‘I’m sure Holly isn’t interested in our local customs, you old fool,’ Tilda said.

‘I think they sound fascinating,’ I said politely, though I’ve never been a great one for Morris dancing and the like, and if this one was all Christmassy too, then that took the icing and the cherry off what was already a quite uninteresting cake.

‘It’s a pity you will miss it,’ Noël said.

‘Yes, I’ll be leaving that morning, because your nephew will be on his way home from the airport. Now, I’d better get going.’

‘Can I come down to the village with you?’ asked Jess. ‘In fact, can I come to lunch at the pub with you, too?’

‘Well, I—’ I began, hesitantly, glancing at her grandparents.

‘Not if you don’t want her to,’ Noël told me.

‘I’m afraid she is having a very boring holiday here in the lodge this year,’ Tilda said, ‘but that is no reason why she should impose herself on you if you don’t feel like company.’

I didn’t really mind and, even if I had, it would have been impossible to say so. I just hoped they were right about the pub letting in dogs. Jess went off to get her coat, which was of course black, and Tilda made her put on a beanie hat and gloves. Then, to her complete disgust, she handed her a wicker basket shaped like a coracle in which reposed three greaseproof-wrapped parcels.

‘Cheese straws,’ confided Jess once we were walking down the lane. ‘Granny keeps making them because they’re dead easy, but they don’t taste of anything much, especially cheese. They’re for the oldies in the almshouses.’

‘Oh yes, that’s the old Nanny—’

‘Everyone calls her Old Nan — she’s ninety something.’

‘And the retired vicar?’

‘Richard, Richard Sampson. He’s pretty old too, but he walks miles, though he’s a bit absent-minded and sometimes forgets to turn around and come back. People phone up Uncle Jude from miles away and he has to go and collect him in the car.’

‘Then let’s hope the weather keeps him at home until your uncle gets back! The other house is Henry the gardener’s isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but he’s pretty active too and although he’s retired he’s always up at Old Place.’

‘Yes, the walled garden and the generator do seem to be his chosen stamping grounds. He sounded a bit territorial about them.’

‘His daughter lives in the village and keeps an eye on him — she works in the Weasel Pot farm shop in summer. But Old Nan and Richard haven’t got any relatives left, they’re way too old, so they’re used to coming up to the house for Christmas Day dinner. I’m not sure what they’re going to do this year — I’m not even sure I’ve got it into their heads yet that it isn’t going to happen.’

I had another of those inconvenient pangs of conscience — which are so unfair, since none of this was my fault in the least!

‘Now Jude has gone away I wish Edwina, Granny and Grandpa’s housekeeper, were still here, because I think Granny’s Christmas lunch will be a major disaster,’ Jess said frankly. ‘And she’s overdoing things. I don’t really think she’s up to it.’

‘Mr Martland’s absence does seem to have made it very difficult: selfishly flouncing off when he must know that everyone depended on him!’

‘Yes, he’s a selfish pig,’ she agreed and sighed. ‘Even having Christmas dinner with Mo and Jim was something to look forward to, but now everything is so boring I was even glad to see Aunt Becca yesterday.’

‘Don’t you like her?’ I asked, surprised. ‘I thought she was very nice.’

‘I like her, but all she ever talks about is horses, fishing and shooting things and she didn’t even stop more than a couple of minutes because the wind was too cold to leave Nutkin tied up outside.’

‘She was a great help telling me what to do with Lady. A horse is quite a responsibility when you’re not used to looking after them.’

‘She said you were competent and capable and she didn’t see why there should be any problems.’

‘No, I don’t either, though it’s good to know I can get hold of someone who knows a lot more about horses than I do if a problem comes up.’

‘Aunt Becca said Mo and Jim left you the huge turkey and everything for the Christmas dinner we were having,’ Jess remarked with a sideways look at me from under her fringe. ‘Couldn’t you cook it instead, Holly?’

I was taken aback by her directness. ‘You haven’t been talking to your Uncle Jude, have you?’

‘No, it just seemed like a good idea.’

‘Well, it might do to you, but it’s not what I bargained for when I agreed to take this job! I do house-sitting so I can have a rest from cooking the rest of the year,’ I told her firmly, and her face fell. ‘And remember I said that I don’t celebrate Christmas anyway? In fact, I do my best to ignore it.’

