Page 3 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

‘A little?’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Sarah didn’t mention Rhys in her letter, apart from the reference to his family Christmas, and she usually chats about him when she writes. Plus she hasn’t said what Chrissie thinks to her plan either, which means Chrissie might not have any idea.’

‘Yet,’ said Astrid.

He was still worrying about his granddaughter. Sarah would be taking time off work for her wedding and honeymoon – surely coming here now would mean she’d have to take unpaid leave from her position at Velvet Edge, the all-female decorating business that was always inundated with jobs. And she wouldn’t be doing that unless something was really wrong.

‘Let’s try not to worry,’ Astrid said. She was always calm in a storm, his true north, the one who kept his feet on the ground. He wasn’t sure how he would’ve handled the sort of work he’d been involved with in the army if he hadn’t had her to come home to whenever he was able.

He shook his head. ‘We’ve wanted a house full for years and never got it.’ He usually made Christmas what he could with all the lights, the decorations, anything that would make it feel jam-packed full of family and festive cheer when really the family weren’t together at all.

‘Well, this year it looks like we’ll have Meg and Sarah,’ said Astrid with a fondness in her eyes that made him want to reach out and comfort her. Because with that fondness came the pain of the rift that had formed between their darling daughters.

They locked gazes as Earl said, ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

She nodded and sighed. ‘It means we won’t need to go into the town for the fireworks this year, because we’ll be having our own display right here at the chalet.’ She covered his hand when he put it on her shoulder.

Chrissie hadn’t come to Winterbruck for Christmas since she lost her husband. Sarah didn’t know her Auntie Meg, and worse, Meg and Chrissie hadn’t spoken a word to each other in more than eight years.

But if Meg was heading this way, and so was Sarah, then there was no chance of Chrissie staying away for long.

2

SARAH

At the self-service bag drop at London’s Heathrow Airport, Sarah looped the tag through the handle of her suitcase and moved out of the way for the next person. She checked the board again. So far so good. The flight to Bern was on time. From there she was booked on a transfer bus which would take her to Winterbruck and right to her grandparents’ door.

She felt her stresses begin to fall away as she reached passport control. She was going to the Swiss Alps, her happy place. Being at the traditional Swiss chalet always felt like something out of a storybook, an escape from the real world, and it brought back happy memories of her dad. They hadn’t been back in winter since he’d died; her mum always wanted Christmas at home in Oxfordshire, and there had been no persuading her otherwise.

Sarah had sent letters to Grumps and Nanna at least once a month ever since she was a little girl, but her latest letter had been less of her usual chatty correspondence and more of a plea for help. She’d tried to word it to sound casual, like there was nothing particularly wrong, and when she followed it up with a phone call neither Grumps nor Nanna had asked any probing questions. But then they wouldn’t, would they? They were easy-going, not like her mum, who was making her feel stressed the closer they got to her big day, which was less than a month away. She had her own doubts, or maybe just pre-wedding jitters, but her mum’s voice in her head didn’t help at all. Right from the moment she got engaged, her mum had questioned whether Sarah was rushing into this and was way too young to get married. And any moment where Sarah looked like she might have some doubt in her mind, her mum leapt on it and wanted to talk it out. Sarah knew she was only trying to help and that her heart was in the right place, but it was all too much.

She’d had the same jittery or uneasy feeling the day she and her mum – along with Rhys and his mum – had looked at wedding venues, and the only thing that had helped was after they’d seen a few and she and Rhys made the decision to have their wedding in a marquee at his family’s property in Northumberland. Sarah had felt herself relax and breathe for the first time in a long while when that choice was made, until she realised the wedding was still going to be huge. And she couldn’t admit her overwhelm or panic to anyone, not her mum who she’d always been really close to, and definitely not to Rhys. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t love him, or that she didn’t want to be with him. She wanted both of those things.

Some days Sarah felt like her mum had finally accepted that this was happening – she wanted to help organise the wedding, after all. But she knew deep down her mum thought this was a mistake, and she remembered how they’d got into another argument about it last week at the bridal boutique while she was having a dress fitting.

Every time Sarah put on her wedding dress she felt like a princess. Once the veil was in place that day, she’d stood and looked at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t stop smiling. Her dark hair curled beneath the sparkling tulle veil and over her bare skin in the ivory off-the-shoulder lace dress, and the beads and sequins in the material shimmered beneath the lights.

You couldn’t control when you fell in love. So what if she was only twenty, at an age when her best friend, Keira’s commitments – aside from her job – were nightclubbing and weekends away with her boyfriend. She’d fallen for Rhys, and on New Year’s Eve, she would put on this dress for real and marry the man she loved.

Her mum had already told her how beautiful she looked, how stunning the dress was, but now the shine in Chrissie’s eyes faded as she stood behind Sarah. ‘Sarah, are you absolutely sure about this?’

Their gazes met in the mirror, but not for long.

‘Why can’t you just be happy for me?’ The problem wasn’t the question itself but more Sarah’s own doubts. And she didn’t want her feelings to be something else her mum fixed, like she’d tried to fix everything else throughout her life. She wanted to find her own way, make her own decisions, whatever they might be.

‘It’s my job to worry. I don’t want you to make a mistake.’

‘We’ve had this conversation, Mum. Many times. I’m the same age as you were when you got married.’

‘But your dad and I weren’t that different in age. Rhys is twenty-seven. A whole seven years older than you. He’s got his life started and you’ve barely been in your first proper job for a year. I gave up a lot of myself⁠—’

‘I know!’ She hadn’t meant to raise her voice, but the words just burst out of her before she could stop them. ‘I know you didn’t have a career with Dad in the RAF and all the moving around, you’ve told me. But Rhys and I aren’t you and Dad.’ Rhys had worked overseas for two years previously; he’d bought his own flat that she’d moved into last month; he was established in his job. But weren’t those all good things? Wasn’t it good that he was sure of himself and settled?

‘I just don’t understand what the rush is.’

‘Why did you rush?’

Her mum didn’t answer.

The bridal seamstress came to remove the veil and help Sarah out of the dress, and when she was back in her jeans and jumper she didn’t want to talk about it any more. Every time her mum shared her own misgivings, Sarah felt like she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.