Christmas at Strand House: A gorgeously uplifting festive romance!

‘Oh, just up my street,’ Bobbie said. ‘It looks wonderful. My friend didn’t say it was quite so grand.’

Lissy had told Bobbie she’d inherited Strand House but no other details, except there’d be plenty of room for all of them to stop for Christmas. Bobbie could hardly wait now.

The driver carried all Bobbie’s luggage – in three trips – to the front door, while Bobbie stood and sucked in the view. She hadn’t expected Strand House to be quite so close to the sea although, had she thought about it, the clue was in the name, wasn’t it?

‘Right then, madam, I’m off,’ the driver said. ‘My kids will be driving their mother mad, modifying their Christmas want list a thousand times and expecting her to get it all by the day after tomorrow. Christmas is for kids, eh? You got children, madam?’

Bobbie hadn’t been expecting that question.

‘No!’ she snapped.

It was what she told everyone who asked that question. It was easier that way. How could you say to anyone, especially, a stranger that you’d had a child – a boy; a child you’d washed and dressed and fed, and held close, and watched in sleep as he snuffled and sighed, if only for a short while – before you’d given him away? But every time that question got her, made her heart beat faster and often she would also feel a little faint with the holding of such a secret. It had got to her now. This perfectly nice and kind taxi driver, who had children of his own he hadn’t had to give away, had asked the simplest of questions, a question one might expect to get at Christmas because Christmas was all about children, wasn’t it?

It was her secret. The only person still alive who knew her secret was her cousin, Pamela, and her cousin’s husband, Charles. And they were in Australia, half a world away; half a world away where they’d taken Bobbie’s baby, Oliver, never to return with him. In her bag, safe inside the zipped section, was a letter. It had an Australian postmark. Bobbie had received it in with a letter from her own solicitor in London just a week ago now; just a short note to say he was passing it on as instructed by a colleague in Sydney. Bobbie had been afraid to open it, fearful of what she might read. Was it from Pamela and Charles to say something had happened to Oliver? Was it a letter from him filled with hate for abandoning him? Perhaps, here at Strand House, with friends around her she’d have the courage to open it? Perhaps.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_4a71558d-a3f0-5542-9a78-3968e2527ab8)

Lissy

‘So, Bobbie, will this room be all right for you? It’s the last one free that’s facing the sea – Janey and I have bagged the other two, I’m afraid. En suite.’ She hurried across the room and flung wide the door to the en suite, and immediately felt stupid and gauche because Bobbie would sure as eggs are eggs know what an en suite was. ‘Help yourself to toiletries. Shout if you need more towels. There are bigger rooms at the back of the house. Views out over the town to the moors if you prefer. If it’s windy it’ll be less noisy at the back, and warmer. And there’ll be more room for your luggage in any of those. Xander’s not here yet but I doubt he’ll be fussed which room he has.’

And I am sounding like a landlady or a chambermaid or something, so bloody formal. This is my friend for goodness’ sake. Relax, for pity’s sake. This was your idea to invite everyone. No one was holding a gun to your head.

What had taken Lissy by surprise was how utterly glamorous, how very London, Bobbie was. She’d stepped from the taxi, fresh as a daisy, her long silver hair barely moving in the breeze off the sea, and wearing a calf-length scarlet coat over an ankle-length paisley dress, the background of which was an identical shade of red. A floral bag – mostly shades of red – was hooked over one shoulder. Claret-coloured heels completed the look.

Standing in the hall in faded jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt with her ancient but comfy Ugg-boot slippers on, she’d been hanging Christmas decorations with Janey when Bobbie rang the bell. Janey had excused herself and rushed upstairs saying she’d leave Lissy to welcome her guest. Lissy had never felt so frumpy in her life.

‘Darling, do relax,’ Bobbie laughed. ‘It’s only me. This room will be more than fine. I’m just glad to be here, to be honest. Christmas almost always is a solo affair for me.’

‘Oh, any reason?’ Lissy asked.

‘A few,’ Bobbie said, the smile sliding from her face. ‘But you don’t want to hear them. I promise to be full of ho-ho-ho and good cheer, and – hopefully – a few glasses of something seeing as it’s Christmas. But before you even think about getting the violins out and feeling sorry for me, the reason I’m usually alone at Christmas is choice, mostly. Work sometimes. That is all!’

‘Okay,’ Lissy said. ‘Violin is back in its case.’

Bobbie was being so very Bobbie, able to take control of a situation in the blink of an eye. Lissy had a feeling there was another reason Bobbie chose to spend Christmas alone but she wasn’t going to ask.

‘Good. And lose the bow!’ Bobbie said with a giggle.

‘Already have,’ Lissy joked back. ‘But if, you know, there’s something you want or need to say then … well, you can guess the rest and …’

‘I’ll keep you posted.’ Bobbie shrugged herself out of her coat, and Lissy marvelled at how even that was a glamourous, catwalk sort of gesture. ‘This room really is fine and I don’t expect to be fighting Xander for it when he turns up because you are absolutely right – men usually aren’t fussed about what room they have or the view.’ She lifted the smallest case onto the bed. ‘I have brought rather a lot of luggage, haven’t I?’ Bobbie laughed. ‘But you did say to stop for four nights so I’ve packed accordingly. I hope it didn’t give that rather scrumptious taxi driver a hernia carrying it all in.’

‘Oh God,’ Lissy said. ‘I ought to have invited him in for a cup of tea or something before he started on the return journey.’

‘He had a couple of flasks of tea and a packet of sandwiches. We stopped a couple of times for comfort breaks as well, so don’t worry. He was keen to get back to his kids.’

