Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

Dinner being sorted, apart from popping the ready-scrubbed jacket potatoes in the oven, I went up early to change into my red velvet dress: this was, after all, the last family dinner I would have here. I thought I might as well make a bit of effort.

And, hot on the heels of that thought, it suddenly dawned on me that I would be alone at Old Place with Jude tomorrow night — apart from Merlin and Lady and Billy, of course. . I can’t think why I hadn’t realised that before! But still, he would be in one wing, and I the other. .

There was still lots of time, so I started packing a few things together, like my laptop and cookbook notes, and bundling Gran’s journals back into the trunk again. . though first I reread the last entry. And then, for some reason, it occurred to me to turn the page and there I found another tiny black and white photo, fixed in with a sort of gummed paper hinge.

N with his parents , she’d written underneath.

He showed it to me, then must have dropped it, for I found it one day after he had gone then slipped it into my bag and forgot about it.

On succeeding pages she’d later added one or two more random entries, mainly to mark tragic events — and hadn’t she already had enough to bear? The one about my mother made me cry:

It was very hard to lose my only child and a cruel blow to Joseph. But he said we must accept God’s will and not see it as a punishment for any wrongdoing, for he firmly believed that the Almighty was not a vengeful God .

‘Holly’s staying until the day after tomorrow,’ Jude told everyone at dinner.

‘Oh, good. And then you will be back again soon, now you have found us, won’t you, m’dear?’ asked Noël.

‘Of course, I’ll miss you all,’ I said, though there was little likelihood I would ever see them again. .

‘Easter,’ he suggested, ‘if not before.’

‘There isn’t an Easter Revel too, is there?’

‘No, only a little pace egging, that kind of thing,’ he said vaguely. ‘But you’re one of the family now, you should be here.’

‘That reminds me,’ I said, picking up the photo, which I’d put inside a folded bit of card next to my plate. ‘I found another picture stuck into the last of Gran’s journals — it’s Ned again, with your parents.’

I handed the photograph to Noël and he nodded. ‘Oh, yes — I remember this picture of Ned being taken. It was just after he came to live with us.’

‘What do you mean, “live with us”?’ asked Jude puzzled. ‘Where else would he live?’

‘He means after Ned was orphaned,’ Becca said helpfully.

‘No, I don’t know,’ Jude exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you all talking about?’

‘I thought you knew — my parents adopted Ned, who was a second cousin. He’d have been two or three years younger than Jess at the time,’ Noël said.

‘So. . Holly is only the granddaughter of a connection of the Martlands?’ Jude said, astounded.

‘Well, he was a Martland all right, anyone could see that, though through the distaff line, and we always thought of him as our brother. But yes — and actually, I suppose that accounts for why Holly looks like him more than anyone else in the family.’

‘Seems like it,’ said Jude. ‘Well, well!’

Jess asked, puzzled, ‘So is Holly still my auntie, then?’

‘Nominally, but the family connection by blood is so diluted it’s transparent,’ Jude said cheerfully.

‘But she still is, and always will be, a member of this family,’ Noël said and then, while I slowly digested the implications of his revelation, he meandered on about the Revels and how my arrival had been the end of one thing and the beginning of something new, just as the Revels symbolised the end of the old year and the start of the next.

‘And then next Christmas, we’ll all be together again, a new cycle completed,’ he said.

‘Except Coco, I hope,’ Tilda put in acerbically.

‘She wasn’t so bad in the end, m’dear.’

‘Huh!’ Tilda said inelegantly.

‘And me,’ said Michael, who had been interestedly listening, ‘I won’t be here.’

‘Oh, you’ll always be welcome, too,’ Jude told him, ‘I feel you’re quite one of the family,’ and Michael grinned at him.

‘Uncle Jude, if you and Holly aren’t really cousins, does that mean—’ began Jess, but I hastily diverted her by appealing to her greed.

‘Jess, why don’t you go and fetch that box of Chocolate Wishes that the Chirks left? I’d forgotten all about them. They’re sort of a chocolate fortune cookie.’

‘Oh yes !’ she squealed, running out of the room.

The wish inside mine said, Follow your heart: you are already in the place you were meant to be .

If the chocolate hadn’t already been moulded together, I would have suspected Jess of writing it herself and putting it in there.

‘So we’re not even kissing cousins any more — or perhaps this means that we are ?’ Jude said, following me into the kitchen later while I was stashing a load of dirty crockery in the dishwasher.

I turned to find him standing too close for comfort and looking down at me very seriously.

‘It’s good news anyway, because ever since we kissed, I can’t stop thinking about you and you’re driving me mad!’

‘You’re driving me mad too, Jude Martland, but not in a good way!’ I snapped, on the defensive as usual. But this time I knew it was because I didn’t want my heart breaking again — and Jude could do just that, if I let him.

That sudden smile appeared. ‘Couldn’t we try that kiss again? You might change your mind!’

‘No! I’ve had such a rollercoaster of a journey finding out about Gran — and now this, to end it all! I don’t know what I think any more about anything : I’m totally confused.’

‘Poor Holly,’ he said sympathetically — and just then Jess burst in to ask if either of us wanted the last Chocolate Wish.

‘No, I think I just got the answer I wanted from mine,’ Jude told her.

Right at the end of her journal, in an entry dated simply ‘Christmas 2001’, Gran had written very poignantly:

It is poor Holly’s turn to suffer a great loss — that of her husband. But she is still young and I pray that one day she will find long and lasting happiness with someone else.

Just as I once knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that God still had a purpose for me, I am certain that my prayers for Holly will be answered, like a True Cross on the sampler of my life.

I don’t think having my heart broken by another Martland is quite what Gran was praying for and Jude certainly didn’t fit into the pattern of my life sampler. In fact, he was more in the nature of a huge, tangled knot, rather than a True Cross, and I’m sure she herself would have described him as a great streak of nowt — I could hear her saying it now.

What on earth was I thinking of, agreeing to stay on tomorrow, for Twelfth Night?

Becca got up early this morning, which I was grateful for, since it meant I wasn’t left alone with Jude. After a largely sleepless night I still felt just as confused about my feelings for him — and about his intentions.

When they came back in from the stables, bringing that now-familiar sweet smell of horses with them, Jude didn’t linger helpfully in the kitchen, but went off to shower and change and by the time he’d come down again the rest of the party had started to appear, too.

There was that strange last-day-of-the-house-party feel about things that I was familiar with at second-hand: a reluctance to leave, mingled with looking forward to being home. But since I shared it for once, I found it unsettling. .