He blinked at me.
‘Oh, right. I see. Well, good for you.’
‘Thanks! I expect you’re getting your plans finalised too? Zara said she was off to Greece with you.’
My smile was now getting so wide and so forced that it threatened to pop a muscle in my neck. Lando, on the other hand, went grey.
‘She said what?’
‘Oh yes, she wasdyingto share your plans with me, said you’d invited her for Christmas and then – off to Greece you go. Marvellous, congratulations. Anyway, I’d better go, lots to do, presents to wrap, better check my inbox.’
Before he could reply, I belted out of the room and upstairs. I was quite pleased with myself for my dashing speech. Now Lando would see I wasn’t someone to be pitied, to find a bit embarrassing, but an independent woman with her own life. He would probably be grateful to be released from my – what was the charming expression Zara had used? Oh yes –cow eyes.
Once Bunny had the children safely out of the way, I dug all their presents out from their various hiding places and took them to my room. I equipped myself with scissors, tape, ribbons, tags and pens and got to work. I was all right with the boxes, but these were woefully few and far between, and soon I was struggling with all manner of strange shapes. The year before I had watched a very together woman on breakfast TV instruct her hapless viewers on how to wrap any present elegantly, the paper floating into position from her skilful hands. Mine ended up lumpen and misshapen but cheerful enough, and I knew the twins couldn’t give a hoot. Phina would be distracted by the ribbons and sticky bows and Caspy would fall in love with the first thing he opened and want to focus solely on that.
By eleven o’clock I was bored and riddled with paper cuts, so I decided to chance going downstairs to get a cup of tea and some of those delicious soft German chocolate-covered gingerbread biscuits. I had seen a few packets in the cupboard and hadn’t been able to stop thinking about them. I stood at the top of the stairs for a moment but couldn’t hear anyone about, so down I scuttled. I entered the kitchen slightly breathlessly and, naturally, there was Lando, sitting at the table with a coffee, eating my biscuits.
‘Oh!’
‘Sorry, weren’t you expecting anyone to be in here?’
‘Er, no, not really. I came down for a quick drink – and some of those actually. Whatarethey called? I can never remember. Leprechauns or something?’
He laughed.
‘Lebkuchen – but I’m not sure how you pronounce it. I’ve made dreadful inroads into this bag, I’m afraid. Shall we open some more?’
‘Why not?’
I switched on the kettle and busied myself, working up enough courage eventually to ask in my most casual tones, ‘Zara not around?’
‘No, she’s not, she’s gone off into Dorchester to get her hair done.’
‘Oh, right. It looked okay to me.’
‘It was fine. She spends a lot of time being groomed, like one of Phina’s My Little Ponies.’
I giggled.
‘Maybe she’ll come back with candy cane stripes in her hair.’
‘It might be an improvement, lighten things up a bit. Look, Penny…’
I stirred my tea intently. There was a tone of voice there that set off alarm bells.
‘Mmm hmm.’
‘I don’t know if youwantme to explain this…well, look, I want to, okay? Zara – I didn’t really invite her for Christmas. She invited herself and the way she went about it…I knew it was a pack of lies, but it was hard to say no.’
I couldn’t help myself.
‘What did she say?’
‘Some story about not being able to stay in her flat and not having any friends she wanted to be with. More likely no one will have her; you’ve seen how demanding and critical she is. She asked Pilar this morning to make everything gluten-free from now on, as she suspects she might have a slight intolerance.’
‘Ouch! I can imagine the response to that.’
‘Well, quite. Luckily, Pilar made it in Spanish, so we only got the gist, but her meaning was perfectly clear.’
