Читать книгу Christmas at Strand House: A gorgeously uplifting festive romance! - Linda Mitchelmore - Страница 10

Alicia – Lissy to her friends – was the first to arrive. Strand House, the far end property in a small cul-de-sac, stood majestically on the headland, large and imposing with its startlingly white walls and flat roof, very Art Deco, and, Lissy had always thought, more suited to the South of France, or maybe Miami, than a quiet Devon coastal town. The early morning, low winter sun was glinting off the huge windows, and the mimosa she remembered helping her late godmother, Veronica, to plant was just coming into bud. It never failed to surprise Lissy that mimosa flowered so early in the year, often when there was frost around, although frost rarely tinged the gardens of Strand House, situated as it was, quite literally, a stone’s thrown from the sea and warmer air. The first sight of Strand House always took her breath away, even though she’d known the house since childhood. And now that Veronica had left it to her, it was hers. A large, square, black-and-white tiled hallway led up to six bedrooms, all with en suites. The sitting room ran the full depth of the house and the dining room could seat twelve with ease. The kitchen was so large and well-appointed it would do any high-end hotel proud.

And later, three of her friends – Xander, Bobbie, and Janey – all single and alone at Christmas, and brought together by her so they would be less alone, less lonely, would be arriving at Strand House.

Xander – now sadly a widower – she’d first met fourteen years ago when he’d married Lissy’s childhood friend, Claire. God, how she missed Claire. They’d been friends since they’d met when Lissy came down to stop with her godmother; Claire’s family lived just a few doors along from Strand House and geography had made them instant playmates. All through college and university they’d kept in touch, meeting up when they could. Lissy remembered how excited Claire was to have met Xander, how her voice had buzzed with the romance of it all when she rang Lissy to tell her that he’d asked her to marry him. ‘You won’t believe this, Liss, but he’s lived just a mile away from my house all these years and I’ve not met him until now! You and me, we’ve probably been in the same café as him, or the same pub, or on the same beach as Xander at some stage. If that’s so I don’t know what we were thinking not registering how gorgeous he is! You’ll just love him!’ Claire had said. And Lissy had found that yes, Xander was easy to love, accepting her as his friend because she was Claire’s. He’d never minded that Lissy took Claire away for a long weekend once a year when they did some course or other, some activity that would teach them new things; time when they loved and laughed and had fun, cementing their friendship further. But that friendship had been cut short with Claire’s tragic death. Xander’s phone call telling her Claire had died in a road accident had played on repeat in her head for days afterwards. The shock of it. The tragedy of a wonderful, vibrant, friend’s life cut short. She’d kept in touch with Xander by email and the occasional phone call, but they hadn’t met up since Claire’s funeral; Lissy had let Xander grieve in his own way, as she had grieved in hers. Between then and now, Lissy had had her own life-changing moment and had got divorced.

Thank goodness, she thought, that she had Janey and Bobbie in her life. Neither were life-long friends as Claire had been but there’d been an instant bond between them from the moment they’d walked into the art studio for a life-drawing weekend workshop in Dartington four years before. Now without Claire to share sad news with it was to Janey and Bobbie that she’d turned, emailing them both, and getting an instant response from that they were there for her whenever she needed to talk. Mostly she didn’t because it was Lissy’s way to fight her own battles, but there were times when it had been almost too much to bear because she’d honestly thought she and Cooper were happy – well, she was. ‘The wife is usually the last to know,’ Bobbie had said. ‘And the first to make a better life for herself once she’s over the shock. Mark my words.’ Lissy had flinched at those words at the time, but it was just Bobbie’s forthright way. Janey, bless her, had been less forthright, but no less supportive. She’d painted Lissy a card – an exquisitely executed, busy picture filled with birds and flowers and clouds – and inside she’d written, ‘Birds and flowers and clouds are always around you, take time to look and ‘be’ among them’. And so, every day, Lissy looked at birds and flowers and clouds and just let herself ‘be’ among them, and it helped, more than she ever thought it would when she’d got Janey’s card.

