‘The mandolin thingy you slice vegetables with,’ she says, adding, ‘blooming lethal.’
Jo winces, ‘Was it a bad cut?’
‘No, no. Just needed bandaging,’ Ruth assures her, ‘but accompanying is out of the question.’
Malcolm gives a helpless shake of the head. A gesture of accepting the inevitable. ‘How’s business going?’ he asks, changing the subject.
Jo started her stationery shop, Dear Wilbur, in Ilkley, but has since opened a second branch in Harrogate, where Eric also has his optician’s practice and where the family now live.
‘Good – in fact,reallygood. It helps that I have a fantastic manager in Ilkley. I’m always worried she’s going to leave. But I’ve got her involved in helping design our own range of cards and journals, and we’re both loving that. So, fingers crossed.’
‘Your Uncle Wilbur would have been very proud,’ Malcolm tells her.
‘I think he would be astonished; but yes, I do think he would be happy for me.’
‘And happy you are so close to your parents,’ Ruth adds.
‘Mum really is amazing. I don’t know what I’d do without her, what with running the shops and everything. Not that Eric isn’t great,’ Jo is keen to assure them. ‘He and Eliot love hanging out together. But not a lot else seems to get done.’ She shrugs helplessly.
Malcolm cannot imagine what it must be like to bring up a young family. Would he have liked it? He hardly knows. His life had taken such a different course. His mother and he had certainly been a family. Maybe families came in all shapes and sizes. Would a relationship with one other person, maybe a friendship that grew into something else, ever constitute a family? His mind drifts to Padam, the owner of the bookshop where he now works. He stops himself there and focuses back on his friends. After everything they have been through, weren’t the three of them like a family?
‘What are you thinking?’ Ruth asks, eyeing him. ‘Trying to work out how to get out of the nativity practice?’
‘Not at all, Ruth.Not at all,’ he says earnestly, turning his body towards her. And he finds he means it. After all, didn’t families help each other? ‘What more do you have planned?’ he asks. Then wishes maybe he hadn’t. It sounds too much like an open invitation. What else will this tricky woman sign him up for? Not that he has other plans for the Christmas period. There is his shop work, his campaigning for the local conservation trust, and meetings at the Historical Society – but that was only once a week. It strikes him how quiet life would be if Ruth didn’t cajole him into helping her. And hadn’t he met many of his local acquaintances through her?
Was that why she did it?
Ruth finishes off her shortbread biscuit which she has been dunking into her hot chocolate. ‘Well,’ she says meditatively, ‘what am I up to? Not that much, now I come to think of it.’
‘Really?’ Jo and Malcolm chorus in astonishment.
‘No!’ Ruth laughs out loud. She starts counting out on her fingers, ‘There are the carol services – town, Rotary, school and WI; there’s the Christingle, nativity, carol singing, early Christmas Eve crib service and midnight mass; then we have a funeral next week and a wedding in the week before Christmas.’ Ruth pauses, ‘I wouldn’t normally say “yes”, but her uncle’s a bishop and he rather insisted.’
‘What’s the bride like?’ Jo asks.
‘Bossy.’ Ruth grins, ‘Like the bishop.’
‘Oh, Ruth,’ Jo says sympathetically.
‘Ah well, I will make sure it’s a lovely day for them.’
And Malcolm knows she will. ‘What else is going on?’ he prompts.
‘There’s the Christmas craft coffee morning to raise funds for the pensioners’ Christmas lunch; obviously then there’s the lunch. After that we have a children’s party at the women’s refuge. Oh, and we’re involved in a service with the local RAF station and another with the Royal Yorkshire Regiment, and that is before we get to all the services on Christmas Day.’
‘Oh, Ruth, that—’
She interrupts him. ‘Then there are all the services at the other two churches, and the housebound to visit for Christmas communion at home and in the care homes. As well as the other people who might need a visit.’
Malcolm inclines his head, ‘Your favourite part of your job, if I remember rightly.’
This does gain an answering nod from Ruth, before she continues, ‘And I forgot, there is also the pub pantomime, where I have a walk-on part as the fairy godmother.’
‘Very appropriate, one cannot but feel,’ Malcolm offers, gallantly.
‘Couldn’t you have said “no” to that one?’ Jo asks.
‘Well, they’re raising funds for the church, so I do feel obliged to help.’ Ruth grins suddenly, and this lift in her expression makes Malcolm realize how tired she has been looking. Ruth continues, ‘At least I talked them out of making me an ugly sister.’
