Page 54 of A December to Remember
“No, you’re all right. Have a little relax; you’re always working.”
“So are you,” Duncan replied, and Maggie smiled at him.
“I guess we have that in common,” she said.
“What’s this?” he asked, leaning over the kitchen table, where several oddly shaped pieces of paper lay scattered over a considerable amount of crushed velour fabric in a striking shade of peach. He picked up a reel of hoop wire and studied it.
She let out a groan. “Verity’s been cast as a pomegranate in the school play, and I’m supposed to be making her costume, but honestly I can’t make head nor tail of it. Sewing is not my strong suit.”
Duncan picked up the pattern instructions and began to leaf through the cut-out pieces of paper.
“Have you got a sewing machine?”
“My mum had one, it’s in the attic, but I don’t know how to use it. I was planning on cobbling it together with a mix of hand sewing and hemming tape.”
Duncan pulled a doubtful expression.
“Please tell me if I’m overstepping the mark, but this looks pretty straightforward to me. I could have this knocked out in an hour or so if I could use your mum’s sewing machine. Unless youwantto make it?”
“Are you serious?”
Duncan appeared diffident. “I like sewing, knitting, anything crafty really. It wouldn’t be any bother. I’m better at sewing than I am tree decorating.” He smiled self-effacingly.
“You, my friend, are absolutely heaven-sent.” Maggie slid the trays into the oven and set the timer for twelve minutes. “And you have earned extra freezer biscuits.”
She crawled back into the roof space and dusted off the cover of her mother’s old machine. When she returned to the kitchen, Duncan had cleared a space on the table and she dumped the heavy machine on it.
“There,” she said, pulling off the case top. “Can you work with that?”
He gave it a quick once-over and nodded.
“My nan’s got one just like it. Leave it with me.” And with that he began pinning the paper shapes to the fabric and cutting them to size. Maggie laid a tea plate of hot biscuits beside him and left him to it.
“Anything you need—wine, cash, my eternal gratitude—you just let me know,” she said, coursing with deepest relief that costume shaming would be one less thing she had to worry about.
“Do you realize this is the first time we’ve ever done this?” said Star, blowing on her hot chocolate.
“Well, we weresummersisters,” agreed Simone.
“You mean you never spent Christmas together?” Verity looked appalled.
“Nope. We all had different mamas and lived in different parts of the country. We spent our summers together and the rest of the year apart.”
“Patrick and I have different dads, only his dad is dead, and we don’t know where mine is, so I guess it’s kind of the same thing as you but different.”
“My daughter, the straight shooter!” Maggie joked as she rested a holly-patterned serving platter piled with the rest of the hot Christmas biscuits on the coffee table. The sitting room looked like someone had ransacked Santa’s grotto. Verity had tipped the boxes of decorations all over the floor “so they could see them better,” and the carpet was now a swamp of tinsel and baubles to be waded through.Dear god, I’ll be hoovering up glitter till next Christmas!Maggie thought as she surveyed the sea of spangle before her, and then she remembered that they wouldn’t be here after next month, let alone next Christmas.Nausea rolled through her insides and settled in the pit of her stomach, ominous and heavy like a concrete slab.
Verity frowned. “I wouldn’t like that. I wouldn’t like to only see Patrick in the summer.”
“That’s kind of how it has been since I started uni,” said Patrick.
“Yes, but you come home for Christmas. I wouldn’t like it if I didn’t see you at Christmas.”
“You’d better warn any future partners that all Christmases must be spent with your sister,” Star said, and laughed as Patrick’s eyes widened in mock alarm.
“And Mama and Joe,” added Verity seriously. “All together forever.”
All eyes flicked between Maggie and Joe. She shifted uncomfortably on the sofa while Joe busied himself with a knot in some fairy lights.
