Page 48 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

The man is an arsehole!

“What?” She rubbed her eyes, feeling like she was on a boat in choppy waters. She messaged him:

What are you on about? Are you sleep texting?

She saw the two ticks turn blue and knew he’d seen her message.

The three little dots popped up on the screen as she heaved herself up to sitting, waiting for his reply, but then they disappeared, and they didn’t come back.

Maybe the message wasn’t meant for her, and he’d sent it by accident.

That must be it. She ignored the alarm bell going off in the pit of her stomach.

She knew if she went back to sleep now, she’d feel even worse later, so she showered and headed downstairs in search of hydration; she needed coffee and water and then more coffee. Her mum was already in the kitchen, a mug of Coast Roast in her hands.

“Morning.” Fred yawned, flicking on the kettle and downing a tumbler of water while she waited.

“Got a weird message from Ryan and now, apparently, he’s blanking me.

Or maybe he’s driving. Probably driving and can’t text.

I don’t think I was the intended recipient anyway.

” She rubbed her hand over her abdomen to ease the anxiety brewing there. “Any news on Diggory?”

“That’s nice,” Bella murmured, absently.

Fred frowned. Jeez, what’s got into everyone this morning? “Everything all right, Mum? Earth to Mother!” She waved her hand in front of her mum’s face.

Bella’s eyes refocused. “Sorry, love, I was miles away.”

“How’s Diggory?”

“He’s fine. They let him out late last night,” said Bella. She left a beat and then asked, “Can I talk to you about something?”

Fred poured boiling water into the cafetière and brought it to the table with her mug, before sitting down opposite her mum. “Of course. What’s on your mind?”

Her mum began to pick at a loose thread on the cuff of her jumper. She sucked in a breath as though about to speak, then closed her mouth and repeated the process twice more. Fred’s “trouble brewing” antenna pricked up.

“Last night, with Diggory, well, it put things into perspective for me. I’ve been putting off telling you, because I know you’ve had a lot of upheaval recently, but if I don’t do it now…nobody knows what’s around the corner, and I can’t wait any longer…”

“Ugh, Mum, you’ve lost me, my head’s still screwy from the aunts’ hot chocolate. You’re going to have to lay it out for me,” said Fred, rubbing her eyes.

“Right. The thing is. It’s like this. There’s no other way of saying it. Liam and I have decided that we have feelings for each other, and we’d like to, you know, give it a go. He’s asked me to go away with him for a few days on a mini-break after Christmas, and I’ve said yes.”

It took a moment for the words to make sense in Fred’s head. Mum and Liam? Surely not.

“He’s what?”

Rather than answer her question, Bella simply continued speaking. “Now, I know it seems a bit quick, but we’ve known each other for a long time.”

Fred was reeling. Was this actually happening?

“You’ve known Mr. Bishop a long time, too, it doesn’t mean you should piss off on a mini-break with him.”

“Fred, there are things you don’t know…” She paused, and Fred watched her pull her shoulders back, preparing for battle. “The bottom line is that I love him. I always have.”

“Oh, Mum!” Fred looked up at the ceiling, exasperated. “You always think you’re in love, and then you fall out of it just as quickly! And that’s fine with the douches you usually go out with, but not with Liam. He’s our friend. He’s a widower, it’s not fair to play with his affections.”

“I’m not.” Bella looked directly at Fred then, but Fred couldn’t look her in the eye. “It isn’t like that,” Bella protested.

Fred couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

She could feel her anger building, pulsing through her veins.

Liam had been like a father figure to her; she couldn’t bear to see him get hurt.

It would hurt her mum too. She couldn’t see it now, because she had her romance goggles on, but when this fling ended—because it would end, just like they always did—her mum would have lost one of her closest friends, forever.

She needed to put a stop to it before it was too late for them both.

Fred swallowed hard. “Mum, I am begging you not to do this. I understand that you’re lonely, but please don’t put your friendship at risk. Choose any other man, but not Liam. Please, Mum, not Liam. For me. I will never ask you for anything ever again, if you just promise me this one thing.”

Her mum’s whole demeanor changed; she seemed to shrink before her eyes, her face crumpling with sadness, and Fred felt the stab of it in her heart.

“Please don’t ask me to give him up, Fred.

