Page 26 of A New Family at Puddleduck Farm (Puddleduck Farm #6)

Phoebe, Sam, Maggie, and the mothers had a family confab about January childcare arrangements.

This had been revised from their original plans.

Phoebe would still go back to work full time as they’d agreed and Sam would have Lily on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

That meant he could work at Hendrie’s on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The plan was for him to pick up his tutoring commitments at Brook on a Saturday once more while they looked into the practicalities of him teaching from Puddleduck.

Maggie and Eddie would have Lily on Wednesdays and Jan and Louella would share Thursdays and Saturdays.

‘We’ll trial it,’ Phoebe said. ‘If it doesn’t work we’ll change it.’

Everyone was happy with that.

But first there was Christmas to organise.

Sam and Phoebe went to town putting up decorations at Puddleduck Farm.

They had two Christmas trees, which they collected from a nearby farm.

Both of them were rooted and in pots so they could be planted outside afterwards.

One was in the kitchen and one in the front room and they spent a happy couple of hours decorating them both with Lily, who loved the sparkly silver tinsel and the shiny red and gold baubles.

The paper chains they’d made were strung up around the kitchen and the hall, and bunches of mistletoe adorned several doorways.

A snow globe Phoebe had owned since she was tiny had pride of place on the front room mantlepiece and there were so many Christmas cards they ran out of places to put them.

To Phoebe’s disappointment there was no actual snow, nor was there any forecast. It wasn’t likely to be a white Christmas.

It rarely was in the New Forest, although they sometimes had a sprinkling in February or March.

Puddleduck Vets looked pretty festive too, although they’d decided not to have a tree this year, in case of injury to any animal patients that might want to sniff it. Also, putting trees inside and expecting dogs to stop doing what dogs usually did on trees was just unrealistic and impractical.

Phoebe took her staff out for their Christmas meal on the Saturday before Christmas. She’d booked the Italian in Bridgeford and everyone had brought their partners.

The Italian was jampacked. Several Christmas parties were clearly being held there and the atmosphere was very festive.

Red and green streamers hung from the ceiling, matching the red, green and white décor of the restaurant, and there were silver crackers and party poppers on every table, all of which were being put to good use.

The gorgeous scents of basil and garlic and cinnamon hung in the air, mingling with the smells of wine and beer and customer colognes. Everyone was dressed to the nines. Marcus and Natasha had let their hair down for once and had both had a glass of wine before the main course had even arrived.

Seth and Myra, who never drank much, had said they’d be happy to be taxi drivers after the meal, and Phoebe, who didn’t drink much either, had also offered to drive people home.

Maggie and Eddie were babysitting Lily so Sam was able to go along too. Max, who’d recently started dating a vet he’d met while he’d been doing the course on APHs, had brought her along. Her name was India, and Seth, who’d met her before, had told Phoebe she was ‘a proper character’.

It turned out he was right. India was a very pretty dark-haired and diminutive woman who was a specialist in exotics, and she regaled them with stories about tarantulas, red-eyed tree frogs and snakes.

‘Once I got called out to a python that the client said was lethargic. When I got there, Monty’ – she rolled her eyes – ‘had escaped because the client hadn’t closed the vivarium properly – obviously not that lethargic then.’ She gave a throaty chuckle.

‘What did you do?’ Myra asked her, agog.

‘The client asked me if I’d stay ten minutes while he looked for him – he didn’t think he’d have got far – so I sat on the sofa with my feet up. Just in case Monty made a sudden reappearance.’

‘I’d have done the same,’ Seth said with a shudder. ‘I’m not a fan of snakes.’

‘Did he make a sudden reappearance?’ Marcus wanted to know.

‘Yes, he did. There was I, happily sitting with my feet up looking the other way, and then Monty slithered along the back of the sofa and tongue flicked my ear.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘He never did.’

‘Blimey O’Reilly.’

There was a chorus of deliciously horrified exclamations from everyone around the table.

‘Did he really do that?’ Natasha asked, wide-eyed.

‘He did. I don’t think I’ve ever moved so fast in my life. And I’m not even that scared of snakes.’

‘I am,’ Seth said. ‘I’d have had a heart attack.’

‘He would,’ Myra confirmed. ‘So what happened next?’

‘The client was very apologetic and he caught him, and we both agreed that Monty seemed to have recovered from his lethargy and didn’t need any further investigation. He was the biggest python I’d ever seen though. At least ten feet.’

