She fleetingly wondered if she should bite the bullet and throw out all the Christmas decorations they hadn’t used. Neither she nor Olivia would have any use for them next year and it would be a step in the right direction in the mammoth task that awaited them before the year was out.
‘What’s the point of all this?’ asked Leon, holding his palms aloft in a classic Gallic reaction to English craziness. ‘One simple tree should suffice. Everyone knows it’s Christmas so why shove the fact in their faces? I absolutely refuse to allow you access to my dining room!’
Leon scrunched up his nose and shook his head in disgust, smoothing back his mahogany curls from his forehead so that they nestled against the collar of his white chef’s jacket. Privately, Kirstie agreed with Leon, but for different reasons. She had been one of the most zealous of Christmas supporters before her life had imploded. However, she knew she and Leon were in the minority and decided to keep her own counsel.
‘What do you think?’ she asked, tweaking the garland of Christmas bunting around the frame of what had been her mother’s favourite painting.
‘Looks great. Your mum loved that picture, didn’t she?’ Emma said, coming to stand at the bottom of the stepladder to study it more closely.
‘She did,’ confirmed Kirstie, running her eyes over the picturesque scene of a snowy village landscape complete with quaint village church surrounded by skeletal branches iced with snow and an adjacent field dotted with sheep corralled by a black-and-white sheepdog as his master watched on.
‘I always thought it looked a bit like Cranbury,’ mused Emma.
‘So did Mum. That’s why she bought it. But Dad said it was probably somewhere in Yorkshire because that’s where the artist spent most of his life.’
‘It’s just like one of those old-fashioned Christmas cards my aunt Muriel sends me every year. She refuses to buy cards with fluffy bunnies dressed in Christmas outfits, or teddy bears wearing Santa hats. “One needs to reflect on the reason for the season, dear”.’ Rachel mimicked her aunt’s Welsh accent perfectly. She squinted at the signature at the bottom right-hand corner of the painting. ‘Joseph L. Farmer. Is he famous?’
‘I doubt it.’ Kirstie laughed. ‘This is just another one of the questionable “masterpieces” Mum and Dad got from Angus. Sometimes I think he just wanted to offload the artwork he couldn’t get rid of in the auction rooms. Look around you and tell me I’m wrong.’
The group surveyed the bar that was as familiar as their own homes. The jazzy crimson and green carpet, the polished mahogany furniture, and every inch of wall space filled with portraits, seascapes and landscapes, and still lifes. Coupled with the numerous boxes disgorging their contents, the room looked like a scene from the Christmas Chainsaw Massacre.
Kirstie knew that Olivia and Harry had tried to dilute the kaleidoscope effect by removing what they could, but, understandably, it had been a difficult balance between maintaining the pub’s appeal to the local patrons and putting their own stamp on a place that would always be home to Don and Sue Harrison’s spirit.
With a disgusted paph, Leon set a Pierrot clown dressed as an elf onto the mantelpiece. ‘If you will excuse me, I must make a start on tonight’s menu.’
‘I’ll come and help you,’ offered Kirstie climbing down from the ladder and making her way towards the kitchen.
‘Not so fast,’ shot Josh. ‘Have you forgotten our trip up to Angus’s? Emma, will you help Leon?’
Kirstie saw Leon’s ebony eyes light up at the prospect of spending an hour in close proximity with the girl of his dreams. She turned her lips downwards and shrugged her shoulders at Emma. She couldn’t deny Leon his hour of pleasure. Yet, whilst the complete adoration scrawled across the chef’s handsome features betrayed his feelings, Emma hadn’t noticed.
‘Fine. I’ll go grab a coat.’
Kirstie tramped back up the stairs to help herself to one of Olivia’s fake fur jackets. She selected one fashioned out of arctic white fluff and glanced at herself in the hall mirror. The jacket made her look like a beauty pageant poodle, its coat shampooed in bleach to dazzle the judges.
A whoosh of sadness crept over her. What a transformation her appearance had undergone in the space of forty-eight hours! From the camera-friendly outfits selected by the FMTV studio’s stylists, all so worthy of her Instagram addiction, to the local playschool’s dressing up box jumble that she wouldn’t dream of showcasing to her followers.
How she wished with every fibre of her soul that she had kept her mouth shut and her life would still be the constant whirlwind of dilemmas, decisions, and deadlines, instead of an impending visit to the local farmyard – dressed as one of its inhabitants. However, she wasn’t at the studio, she was in Cranbury and she had to adjust to the collision of her present and her past. And anyway, it was unlikely that anyone would notice, let alone comment on her choice of attire, and that gave her pause for thought.
Whilst she had no real objection to picking out a Christmas tree, she did not relish being subjected to another grilling from Josh about their decision to sell the pub; nor for that matter was she looking forward to an encounter, however brief, with Angus Anderson, her father’s best friend, whose views would most certainly be sung from the same songbook as Josh’s.
‘Ready?’
Kirstie thought she saw a glint of amusement in Josh’s eyes, but he wisely decided to maintain his counsel as he held open the door of his Spider for her to climb into the passenger seat. She was relieved he didn’t do social media, because she wouldn’t have put it past him to splash her flirtation with sartorial disaster all over Facebook. On the other hand, Josh was definitely photo-shoot-ready, with his buttock-hugging black jeans and the sleeves of his pale lilac cashmere sweater pushed up his forearms to reveal a smattering of dark hairs.
A tickle of a long-buried emotion stirred deep in Kirstie’s abdomen. Her throat had suddenly become dry, so they rode along the country lanes in silence until Josh swung through the impressive carved stone pillars guarding the entrance to the Anderson estate and crunched along the winding gravel driveway, its borders lined with wrought-iron lampposts.
‘You know, Angus must have supplied my parents with a Christmas tree for the flat for the last thirty years.’
‘I know. It’s a shame he didn’t stop there.’ Josh smirked in an effort to lift the mood. ‘Want to have a nosy around the auction rooms whilst we’re here? You used to love a good mooch among the kitchen utensils. Perhaps you could pick something up for Rachel and Leon for their Christmas gifts?’
‘Great idea.’ Kirstie smiled, grateful that Josh had burst the awkwardness bubble. ‘And Angus always has a huge selection of vintage jewellery. I’ll look out for something for Emma to upcycle.’
Josh parked in the cobbled car park and they made their way to the converted barn that was now used as an office-cum-showroom-cum-auction room. A familiar feeling of excited anticipation rushed through Kirstie’s veins and tingled out to her fingertips as she thought of what lay ahead. She was about to enter an Aladdin’s Cave of infinite wonders and she couldn’t wait to lose herself in the twisting warrens of furniture and curios. There was even a storeroom dedicated to architectural salvage – moss-covered roof tiles, carved stone lintels, old-fashioned chimney pots.
Kirstie could feel her genetic propensity for amassing junk writhe through her body. She was definitely her parents’ daughter, except she worked hard to control her instinct to splurge on