The Little Christmas Kitchen: A wonderfully festive, feel-good read. Jenny Oliver

      He glared at them for a second, six foot with shoulders broader than should be allowed, black shaggy hair and at least three days’ stubble, he knew he could terrify them.

      ‘Don’t.’ Maddy rolled her eyes. ‘They’re only little.’

      ‘They’ve messed with my board. Look at it.’

      ‘You’re mean. Stop being mean to them. Look at them.’ She turned to wave in their direction, all four kids huddled together, their fishing rods clutched in their hands, their cheeks pink, waiting for their telling off.

      Dimitri sighed. ‘You stay away from my board. Yes!’

      ‘Yes Dimitri,’ they chorused again.

      ‘And while you’re at it, stay away from my bike as well. I saw you the other day sitting on it. Yes. I did, don’t shake your heads, if it fell on you it could do some damage. Don’t sit on my bike.’

      ‘Can we ride on it again with you, please?’

      He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. ‘What have I started?’ he said to Maddy. And she shrugged a shoulder.

      ‘You shouldn’t have been so keen to show off your new toy should you?’ she said, nodding to where his beautiful Triumph Bonneville T100 sat gleaming on the cobbled slipway.

      Dimitri followed her gaze, paused for a second to admire his bike and then said with a shrug, ‘I was excited.’

      Maddy shook her head and turned away with a laugh, she stuffed the rag in her pocket and turned around to the kids and said. ‘I’ll take you out on this, if you like?’ This was the sleek white forty foot yacht she’d just repaired the engine of.

      ‘Are you sure Maddy?’ Dimitri questioned, dubious, as the kids all whooped and, chucking down their rods, ran over to jump on the deck of the boat, their shoes leaving tiny, dusty footprints on the gleaming surface.

      ‘Yeah it’ll be fine.’ Maddy said, pulling on a big red, oil streaked jumper that came down to just above the frayed edge of her shorts. Sweeping away the wisps of hair that the wind was blowing in her mouth, she said, ‘And with my mum, I just don’t want her to not want me to go. I want her to approve, I suppose. Stupid, huh?’ She laughed, husky and dry like a granddad.

      ‘It’s pretty windy out there, Mads.’ Dimitri shielded his eyes from the low sun and looked out to where the waves were starting to pick up.

      ‘Can you focus on what I’m saying about my mum.’ She frowned, ‘And – it’s ok for you take your windsurfer out but I can’t handle the boat? Are you kidding?’

      ‘It’s got worse in the last few hours. I would never dream of implying you couldn’t handle the boat. But let’s look at the facts, Maddy, it’s really bloody windy and it’s not your boat.’

      ‘Well he’d want me to test the engine as well as fix it, wouldn’t he?’ She kicked one of the posts with her old Nike hi-top trainer.

      ‘You can test it by turning the key in the ignition. Not taking a bunch of seven year olds for a joyride into a mistral.’ Dimitri shook his head, tendrils of black hair wobbling like a sea anemone.

      ‘It’ll be fine. And anyway–’ Maddy jumped down onto the stern, taking the rope she’d looped into one of the jetty rings with her to cast off. ‘I can’t say no now, look at them…’

      The kids were all sitting crossed legged at the bow like tiny figureheads, watching expectantly.

      ‘See this is probably what your mum’s talking about. In your desperation to please people, you don’t think things through.’

      ‘Oh please.’ Maddy scoffed as she pressed the button to haul up the anchor. ‘She just doesn’t want me to go off to London and leave her alone.’

      ‘I think she worries that you’ve been too sheltered.’ Dimitri yelled over the wind and the sound of the two hundred and fifty horsepower engine as it sprang to life.

      ‘Bullshit.’ Maddy shouted back. ‘That’s the most patronising thing I’ve ever heard, Dimitri. You’re so annoying.’

      ‘Good comeback,’ he said, raising a brow. ‘My case in point.’

      Maddy snorted a laugh and then turned her back on him to steer the boat out of the little harbour. The kids were clinging onto the tinsel-wrapped railing at the front, dangling their feet over the edge and laughing as the spray bounced up into their faces.

      As Maddy looked past them, out at the wide blue sea, dark like sapphires, the white horses jumping like skittish foals, rays of low winter sun darting off each wave like silver fish, all she could think was, god I wish this was London.

       CHAPTER 3

      ELLA

      Ella threw her Blackberry on the sofa. Bloody holiday. She didn’t need a bloody holiday. She needed to curl up into a little ball and hibernate like a hedgehog. She needed to talk to Max.

      Adrian had called her into his office directly after the meeting and asked her what was wrong. She’d shown him the email and he’d sucked in his breath.

      ‘Do you want a cigarette out the window?’ he’d asked.

      ‘I don’t smoke, Adrian.’

      ‘I know but sometimes moments call for a cigarette. If you don’t want one I might have one.’ He pulled open his desk drawer and fumbled around at the back for a hidden packet of Marlboro Reds and a box of matches. Hauling up the sash window he leant on the sill and inhaled half the cigarette in one. ‘Christ I’ve missed this.’ Exhaling he shook his head. ‘Max. Max, what are you doing?’

      ‘I think maybe it’s been photoshopped.’ Ella said, crossing the room to perch on the edge of the big leather covered desk. Outside it had started to sleet, watery white flecks cascading down like a snow globe. A couple of mangy pigeons on the roof opposite were shaking out their feathers, huddled up together next to a light up Santa Claus – plump and wet and depressed.

      Adrian raised a brow, the creases on his forehead deepening. Ella frowned. ‘You don’t think so? You think he’s having an affair. I don’t think he’s having an affair. Especially not with her. I really don’t. Look–’ she held out her arm where the bracelet slipped forward over the back of her hand. ‘Look.’ she said again, a little quieter.

      ‘It’s very pretty.’ Adrian nodded. Took another drag and then flicked the cigarette out onto the roof top, the pigeons scattered. ‘Do you want me to see what Anne thinks?’

      Anne was Adrian’s wife. Anne had been friends with Max since childhood and it was through a dinner at their house that Ella had met Adrian and he’d given her a job. They had garden parties in the summer in their huge dilapidated mansion and their wild, adorable children ran around in slightly dirty clothes and no shoes while everyone else drank Pimms and adored the roses. They were the antithesis of Max’s other friends. So rich they could bypass into shabby and boho and not care in the slightest. But they were all so inextricably linked. Like a web. Or Kerplunk. One stick pulled out and it all falls down.

      ‘No.’ Ella shook her head. ‘I trust him. Of course I trust him. There will be an explanation. There’s always an explanation for things like this. It’s not bloody EastEnders is it. She’s one of his friends for god’s sake. If he was going to have an affair, would he really do it on his own doorstep?’ She felt her voice catch in her throat. She thought of Max – gorgeous, funny, beautiful Max, with his arm casually draped round the waist of a woman who wasn’t her – a woman with lovely hair and eyes that tipped up at the corners. Amanda. One of his ‘girls’. The one who had taken Ella aside when they’d first got together and taken her shopping and bought her champagne and linked her arm through hers and managed to get her to tell all her secrets about Max.

      Max who she looked at every morning