The Christmas Promise Page 31

  Loved The Christmas Promise?

  Then read on for a sneak peek of Sue’s next book, Just For the Holidays…

  Prologue

  Thursday 20 July

  Michele: Re holiday … Alister wants to come! Says he’s never visited that region of France, it was planned before the break-up, he paid, there’s room, and what’s he supposed to do for most of August with the kids away? The gîte has good wifi so he can do his pre-term admin, blah blah. The children will hate me if I say no. Would you mind? Pleeeeeease don’t mind! x

  Leah: Happy to step aside. Only said I’d come because you’d be alone with the kids. Maybe you and Alister will make up? *hopeful face* J x

  Michele:L We absolutely WON’T make up and I NEED you there to defuse the TENSION. Pleeeeeease? xxxxxx

  Leah Beaumont read the final message with a sinking heart. A few weeks ago, in a shock move – shocking even to husband Alister, apparently – Leah’s sister Michele had ended her marriage. Since then, Leah’s role had been to provide emotional support for Michele and the kids, Jordan and Natasha. Even Alister had turned up at Leah’s place for a long open-heart discourse on the hideousness of having to leave – ‘being kicked out of’ – the family home.

  In the end-of-relationship wasteland, the family’s trip to Alsace had slipped down the ‘needs attention’ list until Michele received a cheerful e-mail beginning Soon we’ll be welcoming your family to our fantastic gîte Mrs Milton. Here are a few things you’ll want to know! and instantly phoned Leah. ‘Will you come in Alister’s place? You know I can’t drive on the wrong side! And you don’t mind doing outdoorsy stuff with the children.’ Michele’s voice had been squeaky with tears and it would have taken a harder heart than Leah’s to refuse, though it would mean dreary hours in Michele’s lumbering seven-seater known as ‘The Pig’ because Michele had had it sprayed pink. On purpose.

  Leah’s phone beeped again.

  Michele: Really absolutely definitely PLEASE don’t back out! Can you come round? xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Leah sighed.

  Ten minutes later she was sitting in her sister’s kitchen. Michele’s curly bob corkscrewed randomly above one eye and the top button of her jeans was undone. ‘You’re not going to back out. Are you?’

  Though Leah understood that ‘Yes’ would not be the correct answer, she wriggled feebly on the hook. ‘But now Alister’s going—’

  ‘If you don’t come, I’ll shoot myself,’ Michele promised, eyes swimming with tears. ‘But if you’re there to make the holiday bearable, maybe Alister’s presence might actually help the children. If we’re friendly and civilised they’ll know that whether we’re together or apart our love for them is the same.’

  Though Leah didn’t see children as quite that easy to reboot she knew better than to theorise when Michele scored fifteen years parenting and twenty years teaching to Leah’s nil. She propped her elbows on the oak table. ‘There may be enough rooms but it would mean taking two vehicles.’

  ‘Alister can drive The Pig, as it’s bigger than his hatchback, and I’ll be your passenger.’

  A road trip in Leah’s middle-aged Porsche Cayman was definitely more of an incentive than being obliged to drive The Pig. ‘But putting me in the middle of your marital distress—’

  ‘It’s just for the holidays and you’re on gardening leave! You’ve landed a great new job and you’re being paid to stay away from the old one. It’s a free holiday!’

  Leah’s neck prickled at the familiar sensation of a sisterly squabble brewing. ‘I did already have plans for my gardening leave – redecorating my lounge, a trip to see Mum and Dad and a track day with Scott.’ They hadn’t been firm plans, but they’d been plans.

  ‘Scott’s not even a boyfriend!’

  ‘What difference does that make? He’s my friend.’

  Michele sucked in a long, wavering breath, eyes huge and tragic. ‘But— I’m pregnant again.’ And she burst into noisy tears.

  Leah’s jaw dropped. ‘Pregnant? Michele—!’

  ‘I know, I know!’ Michele’s shoulders heaved. ‘It’s come at exactly the wro-wrong time. But tha-at’s why I nee-ee-eed you. Everythi-ing’s such a mess.’

  ‘If your life gets much messier soap operas will be stealing your storylines,’ Leah declared, though not without compassion. ‘Does Alister know about the baby?’

