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

of steep steps that joined them to the road leading to the taverna.

      It was the smell that knocked Ella for six. Warm pastry cracking and bursting in the oven and cheese melting into a soft, spongy goo. Summers spent sitting on the veranda of a villa they rented stuffing little filo pies into her mouth and jumping into the pool while her dad barbecued and her mum sat in the shade rubbing sun cream into Maddy’s tiny arms, wearing an old white linen shirt and no make-up, and looking stunning. It was on this island that Ella had dipped Maddy’s toes into the sea when she was a baby, it was where she’d reluctantly agreed to go on the donut rides that she hated so that Maddy would have someone with her, where she’d taught Maddy to play the card game Slam! and let her beat her just to be nice, and where, on the plane on the way home, she had held Maddy’s hand and listed all the good things they were going home to when she cried about the holiday being over.

      As Maddy and her mum stood side by side now, Maddy having gone over and tapped Sophie on the shoulder, Ella could see that their likeness had only got stronger as they got older. That even in looks now, she was the odd one out.

      ‘What is it?’ Sophie frowned, rubbing her hands clean on a tea-towel. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’

      Maddy nodded towards the doorway.

      Ella was standing between her granddad who was snoozing in an old armchair and a big bunch of conifer leaves that had been thrust into a pot of oasis and decorated like a Christmas tree, white lights sparkling, tiny rainbow coloured baubles winking as they bobbed in the breeze, and on the top branch the big gold star from their youth bound on with wire.

      There was always a joke that Ella got all the worst bits of both of her parents. Her dad’s pale skin that burnt with anything less than factor fifty. Her mum’s unruly hair. Her dad’s thick eyebrows. Her mum’s ankles. Her dad’s constant battle with his weight that had him in the gym every morning. Her mum’s belief that love always won out in the end. Was she still waiting? Ella wondered as she glanced at the star glinting on the top of the tree, remembered her dad bringing it home in a tatty brown paper bag, pulling it out like a magician pulling flowers out of a hat. They hadn’t had much spare money for decorations but he’d said with absolute authority that you couldn’t have a tree without a star and picked it up from the market stall outside his office.

      ‘Ella.’ Sophie said, hair all wild and scrunched up in a knot on top of her head, wearing a pale purple sweatshirt pushed up at the sleeves, and a pair of stone-washed jeans that had gone full circle since the eighties and looked fashionable again. ‘Lovely to see you.’ She smiled, as if Ella walked in every day.

      Standing in the doorway Ella had never felt more like an outsider, watching the look that passed between her mum and sister when Maddy said, ‘She’s brought a case with her.’ As if Ella wasn’t there at all.

      ‘Are you staying with us?’ her mum asked, looking past Ella at the dusty suitcase.

      Ella was too distracted thinking that she wished for a moment that her mum could look at her and know what she was thinking. Know the crazy emotions whizzing round her head about Max without her having to say anything. Maddy and her mum seemed to communicate via telepathy. Always had.

      ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

      ‘It would be no trouble at all but we’re fully booked at the moment, honey.’ Her mum made a face of apology.

      Ella couldn’t work out quite how she felt at the term of endearment.

      ‘If you’d rung I could have saved you something but with this weather…’ Her mum pointed out the window towards the slowly sinking sun, ‘… you are more than welcome to share the upstairs room with Maddy.’

      ‘What?’ Maddy, who had been leaning against the larder door chewing on a stick of celery, suddenly stood up straight, incensed.

      ‘It’s a big room, Mads.’ her mum said, and Ella thought she saw her raise her eyebrows at Maddy as if telling her to suck it up.

      Ella nodded. ‘Oh don’t worry, I can try and find a room elsewhere.’

      ‘There’s nothing, Ella.’ Her mum shook her head. ‘Of the apartments that haven’t closed for the season, there’s nothing left. People are even letting out their own bedrooms to cash in at the moment. Honestly, the room upstairs is lovely and quite big enough for the two of you.’

      Maddy skulked away and stood in the doorway with her back to them.

      A yellow-eyed white cat jumped down from the sea wall and sauntered over to weave its way through Maddy’s legs.

      Her mum cocked her head to one side. ‘The only other place I can think of where there might be something is one of the hotels on the other side of the island but really, you’re quite welcome to stay.’

      Before Ella could come up with a reasonable excuse and start calling round the hotel chains, there was a sudden hacking cough from next to her and a snorting sound that seemed to signal her grandfather waking up. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘I forgot where I was for a second.’ Then rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he sat up further in his chair, reached for his glasses on the table next to him and said, ‘Well if it isn’t Eleanor, goodness me, look at you. All dressed up for this old place.’ he said, laughing the same croaky, husky laugh that Maddy had inherited. ‘You here, Maddy in London. I don’t know. Can’t keep up with any of you.’

      Ella watched Maddy’s head shoot up with a look of horror.

      ‘I didn’t know you were going to London, Maddy.’ Ella said, wondering whether she would have told her she was in town. Her next thought was that she didn’t want Maddy in London. London was hers, she thought. Then right deeper down, a tiny bit of her said that it wanted to make sure that she wasn’t going on her own, Maddy would be completely out of her depth. In the last however many years she’d only been off the island to go to Athens, as far as Ella knew. She ignored that voice.

      ‘She’s not going.’ Sophie said, emphatically, walking back to the counter, pausing to stroke Maddy’s hair absentmindedly as she went past.

      Ella frowned as she watched Maddy glance to one side, her jaw seemingly locked rigid in place.

      Instinctively Ella reached up and touched her ponytail, greasy now from travelling, and wondered when the last time her mum had stroked her hair was.

      Her phone beeped.

      She pulled her hand away from her ponytail and was reading the text in an instant.

      Max.

      Please don’t stay away too long.

      It was like a scene in ER. The phone defibrillating her heart back to life. Her blood was suddenly pumping through her veins again. Like she’d reached the surface and could breathe.

      ‘I’ve just got to reply to this, sorry, it’s work.’ she said, stepping outside for a second and turning her back so they wouldn’t see the beaming smile on her face.

      I need a couple of days at least to think. Ella wrote. She didn’t want to give in too easily.

      Understood. I’ll be at the club, flat too lonely without you. Tree v sad you’re gone.

      She smiled as she put the phone back in her bag. She’d let him stew for a bit, just give him time to put a stop to anything that might have been going on with Amanda, then go back for a Christmas full of apologies, make-up gifts, make-up sex. They could have that dinner at Claridge’s, go and buy oysters for Christmas Eve at Borough Market, stroll hand in hand down the Southbank, his arm tight around her shoulders, and then snuggle up in a black cab home. They’d be back on track. Back in their perfect life. He had chosen Ella. And for that she could turn a blind eye to a small hiccup, as he’d said, it was almost as if she’d expected it from him. Now though, she’d go back and be better. She’d never mention it again. In the cold light of her mum and Maddy’s life in Greece, suddenly home with Max seemed like the only place she belonged, and she couldn’t wait to get back.