‘Yeah, Christmas is for kids really, isn’t it? Anyway, we haven’t got any, have we? None of us has, you or me, Janey or Xander. We’ll have to play at being big kids for a few days, won’t we? So if this room is okay, I’ll leave you to unpack. Join Janey and me when you’re ready. Ah, is that the gentle tones of my Waitrose delivery arriving?’ Lissy went to the window and peered down onto the drive. ‘It is so. So now we’ll all be able to eat!’

And in a minute I should have relaxed a bit and begun to sound more like me and not someone out of a film out of the Fifties – all perfect diction and political correctness. It’s only Christmas for heaven’s sake and you’ve cooked enough Christmas dinners and made enough mince pies and poured enough cocktails to know how to do it properly.

‘I’m glad you like the room, Bobbie. Really glad.’ She was glad now she’d taken the trouble to pick a few bits and pieces from the garden that had berries on and add a white rose bud from the bunches she and Janey had bought in town. In a rush of affection for her friend she enveloped her in a big hug, a hug Bobbie returned with rather less pressure than Lissy. And when Lissy pulled back and looked at her friend there was something about the guarded look in her eyes, and the way she nodded instead of answering her question – as though she couldn’t trust herself to speak at that moment – that told Lissy she had said the wrong thing. But what?

Chapter 6 (#ulink_254ec886-83d8-5e54-9d7b-4a6d9fcc1e3c)

Xander

‘Christmas, Felix, who’d have it? It’s a woman’s thing. Claire loved Christmas, didn’t she?’

Xander reached to fondle the soft fur of Felix’s head, smoothing the palm of his hand over it, gently circling the cat’s ears with his fingers. Sometimes Xander wondered how he would have managed after Claire’s death if he hadn’t had Felix around – another body to touch, someone to talk to.

‘Not a very original name I gave you, is it?’

But Felix had seemed appropriate at the time when Claire had come home with him. One of her students – Sandy, if Xander’s memory served him well – in the fitness classes she ran had come in with a kitten that her father said he would put down if no one wanted it because they already had too many cats in the house. Sandy had begged someone to give it a home. So Claire had. She’d arrived home with it in a cardboard box sealed with masking tape, and some holes punched in it so the cat could breathe, that old Arthur from the newsagent on Manor Corner had given her.

Xander remembered, still stroking the cat, how he’d laughed because the cat had looked like a living version of the cartoon cat in the Felix cat food adverts. So Felix he had become. And now Xander was reluctant to leave him for four days even though it was only a mile along the prom from his cottage to Strand House.

‘I could pop home every day to see you, old boy, if you like.’

Felix purred, pushed his head further into Xander’s hand as if to say, ‘How could you give up on all this affection I’m dishing out, man? Abandon me if you must. Leave me to Eve Benson’s ministrations if you must.’

‘I know it’s no hardship having Eve look after you. And don’t think for a second, I don’t know you spend half your day in her house anyway, because I do.’ Xander increased the pressure of his hand on Felix’s head and then ran it along the full length of the cat’s back. Felix stirred, stood up, stretched. ‘Had enough of that then, have you, old chap?’

Xander stood up too and began clearing his lunch things. There was no need for him to be at Strand House until five o’clock. And what a surprise that had been, to get Lissy’s invite to spend Christmas there with her, and Janey and Bobbie. He knew Lissy, of course, because she’d been of Claire’s oldest friends, but Janey and Bobbie he’d only met the once – at Claire’s funeral. It had been kind of them to come but in all honesty, he couldn’t remember them. He’d probably pass them in the street as though they were strangers. Had he, he wondered, made a grave mistake accepting Lissy’s invitation? What did any of them have in common? What would he talk to them about? It wouldn’t add anything to the festive spirit, would it, if he said he’d been mourning Claire so long he never thought he was going to feel like himself ever again and that his building business was suffering. Really suffering. A few days ago, he’d been called in to see his bank manager and been told that his overdraft could not be increased. It was only a small business and if he’d been the sole workforce then he could sell his cottage, find a flat somewhere for him and Felix, pay off his debts. But he wasn’t the sole workforce; there were Tom, Josh, and Ethan in the equation too. Each with families to support. Ah yes, families. How he wished now that he and Claire had had one because then he’d have someone who looked like her around, someone who had her genes, the essence of her. But Claire hadn’t wanted children.

‘I wouldn’t have minded a couple of kids, Felix,’ Xander said as Felix lapped noisily at his saucer of milk. ‘Christmas is for kids really, isn’t it?’

Felix looked up at him and walked towards the catflap.

‘Oi, you!’ Xander shouted after him. ‘I hope you’re going to say goodbye.’

But Felix – as the cartoon of old had it – kept on walking and went out.

With a sigh Xander put his dishes and the saucepan he’d used to heat the soup he’d bought from the supermarket in the dishwasher, found a tablet – the last, so he’d have to remember to buy some more as soon as Christmas was over – and switched it on, even though the thing was only a quarter full.

He had some Christmas cards still to write and hand deliver. He’d driven down to Kingsbridge to see his mother at the weekend and hand-delivered that one, along with a bunch of roses and a silver bracelet he knew she’d like because he’d been with her when she’d pointed it out in the window of Silver Dollar the previous week.

‘I don’t like to think of you on your own, Xand,’ his mother had said in Bailey’s Bistro where they’d gone for coffee.

‘I won’t be on my own. Lissy will be there. And two of her friends, Janey and Bobbie. They all came …’

‘Don’t think about that time,’ his mother said, cutting him short. They’d both known how he was going to finish the sentence – to Claire’s funeral. ‘It doesn’t help. I know it hurts you still that she’s not here but, well, don’t you think it’s time to date again?’

‘Date?’

Such an old-fashioned word, date. Did people still use that term? Xander supposed they did because wasn’t there a programme on TV called Blind Date or something like that?

‘Yes. Date. You know, you see someone you like and you invite them to the cinema or for a meal. And …’