  ‘Yes, the poor man thinks I’ve undergone a personality transplant. I’ve still got to find a way to tell Jordan and Natasha, and what about Baby Three? What kind of family life is she or he going to be born into?’

  Leah slid a comforting arm along Michele’s shoulders. ‘Is the baby Alister’s?’

  Michele flung herself upright, tears on hold as her best indignant teacher’s voice cracked out. ‘Leah! If even you think the worst of me, I might really shoot myself!’

  ‘Sorry.’ Leah backtracked hastily as her sister’s face crumpled into a still more tragic mask. She did love Michele, no matter how much they jokingly referred to themselves as ‘Chalk’ and ‘Cheese’, Michele being eight years older, the very married and motherly Mrs Milton; Leah the resolutely single and child-free Ms Beaumont. Michele having a sensible job in teaching; Leah having what Michele termed ‘a silly job’ in chocolate products – despite it paying better than Michele’s sensible one.

  ‘All right, I’ll come,’ Leah capitulated, ‘if I get the garden annexe, as agreed. I’m not used to family life and I need my space.’

  ‘It would be better if Alister was out there.’ Michele grabbed a fistful of kitchen roll to trumpet noisily into. Then, catching Leah’s eye, ‘Oh, OK, if that’s what it takes. Thank you.’

  Leah ignored the whiff of reproach. Her claiming the garden annexe would force Alister and Michele into proximity in the main house. Maybe Michele’s uncharacteristic decision to hurl her family into upset and confusion might yet prove to be a feature of early-pregnancy hormones? Away from the daily stresses of home, of Michele being a teacher and Alister a head teacher, things might improve.

  Then Leah could quietly pack up her car and give them privacy to realign their relationship. Behind her back, she crossed her fingers.

  Chapter One

  La belle France

  Monday 7 August

  Leah loved her sunglasses, and not just because they made her look cool or made driving her Porsche in the mellow sunshine of France more pleasurable. No. Those sunglasses were currently allowing her to pretend to leaf through a magazine in the sunshine outside ‘La Petite Annexe’ while actually watching the balcony of the house next door where a workman had bared his tanned back to the morning sun.

  His sure and easy brushstrokes were transforming the walls of the house from dirty grey to the gold of unclarified honey yet Leah’s breathless regard was trained on the youth behind him. Everything the youth wore was black and most of it was decorated with studs or chains. Having perched himself on the wooden balcony rail and hooked his feet around the uprights, he was now arching backwards into scarily thin air. Flexing his spine, he swung gently, chains dangling and winking in the sun.

  Leah bit her lip against an urge to shout a warning, scared of startling the youngster into falling.

  As if on a sixth sense, the man turned. Demonstrating commendable reflexes, he dumped his paint pot and made a grab for the gangly figure and, bellowing with laughter, the youth allowed himself to be hauled to safety. Leah let out the breath she’d been holding and grinned at the man’s obvious exasperation as he gave the youth a tiny shake before dragging him into his arms for a hard hug. Finally, he managed a laugh as he loosened his embrace, his dark hair lifting in the breeze.

  Then his gaze snagged on Leah and, after a moment’s contemplation, he raised his voice. ‘Bonjour!’

  Unnerved at being spotted through the leafy trees, Leah lifted her head as if she hadn’t been spying on them. ‘Oh! Bonjour.’

  ‘Vous êtes en vacances? Restez-vous ici en Kirchenhoffen?’ The man’s voice rolled over the sunny air a
nd he settled his forearms on the balcony rail. His front view was as pleasing as the back had been.

  Leah smiled. Her French was just about equal to the conversation so far. ‘Oui.’

  But then, ‘Nous sommes enchantés’ launched him into a speech of fascinating undulating rhythm punctuated with urrrr and airrr, of which Leah caught about ten per cent. She did at least understand that when he paused it was to invite her to respond to a question.

  Both oui and non carrying equal risk, she prepared to offer a shrug and her stock phrases, ‘Désolé, mon français est très mauvais. Parlez-vous anglais?’

  But then Natasha bounded out through the door of the main gîte. ‘Dad says aren’t you coming in for breakfast? We want to go kayaking.’ Both man and boy swung their heads to gaze Natasha’s way as, message delivered, she dashed back inside again.

  Thus saved from confessing to her rubbish command of the native language of her host country, Leah put her shrug to good use and called ‘Excusez-moi!’ to the occupants of the balcony and went to join the family.

