Page 13 of One More Christmas at the Castle
‘Bit like my school hols, parked with one lot of rellies or another, while Mummy freeloaded on friends in Amalfi.’
‘It was quite fun and we were both pony mad – it was only just starting to wear off a bit at sixteen. And my stays there meant Dora and Granny could go off on a cruise, or an extensive European train trip, unfettered and free.’
I frowned, looking back. ‘Things weren’t quite the same that last summer holiday, though, especially after Charlie’s mum lost a valuable old family ring. She was totally distraught about it.’
Even though I’d been so engrossed in my crush on the friend Charlie’s brother had staying with them, I remembered that, and the way the house had been turned upside down looking for it.
‘Did it turn up?’ asked Henry.
‘No, though she said she was sure she left it by the basin in the downstairs cloakroom when she washed her hands … and sometimes I even thought she suspectedI’dtaken it, for she looked at me so strangely once or twice and her manner changed.’
‘Surely not? I expect you just imagined that.’
‘I don’t know. But anyway, that was the last time I stayed with them, because the two summers after that, Charlotte and I were allowed to fly out to California on our own for the summer. We spent most of our days with the family of Dad’s university friends, sometimes at their beach cabin. That was fun – we learned to surf and waterski.’
‘I learned to waterski on a freezing cold Scottish loch,’ said Henry. ‘You pick it up fast when you don’t want to fall in.’
‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘You can see why I said that Liam and I didn’t see much of each other once he’d gone to the local grammar and I was at boarding school, then off with Charlie for weeks in summer. But with Liam, it was just like we’d never been apart once I got back to Great Mumming.’
Except, perhaps, after that last summer at Charlie’s … But then, the guilt had soon worn off and his familiar affection had been balm to my soul.
‘You and I were living through similar kinds of experience, really: our families were fond of us, but not so fond they didn’t take every opportunity of parking us elsewhere in the school holidays,’ I said, though of course Henry’s was the posher version, with a big public school paid for by an uncle, while mine was a small Quaker affair, funded by Dad and my birth mother, who had become a research chemist for a big pharmaceutical firm in Switzerland and took a remote but punctilious interest in my progress.
‘Then we met up in the first days at uni,’ Henry said reminiscently, ‘and a whole new friendship was forged.’
‘Several of them,’ I said. ‘We turned into a fairly tight group once we moved into that house together, didn’t we? But onlyourfriendship has stood the test of time.’
‘I suppose Mia and Liam’s has too, in its way, since they’re still together,’ he pointed out.
‘And all of us were studying English and secretly convinced we were going to be the next great British novelists,’ I said wryly.
‘Not Kieran – he thought he was a poet. And I think Liam only took the same degree to be with you. He went back to living and working on his parents’ farm fast enough when he got home with Mia, didn’t he?’
‘True, but he writes a nature notes column that’s syndicated in local newspapers … and he wrote a coffee-table book, too, about rambles round the area.’
‘I know, he sent me a copy. It’s propping up the corner of that wonky bookcase in my hall.’
‘Mia’s still writing the Great Novel, but she always says the children must come first and I’d understand if I had any,’ I said.
‘Cow,’ Henry commented amiably. ‘I’mstill writing, even if I did change direction.’
‘You’re all over the internet; you’ve turned into a complete media tart,’ I told him.
‘I’m an increasingly successful vlogger,’ Henry said, with dignity, then grinned. ‘But yes, I am all over it and it’s getting quite lucrative now.’
Henry started blogging about his travel experiences soon after we finally got back from our extended globetrotting, and it had just grown from there. He liked to explore and talk about unusual things he’d done on his travels, but basically I think he simply liked talking to himself on camera. Between our catering gigs he would fly off to explore new places, and occasionally I would go with him.
As for me, I’d come home with several fat notebooks containing recipes and notes. Then, when I started to turn them into books, I was lucky enough to find a small publisher who issued one little fat hardback in a retro cover every Christmas. There were eight now, and they were modestly popular.
‘I’ve still gotmygreat novel in a drawer,’ confessed Henry.
‘Me too,’ I said, grinning. ‘I get it out occasionally and tinker with it.’
‘Pretend novelists,’ said Henry. ‘But real life is much more fun. It’s a pity I can’t blog about our house party assignments, but the clients would sue me.’
‘Yes, and then no one else would hire us,’ I pointed out. ‘But I was thinking last night, Henry, that you probably make enough from your blog to survive without the business now, and maybe, after ten years, we should both be thinking about hanging up our wooden spoons and butler’s outfit and doing something else?’
‘You know, I had started to wonder the same thing,’ Henry admitted. ‘I enjoy Heavenly Houseparties, but we never meant to go on doing it for ever, did we? Let’s have a think about it over Christmas, shall we?’
