ONE
When I stepped off the train, a wave of Christmas cheer washed over me despite feeling worried about the way I’d decided to spend the next few weeks. It was much colder here in Dorset than it had been in London, and in the weak afternoon sunlight frost sparkled on the bushes and my breath puffed out in smoky clouds. I piled my suitcases into the waiting taxi and pressed my nose against the cold glass as we drove through pretty villages, their decorations up and festooned trees standing in every window. As we paused at traffic lights outside a church, I saw a group of carol singers, muffled up against the cold in scarves and hats, and quickly wound my window down so that I could hear a snatch of their music before we drove on. It was one of my favourites, and I joined in softly as they sang:
‘O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by…’
‘Looking forward to Christmas, are you?’ enquired my driver.
‘Oh yes, I love it. Do you think we’ll get snow down here?’
She shrugged.
‘We often do, so you might be in luck. Staying with the Lords, are you? Up at the house?’
‘I’m working for Bunny – helping to look after her twins.’
‘Ah, of course, they’ll be up for Christmas as usual. Well, you’ll certainly be busy.’
I didn’t want to gossip about my new employers, but I couldn’t help asking: ‘Are they…nice?’
She laughed.
‘You’ll have a memorable time with them, that’s all I’ll say.’
I didn’t have time to ask her what she meant, because we were pulling up on a sweeping gravel driveway outside an enormous house, disturbing three or four large crows who cawed loudly as they flew to perch in the branches of a grand oak tree, stripped now of its leaves. Frost iced the holly trees that grew to one side of the drive, their red berries glowing through the sprinkling of wintry glitter. Opposite them a rather overgrown yew hedge, also dusted with white, ran alongside a small stream, still bravely flowing despite the cold day. A pair of mallards snuggled together beside it on a mossy stone ledge, their feathers fluffed up, and – alighting from the taxi – I rummaged in my bag for some leftover oat biscuits to share with them. A rustling drew my attention away from the ducks, and I turned slowly to see the russet face and bright, black eyes of a fox watching me from a gap in the hedge.
‘Hello, Fox,’ I said softly. It retreated a step or two but didn’t run away. ‘Are you hungry too? Let me see what else I’ve got.’ I looked again and found half a cheese sandwich, which I threw in its direction. The fox sniffed it suspiciously, then picked it up delicately, glanced at me and turned, disappearing into the dense woodland behind. I wondered what other animals I would see if I waited long enough – a hare, maybe – but turned my attention back to the house.
I stared up at its imposing stone chimneys and asymmetric gabled roofs, silhouetted against the pale sky and jewelled with icicles, and wondered how many bedrooms it had. Eight at least, surely? Lights shone warmly in two of the windows and someone had strung fairy lights in another. They twinkled gently into the chilly day, invitingly festive. An extravagant wreath hung from the front door, made from the evergreens growing around the house and finished off with an enormous red velvet bow and – I peered a little closer – yes, a couple of plastic Bluey figurines placed incongruously amongst the foliage, surely the work of the twins I was going to look after. It couldn’t be any more different from my neat, two-bedroomed newbuild with its astroturfed postage stamp of a front lawn and white uPVC porch. The elegance of the house was only slightly marred by a giant inflatable chimney next to the door, out of which a wheezing, blow-up Father Christmas emerged arthritically every minute or so. He wobbled, lopsided, for a few moments before descending again with what looked to me distinctly like relief. I could relate to that. All I wanted to do was crawl under my duvet away from all society with some high-sugar, high-carb snacks and try to numb the pain not only of Timothy’s desertion, but of a wasted decade, waiting for something that would never happen. But here I was, so I had better get on with it.