” Her mum’s voice was pleading, and it wrenched a hole in Fred’s chest. But she’d watched this scene play out before, and she knew how it ended; it was never good.

Liam was one of her mum’s best friends in the world—it was the healthiest relationship she’d had with any man, ever—Fred couldn’t let her blow it all to hell.

Tears were flowing freely down her mum’s face as she said, “I know I don’t have a great track record, but you have no idea how lonely I was. And yes, I get that it wasn’t ideal, and I could have made better choices. But this is different. I have no intention of breaking Liam’s heart.”

Fred’s own heart was breaking to see her mum like this. She reached her hand across the table, fingertips stretched toward her mum’s. “Then tell me how this is different, Mum,” she said softly. “Make me understand.”

“Because it’s Liam. Because I love him. All the others were just…

” The weariness in Bella’s sigh was palpable, her voice rough with emotion.

“I chose them specifically because I knew I would never love them; because loving people hurts, and I didn’t have any more of my heart left to give. I was empty. Can you understand that?”

The rawness in her mum’s admission was like being winded.

Fred couldn’t speak. She did understand.

Finally. Oh, she knew the facts of her mother’s past: the abuse, losing her mum to cancer at so young an age, being let down in the worst ways by the men who claimed to love her.

She had always respected and appreciated her mum’s fortitude, maybe even been a little envious of it.

But until this moment Fred had never truly felt those facts, the sheer weight of them, the way they must have cut and gouged at her.

Her mother was hewn from pain and heartache, and instead of being embittered all she’d ever done was push love out into the world.

If anyone in this world was deserving of a chance at love, it was her mum.

If the universe was testing the sincerity of Fred’s intentions from last night, now was as good a time as any to show it that she meant every word.

“Mum…” The word squeezed out around the emotions filling her chest, and she smiled in a way that she hoped conveyed all the warmth she felt in her heart. “I’m sorry I went off like that, you didn’t deserve it—”

But the rest of her sentence was cut off when Aunts Cam and Aggie chose that moment to burst into the kitchen, letting in a gust of cold air.

“Gird your loins, Freddie Hallow-Hart,” called Aunt Aggie, waving a newspaper above her head as she kicked off her Wellingtons. “There’s a shitstorm coming, and it’s got your name on it! Any coffee left in that pot?”

“It would seem that your young man has done the dirty on Pine Bluff,” said Aunt Cam, dusting the snowflakes off her cape and taking a seat at the table.

Aunt Aggie flung the newspaper down in front of Fred and grabbed two mugs off the dresser.

“Page forty, dear,” Aunt Cam said, pointing at the copy of the Daily News .

Fred looked at her mum, but Bella turned away and looked out of the window.

Aggie, frustrated by Fred’s slowness to act, slammed the mugs down and opened the paper herself, stabbing a finger at the page.

Warren’s travel piece must have been published.

He’d got the job. But wasn’t the article meant to be a good thing?

With a creeping sense of dread, Fred began to read.

This was not the same draft she’d read in the restaurant.

All Bluff and No Substance

Written by the newly appointed food critic for the Daily News , Warren Reeves

How I took a deep dive into the eateries of Pine Bluff and came up empty-handed…

Fred could hardly bear to read the words.

Nausea rose up from her stomach and settled in an acid pool in her throat.

None of the restaurants or pubs mentioned were left unscathed by his damning review, which featured phrases like “gnocchi the texture of phlegm globs” and “souvlaki that even street dogs would turn their noses up at.” All the establishments he’d visited were included; he was especially vicious about the ones they’d visited together.

Oh god! These were people who had been friends and neighbors of her family for decades; good, hardworking folks who didn’t deserve to have their family businesses trashed by a hack with ruthless ambition.

And what must they think of her? She may as well have spat on their grandmas.

The back of her neck was growing hot, and her top lip prickled with sweat.

The worst review was reserved for Coast Roast.

One of those businesses an influencer decided to make a TikTok about—an influencer with too many followers and zero taste—and suddenly this pond sludge was being slurped up by every vacuous Real Housewife in the UK, and being sold as an artisan product in shops that showcase their wares in wicker baskets—Fair-trade wicker, of course.

Fuuuuuuuuuck! Suddenly Ryan’s shitty message this morning made sense. He’d seen this. Oh crap, he’d seen this! But the final death knell was yet to come.