Page 23 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Bella

Bella had filled the large slow cooker with root vegetables, onions, herbs and a bottle of Guinness in the morning before she had left for the market, and now the mixture was rich and dark and bubbling thickly, filling the house with the comforting aroma of boozy stew.

As soon as she’d got home, she had made up some herby dumplings and laid them on top of the stew, pushing them down gently so that they were half submerged in the gravy, before clamping the lid back on.

She had invited Liam, Martha and Diggory to join them for Friday night dinner. Diggory had promised to look at the radiator in the bathroom; it was so cold in there now that both she and Fred had taken to only using it for the bare necessities, and had begun washing their hair in the kitchen sink.

She missed Claire; she’d been a good friend, and Bella had taken a great deal of comfort from knowing that Liam was happy and loved.

He deserved to be loved. She sighed. Loving him had been her pleasure and her penance for thirty-five years.

From the moment she had first set eyes on him, there had never been any other choice for her—even when he loved someone else.

She had tamped down her love, trained her heart not to skip when she saw him, and coaxed her mind into locking thoughts of him away in a safe place so that she couldn’t dwell on her feelings.

But this year, her heart and mind refused to be silenced.

Could he love again after Claire? And if he could, would it make more sense for him to meet someone completely new, rather than reaching back through history to revisit a doomed love affair?

Enough , she told herself. Last week she had manifested her heart’s desire to the full moon, and that would have to do. What will be will be .

She turned her attention back to her meal prep.

Aggie had invited Ryan to join them tonight when he’d dropped off another two bags of coffee earlier; since Fred had been back, Ryan had delivered more coffee to the house than they could drink in a year.

He’d mentioned that he had a business proposal to run by her and she wondered what it could be as she heaped a double handful of chopped chives and half a block of butter into the enormous saucepan of potatoes she was mashing.

She tasted it, then added sea salt, several good grinds of black pepper, and poured in some of the cream from the saucepan simmering on the stove.

“Mum!” The screeching came from above before thunderous footsteps descended the stairs. “Oh my god! Mum!”

“I’m in the kitchen!” she called back as she carried on mashing the potatoes.

Fred burst in, waving her phone with an expression of pure horror.

“What on earth is the matter?” Bella asked, picking up a fork and whipping the mash as she added the last of the cream.

“The aunts invited Warren to dinner tonight,” Fred answered breathlessly.

Bella bit back a snigger. They loved to meddle. “Lucky I made plenty of food then,” she said, trying to play it down in the hope that Fred might be soothed.

“This is not okay, Mum. This is fucked up!”

“That seems a bit strong. I mean, I can understand that you might feel a little awkward. But if Warren doesn’t mind, then neither should you.”

“One date.” Fred held up a finger to emphasize her point. “One. That is not enough to warrant a ‘meet the family’ meal with any family, but especially not with this family. This is a nightmare. I am stuck in a nightmare.”

“Do you think you might be catastrophizing slightly?”

“ AARRGGHHHH! ” Fred yelled.

“I see. Well, maybe they thought since they’d already invited Ryan—”

“What? Ryan’s coming too? Kill me. Just kill me now. Go on, do it!”

“With the potato masher?”

Fred slumped down onto one of the dining chairs and began to bang her head on the table.

“Oh, it’ll be fine, stop being so dramatic. There’ll be plenty of us here to keep the conversation flowing.”

“What if the aunts tell Warren embarrassing stories about me? Remember when I brought Kai home from uni and they told him I wet my pants when I met Cinderella at Disneyland?”

“You were only five, and it was a very exciting time for you. Kai thought it was cute.”

“Warren and I are not at cute story stage, we’re not at any stage, we’ve barely left the starting line.”

“All right,” Bella said, clamping a lid on the mashed potato pan. “I will monitor the aunts, and if it looks like we’re heading into naked cycling or sleepwalking story territory, I will reroute them.”

Fred looked up. “Do you promise?”

“I do solemnly swear.”

“What are we swearing about?” asked Aunt Aggie, wiping her boots on the back-door mat.

“That you won’t embarrass Fred this evening.”

“The very idea!” Aunt Aggie blustered.

“Ooh, something smells delicious,” said Aunt Cam, coming in behind her and holding a towering cake smothered in a dark chocolate ganache that shone in the light.

Tonight they both wore floor-length velvet dresses. Cam’s was adorned with golden stars and Aggie’s with glitter half-moons.

