The Christmas Promise Read online

  ‘Are mug cakes like cupcakes, only bigger?’ Jordan’s expression lightened.

  ‘No, a mug cake’s made in a mug, in the microwave.’

  Natasha who’d managed to bag the front passenger seat coming home, looked more cheerful, her nose red from the sun. ‘Chocolate mug cake?’

  ‘Of course. Nice and gooey. We can put some cola in the mixture to make it moist.’

  ‘May I have coffee in mine? Good and dark?’ Alister smiled at Leah via the rear view mirror. Smiling wasn’t something he’d done a lot of today and Leah grinned back. Alister was a nice man. He’d been her brother-in-law since she was seventeen and it was painful to see him so sad, yet trying to cover it up. ‘Coffee, cola, nuts, orange, strawberries – everyone can choose.’

  The atmosphere lightened as Jordan suggested, ‘Marshmallow and Haribo,’ and Natasha countered with, ‘Banana and lime. And chocolate, obvs.’ Amazing what cake could do to lift the spirits.

  When they pulled up in front of the gîte, Leah spotted that the workman from earlier had moved his area of endeavour to the front of the house next door, and his studs-and-chains young companion was leaning on the balcony rail, playing with his phone. They both turned at the sound of the car. The workman flashed his grin, giving an airy wave of his paintbrush before turning back to his work. The teenager just looked.

  ‘Who’s that boy?’ hissed Natasha.

  Jordan tugged her hair. ‘Someone too cool for you.’

  ‘He’s not!’ Natasha responded in indignation. ‘He’s just Goth. We’ve got loads of Goths at school. They’re not allowed to wear their piercings in school but they put up with it because Goths are big on tolerance.’

  ‘Being excluded if they don’t comply has a lot to do with that kind of tolerance.’ Alister and Leah began to clear The Pig of the cans and bottles accumulated during the day. Jordan and Natasha dawdled down the path at the side of the house.

  Overtaking them, Leah pushed through the back door and into the kitchen. The room was cool and quiet. She paused, listening, becoming aware of Alister listening in the same way.

  She glanced at her watch. Six thirty. The kitchen looked exactly as it had when they’d left it this morning. No salad washed, nothing cooking. She glanced out of the window. No barbeque alight.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ Natasha bumped through the door behind them. ‘Or can we start the cakes straight away? I’m staaaaaaaaaaarving.’

  ‘Can I have crisps?’ demanded Jordan.

  One glance at the bleakness that had settled over Alister’s face and Leah smoothly picked up the slack. ‘Dinner before the cakes,’ she suggested brightly. ‘I’ll whip up a risotto and we’ll have it with salad. There’s some of that fab bread left, too, I think.’

  ‘I’ll go find Mum.’ Natasha trotted off through the hall.

  Alister cleared his throat. ‘I thought Michele said she’d cook?’

  ‘Probably having a nap.’ Leah hoped. But, somehow, didn’t think so. The house had had an empty air. Slopping a little olive oil into a heavy pan and popping it onto the hob to heat she took out two onions and topped, tailed and peeled them with the eight-inch cook’s knife from the block. With swift, machine-gun movements, she passed them under her flashing blade, ch-ch-ch-ch-CHAH, using the back of the knife to scrape the pieces from the chopping board into the pan, stirring briskly, then turning to the fridge for bacon. Her heart was at once weighty with grief and pattering in apprehension. Alister just waited, staring sadly through the window, while Jordan frowned ferociously at his phone.

  Natasha bounded back into the room, eyes wide. ‘I can’t find Mum!’

  ‘Probably gone for a walk.’ Leah smiled reassuringly though her heart sank more heavily than ever. From the corner of her eye she saw Alister sigh and move silently to the fridge, taking out a tall green bottle of Cremant d’Alsace. Wordlessly, she took down two glasses and lined them upon the counter top for Alister to fill. They gulped companionably, in no way treating the sparkling liquid with the respect it deserved. But, fortified, Leah was able to summon up some semblance of a smile. ‘Can one of you kids text your mum and see where’s she’s got to? Tell her dinner will be ready in forty minutes.’

  Jordan and Natasha began to squabble about who should do the texting. Under cover of their noise, Alister hovered close to Leah. ‘Do you know where she is?’ His wineglass trembled slightly.

