Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

‘ And she’s a distant cousin,’ added Noël. ‘Isn’t that lovely? One of the family.’

‘Everyone’d guessed that already,’ Liam said.

I did go down to the studio as ordered, but diverted long enough to give Laura a quick update on what had been happening, mostly the edited lowlights, like being outed to the entire family as an illegitimate relative, until I told her about the accident.

‘But you could both easily have died!’ she exclaimed, horrified. ‘Thank goodness Jude heard you! Are you really all right?’

‘Fine — but afterwards I fell to pieces, because it made me realise that Alan couldn’t have stopped himself running onto the ice to rescue that dog — sheer instinct takes over in that sort of situation and I’d have done just the same for Merlin. It was. . cathartic. I cried buckets over Jude Martland and he was very comforting.’

‘So there you are, he has a kind heart!’

‘And then he kissed me. Or I kissed him — he’d put a lot of whisky in my tea for the shock and I wasn’t myself. He could give George lessons,’ I added thoughtfully.

‘Holly!’

‘Don’t get excited: he was the one who stopped. He said he hadn’t meant to take advantage of me when I was upset. . but he’d probably just thought better of it. I told him it didn’t matter, it was just shock and whisky, and we’d forget it.’

‘Is that possible?’

‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘Apart from him being my cousin, he’s already made it plain he’s not looking for any long-term commitment and I’m not about to repeat Gran’s mistakes with another Martland male, either.’

I didn’t dwell on my increasingly confused feelings about Jude, but I’m sure she read between the lines because she knows me too well.

Jude stopped working straight away when I went into the studio and wolfed down his lunch, so he must have been hungry. After that, he feverishly drew sketch after sketch of me with Merlin, almost as if he suspected I might suddenly vanish into thin air, before going back to his welding.

He was stripped to his T-shirt again. . and it’s no use: I may know he’s not my type and he’s out of bounds because he’s my cousin — but my God, I have to admit there’s something terribly sexy about him when he’s welding!

I was so hot, if I’d gone out and rolled in the snow, it would have hissed.

Maybe I just have cabin fever, after being cooped up here so long? The sooner I get away, the better!

In Gran’s journal that night she rambled off into another long soliloquy on the subject of God’s plans for her and about loving forgiveness, though not everyone shared her views:

My parents have still not forgiven me, despite my marriage: perhaps they think I tricked Joseph into it. We have arranged that I will go to Joseph’s sister in Cornwall well before the baby is expected, which will seem natural enough: Joseph has told her the truth and she wrote a wonderfully kind letter to me. .

I couldn’t believe that it was already Sunday again! Where has the time flown to?

Richard had sent word that he was holding another church service, since clearly the official vicar would not be making an appearance. According to Becca he only held services in the village twice a month anyway.

‘It’s not what it was when Richard was the vicar here, before they joined the two parishes together. He’s not part of the community,’ she grumbled. ‘Though of course, Richard holds a service on the Sundays when he doesn’t come, so we don’t feel the loss.’

Guy and Michael were to drop them off at the church on their way to dig out Michael’s car, but I declined to go with them since I wanted to have a trial run with the Revel Cakes and had steeped some saffron overnight ready. Jude decided to help them instead of going straight to the studio, but Coco, who was hideously bored, elected to give herself some kind of super-duper beauty treatment upstairs.

I didn’t tell her I’d put her designer padded coat in the washing machine on hand wash. It looked so filthy, there didn’t seem to be anything else to do with it and I thought it would come out okay if I tumbled it on low heat afterwards. . But then, even if it didn’t, she would probably have binned it once she got home, anyway.

‘You don’t know how to clean a fur hat?’ I asked Tilda a couple of hours later when the church party had returned, dropped off by George, and a batch of delicious Revel Cakes were sitting on the wire rack, golden yellow with saffron and crusty with candied peel and sugar.

‘Talcum powder and a good brushing might help?’ she suggested.

‘I thought it would be nice to send Coco off tomorrow looking less like a tramp,’ I explained. ‘I washed her coat and it’s come up quite well. It’s in the tumble drier now.’

‘It’ll be so lovely if we can get rid of her,’ she agreed. ‘What is that delicious smell?’

‘Revel Cakes, though really they’re more of a fruit-topped bun, aren’t they? I found the recipe in a box in the kitchen, but I thought I’d better have a trial run before baking lots of them, because I only had dried yeast and not fresh. Would you like one?’

‘I think we’d all like one,’ Becca said. ‘I’m going to miss your cooking when I’ve gone home — and now the lane down to the village is thawing out, I haven’t really got much excuse to stay on, have I?’

‘None of us want to outstay our welcome,’ Noël said, ‘and we’ve had a truly wonderful Christmas, thanks to you, Holly! But if Edwina manages to get here tomorrow, as she originally planned, we will be able to leave, too.’

‘Edwina does my shopping with theirs and fills my freezer up with ready meals,’ Becca said. ‘She’s a little powerhouse! Even Jude gives her his shopping list sometimes, too.’

The car-excavation party were late getting back for lunch, but eventually drove up in Michael’s red car, though they’d had to jump-start it.

‘Ben managed to plough down to the lower road, and there’s traffic along it now,’ Guy said. ‘I wasn’t sure Michael’s car would get up the hill, but it made it once Ben had spread some grit and put a spare set of chains on the wheels.’

From the way they all talked about it, you’d think they’d just returned from some perilous Arctic expedition, mugged by polar bears at every turn!

Coco had come down to lunch (or not to lunch), looking much as she did before her beauty treatment, and was told that she could probably leave tomorrow.

‘With me driving you — under extreme protest,’ Guy explained.

‘And wearing your lovely white coat,’ I said. ‘I’ve washed it and it’s come up just like new!’

‘You washed it?’ she exclaimed, staring at me with wide, ice-chip blue eyes.

‘It’s surprising what will wash on a gentle cycle, and there didn’t seem to be anything to be lost. I gave your hat a brush too, but really you need a specialist cleaner for that one.’

Typically, Coco didn’t thank me for my efforts, but examined her coat as if incredulous it should have survived my cavalier treatment of it.

Tilda had said she had a packet of saffron at the lodge and I could see I’d need more for the Revel Cakes if I was to do a very big batch. So after lunch was cleared away, Jude and I walked down the drive together, though this was not by any intent on my part: he just happened to be setting off for the studio at the same time.

He was pretty quiet — but then, he often was.

‘How many Revel Cakes do you think I’ll need to make?’ I asked him as we walked down through the pine trees to the lodge, passing the track up to the mill — he’d decided to go to the lodge with me first, for the exercise, though I would have thought digging Michael’s car out was enough of that for one day.