“I made my special chocolate cake to welcome friends, old and new, to the family,” said Cam.

“Warren is not joining the family, Aunty. He’s…wait, what do you mean by ‘special’ chocolate cake?” asked Fred, as Aunt Cam gently settled the plate down on one of the dresser tops.

“Secret ingredients,” said Aggie, tapping her nose.

“It’s not a weed cake, is it? Oh my god, you didn’t spike the cake with magic mushrooms, did you?” Fred asked, her voice rising in pitch.

Aunt Cam looked at her seriously. “We would never present edibles without consent, dear.”

“Right,” said Fred, rubbing at her forehead. “I wish you’d got my consent before inviting Warren over for dinner.”

“I thought you’d be pleased we’d included your beau in our plans,” said Aunt Aggie, pulling a large floury loaf from her bag and setting it down on the board in the middle of the table.

“He’s not my beau. He’s just a guy I’ve been on one date with. We haven’t even kissed.”

“Well, there’s plenty of mistletoe around the place,” Aunt Aggie quipped, and Aunt Cam tittered delightedly and slapped her wife’s arm.

Give me strength!

“So, what are your secret ingredients?” asked Bella, loudly.

“My secret ingredients are vanilla bean paste and a teaspoon of coffee in the batter, and a sprinkling of sea salt flakes in the ganache frosting; it makes the chocolate even more chocolatey. But I do have a batch of cannabis brownies in the freezer for emergencies, and we still have a few shrooms left over from our last forage. I’d be happy to run and get you one from the cottage before our guests arrive, Fred, you do seem a little het up.

Perhaps half a liberty cap would take the edge off? ”

Fred rolled her eyes and tried, and failed, to hide her smile. “I’m fine, Aunty, thank you. And if it’s at all possible, could we keep all talk about the illegal substances stashed in your freezer on the down-low this evening? That goes for you too, old Aggie Escobar in the corner.”

“Who, me?” Aunt Aggie asked, exaggeratedly.

“Yes you! No regaling him with tales from wacky-baccy cottage. Warren is new to all this; I don’t want to frighten him off before he’s had a chance to get to know us,” Fred carried on.

“Wacky-Baccy Cottage,” Aunt Cam mused. “That has a nice ring to it; we could get a plaque made for the porch.”

“God help me!” said Fred, shaking her head.

Bella stifled a laugh. A few years ago, this kind of jokey conversation would have sent Fred into an angsty tailspin. She was always so worried about what Tim would say, or think, even when he wasn’t here. It was good to see her sense of humor returning.

—

It was joyful having everyone around the table together.

And if Bella was honest, she was grateful that it wasn’t only her and Liam, as much as she wanted to have him all to herself.

She needed to have a reason not to throw herself at him, and having people around her was a good deterrent.

When he’d arrived, a bottle in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other, she had been so filled with longing that she had trembled when he kissed her cheek.

If he’d noticed, he’d been too polite to say.

He was casually dressed, as always, in jeans and a navy-and-green checked flannel shirt.

His hands were rough and callused from years of wood sculpting and his face, still as handsome as when she had first set eyes on it, had lines chiseled into it by time, and she loved him still, maybe even more.

She loved, too, that his once sandy-blond hair had turned almost completely gray, to match the short trimmed beard he had taken to wearing.

Having him in her house now, she could almost imagine that he suited her home, that he belonged here with her.

Warren had brought two bottles of wine—which had endeared him immediately to the aunts—and Fred, though still on edge, looked pleased with his reception. Her face positively lit up when he presented her with a gift-wrapped box of truffles she’d supposedly been salivating over at the Cocoa Me stall.

Ryan had come bearing a bag of a new coffee blend he was experimenting with, plus a box of after dinner mints, also from Cocoa Me. “To sweeten you up if the coffee sucks,” he said, self-deprecatingly.

Diggory, Martha’s husband, spooned generous dollops of creamy mashed potatoes onto everyone’s plate except Aunt Aggie’s. “I’ve got some separate mash for you,” said Bella, “made with soya cream and—”

“I don’t want that vegan nonsense; I want the cream cream!” Aunt Aggie protested.

“You are dairy intolerant; as it is, you eat enough butter to block an elephant’s arteries, and you’ve only just recovered from the cheesy chips you had the other night.

No!” Bella put her hand up when Aunt Aggie began to bluster protestations.

“Don’t deny it, I saw Aunt Cam the next morning making you a tisane because your stomach was bad. ”