Linda Mitchelmore - Christmas at Strand House - A gorgeously uplifting festive romance!

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.’