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“What big Christmas push?” Nathan had asked, and Sarah had had to bite her tongue, because she’d told him all about it during their dinner out, but clearly he’d forgotten.
“A Christmas holiday week, don’t you remember?” she’d explained. “It’s a way to help the inn’s fortunes, because it’s been struggling financially.”
She’d been able to tell from her husband’s noncommittal response that he hadn’t been interested in hearing about it the second time round, either.
Now she did her best to push the memory of that conversation and the worries it had caused to fester to the back of her mind. She’d taken the week off work for half-term, and she’d decided to pitch in as much as she could with Ellie’s Christmas plans for the inn. If she couldn’t save her marriage—and she really was starting to wonder if she could—then at least she could try to save the inn. Despite her earlier doubts, she wanted to give this Christmas week the best chance she could.
“What crafts have you planned for this week, Mairi?” she asked, with potentially more enthusiasm than she usually would have used for such a question.
Mairi shrugged as she gazed out the car window and twirled a strand of hair around one finger. “The usual. Finger painting. Leaf printing. Stuff like that.”
Sarah glanced at her daughter, noticing her seemingly disconsolate expression. Mairi had always been a self-contained person, much like Sarah herself was, but lately her daughter seemed even more isolated, obsessed with—and so very anxious about—her exams. “Sounds fun,” she offered, and Mairi simply shrugged.
Once, Sarah reflected, Mairi would have chattered on about the crafts, asked Sarah’s opinion about whether she thought they would occupy the children, enthuse about the paints or the playdough. Not in the last year, though, Sarah acknowledged. Mairi had become more and more withdrawn, seeming stressed and distant and borderline angry a lot of the time. Was it just the usual teenaged angst or something more? How on earth could she tell?
When her children had been younger, she reflected, things had seemed so much simpler. She’d read all the pregnancy and parenting books and had felt fully confident in her choices—organic food, a strict sleep schedule, time-outs and redirecting for discipline, limited screen time, on and on and on. Now, however, when their moods were mercurial, when the most innocuously asked question could set them off into fury or despair, when life felt like a minefield, and you didn’t know where or even what the mineswere—well, it was a lot harder than she’d ever expected it to be, especially now that Nathan seemed happy to take a backseat in terms of parenting.
She’d picked up a book on parenting teens “for success” a few years ago, and had read it with avid determination, assiduously making notes and then doing her best to implement its can-do strategies. She’d carefully followed its directives about how to build motivation and have teens accept consequences, but the thought of implementing those strategies now, or even skimming through the book again, only wearied her. She didn’t want to follow the steps for successful parenting, or, really, for anything anymore, and she wasn’t even sure why. Was she having a personality change or was she just tired of slogging through life without feeling much purpose or joy?
“Hello!” Ellie’s voice was bright and maybe slightly manic as she threw open the front door a few minutes later, as they all headed into the inn. “The guests are going to arrive in about an hour—we’ve got three families booked: one with a baby, so I don’t think they’ll be doing any crafts, another with a four- and six-year-old, and then another with a nine- and eleven-year-old. You think you can manage it?” she asked Mairi, sounding just a little too jovial.
Sarah glanced closely at her sister-in-law, and thought the color on her cheeks looked a little intense, her smile a bit forced.
As Mairi and Owen sloped off to join their cousins, Sarah followed Ellie into the kitchen.
“Ellie,” she asked, “are you okay?”
Ellie turned around, eyebrows raised, hands on her hips. “Don’t I seem okay?”
“Well…” Sarah hesitated, because while she and Ellie had come a long way in their relationship, she still wouldn’t say they were best friends or anything like that. “No, actually,” she said bluntly, and then wished she hadn’t when Ellie flinched.
“I’m tired,” she admitted after a moment. “Ava wet the bed last night, which meant getting up, changing sheets, all that.”
Sarah frowned. “Oh dear—”
“It’s not just that,” Ellie continued with a burst of feeling. “It’severything. The stress of making this all work. The journalists and photographers are coming in a little over a week and I feel like we’ve done basically nothing to get ready for them.”
Sarah glanced around the kitchen, which looked essentially the same, with its old Aga and Welsh dresser full of dusty Willowware—comfortable, shabby, but ultimately welcoming and lovable, always the vibe the inn had gone for. “What have you done so far?” she asked practically.
Ellie blew out a breath. “Well… I’m trying to source some decorations for the interiors, but that’s ongoing. We’ve updated the website with details about the Christmas week, and your mom has planned a delicious menu… Mairi and Jess are working on some ideas for Christmas crafts, and Matthew has found a Christmas tree for the photo shoot, which we’re hopefully going to decorate next weekend, as soon as the guests have gone.” She paused, looking strangely hesitant, before adding, “And also your mom has a friend coming round today to help in the garden, make it more Christmassy. He’s a retired landscaper.”
“He?” Sarah couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice. “Who is that?” In over twenty years of widowhood, her mother had never had a malefriend, not as far as Sarah could remember. No one she’d mentioned or introduced to her children, anyway.
“I don’t think she told me his name,” Ellie replied, “but he’ll be here shortly, so you’ll find out soon enough. She said he was an old university pal of your dad’s.”
“He was? Huh.” Sarah tried to think of who that could be. Back when she and Matthew had been children, they’d visited several of her parents’ friends, but it was all such a long time ago, and she’d more or less forgotten who they’d been. “Well, that’s interesting,” she said at last. “I look forward to meeting him—or seeing him again, if I’ve met him before. I don’t know whether I have or not. Anyway,” she finished, doing her best to bolster Ellie’s seemingly flagging spirits, “it sounds like you’ve done a lot to prepare already. When is this shoot, exactly?”
“A week Monday, but in the meantime, we have this week’s guests. I’m not sure what I was thinking, arranging a Christmas photo shoot the day after half-term ends! We’re going to be run off our feet…”
“Let me help,” Sarah offered. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t have to stick to just ledgers and numbers. What needs doing?”
“Oh…” Ellie looked quite touched. “Thank you, Sarah. I’ve been feeling a bit like a chicken with my head cut off, to be honest, running around in an absolute tizzy.”
“Well, chickens with their heads cut off can only run around for so long! Let’s have a cup of tea and then we’ll tackle that to-do list there sensibly.” She nodded toward the list she’d seen on the table; it was in Ellie’s handwriting and had at least twenty items.
“You’re a star,” Ellie murmured, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table as Sarah went to fill the kettle. It felt good to be doing something proactive and practical, when she felt as if all she could do at home was mope or drift.
“So how are things with you?” Ellie asked brightly. “How’s Nathan?”
