Christmas Magic. Cathy Kelly

>

      CATHY KELLY

       Christmas Magic

      Copyright

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

      www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

      Copyright © Cathy Kelly 2012

      Cathy Kelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental

      Source ISBN: 9780007466931

      Ebook Edition © September 2012 ISBN: 9780007444434

      Version: 2017-11-21

      FIRST EDITION

      All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      For Dylan, Murray, Laura, Naomi, Emer and Robert, with all my love

      Contents

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Christmas Magic

       Anniversary Waltz

       Madame Lucia

       Off Your Trolley

       May You Live in Interesting Times

       A Villa by the Sea

       The Gap Year

       Cassandra

       Letter from Chicago

       Bride and Doom

       You’ve Got Mail

       Christmas Post

       The Trouble with Mother

       The Paradise Road Book Club

       The Angel Gabrielle

       Lizzie’s Fling

       Thelma, Louise and the Lurve Gods

       The Office Christmas Party

       A Family Christmas

       Afterword

       Stories previously published

       About the Author

       By the same Author

       About the Publisher

       Christmas Magic

      Primrose Cottage sat at the very end of Johnson’s Lane, an enchantingly pretty little house with wisteria snaking into the low roof and rose bushes clustering up to peer in the windows.

      It was owned by the Malone sisters, Dolores and Genevieve, and although they didn’t get a lot of post, the sisters were on first-name terms with the postman, Bernard, who often stopped at Primrose Cottage for a quick cup of tea of a morning.

      When he had anything for them, Bernard’s routine was to arrive at about nine thirty, by which time Genevieve would have completed the crossword and Dolores taken the dogs for their first little stroll of the day, up past that nice young couple’s cottage and back. The kettle would be boiling away happily on the range and Dolores’ scones would be warming in the small oven, ready for dollops of Genevieve’s crab-apple jelly.

      Genevieve was the chattier, more outgoing of the two: older than her sister, Bernard thought, but more worldly and keen on wearing silver combs in her white hair. She was a smiling sort of person, always neatly dressed in flower colours and with tortoiseshell glasses perched on her nose. Dolores, who still had a hint of softest auburn in her hair, was shyer and more inclined to let Genevieve do the talking, but she never stopped chatting to her beloved dogs, feeding them little bits of scone all the time.

      Time permitted Bernard to stop only a couple of times during his morning round and, despite a number of very talented housekeepers in the town, there was no place he liked stopping better than at the Malone sisters’. Their home reminded him of how life used to be when he was a boy.

      ‘You’re wonderful, the pair of you,’ Bernard would say, when he had a cup of tea in one hand and a bit of hot buttered scone in the other.

      ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Dolores would reply. ‘It’s just what Mother used to do.’

      ‘Yes,’ agreed Genevieve. ‘Mother always made her own bread, scones and jam, but she had the hens too.’

      Both sisters looked a little mournful at this recollection. Mother had always made them feel inadequate. She had been amazing, a domestic goddess long before such a term had been invented. Everyone over a certain age in Ardagh agreed: there had been nobody like Mrs Malone.

      She was a powerful woman, people said, using the rural sense of the word, which conveyed strength and purpose rather than an ability to lift tall buildings. She had been on every committee going, a stalwart churchgoer, organiser of the church flowers and a woman with firm views