Lissy steered the car into the drive of Strand House. She couldn’t wait to see them all again, even though her mother had poured scorn on the idea.

‘But, darling,’ her mother had said when Lissy had divulged her Christmas plans, ‘why don’t you come to us? Mark was only asking this morning if you would be.’

‘No ferries?’ Lissy had replied, the hint of a question in her voice. Perhaps her mother had forgotten the ferry didn’t run at Christmas. She doubted that her stepfather had said any such thing – largely he avoided her whenever they were in the same place.

‘Flights, darling?’ her mother had replied, whippet-fast. Lissy’s mother, Carol, was one who liked to have her own way.

‘Too problematical. I’d have to catch a flight to Paris and then get a train or hire a car.’

‘Goodness, but you’re making it sound as though you don’t want to come. Please do, darling, Christmas is for families.’

Lissy had heard her own deep intake of breath like a pistol shot in her ears because hadn’t her mother fractured their family when she’d left Lissy’s father, Ed, for another man? And hadn’t her father died of a broken heart? Well, ‘heart disease’ was the official term but Lissy had always believed differently.

‘Some people don’t have families. At Christmas or otherwise,’ she’d replied wearily.

‘And these friends, darling,’ her mother had gone on, unwilling to let the subject drop, ‘how well do you know them?’

‘Mum, I am thirty-six years old. I’ve been married and divorced. I am a chartered accountant with my own practice. I took the very brave step of joining a choir with a bunch of people I didn’t know and who could have been axe murderers for all I knew, and I was fine. It would be nice if you could give me the grace to choose my own friends.’

And the call had ended a little frostily as almost all calls to her mother did these days, and with Lissy on the verge of tears that her relationship with her mother wasn’t better than it was.

But her mother had a point – how well did she know Janey, Bobbie, and Xander?

Feeling a little uneasy now with the memory of her last conversation with her mother still ringing in her head, she drove along in front of the house, reached for the radio-control fob on the keys in the ignition and opened the automatic garage door. There was room enough inside for at least four cars; her Mini was going to look a little lost, wasn’t it? Janey would be coming by train, and Xander possibly on foot because he lived just half a mile away in a cottage behind the harbour. Bobbie, too, had said only that she wouldn’t be driving down to Devon, not in the Christmas rush to escape London and the chaos of the M25.

‘Gosh, but Cooper is going to be so cross when he discovers Strand House is now mine,’ Lissy said aloud as she let herself in. ‘And mine alone.’

Not hers and Cooper’s to divide between them. It had been Cooper who’d asked for a divorce because he’d fallen in love with someone else.

‘Do I know her?’ Lissy had asked, knowing instantly how analytical the question was, and that she must be in shock. Her heart had jolted in her chest, missed a beat, and her breathing became erratic as she took longer breaths which took even longer to let out again. Sometimes, even now, she woke in the night remembering that feeling, fearful that that scenario had only just happened, and it wasn’t until she’d sat up, turned on the light, and seen that the bedroom was different now to how it had been when Cooper had shared it with her, with new everything, that she knew she was making a new life for herself now.

‘You’re making that sound as though you don’t care.’ Cooper had sounded more than miffed.

‘Really? What did you expect me to say? To beg you not to leave?’ Her mouth had been dry with nerves and she’d struggled to get the words out but get them out she had.

‘I’d still leave,’ Cooper had said. ‘Her name’s Nina.’

Lissy struggled to remember if he had mentioned anyone called Nina working in the same bank as he did; if, perhaps, he’d dropped that name into the conversation a few too many times and she’d failed to pick up on the clues. She felt her forehead furrow in concentration, and a pain arrowed through her head like gunshot.

‘Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,’ Cooper had said, almost with a snigger. ‘I can almost see the cogs going around. You don’t know her. I met her at the gym.’