Until now, I had led a sensible life and I never made rash decisions. But when Timothy ended things, I found myself with three of them under my belt in as many days. Hard-working and well-behaved, I had made my way through school and a teaching degree without causing many ripples in my own life or anyone else’s. I wore sensible clothes, ate sensible food and read sensible books. Now and again, I explored sensible hobbies such as quilting and fell-walking. I had been in my sensible teaching job for fifteen years and lived in a sensible house in a sensible town at a sensible distance from London. I had a sensible relationship with Timothy, who was a sensible man. Or so I had thought. Timothy and I had been together for ten long, sensible years. We had, very sensibly, delayed marriage and children until everything was just so. I kept an eye on my age with increasing panic but, even at nearly thirty-eight, didn’t pressurise Timothy. Everyone knows that is not a sensible thing to do. Then one day, nevertheless, Timothy sat me down and told me he was leaving me. He was, he said, very sensibly doing this before December 1st, as everyone knows that December is proposal month, and he didn’t want me to get my hopes up…again. When Timothy left, taking the only items of his own he had ever left at my house – his second-best toothbrush and a cheap coffee machine – I contemplated the empty spaces in the bathroom, on the kitchen worktop, on the fourth finger of my left hand and in my womb. Then I realised that the empty space in my heart was no bigger for Timothy’s desertion. I reflected that this was, on balance, a good thing. I knew, now, that he had led me on – not for a month or two but for ten years. And I had let him. And that is when I decided to stop being sensible.
Decision Number One: I will never get involved with a man, ever again.
This was not a sensible decision for a woman who longed for love and for babies, particularly a woman careering towards forty at breakneck speed. But how could I? How could I trust myself, let alone a man? My ability to judge them was clearly woefully inadequate. I had wasted ten years of my precious life waiting for a man, and I wasn’t going to waste a second more. The ache for love would wane. Given time. Wouldn’t it?
Decision Number Two: I will hand in my notice after Christmas and move to India.
I loved my job. Correction: I loved the children I taught, but the job itself? Meh. The only reason I had stayed so long was because I thought – believed – that Timothy would propose at any moment and soon I would be knee-deep in white tulle, swiftly followed by nappies. Nowthatwasn’t happening, I didn’t want to stay a moment longer. I certainly didn’t want my colleagues’ prurient sympathy, and the best way to avoid that was to give them something else to talk about. So, I decided that I would move to India and get a teaching job there, starting at the beginning of the school year there: May. This was not as reckless as it sounds. My parents had moved there six months previously, and I missed them. At their leaving party, my mother, prescient as ever, had looked askew at Timothy, who she thought was boring, and suggested I look at the ‘International Jobs’ section of theTimesEducational Supplement.
Decision Number Three: I will spend Christmas living with and working for people I have never met in a place I have never visited.
This opportunity came about by luck, when a friend posted about a family she knew in dire need of a ‘mother’s help’ over the Christmas break – all of the three weeks holiday I got. I would, naturally, normally have scrolled past, but that day I leapt on it with a haste fuelled by panic that someone else had got there first. This was what I needed to keep me busy and my mind off Timothy. Well, off the subject of my own craven stupidity in staying with him, which I beat myself up about throughout each day. I could be useful, earn some money and spend my spare time composing my resignation letter, to be handed in on the first day of the spring term.
As soon as I had seen the Facebook post, I messaged my friend and said I was interested in the job. Not usually that bothered by social media, I refreshed the app obsessively for the next twenty minutes, until a message pinged back with the phone number for the Lords. I rang immediately.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, may I speak to Mrs Lord please?’ There was a loud crash. ‘Um…hello? Hello?’
All I could hear now was someone shrieking ‘put it down, put it down!’ and some muffled swearing. And then a breathless voice:
‘Hello, sorry about that. Don’t ever have twins. Yes, I’m Mrs Lord, although that makes me sound like a particularly devoted Sunday school teacher. Call me Bunny, everyone does.’
‘Er, all right, hello Bunny. Joanne said that you were looking for some help over Christmas?’
‘And you have been sent from Heaven to save us! Oops, touch of the Sunday school teacher there again. Yes, I am desperately in need of help. Lovely Joanne said that you would call, she said you were theperfectsolution – wonderful with children and socalm. You used to work together?’