  Her heart squeezed at his misery. All Alister had ever done was be Alister, and that had once been what Michele wanted. Leah took another slurp of wine, beginning to feel as if she might need a lot of it before this holiday was over. ‘No idea,’ she whispered.

  ‘Shit.’ Alister gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t even know why I’m surprised. What’s a forgotten meal when you can shuck off a marriage like an unfashionable coat?’

  ‘Mum’s on her way!’ cried Natasha, saving Leah from having to think of a response. ‘She says she’ll be ten minutes. I’ll go outside to wait.’

  As she banged through the door Jordan observed loftily, ‘Natasha’s such a baby.’

  Leah weighed out the rice and made up a jug of stock as, obviously, she hadn’t had time to make her own. She remembered thirteen being a pretty confusing age, even without the shock of a parental separation. ‘Good job she’s got a brother who’s a whole two years older to be kind to her, then. Eh, Jordan?’

  ‘None of that kindness stuff’s on the Big Brother’s Cheat Sheet.’ But he grinned sheepishly, as if taking Leah’s message on board.

  It was nearly twenty minutes later that Michele finally strolled in, Natasha clinging to her arm. Leah looked up from grating parmesan. ‘Are you better? I thought you promised to make dinner.’

  Michele looked better – except, perhaps, for a little guilt around the eyes. ‘Sorry! I forgot the time.’ She ruffled Jordan’s hair, as much as his hair would ruffle now that he’d taken to lacing it with gel or gum or whatever was that week’s favoured product.

  Under cover of topping up his glass Alistair muttered to Leah, ‘Promises, eh? Like “Till death us do part”? Turned out to be crap.’

  Leah stifled an inappropriate urge to giggle, though nothing about the situation was actually funny.

  ‘And I see it’s wine o’clock.’ Michele reached for a glass.

  Alister halted his drink halfway to his mouth. ‘Really?’ He shifted his gaze meaningfully to her mid section.

  For a second Michele looked thrown, as if the existence of Baby Three had slipped her memory. Silently, she turned to the fridge and filled her wine glass with orange juice.

  Chapter Two

  Taken for a ride

  Tuesday 8 August

  ‘I hope Mum comes out with us today.’ Head on hand, Natasha was playing with her croissant instead of eating it, a sheen on her skin from where the morning sunshine streamed in through the kitchen window.

  Jordan had already wolfed a cheese sandwich doorstep and two croissants. ‘Yeah.’ His expression was hidden, absorbed as he appeared to be in fraying the bottom of what he termed ‘shorts’, despite their ending halfway down his calves. Calves that seemed too hairy to belong to someone Leah still thought of as a boy.

  Before she could suggest that the water park in nearby Muntsheim surely couldn’t be too taxing as the kids could hurl themselves down the chutes while the adults watched/read/snoozed, Alister got in with a simpler plan. ‘How about we hang out in the garden? Then Mum won’t have far to go when she feels well enough to join us, will she?’

  A smile lit Natasha’s face. ‘I’ll tell her.’

  ‘Cool,’ agreed Jordan.

  ‘But you’ll do something more active than playing Minecraft, won’t you Jordan?’ Alister employed his mild-but-inflexible voice.

  Jordan sighed and climbed to his feet. ‘OK. I’ll get my super soaker to shoot Nat with while she plays boules.’ He sent Alister a challenging look but Alister, who picked his battles wisely, merely smiled.

  The kids gone, Leah began to clear t
he table, admiring the delicate pale blue and green of the crockery. She was perfectly happy to play boules or get into water fights but wasn’t overly convinced that Alister and Michele could play their parental roles without PDA – public displays of animosity – crackling on the air.

  Alister watched her load the dishwasher. ‘My suggestion we stay here today is an experiment. This is crappy for you but I hope you don’t mind.’

  Deciding not to enquire too closely into the nature of the experiment or what data he hoped to collect, Leah abandoned her tower of crockery to give him a friendly hug. ‘I’m just sorry it’s all gone wrong between you.’

  His body seemed to sink in on itself as he sighed but whatever he opened his mouth to reply was lost in Michele’s entrance as she banged in, throwing back over her shoulder, ‘No, stay up there, please, Natasha. I want to talk to Dad.’

