Last Christmas. Julia Williams

and always had been.

      ‘What should I tell Stephen?’

      Eve stifled something that sounded like a sob.

      ‘You’re a good man, Gabe,’ she said. ‘Too good for me. You deserve better.’

      She kissed him on the cheek, and fled the house towards the waiting taxi, while Gabriel stood in stunned silence. He’d known this moment had been coming from the minute he took her under his wing. She was a wild bird, and he’d always felt that eventually she would fly away and leave him. But not like this. Not now. Not just before Christmas.

      Gabriel had lost track of the time while he sat alone in the gathering gloom. It was only now that he was beginning to notice how cold it had suddenly got. How cold it was always going to be now that Eve had gone. He wondered what he was going to do. Whether he’d ever see her again. And what the hell he was going to say to their son…

      Noel Tinsall stood nursing a pint at the bar in the tacky nightclub the firm had booked for this year’s Christmas party, listening to Paul McCartney blasting out what a wonderful Christmas time he was having. Noel was glad someone was. He wondered idly when it would be decent to leave. Probably not wise to go before Gerry Cowley, the CEO, who was strutting his deeply unfunky stuff on the dance floor, leering at all the secretaries. It was only eight o’clock. The party was barely started yet, and already he could see some of the junior staff had drunk more than was good for them. He wouldn’t be surprised to find a variety of embarrassing photos doing the rounds on the Internet in the next few days. What was it about the office Christmas party that made people behave so idiotically? Bacchanalian excess was all very well when you didn’t have to face your demons at the water cooler the next day.

      ‘Hey, Noel, you sexy beast, come on and dance.’ It was his secretary, Julie. Or rather, not his secretary anymore. Not since that jumped-up toerag Matt Duncan had got his promotion. Now Noel had to share a secretary. A further subtle means of making him feel his previous high standing in the office was being eroded. Time was, when people jumped to his beat. Now they jumped to Matt’s. Perhaps it was time to get a new job.

      Noel hated dancing, but also found it nearly impossible to be rude to people, so before long he found himself in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by sweaty, writhing bodies, and unable to escape the feeling that everyone was laughing at him.

      ‘You’re dead sexy, you know,’ Julie was shimmying up to him, and grabbing his tie. ‘Much more than that silly tosser Matt.’

      No, no, no! They had always had such a professional relationship, but she was clearly pissed and coming on to him. Not that she wasn’t incredibly attractive or anything. And not that Noel wasn’t sorely tempted for a moment. Would Cat even know or care if he were unfaithful? Sometimes he didn’t think so. Julie was lovely, uncomplicated and she was available. It would be so easy…

      What on earth was he thinking? Noel shook his head. Definitely time to go.

      ‘Sorry, Julie, I’ve got to get back,’ Noel said. ‘Catherine needs me. Kids. You know how it is.’ Catherine probably wouldn’t care if he were there or not, judging by the notice she took of him these days, but Julie didn’t need to know that.

      Ducking her alcohol-fumed kiss, Noel made his way out of the club, and into the welcome crisp air of a London December evening. It was still early enough for the third cab he hailed to be miraculously free, and before long he was speeding his way towards Clapton, secure in the knowledge that, despite the amount he’d imbibed, he’d got away without making an idiot of himself.

      The cab drew up outside his house, an imposing Edwardian semi down a surprisingly leafy street. The Christmas lights he’d put up with the kids the previous evening flickered maniacally. One of them had no doubt changed the settings again. He bounded up the steps and let himself in to a scene of chaos.

      ‘I hate you.’ Melanie, his eldest daughter, came blasting past him and flung herself up the stairs in floods of tears, followed swiftly by his son, James, who shouted, ‘I so hate you too!’

      ‘Nobody hates anyone round here, I hope,’ he said, but he was ignored and the house rang to the sound of two slamming doors.

      ‘Don’t want to go to bed. Don’t WANT to!’ his youngest daughter Ruby was wailing as Magda, their latest inefficient au pair, tried to cajole her off the floor of the playroom where she lay kicking and screaming. Noel noted with a sigh that the bookshelf had fallen down again. He wasn’t quite sure he was up to dealing with that, so he poked his head in the lounge and found Paige, his middle daughter, surreptitiously scoffing chocolate decorations from the tree.

      ‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked.

      ‘She’s on the bloody blog,’ said Paige calmly, trying to hide the evidence of her crime.

      ‘Don’t say bloody,’ said Noel automatically.

      ‘That’s what Mummy calls it,’ said Paige.

      ‘And don’t steal chocolate from the tree,’ added Noel.

      ‘I’m not,’ said Paige, ‘Magda said I could.’

      ‘Did she now?’ Catherine came down the stairs looking frazzled. ‘Come on, it’s your bedtime.’

      She kissed Noel absent-mindedly on the cheek before going into the playroom to calm down not only the howling Ruby, but also a semi-hysterical Magda, who was wailing that these children were like ‘devils from hell’.

      Noel stomped downstairs to the kitchen, got himself a beer, and sat disconsolately in front of the TV. Sometimes he felt like a ghost in his own home.

      ‘Angels! I need angels!’ Diana Carew, formidable representative of the Parish Council, flapped about like a giant beached whale. It was hard to see how someone so large could actually squeeze through the tiny door of the room allocated for the children to sit in while they awaited their turn to go on stage, but somehow she managed it.

      Marianne suppressed the thought as being bitchy, but it was hard to take her eyes from Diana’s enormous bosoms. Marianne had never seen anything so large. And it gave her something to smile about while she sat freezing her arse off in this godforsaken tiny village hall watching the Hope Christmas Nativity taking shape, knowing damned well that any input from her was not actually required. In the weeks leading up to the nativity, Marianne had become grimly aware that she was only on the team because every other sane member of the village, including her colleagues at the village school, had already opted out.

      Everyone, that was, apart from the very lovely and immensely supportive Philippa (or Pippa to her friends). Marianne had only got to know Pippa in recent weeks, since she’d been co-opted into helping on the Nativity, but she was fast becoming Marianne’s closest friend in Hope Christmas and one of the many reasons she was loving living here. Pippa was bearing down on her now with a welcome cup of tea and a barely suppressed grin. Together they watched Diana practically shove three reluctant angels on the stage, where they joined a donkey, two shepherds, some lambs, Father Christmas and some elves, who were busy singing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ as they placed gifts at Mary and Joseph’s feet.

      ‘I have to confess,’ Marianne murmured, ‘this is a rather, erm, unusual retelling of the Nativity. I can’t recall elves from the Bible.’

      Pippa snorted into her tea.

      ‘I’m afraid the elves are here to stay,’ said Pippa. ‘Diana does a slightly altered version every year, but the elves always feature. It dates back to when she ran the preschool in the village. And it’s kind of stuck. Everyone’s too frightened of her to tell her to do it differently.’

      ‘Are there actually any carols involved in this?’ Marianne asked. So far, on the previous rehearsals she’d been roped into, the only thing remotely carol-like had been ‘Little Donkey’.

      ‘Probably not. At least this year she’s dropped “Frosty the Snowman”,’ said Pippa. ‘Mind you, it took the Parish Council about three years to persuade