Once Upon A Christmas Night.... Annie Claydon

have accommodated an army of caterers.

      He raised an eyebrow. ‘He was mostly working. Mum used to bring me over, and half the time we’d just make our own entertainment because my father was locked away in the study, on the phone.’

      ‘But she still brought you.’ A picture of Rosa, walking her young son across the fields so that he could see his father, floated into her head. How must she have felt when the boy was ignored?

      ‘My mother was an eternal optimist where my father was concerned. She always encouraged me to see him.’ He dumped the kettle down onto the range and lit the gas underneath it.

      In this house, he seemed surrounded by things he didn’t want to talk about. But he’d come here. He’d brought her here. On some level he must be aware of that, and that the seemingly complicated tangle of his relationship with his father wasn’t going to straighten itself out all on its own.

      ‘So this is where you grew up?’ She settled herself onto one of a long row of kitchen stools.

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘And you didn’t see much of your father.’

      ‘Nope. Not a lot.’

      She’d hit a sore spot, but she kept pressing. Sometimes you had to do that. ‘But your parents were on good terms?’

      He barked out a short laugh. ‘Yeah. She loved him, and in his way he loved her. They just had very different priorities. And it’s not particularly easy to maintain a relationship with someone who only has about five uninterrupted minutes a day to spend with you.’

      ‘No. I imagine not.’ Jess wondered whether Greg was talking about his mother’s relationship with his father or his own. Probably a bit of both. ‘Neither of them married again?’

      ‘Not straight away. But that doesn’t mean they were secretly yearning to get back together. My father had his share of women friends. They loved the lifestyle for a while and then realised that they’d always be playing second fiddle to his work. And my mother remarried when I was fifteen. The local doctor. You’ll meet Ted when we go over there.’ There was sudden warmth in his voice.

      ‘So it was his footsteps you followed in.’

      ‘Guess so. Mum made him wait, but he was always there when I was a kid. He’d take us out somewhere every weekend, we used to have great adventures together.’

      ‘But they never moved away from here?’

      ‘Why should they? Ted’s practice is down in the village. This is my mother’s home much more than it ever was my father’s.’ He shrugged. ‘Although he came back here at the end.’

      ‘You mean he died here?’

      Greg nodded. ‘He hadn’t told anyone that he had cancer. But when he turned up here, two days after Christmas last year, it was obvious that he was ill. My mother called me, and I arranged for him to be seen by a specialist. My mother looked after him, right up until the end.’

      ‘That was a nice thing to do.’

      ‘Yeah. She’s a nice person. I think somehow my father reckoned that he could correct some of the mistakes he’d made, but it was too late.’ He poured the tea and set a cup in front of her on the marble worktop. ‘Does that cover it?’

      ‘I don’t know. Does it?’ Greg’s secrets ran deeper than this. Nothing that he’d said explained the eight-month absence after his father’s death. Or the air of weariness that broke through whenever he talked about his father.

      ‘Difficult to say. Would you like to see the house?’

      ‘Why not?’