Page 75 of A Merry Little Christmas

‘Hey, Dad, can we have Christmas dinner here?’ Harley asked.

‘Yes!’ Freya bounced in her chair. ‘It’ll be cool.’

‘I’d love that,’ said Merry, ‘but the house isn’t quite ready yet. We’ll be here next year, definitely.’

Freya sighed. ‘But next Christmas Day we’ll be at Mum’s. And you’ll be with the new baby without us.’

They took it in turns, with Cole and his ex-wife Lydia sorting out the child-sharing between them. Merry didn’t get involved, but it was heart-warming to hear Freya speak so fondly about the baby already.

‘I’m not sure whether Father Christmas will find you here,’ said Cole slyly.

Freya gave him a knowing look. ‘I’m not worried about that, Dad. I think you’ll find us wherever we are.’

‘That’s the magic of Christmas,’ said Merry, smiling to herself at the disappointed look on Cole’s face. ‘Santa will always find the good boys and girls.’

‘Better make sure you’re not naughty then,’ Cole murmured in her ear when the children weren’t looking.

‘Define naughty,’ she said, touching the tip of her tongue to his lips as she kissed him.

‘Oh gosh,’ said Cole, clearing his throat. ‘It might be time to take the kids back home.’

‘Shooting star!’ Harley yelled, pointing up into the night sky.

‘Wow! You’re right, son,’ said Cole, bending down to Freya’s level to show her where it was. ‘Everyone make a wish.’

‘I wish we could have Christmas Day at Meadow View,’ said Freya, looking beseechingly at her dad.

‘I wish we could have Christmas Day here and we get loads of snow,’ said Harley.

‘I wish you two would stop ganging up on me,’ Cole grumbled good-naturedly. ‘And I’m sorry, but I’m wishing for a non-white Christmas this year, just in case the baby comes and I have to drive through snowdrifts to get to the hospital.’

Merry was thinking about that last message from Nell. Every time she remembered their argument, her stomach would churn. How had it come to this? Her favourite Christmas tradition was that they would speak on the phone on Christmas morning, and they’d wish each other a happy Christmas. Even last year, the day after her wedding, they’d chatted first thing, Merry blissfully in love and Nell over the moon for her. And the year before, when she’d woken up on Christmas morning at an airport hotel so that Cole could catch his early-morning flight to see his kids. And every Christmas morning before that in all the years they’d been friends.

‘And I wish that you all get what you want for Christmas,’ Merry said, mustering up a smile.

But what she really wanted was to get her best friend back, because Christmas simply wouldn’t be Christmas without Nell.

Chapter 30

Nell

Nell woke up and yawned. She was warm and comfortable under the covers of her bed and, stretching her legs, she blinked herself awake.

A spilt second later, she remembered she was in her old teenage bedroom at her parents’ house, and her contentment was quickly replaced by queasiness.

‘Oh God,’ she groaned.

Olek had left her and wasn’t replying to her messages, she’d fallen out with the best friend she’d ever had, she’d run away from home and walked away from the job she’d loved. She was thirty-seven years old, and her life was a shambles.

She reached for her phone on the nightstand. It was five o’clock in the afternoon; she’d had a two-hour nap. Two hours! She despised herself for her laziness. What had happened to Nell the doer, full of energy and ideas and a new project on the go? She had probably spent more time asleep than awake since being here. Shutting the world out was the only respite she had from the car crash of her life.

Thank goodness for her parents, who had been a source of solace this last week.

When Nell had turned up unannounced, her dad had opened the door, taken one look at his daughter, muttered, ‘Good Lord’ and shouted for his wife to come running. Ten minutes later, she’d been ensconced between them in front of the fire, nursing one of her father’s legendary hot toddies and sobbing onto her mother’s shoulder.

‘Your face, your posture, your entire demeanour screamed total and utter defeat, Eleanor,’ her father had later told her, calling her by her full name as usual. ‘Something I’ve never seen from you in all your thirty-odd years.’ He could never remember her exact age, and the older she got, the more grateful she was for his poor memory.

Now, Nell snapped on her bedside lamp and checked her phone for messages. There was one from Max, but that was it.