  *

  Curtis craned over the rail to watch the woman and girl out of sight. ‘Hot.’

  Ronan quashed the reflex to call out a sharp, ‘Don’t lean too far!’ His heart might not have recovered from Curtis’s last little stunt but Curtis was one big growing pain these days and making it abundantly clear that he no longer expected to be treated like a child. He was a teenager and had embraced their language, rituals and social conventions with the fervour of a religious convert to a sect.

  Instead, Ronan hazarded a suitably laddish reply. ‘Obviously, I won’t comment on a teenage girl but the woman was hot.’

  Curtis rolled his eyes. ‘How d’you know I didn’t mean the woman?’

  Ronan tried to decide whether his teenage self would have had this conversation with his own father. It had been just him and Dad for a long time and Ronan had only good memories but, no, he couldn’t imagine openly staring after a thirty-something woman with long bare legs and a rope of streaky hair. Even when Ronan had been old enough to spend university holidays on big, bluff Gordon Shea’s building sites, he wouldn’t have sprouted four facial piercings, as Curtis had done this summer holiday. And what Dad would have thought of Curtis’s long hair at the front and shaved patches at the side …

  Ronan took up his brush. ‘The hot woman seems to be the mum and there’s a dad there so she’s taken anyway.’

  Curtis jingled the four chains he wore in place of a belt. ‘Try not to be intimidated by convention, Dad.’

  Suppressing simultaneous compulsions to laugh, scold,and suggest Curtis get himself a paintbrush and direct his energies to something more productive than condescending to his father, Ronan replied gravely. ‘Try not to gawp at other people’s wives, Curtis.’

  With one of the lightning changes of mood that came with his teenaged landscape Curtis began to whoop like an ape, ‘Oo oo oo!’, crossing his eyes and swinging his arms.

  Glad they were joking around rather than arguing, Ronan tucked his left arm into his pocket to relieve his sore shoulder of its weight as he turned back to his task. ‘How could she resist?’

  *

  The roomy kitchen was bright with colourful tiles and fabrics. Alister was attacking the shiny crust of a baguette and Leah realised guiltily that he must have been down to the boulangerie while she’d been lazing in the sun.

  Natasha was already at the table, buttering chunks of bread, tutting as her knife made a hole while Jordan stabbed at his phone with the intensity reserved by fifteen-year-olds for anything with a screen. ‘You’re coming kayaking with us, aren’t you?’ demanded Natasha.

  ‘Sounds fun.’ Leah washed her hands before opening the fridge in search of cheese and cold meats. She glanced at her brother-in-law. ‘Does Michele know kayaking’s on today’s schedule?’ It didn’t seem the obvious activity for a forty-three-year-old in the early stages of pregnancy.

  Alister sawed energetically, his eyes fixed rigidly on the baguette through the lenses of his glasses. ‘Haven’t seen her this morning.’

  ‘I have,’ Natasha piped. ‘She’s a bit under the weather so she’s going to stay here and rest. If the boats are two-person, can I be with you, Leah? Then it’ll be girls against boys.’

  Jordan glanced up from his phone. ‘We’d spend all day waiting for you. It’ll be better if I go with Leah and you go with Dad.’

  Natasha pointed an indignant butter knife. ‘I said Leah first. Just because Mum’s not here—’

  ‘Jordan, would you make the coffee, please?’ interrupted Alister, in the head-teacher voice that managed somehow to be both mild and authoritative. ‘Natasha, how many more slices?’

  Leah followed Alister’s lead in distracting the kids from bickering. ‘We’ll take the advice of the hire staff regarding distribution of paddlers between kayaks, shall we?’ As they sat down at the refectory-style table and she sliced smoked cheese onto her bread Leah added, ‘I could eat so much of this that I wouldn’t fit in a kayak.’

  Jordan grinned. ‘You do have the appetite of the average gorilla.’ The conversation loosened with laughter, Leah as loud as anyone, though her thoughts were less cheery.

  Three days they’d been in Kirchenhoffen. For two of them, Michele had managed to contrive so that the family went out without her.

  When breakfast was over, Leah slipped out into the hall and up the wooden staircase, its open treads sweeping up between thick spindles to the first floor then up again to the rooms tucked beneath the gabled roof. Michele and the children had rooms on the first floor; Alister had been allocated space at the top, where there was only his room and the games room.

