Page 19 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

The rest of their time together was pleasant, and they left each other at around four o’ clock with a kiss on the cheek and a promise to see each other again.

Fred wandered down to find her mum in the Hallow-Hart Crackers hut at the Forest Inn end of the high street.

Now that it was dark, the pretty market with its twinkling lights really came into its own.

It was impossible not to feel Christmassy when surrounded by so much festive hubbub.

“How’s it been?” Fred asked as she settled herself on the stool beside her mum, looking out of the window hatch of the hut.

“Pretty steady, all afternoon. I’ll be busy tonight, getting more stock made.”

“Want some help?”

“I’d love some. If you don’t mind.”

“I have no other plans. You’ll be saving me from binge-watching Love Island reruns.”

“Gracious. We can’t have that.”

“Did you know that the radiator in the bathroom isn’t working? It was like showering in a chest freezer this morning.”

“I did. Bloody thing. It did the same thing last year, but Diggory managed to get it going. I’ll ask him to take a look at it. The whole system needs replacing ideally, but it’s such a big cost and upheaval, I’ve been putting it off. Anyway, enough of that, how was the date?”

“Ummm…” Fred frowned, wondering how to reply.

“That doesn’t sound promising.”

A couple stopped at the window and bought two boxes of crackers with a partridge in a pear tree design.

“It’s not that I don’t like him,” Fred continued when the couple had left. “And he is very nice to look at, but he seems to have this persona when he’s around other people, and I don’t know how I feel about it.”

“It was only the second time you’ve met him. And you did say that he was in the process of getting a divorce, so maybe he’s keeping his barriers up until he knows you better.”

“I guess so.”

“Are you ready for serious dating again, or are you looking for a Christmas fling?”

It was a good question. Her focus hitherto had always been to settle down. She’d never wanted to be a serial dater like her mother. She chose carefully who she dated, listening only to her head and never anything as fallible as gut feeling or vibes. Maybe it was time to change tack.

“I don’t know. I haven’t had much luck with dating since Tim.”

“Oh, Tim was a pompous dickhead who never deserved you,” Bella snapped.

Fred smiled at her mum’s sharp retort. “I’m sensing you really had to hold back from telling him that directly.”

“Every single time I saw his stupid smug face,” Bella shot back. “I understand why you wanted to make it work with him. I know that it has a lot to do with my own dating history. Plus—you won’t want to hear this but I’m going to say it anyway—maybe you had some daddy issues?”

Fred made a retching sound but didn’t argue.

Bella continued. “But he was so wrong for you, darling, and you seemed to be the only one who couldn’t see it. I couldn’t bear him from the moment you introduced him. Eugh! Like a snake in a waistcoat.”

Fred laughed. “You never said.”

“Would you have listened?” Bella arched one eyebrow in challenge.

Fred shook her head, chuckling. “Absolutely not.”

“Well, then.”

Fred sighed. “Maybe you had the right idea all along; perhaps we’re just not cut out for settling down. Although Aunt Cam and Aunt Aggie seem to have managed it okay.”

“They’ll have been together sixty years in the spring,” Bella said, wistfully.

“And for the record, I did want to settle down, it just didn’t work out that way.

But you, don’t you dare say you’re not cut out for it!

Of course you are, if that’s what you want, you simply haven’t met anyone worth settling down with yet. ”

A group of six shoppers crowded around the stall and the next few minutes were taken up with sales.

Fred watched her mum talk the customers through her inspirations and the design process for the various patterns while they listened, rapt.

She’d always admired her mother’s skill for expressing herself both verbally and through her art.

That was what made Hallow-Hart Crackers special.

They weren’t patterns generated by AI programs; they were works of art with human stories behind them.

Once again, Fred’s mind intuitively wandered to that place of taglines and images, where threads of ideas spooled and twisted, and marketing strategies danced through her head.

“What about you?” Fred asked, when the shoppers had mooched away, swinging their paper bags of crackers. “It’s not too late for you; fifty-two is the new thirty-two, don’t you know…which would make me about fifteen,” she added as an aside. “Your soulmate could be out there waiting for you.”

“Pah! I haven’t dated anyone in almost four years.”

“What? You’re kidding!” Fred couldn’t hide her surprise.

Bella gave her a side-eye. “I kid you not.”

“What happened?”

Bella laughed. “Nothing happened. Don’t look so shocked.

I’d always thought that if I kept my mind open to the possibility, then love would eventually find me.

But it hasn’t. So, I gave it up.” Her expression became serious.