‘I didn’t think pythons even got that long,’ Marcus gasped.

‘They don’t,’ Seth said, and India threw her head back and laughed.

‘No, I may have exaggerated slightly about that bit.’

Max put his arm around her and she winked at him. He was clearly besotted with her. Phoebe was pleased.

Lots of women made it clear they’d have loved to date Max, the practice heartthrob, but she’d never known him be interested in any of them. She could see why he liked India. She was gorgeous, uber smart and clearly didn’t take herself too seriously either.

At the end of the evening, Phoebe slipped away to the bar to pay the bill. Myra spotted her on her way back from the ladies’ and the older woman came across to speak to her.

‘Thank you for inviting me along. It’s been really, really lovely. Seth and I don’t get invited to too many parties these days.’

‘You are so welcome.’ Phoebe remembered they didn’t have much in the way of family.

Before she’d had Lily, she and Myra had once had a heart-to-heart about trying and failing to have a baby.

It hadn’t been long after Phoebe had had her miscarriage and Myra had confided she’d had several miscarriages herself, which was why she and Seth didn’t have any children.

‘Seth has shown me photos of your gorgeous Lily.’ Myra’s eyes misted and Phoebe touched her arm.

‘You should come and meet her some time. I’d have asked you before, but I wasn’t sure how you were… around… babies…’ She broke off, aware that she sounded crass.

But she was relieved to see Myra was smiling. ‘Oh, my dear, that’s very sensitive and thoughtful of you, but I’m fine. I love little ones. Even though we didn’t manage to have any of our own.’

‘I haven’t forgotten the one we lost either,’ Phoebe blurted. ‘I think of him often.’

Myra nodded. ‘I don’t think we ever really do forget them but we do move on. We have to move on.’ She was still smiling but her eyes were a little more serious now.

‘Come over after all this madness is over.’ Phoebe gestured around them at the party that was going full swing in every corner of the Italian. ‘You’d always be very welcome.’

‘Thank you, my dear. I’d really like that. I will.’

* * *

Phoebe had loved Christmas since she was a little girl. And for as long as she could remember, most of her Christmases had been spent at Puddleduck Farm.

Even when she and her brother Frazier had been very small, she had fond memories of them being packed up along with boxes of food and drink and bags of presents and transported over to what had in those days been a dairy farm.

Cows couldn’t be left so Maggie and Farmer Pete just had open house from 23 December, where everyone mucked in with the Christmas preparations and cooking and it was all pretty casual.

Phoebe had loved being in the big old farmhouse kitchen, which was always full of dogs and cats and sometimes other animals Maggie was looking after.

The only rules were that children didn’t go into any of the fields where cows were grazing, and they were careful around hot things.

In those days, the Aga had been powered by wood like the fires, and someone was always running in and out with armfuls of wood and kindling to stoke them up. Maggie hadn’t had it converted until the nineties.

Part of the routine of childhood Christmases was that Frazier and Phoebe wrote out a note to Father Christmas to tell him they would be at Puddleduck Farm rather than Five Oaks Drive that year and could he kindly use chimney number two when he came calling and they’d make sure they didn’t have a fire in it that night.

It was so exciting. On Christmas Eve, she and her brother would be packed off to bed early while the grown-ups sat around drinking sherry and eating mince pies.

Not very much had changed in the last couple of decades either.

They’d lost Farmer Pete, of course, but everyone was really pleased that Maggie had found love again with Eddie, who’d been a loyal farmhand for years.

Apart from the occasional exception, everyone still gathered at Puddleduck Farm for Christmas Day at the very least. Frazier and Alexa brought their children most years.

Last year things had been a bit different because Maggie and Eddie had moved into a bungalow and had handed the reins of both Puddleduck Pets, the sanctuary, and the Puddleduck farmhouse itself over to Phoebe and Sam. But the family had still come for the main event.

This year things were different again, because Lily was here, and it had been raised by Maggie that Phoebe and Sam might not want hordes of people descending on them, but they’d said that they did. They definitely did.

‘We couldn’t imagine not spending Christmas with you all, could we, Sam?’ Phoebe had said, and Sam agreed with her wholeheartedly. In between the hectic run-up to Christmas, he’d been sorting through some of the practicalities of setting up his own business.