  By treading at the edges of each step Leah found she could glide almost silently to Michele’s quarters. Without ceremony, she thrust open the door.

  Dressed only in pretty underclothes and a towel swathing her hair, Michele jumped guiltily, pressing a button on her phone. ‘Come in, won’t you?’ A yellow summer dress was laid out on top of her neatly made bed.

  Leah closed the door behind her. ‘Do you need anything before we go out? Natasha says you’re under the weather.’

  Michele shrugged. ‘You know I feel lumpy in the mornings.’ Her skin did look pale and waxy.

  ‘We can hang on until you feel well enough to come with us.’

  Belting on a blue robe, Michele dropped her phone into its pocket. ‘Kayaking in my condition?’ Unwinding the towel, she began to rub her hair.

  ‘The children would gladly rearrange the kayaking for another day. We can do something less energetic.’

  ‘I’d hate to ruin things for them. I’ll put my feet up today, then have a lovely dinner ready for when you come home and spend the evening with the children.’ Michele began to brush her wet hair sleek against her head. She looked different without her curls. Harder.

  Or was that just how she was, these days? Harder?

  Although Michele picked up the hairdryer and paused, poised, as if to hint she had other things to do than chat, Leah meandered to the bedroom chair and plumped down into its depths. ‘It’s turned out to be a good thing that Alister’s here, with you having morning sickness. I know you wouldn’t have put on me to take the kids out all the time.’

  Michele’s eyes glinted oddly. ‘Alister told me last night that I’m acting like a stranger so I suppose I might do anything. What do you think? Do you still know me?’

  Leah’s sympathy warred with exasperation. ‘Of course I do. I just don’t really understand what’s going on with you. All our lives you’ve known what you wanted. Teacher training leading to a good job with a pension; wife, mother, home in a nice area, sensible car to ferry your kids around in.’

  Blinking, Michele fidgeted with the hairdryer, watching the movement of her fingers rather than meeting Leah’s eye. ‘Maybe you’re the one who should understand,’ she suggested, tremulously. ‘Your choices are just as carefully thought out – but they’re all about how to avoid having kids or a hu
sband to stop you from indulging yourself with car races or stunt driving. Why shouldn’t I want my life to be all about me, sometimes?’

  Leah leaned forward and covered her sister’s hands to still her fretful movements. ‘Because you gave that up to have children. Shell, even if you stop being Alister’s wife you can’t stop being a mother. You’re in a strange place but none of this is easy on Jordan and Natasha.’

  Michele’s shoulders began to quake. ‘I know. I’m the worst mum in the world.’

  Though aware she was being manipulated, Leah was unwilling to damn Michele’s hitherto conscientious parenting. ‘You’re absolutely not the worst mum in the world or the kids wouldn’t be so keen to spend time with you.’ She jumped to her feet and assumed a brightly positive tone and matching smile. ‘Look, take today for yourself. Put on your pretty dress and flake out in the garden. Read, paint your nails, snooze. There’s even a hot workman next door to watch. Then maybe you’ll be ready to go out with the family tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Michele managed a watery smile, picked up her hairbrush and switched on her hairdryer.

  *

  Unfortunately, the day’s kayaking on the River Ill in the forest of Illwald achieved only a low rating on the fun scale. Natasha, though she achieved her aim of sharing a boat with Leah, became tearful every time she was splashed, Jordan called her Gnasher or one of the big, ugly, grey bugs that plagued the river took a bite of her. As kayaking, a big brother and the spite of insects made any or all of these things likely, Natasha spent too much time sporting damp eyes. Every ten minutes she’d sigh, ‘I wish Mum was with us,’ which made Jordan snap, ‘Shut up, Gnasher.’

  Alister emerged from his thoughts long enough to say, ‘Bit kinder, maybe, Jordan?’ and Jordan fell to silent scowling, stabbing the khaki surface of the river with an angry paddle.

  Leah drove home longing to hide away in La Petite Annexe and treat herself to a huge glass of cold white wine. Instead, as she shifted down a gear to encourage The Pig up the slope towards the gîte, she cast around for something to improve the mood. ‘Do you kids want to make mug cakes when we get back? Your mum’s preparing dinner but we could make dessert.’