Page 26 of Christmas Ever After
The outside of the house might look like somewhere Clark Griswold decorated, but inside, it’s like stepping onto the set of a Hallmark movie. The warmth of the house after being outside wraps around me like a blanket. I’ve never been able to keeponepoinsettia alive for longer than a week, but Mrs Dardenne seems to be operating some sort of poinsettia factory because there’s one on almost every surface, and none of them have got shrivelled-up leaves or look like they’re desperately gasping forwater having been forgotten. There are pine garlands arranged along every surface, all wound with twinkling lights and decorated with winter berries, pinecones, and cinnamon sticks. And the smell pervading the whole house is unreal. It’s fresh pine, combined with cinnamon, the heat of food being cooked, and an unidentifiable component that’s the embodiment of Christmas.
‘Uncle Raff’s brought a girl home!’ a young voice squeals from somewhere inside, and a girl of about seven barrels towards us and throws her arms around Raff’s waist.
He bends down to hug her and ruffles her blonde hair. ‘This is Sofia,’ Raff says to me. ‘And this is my friend, Franca. Do you remember I told you I’ve been working with her because she’s got an injury at the moment so we’ve all got to be extra gentle with her, okay?’
It’s an understatement to say I melt at the tenderness in his voice. His whole demeanour softens when he talks to her, and he picks her up and swings her around and she gives me a wave from his arms.
I wave back. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Sofia. I’ve heard a lot about you.’
Her face turns red, and she makes Raff put her down and runs to the kitchen, repeating her earlier shout, and I feel like Lumiere and Cogsworth are watching me from somewhere, murmuring in disbelief that there’s a girl in the castle.
‘This is my sister, Erin.’ Raff beckons her over and she gives me a careful one-armed hug, her protecting her pregnant belly and me protecting my hand.
‘And you know my brother-in-law, Quentin.’
I wave to the man I met briefly a couple of days ago when he came in looking for Raff after a customer query at Love Is All A-Round.
‘And this is my mum.’
The woman who bustles out of the kitchen is… well, if she’s notactuallyMrs Claus, she should definitely be cast to play her in the next Santa movie that gets made. She must be in her early sixties, with brown hair with streaks of grey in it, the same dark eyes as Raff, freckles across her rosy cheeks, and hair that winds over her head in a plait to meet in a bun at the back.
‘Thank you for having me, Mrs Dardenne.’ I hold my left hand out to shake hers, but she envelopes me in a bear hug that I’m fairly sure must be tighter than an actual bear would give.
‘I’m so sorry about my clumsy oaf of a son.’ She squeezes me even tighter. ‘I gave him a serious talking-to about watching where he’s going when I heard what happened. And not a word of this “Mrs Dardenne” nonsense – you call me Trisha, okay? Make yourself at home. Help yourself to anything you want. It’s all there for the taking.’ She pulls back and her brown eyes meet mine and she squeezes my shoulders with both hands. ‘It’s a pleasure to have you, Franca. An absolute pleasure.’
My nose burns with the effort of not tearing up at the warmth in her voice and how welcome she’s making me feel. Christmases were never like this at home. Even in the good years, there was tension between my parents. Mum wanted things to be perfect and Dad wanted to go to the pub. Visitors weren’t welcomed in case they disrupted Mum’s carefully prepared plans, and visits to extended family had to be planned with military precision. There was nothing easy-going about it, but here it seems like anyone could turn up on the doorstep and they’d be welcomed warmly.
‘What am I, chopped liver? Used wrapping paper, scrumpled up and tossed aside as an afterthought?’ A crotchety voice comes from the living room.
‘We were saving the best for last, Grandma.’ Raff goes down a step into the living room and bends to give her a hug and akiss on the cheek to save her getting up from the armchair she’s sitting in.
When he steps back, the elderly woman is trying to hold onto her frown, but no one is immune to Raff’s charm. She takes a sip of her martini and raises the glass to me in a toast.
‘This is my grandma, Granny Biddy.’
She wags a scolding finger at Raff. ‘Don’t you dare use the G word around me, young man. I refuse to be known as anyone’s grandmother. People will think I’mold.’
She transfers the martini glass into her other hand so she can reach out and shake mine with her curled arthritic fingers. ‘I’m an old biddy called Biddy – proving that age isjusta name. I don’t let people think I’m over fifty. Unless it benefits me in getting me out of doing something I don’t want to do. “Stand in this long queue, good sir? Withthesehips? Oh, I couldn’t possibly, I’m just a poor, feeble old woman.”’ She coughs for effect and then gives me a toothy smile. ‘You don’t think I’m old, do you?’
‘Not at all. You don’t look a day over thirty-three,’ I say with a grin. She’s clearly well into her nineties.
She squeals with delight and then turns to Raff. ‘Ooh, I like this one. You should bring girls like this home more often!’
‘As opposed to the hundreds of other girls he brings home?’ Erin asks sarcastically.
‘Do you bring a lot of girls home?’ I raise an eyebrow at him.
‘You’re the first.’
‘We were starting to think there was something wrong with him,’ Erin says.
‘Starting to? I could start a list of all the things wrong with him.’ I pretend to scoff and glance around at them. ‘But I won’t, because that would be rude when you’re being so hospitable and he’s been very good to me this week.’
‘Well, he’s also broken three of your fingers so the bar is set pretty low.’ Erin gives her brother a mocking grin and he pokes his tongue out at her and I can’t help laughing at them. It would be so easy to forget that this is the Dardenne family, if it wasn’t for the snow globes everywhere.
I wander over to the fireplace and the mantelpiece above it, looking at the array of snow globes lined up.
‘That’s the first one my husband ever made,’ Biddy says. ‘Many decades ago now.’
