm around her shoulders. ‘All these years we’ve been friends and we’ve never spent Christmas Day together. And look where we are! It couldn’tbeany more Christmassy…’ They all fall silent for a moment, taking it all in. Not just the snowy landscape, sparkling now in the weak sunshine, but the realisation that they will definitely be spending Christmas Day together, right here. Then Shelley remembers that the hens’ water bottle might be frozen, and they all make their way back to the cottage, where Niall offers to check it.