‘Oh, that’s right, it’s against your religion.’

‘Strictly speaking, I don’t actually have a religion any more,’ I admitted, ‘but the grandparents who brought me up only celebrated the religious aspects of it — extra chapel services and readings from the gospels — so it’s not something I really miss.’

‘You mean when you were little there were no presents, or a Christmas stocking or anything?’ she demanded, turning stunned brown eyes up towards me.

‘No, there was nothing like that, and no big blow-out special dinner either, though Gran was a good plain cook. Her raised pork pie was legendary.’

Jess was unimpressed by pork pies in the face of my other childhood deprivations. ‘No tree, or decorations, or Father Christmas. .?’

‘No, though I secretly used to exchange presents with my best friend, Laura — I did a paper round, so I had some money of my own. But when I got married my husband loved all that side of Christmas, so we celebrated it just like everyone else. We’d buy the biggest tree we could tie on top of the car and load it down with lights and baubles; hang garlands and Chinese lanterns and make each other surprise stockings full of silly bits and pieces. . it was fun.’

But then, everything I’d done with Alan had been fun. .

‘Then why did you stop?’

‘Because he died,’ I said shortly. ‘It was just before Christmas and there didn’t seem any point in celebrating it at all after that.’

‘What did he die of?’ she asked with the directness of the young. ‘And was it ages ago?’

‘It was an accident. . eight years ago on Monday.’

This was an anniversary I usually marked quietly and alone, though the way things were going, that would not be an option here unless I stopped answering the door and took the phone off the hook.

‘What sort of accident?’

‘He fell through the ice on a frozen lake.’

‘I keep thinking my parents are going to fall through the ice in Antarctica and a killer whale or something will eat them,’ she confessed.

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so, I’m sure they know what they’re doing.’

‘Yes, but Mum tends to keep walking backwards with the camera.’

That did sound a bit dodgy.

‘A lion nearly got her once — I saw it. If they’re not home during the holidays I usually fly out to wherever they’re working, only I couldn’t really do that this time.’

‘No, I don’t think it would be very easy to get to Antarctica,’ I agreed. ‘By the time you got there it would probably be time to turn around and come back, too. You go to boarding school, don’t you?’

‘Yes and I quite like it really — I’ve got lots of friends.’

‘I used to get bullied because I never fitted in and I was always taller than my classmates, even the boys. There was a group of girls who made my life a misery — I was really self-conscious about my height.’

‘I get that a bit sometimes, but we all have a sixth-form mentor we can talk to and they sort it out for us.’

‘Sounds like a good idea. I wish we’d had something like that.’

We’d arrived at the village by now and Jess decided to offload the cheese straws first, starting with Old Nan, who when she answered the door was the size of a gnome and wrapped in a crocheted Afghan shawl. On her feet were fuzzy tartan slippers with pompoms and a turn-over collar that fitted snugly round her ankles.

Jess introduced us and said, ‘We’re not stopping, Nan, because we’re going to the shop and then the pub for lunch, but Granny sent you some more cheese straws.’

Old Nan took the parcel without much enthusiasm. ‘A body could do with something a bit tastier from time to time,’ she grumbled.

‘Well, you should try living at the lodge — it’s all lumpy mashed potato, tinned rice pudding and not much else at the moment,’ Jess said. ‘At least you all get to go over to Great Mumming tomorrow in a minibus for the WI Senior Citizens Christmas dinner so that will be a change, won’t it?’

‘If the weather holds, because there’s snow on the way. Not that it’s like dinner up at Old Place anyway. They use those gravy granules and tinned peas, you know.’

‘So does Granny. But I hope you’re right about the snow, because I’ve never seen really deep snow.’

‘Be careful what you wish for. And be off with you, if you won’t come in, I’m letting all the warm air out standing here like this.’ And she shuffled backwards and closed the door firmly.

‘She gets a bit grumpy when her rheumatism is playing up,’ Jess explained, stepping over a low dividing wall and knocking on the next door.

The retired vicar, Richard Sampson, was a small, wiry, white-haired man with vague cloud-soft grey eyes and an absent expression. He came to the door with his finger in his book to mark the page, and seemed to struggle to place Jess for a minute, let alone take in her introduction to me. Then a smile of great charm transformed him and he shook hands. Unlike Old Nan, he seemed genuinely pleased about the cheese straws.