  ‘I’ll leave.’ Leah turned for the door to the garden.

  ‘Appreciated,’ murmured Alister.

  ‘Why should you?’ Michele snapped simultaneously. ‘You’re involved in this Happy Families plan for today.’

  Alister met her ire with coolly raised eyebrows. ‘Basing ourselves here will enable you to see something of your children without worrying about feeling queasy in the car or doing anything too active for your delicate condition. Does that cover whatever excuse you were about to trot out?’

  Acutely uncomfortable as Michele and Alister glared icicles at each another, Leah resumed her escape. ‘I’ll get more loungers from the summerhouse.’

  She closed the door on Alister’s low-voiced, ‘Think what’s best for the children, Michele.’

  Leah dawdled through setting out the wooden sun loungers. Casting around for other tasks to keep her clear of the battleground she located in the capacious summerhouse a paddling pool and a hose. The gîte and its neighbour were the only residences this far up the lane and there seemed nobody next door but the workman and his young assistant, so she doubted it mattered if they had a water fight and it got a bit screamy.

  She watched the clear water burble into the pool. Think what’s best for the children … If not for the kids, she’d reverse her car out of the garage and drive off instead of sticking around to share the death throes of Michele and Alister’s marriage.

  But, as she was here, Leah could – probably – prevent spilled blood, and that definitely came under the heading of ‘best for the children’. Mentally polishing her halo she let herself into La Petite Annexe to change into her bikini. It was brief, but she hadn’t had much time for holiday shopping and she was amongst family.

  She paused to send Scott a text, feeling a sudden longing for his easy, uncomplicated company.

  Leah: Holiday hell! Gaaaah! Haven’t even been out in the Porsche for days!

  Slathering on factor 50 and grabbing her magazine she’d barely settled on a lounger when Natasha and Jordan burst into the garden, Jordan armed with a Rambo-sized water gun and Natasha with plastic bowls from the kitchen.

  ‘Girls against boys!’ Natasha yelled, frisbeeing a bowl in Leah’s direction.

  With little choice but to join the fray, Leah snatched the bowl from the air and taking outrageous advantage of Jordan’s exposed position at the pool as he filled his supersoaker scooped up a healthy bowlful of the glistening water and sloshed it down his bare back. ‘Girls against boys!’

  ‘Waaaaah, freezing!’ Jordan heaved harder on the plunger that loaded his weapon. ‘This means water war!’

  ‘Water war!’ Natasha, screaming like a chimpanzee, leapt into the middle of the paddling pool just as Alister emerged from the house. With no respect for his sombre expression, Natasha kicked water in his direction.

  The arc of water hung in a shimmering rainbow on the air before sloshing over Alister’s head and chest. He flinched. Blinked. Then, resignedly, he dragged off his T-shirt, laid his bespattered spectacles carefully away and calmly took up the garden hose. ‘OK, water war.’

  ‘You can’t have the hose, Alister, it’s not fair to outgun us by that much!’ protested Leah, trying not to trip over her flip-flops as she raced to remove herself from the firing line.

  ‘Who said life was fair?’ Alister span the tap to the ‘on’ position and pulled the hose trigger at the same instant as Michele stepped out from the house. The powerful jet of water met her head with an audible splat.

  ‘Oops.’ Alister took just a second too long to shift the jet away. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh—!’ Michele gasped, one side of her hair plastered to her head and the corresponding eye streaming mascara.

  Natasha screamed with excited laughter. ‘You got splooshed!’

  With a Tarzan yell, Jordan aimed his super soaker at his mother. ‘Girls against boys! Choose your weapon.’

  For a second, Leah thought Michele would give everybody a good scolding or whirl around and retreat to her room. Time seemed to stutter while water glistened on bare skin and lush lawn.

  Then Michele wiped her face and slicked back her hair. ‘Girls against boys,’ she growled dangerously and yanked the bright green hose off the tap, leaving Alister with an altogether empty weapon. Jamming her fingers into the stream of tap water she sent water spurting in his direction with deadly aim.

  ‘Unfair!’ he bellowed, slipping on the wet grass as he floundered to escape at the same time as attempting to rearm himself by stealing Jordan’s water gun.

  ‘Get your own weapon, soldier,’ snapped Jordan, wrestling it back and aiming at his sister.