And then Cooper had begun throwing clothes into black bin bags. And shoes. And all his motor racing magazines. He’d even had the audactity to take two pork chops from the freezer for his and Nina’s supper. It had been that last act that had told Lissy there was no saving her marriage now.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Cooper had said after he’d carried the last of the sacks out to the car.

‘So will I!’ had been Lissy’s reply. ‘Through my solicitor.’

The divorce had been acrimonious, if swift, Cooper insisting everything was scrupulously divided in two. Lissy often thought he would have cut their friends in half if he could. What luck then, for Lissy, that the decree absolute had arrived a week before her godmother’s fatal heart attack.

‘And you are not going to give Cooper any more thought!’ Lissy strode purposefully across the black and white tiles of the hall and up the stairs to the large, master bedroom with its patio doors that opened onto a narrow balcony overlooking the sea she had already bagged for herself. She could fetch her luggage in later. Lissy went over to the bed, covered in pristine white bed-linen with broderie anglaise trim, and lay down. How fresh it all smelled. She was glad now she’d gone to the expense of paying a cleaner to come in once a week after Veronica had died, even though there was no one to clean up after. The hall tiles had gleamed the way they always had, welcoming her in, as they had when Veronica was alive. The teak banister rail smelled faintly of polish as she ran her hand along it on the way up, as it always had. Lissy rolled over onto her side and sniffed the pillow. Yes, the pillow still held the fragrance of the fabric conditioner – sea breeze – that Veronica had always used.

‘Oh, Vonny,’ Lissy said into the pillow, using the pet name she had always called her godmother. ‘Thank you for this wonderful gift, but I miss you so.’

She missed the warmth of her greeting and the scent of Shalimar on her godmother’s skin, and the depth of her loving. She knew she would miss always the myriad little ways Vonny found to spoil her – making shortbread biscuits on rainy days; filling a bath with what Lissy had discovered, when she was older and able to buy it for herself, was hugely expensive bath oil, and frothing it into a cloud of bubble so that only the tip of Lissy’s nose and her mouth had been visible; and letting her pick the first yellow peony from the bush even though they both knew it looked better on the bush than in a vase.

But this was a bedroom that needed to be shared. A bedroom that begged for her to wake up beside someone she loved and who loved her. They would sit up, propped against the huge hessian-covered headboard, and watch the sun rise over the water. And then they would make love, with no need to pull the curtains because no one could look in. There was nothing between Strand House and the continent.

‘And I have got to stop talking to myself! I’ve got three friends arriving soon and lots to do before then.’

The house had yet to be decorated for Christmas. There’d probably be some decorations of Vonny’s in a cupboard somewhere but Lissy didn’t want to use them. She had a fancy for a theme of some sort – silver and blue, or maybe gold and green. There was bound to be a shop in town somewhere that sold decorations and surely they wouldn’t all have been sold already. And flowers. Strand House had always been filled with fresh flowers when Vonny had been alive. White roses had been a favourite and Lissy decided that she would try and find some to honour her godmother’s memory. So many would be needed in a house this size – one little bunch of ten or so stems would look lost. Vases – she’d need lots of vases. And some smaller pots because she intended to put small posies in each of the rooms for her guests, something her godmother had always done for her, often picking buds of things, and interesting leaves from the garden – daisies even – to welcome her. Lissy looked around the room. Yes, that’s what she missed the most, perhaps … the little pot of hand-picked flowers on the bedside table in welcome. There probably wouldn’t be much in the garden in the way of flowers at this time of year but there’d be ivy and some evergreen shrub somewhere she could use with a few buds taken from shop flowers. Just as soon as Janey arrived she’d suggest they go into town and see what they could find, but they’d need to be back in time for her 2 p.m. Waitrose delivery.

She leapt from the bed and went to fetch her luggage.

Yes, perhaps the decision to ask Janey, Bobbie, and Xander to join her had been the right one. Maybe she was the loneliest one of them all.