“You can sort them tomorrow,” Zack said.
“That’s if we don’t die from food poisoning overnight,” May said, voicing more doom than should be allowed on Christmas Day. “There could be none of us left tomorrow with all this posh food.”
“May, it’s Christmas dinner like you have every year. In fact, you had your Christmas dinner in that same spot for the last six years running,” he said.
“Well it doesn’t look like it!” May said, banging the base of her knife on the table. May was frequently cantankerous, but even more so when her children were due to visit as they were that afternoon.
“Ignore the silly old bat,” Mac said. “You know how she is if anything ever changes.”
Zack did. Because May made sure everyone knew about it.
Half an hour later, the ballroom at the Manor was filled with the care home’s residents, some of their families and staff eating Christmas pudding, or sitting with someone while they ate Christmas pudding. Gran had arrived with the other two members of her coven to sit with Glenda, although the three of them were actually eating Christmas dinner later in one of the gastropubs with Gran’s son and a handful of other people.
There had been presents for all the residents, something Zack had argued with his uncle long and hard about because it totalled to a large amount, that would affectively eat into their profits. But when Zack had, three years ago, threatened to pay for it out of his own wages, his uncle had agreed, so even Willy Chambers, who had no living relatives, had something to open that morning.
His phone vibrated, which was never a good sign. It was either Jake telling him he’d burned the beef—turkey was out this year—or something at the actual care home.
“What’s up? You look pensive,” Sorrell said, coming to stand next to him. She’d helped the kitchen staff this morning and two of the carers who had come in specially to add more Christmas décor to the large hall.
“Joan Bagley has died,” he said quietly. “The doctor is on her way.”
“I’m sorry,” Sorrell said, pushing her arm through his, a small gesture meant to give him comfort. “I know she had been poorly for a while. It’s just a shame it had to be Christmas Day.”
Zack typed a quick response and put his phone back in his pocket. “It isn’t unusual to lose someone on Christmas Day. Her family came to sit with her this morning and it seems she hung on for that and then slipped away. She wasn’t suffering and it would’ve been peaceful.”
He’d sat with her too for twenty minutes before her family had arrived, having a feeling that it would be the last time with how her breathing was. She’d declined in the past few days but it was still sad for the family and those that had cared for her.
“She was a resident for a while, wasn’t she?” Sorrell said.
He recognized her therapist’s voice which made him smile. She couldn’t help herself.
“She moved in pretty much the same time I started. But back then she was up dancing and playing crib,” Zack said, feeling it now. The loss. It didn’t get easier like some people thought, nor was it just a job. But he knew as well as anyone that this was life and it had to carry on—he had to carry on—for the sake of those around him.
“You cared,” Sorrell said. “That counts for a lot. Do you want to head over to Sunrise and check on your staff?”
He had a thought, one that he should’ve had before, damn it. “Ells, when you’ve got yourself a bigger staff team here would you consider working a day a week at Sunrise with the staff and families? I’ve talked about it with the board but never acted on actually employing a counsellor. I don’t think we’ve had one living in Severton before.”
“Possibly,” she said. “I could be interested in that. I have counselled adults before although it’s been just children more recently. But it’s Christmas day. Let’s go and sit with Gran for five and catch up on the Severton gossip.”
He took her arm as she tried to move away. “Sorrell,weare the Severton gossip!”
Sorrell had packed an overnight bag and for the first time since moving to Severton, she was staying somewhere other than the hotel—Zack’s childhood bedroom. He’d promised her that it wasn’t still full of posters of models or cars on his walls and he’d also promised her that the duvet set wasn’t still a Transformers one. And that it was a double bed. Despite those promises, she was still feeling nervous and had the urge to bolt for the hills and take cover.
She was worried about the gifts she’d gotten him, and the ones she’d bought for Jake, Rayah, Scott and Alex. There was a bottle of Scotch for his dad and a bottle of gin for his uncle—easy gifts to choose, but she hadn’t wanted to be empty handed for the rest of the family.
And she’d baked. Excessively. She’d been up at five anyway to turn on the ovens for the chefs from Sunrise and that was when she’d started to bake and ice. The Christmas cake had been done a week ago, the Christmas pudding before that. But the Yule Log needed to be fresh and the cake needed icing.
She’d then started on cookies, snickerdoodles and a trifle and finished with a recipe for a marmalade cake as she’d heard that Zack’s dad was partial to oranges. There was enough to feed half of Severton and certainly too much for one dinner, even if it was for seventeen people. Still, Christmas was all about the leftovers.
The farmhouse was only ten minutes’ drive from the hotel, even in icy conditions that she was just about getting used to driving in. Zack had offered to pick her up, but she knew he was quite possibly going to be called out to Sunrise and she didn’t want to be left without a means of getting back to the hotel should she need to.
A horse was outside the farmhouse, seemingly enjoying a trot in the snow. Scott was with it, arms folded, watching it prance about with a knowing look in his eye.
“Christmas present?” Sorrell said, opening the boot of her car and picking up a large pallet of baked goods.
Scott nodded. “Kind of. He was Niall’s. There’s a mare in the stable too.”
Sorrell remembered the farmer whose heart attack had happened suddenly. “How’s he doing?”