  ‘Eeep! Noooooo!’ Natasha squealed, flying across the garden with the water playing square between her shoulder blades. ‘All onto Jordan, girls!’

  For the next hour the air was filled with screams, protests, laughter … and a lot of water. Sufficient to, temporarily at least, swill away the tension.

  Finally, puffing hard, Michele held up her hands and called, ‘Enough! I retire or surrender or whatever I have to do.’ She fell into one of the now-damp loungers.

  Glad that the atmosphere had warmed a degree or two Leah flopped down on another lounger, wringing out her hair. ‘I’ll get drinks when I’ve caught my breath.’

  Michele closed her eyes and tipped her pale face to the sun. ‘Thanks. I think perhaps I overdid it.’ Her clothes clinging damply didn’t deter her from plummeting almost instantly into sleep.

  Alister regarded his estranged wife sheepishly. ‘Maybe she did overdo it. She’s zonked.’

  ‘It’s to be expected, I suppose.’ Leah’s eyes darted towards the youngsters, their heads bent over their phones as they recovered from the water war via their world of constant communication. When were they to be told about their brother/sister-to-be? Her heart twisted to think of yet another major change about to explode their young lives.

  Leah managed to bask in the sun for an hour before Natasha announced herself once again to be ‘Staaaaarving.’ Michele stirred but sank back into her slumbers so, stifling a sigh, Leah laid down her magazine. ‘We’ll eat out here. Lots of lovely salad.’

  ‘And cakes?’ Jordan suggested, hopefully.

  ‘With ice cream?’ supplemented Natasha.

  ‘For afters,’ Leah agreed.

  She wasn’t sorry to go indoors and get a break from the powerful sun. The tiles of the kitchen floor felt smooth and cool beneath her feet as she put eggs on to boil, then washed watercress and lamb’s lettuce for the salade verte. Humming quietly as she moved on to slicing big firm tomatoes that were so red they glowed she became conscious of a man’s voice speaking French outside. Then Michelle, evidently restored by her nap, replying. Alister joined in. Leah didn’t bother trying to follow a conversation that was way above her command of simple French phrases. Her sister and brother were Francophiles; French Language was Alister’s teaching commitment in his junior school and Michele loved to compete in airing her command of the language.

  Leah only understood a few words but as she whisked together a quick pecan toffee pudding, covering it with brown sugar and pouring boili
ng water over it before sliding it into the oven, she did catch Michele insisting, ‘Oui, oui, il est notre plaisir!’ It was good that something was giving Michele pleasure because not much seemed to, these days.

  There was a little rice left from the risotto and Leah made a quick rice salad, chopping in tomatoes and spring onions with almonds while the eggs cooled, pausing only to call through the back door, ‘Could someone carry the table and chairs onto the lawn, please?’

  Finally, she grabbed napkins and cutlery and stepped out once again into the shimmering heat of the garden. ‘I’m ready to bring lunch out, if someone wants to help me.’

  At the same moment, Michele called, expansively, ‘Welcome! Come and join us.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Leah halted in confusion.

  Then two figures rounded the corner of the house and a deep voice replied. ‘Thanks. This is nice of you.’

  Leah jumped as she recognised the workman and the teenager from next door. ‘Oh!’

  ‘This is my sister, Leah,’ Michele beamed.

  The workman’s dark hair looked as if the wind had just blown through it, his even darker eyes smiling from his tanned face. ‘I’m Ronan Shea and this is my son Curtis. Great to meet you.’

  ‘You’re not French!’ Leah protested stupidly.

  ‘No, indeed.’ If anything, she could detect a touch of Irish in his voice.

  ‘But you spoke to me in French!’

  He shrugged, grinning disarmingly. ‘I’m a big fat show off.’

  ‘Leah, I’ve invited them to join us,’ interrupted Michele, ‘so they’ve brought their lunch and we’re all pitching in.’

  As if to prove her words Ronan opened a cool bag to display three different hunks of cheese, a whole cooked chicken, a portly loaf of bread and bottles of wine and cola. ‘I hope it’s not too inconvenient?’ His gaze remained steadily on Leah’s face, whereas his son seemed unable to lift his eyes above Leah’s neck. Although they weren’t far below it.