“I know you didn’t approve of my life choices, but they were my choices to make, and I won’t apologize for that, I won’t be shamed by anyone; I had enough of that from my father to last me two lifetimes.

But I am sorry if it shaped your outlook on men negatively.

That was never my intention.” She sighed.

“I was so lonely, Fred, you can’t imagine. ”

Fred felt the weight of her mum’s words like a pang of sadness.

“I think maybe I can, now; I couldn’t then.

I’m ashamed of the way I treated you. I can’t believe I slut-shamed my own mother—I had no right to be so disapproving, and I am sorry.

I hate to think of you giving up on love.

” She screwed her face up. “But you must admit that most of the men you dated were dickheads and losers.”

Bella nodded a somber acceptance. “On balance I’d say that is a fair assessment.”

“They didn’t deserve you. I was ten years old, and I could see it, and I never understood why you didn’t.”

Her mum let out a long sigh. “I was in a complicated place.”

“I guess partly I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t enough for you.” This rare confession made her feel exposed and she covered her emotional nakedness with another truth. “But mostly I just wanted you to be like all the other mums.”

Bella took her hand and squeezed it. “My darling girl. I hope you’re wise enough now to see that it was never that you weren’t enough. And as for the other mums, most of them had partners.”

“Not all of them.” She smiled mischievously. “But you were the only one who wore gold hot pants to Tesco.”

Bella snorted out a laugh. “Well, I had it and I wanted to flaunt it. I’m glad I made the most of my thighs when I could, because now they look like tapioca pudding.”

Fred pulled a face. “I hated having to share you with stupid men who thought they could woo you by being faux nice to me. I wanted to be the apple of your eye.”

A woman in a parka jacket with the hood zipped up so high that her words were muffled, bought a box of crackers with cute mice nibbling Christmas puddings on them, and scurried away.

“Oh, sweetheart, you were the one and only apple of my eye.” Bella rubbed her temples. “Is that how you felt? Like you had to compete with my boyfriends?”

“Of course I did. Did you think I gave you a hard time because I was a prude?”

Bella pulled a face. “Well, you were always very disapproving, and you didn’t lose your virginity until you were nearly twenty…”

Fred sucked in an outraged breath, and laughed. “I had to wait until I’d left town because I was worried that I might end up losing it to someone my mum had already had sex with!”

A couple in matching tweed hats steered away from the hut with their eyes wide.

Bella burst out laughing. “Jesus, Fred, I wasn’t sleeping with high school students!”

“Neither was I.” She side-eyed her mum and laughed. “Of course, that wasn’t really the reason! It just took me a while to find someone I liked enough to want to have sex with. You know how picky I can be.”

“You didn’t miss much; men don’t really get good at sex until they reach at least their late twenties,” Bella said, glibly.

“You would know,” Fred snorted.

Bella looked down and picked at the edges of her fingerless gloves.

“I’d hoped that being so open about things in that regard would ensure you never had to feel the kind of inherited guilt that I did around sex.

I always imagined that once you reached your teens, we’d be chatting about the people we were seeing as though we were mates.

” She frowned. “But it didn’t happen that way. ”

“I didn’t want you to be my mate, Mum, I wanted you to be my parent. You know, tell me off for not doing my homework, maybe ground me occasionally.”

“I know.” Bella’s voice was small.

Fred sighed. “It wasn’t all bad,” she said finally.

“Oh, well, that’s something. You can pop that on my gravestone. Here lies Bella Hallow-Hart, she wasn’t all bad.”

“You were the most fun mum at the school gates,” Fred said. “I was always very proud about that.”

“Read: irresponsible, pushover.”

“And you always did the voices when you read me stories.”

“Frustrated actress,” Bella responded, drolly.

“And you gave the best hugs of anyone, ever.” Fred smiled at her mum. “Still do.”

Bella smiled back, putting her arm around Fred and pulling her close into her side, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll take that one and put it in the bank.”

The wind blowing in through the hatch had grown even colder now that night was settling into place, and it was no match for the portable heater doing its best on the floor of the hut.

Fred stayed contentedly in her mum’s embrace until a flurry of harried customers, desperate to purchase last-minute items before the market closed for the night, descended on them.

Then she helped to take payments and pack their boxes into the stiff paper bags with the Hallow-Hart insignia on the side.

She knew that the aunts would have something hearty on the stove, ready for their return, and a sense of warm gratitude flowed through her…

either that, or she was in the late stages of hypothermia.