Page 6 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

The second she got off the phone she wrote a letter to her grandparents. It was easier to do that than make a call; she didn’t trust herself not to sound upset. She’d call them in a few days when she knew they had the letter, and in the meantime, she’d get the travel arrangements underway and finish up at work.

Boarding for her flight was called, shaking her out of the memories that had led up to this moment. Sarah walked across the jet bridge and showed the flight attendant her boarding pass. It was stop-start all the way up the aisle, as passengers tried to shove stupidly big bags in the overhead bins, then took coats off, then realised they’d left something in the stupidly big bag so yanked it down again before noticing they were holding up everyone behind them.

Finally, she took her seat and smiled at the female passenger who shuffled into the middle seat and greeted her. She looked a lot like Rhys’s mum, who was lovely. In fact, the whole family was. It was just that there were a lot of them. And already the wedding sounded like it was going to be huge. Rhys’s family and friends had brought the guest list for the wedding to two hundred so far. Two hundred! And the guests didn’t even include the two men she adored – her dad and Grumps – which all but broke her heart.

Until recently Sarah had had no idea that anything with Rhys would ever be complicated. How could it be when they were head over heels for each other?

She still wanted Rhys, she was in love with him, but with Rhys came a life she wasn’t sure she was ready for. Would she feel like she was missing out on something if she got married so young? And if she loved him enough to marry him, why hadn’t she run to him? Why hadn’t she talked to him and explained that she wasn’t sure she was ready for all of this?

She rested her head back against the headrest as the plane gathered speed. Droplets of rain failed in their traction against the window glass; grey skies lingered.

She’d lied to her fiancé about her reasons for going to Switzerland. And she hated lying to him. This was the first time she ever had. She’d told Rhys that with her nanna’s heart problems, and the fact her beloved grandparents wouldn’t be at their wedding, she just had to see them before they got married. She’d also fibbed that Grumps had a neighbour who had a decorating job for her so it would be worth her while as she was taking unpaid leave. He’d been disappointed by her absence at Christmas but as they would have many more as a couple, he said he understood and they’d had breakfast together before she’d left for the airport.

She knew she was being a coward.

At least her mum would be working most of the days over Christmas. It would stop her calling all the time, deciding that her own doubts and her daughter fleeing to Switzerland were more problems she had to solve.

For once, Sarah really wanted to fix this one for herself.

3

CHRISSIE

Chrissie came back through to the reception at Chetbury House Surgery in the little village of Chetbury, Oxfordshire, where she’d been living for the last seven years. She’d updated Doctor Harris after taking a call from one of his patients who needed a home visit and brought back a pumpkin spice latte for herself and one for her colleague and friend, Maria.

Maria gave her a heartfelt thank you and picked up her mug as Chrissie sipped the coffee, courtesy of the new fancy machine in the kitchen. ‘This is bliss. Whatever would we do without coffee?’

‘Be slumped at the reception desk by 9.30 a.m.?’ Maria suggested.

Chrissie laughed. It was the start of December, and they were on the cusp of cold and flu season as well as other winter bugs that might rear their ugly heads. Being a doctor’s receptionist was hard work, something she hadn’t realised until she started the job. After an intensive training course, she’d applied here and had been doing this for almost as long as she’d been living in Chetbury.

‘At least you’re not working over Christmas.’ Maria lifted her coffee cup in a cheers gesture and Chrissie met it with her own cup.

‘I was surprised to be given leave at the last minute. I know how crazy it gets around here.’ She’d put in for the holiday ages ago, but it was only confirmed that morning that she could take a whole month off spanning Christmas and the New Year. She hadn’t fancied her chances of getting a yes to her request when she originally submitted it because reception still had to be covered between the three receptionists on the payroll, and all of them had families they wanted to spend time with. She would’ve accepted just five days for Sarah’s wedding if she couldn’t get the full leave, but it seemed she was in luck. Kind of.

Now, Sarah had gone to Switzerland and Chrissie wondered whether she might end up cancelling her leave this side of Christmas and coming into work after all.

She’d had such big plans to spend December with Sarah, not only to ensure she was making the right decision about getting married, but to support her if she insisted the wedding would be going ahead. She would’ve done anything to help out but it seemed her efforts so far had been damaging rather than helpful. She kept saying the wrong thing, her good intentions making it worse.

‘You deserve it,’ said Maria interrupting her thoughts. ‘You’ve worked the last few years in a row. It’s about time.’

That was true. She usually worked right up until Christmas Eve. ‘Thank you.’

‘So, what are you going to do with yourself for an entire month?’

‘Watch movies, eat a lot of chocolate, drink mulled wine, then come Boxing Day have a massive panic that I won’t fit into my wedding outfit.’ Perhaps the more she talked about Sarah’s wedding the more she’d get used to the idea, accept that it was happening. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Rhys, she did, but she was cautious about him. He was older; Sarah was still just twenty, and no matter that Chrissie had married at the same age she didn’t want her daughter to miss out on being young. Sarah should forge her own career and path, before decisions became joint and she might not always get what she wanted. She’d never regretted marrying Anthony and the life she’d had with him, but she wanted Sarah to have everything she possibly could.

Maria handed Chrissie a file to put back into the cabinet on her side of the desk. ‘Your Sarah is going to be a beautiful bride.’

‘She really is.’

As a single parent Chrissie was always worried she wasn’t doing a good job, but she’d done things right with Sarah, hadn’t she? At least up until now.

Sarah had shared her reasons for going to Switzerland but was she really telling her everything? Chrissie doubted it. She suspected her daughter wasn’t entirely sure about the wedding, although she hadn’t said that. But the clues were there.

Not long after the engagement, Chrissie had driven her and Sarah up to see Rhys’s family. It had been a long six-hour drive from Oxfordshire to Northumberland, and they’d stayed in a gorgeous B&B as their base while they checked out the wedding venues pre-selected between Sarah and Rhys, Chrissie, and Louise, Rhys’s mother. They’d looked at a Grade II-listed country house with a breathtaking backdrop that seemed like something out of a fairy tale. They’d seen a rustic barn as another option, positioned on the coast with a whole host of photographic opportunities. They’d visited a castle with history and grounds and architecture that wowed Rhys.

When Chrissie had looked at her daughter as they left the castle a smile had been in place, but behind that smile Chrissie knew lurked a worry. It was something Sarah had always done even as a kid and still did as an adult. Before the school play when she was nine and she’d been chosen to play Snow White she’d had that same smile that belied the nerves sitting behind it. When she started a part-time job aged fourteen, she’d had the smile before her first day, which she admitted afterwards she’d been quietly dreading. The same smile had been in place when she was learning to drive, pretending that everything was absolutely fine until the day of her test when she almost didn’t go through with it because she was so nervous.