‘Is that George?’ called Noël from the kitchen. ‘Tell him to come through!’

‘I can’t stop,’ George called back, but walked up the passage anyway, while I lingered to put the holly and mistletoe in the utility room together with the hyacinth, until I could find it a saucer to stand on.

Despite what he’d said, he was sitting at the kitchen table when I went in and Noël was pouring him a mug of slightly stewed tea.

I put a plate of mince pies in front of him and, sniffing the air as appreciatively as a truffle hound, he said, ‘Something smells good in here!’

‘That’s the ham cooking. . and maybe the cake I made earlier.’

While he consumed a succession of mince pies he told us what the lane down to the main road was like, which was pretty bad for anything except four-wheel-drive vehicles, especially the last steep, bendy stretch from Weasel Pot Farm.

‘Their lad Ben’s doing a roaring trade, pulling the SatNav people out of the ditch on the first corner. They get partway up it, then slide down again.’

‘You’d think they would take one look and realise the SatNav was wrong,’ Noël said.

‘More money than sense, buying those things in the first place,’ George said.

‘But the postman got up it all right?’ I asked.

‘He’s got a Post Office Land Rover and he’s used to it,’ he explained. ‘Did you make these mince pies yourself, flower?’

They were quite small, but even so, I’d never seen anyone put a whole one in their mouth before. I nodded, fascinated.

‘They’re champion — you’re a grand cook as well as a strapping lass,’ he said with approval.

Jess giggled and he grinned at her. ‘And you’ll be another strapping lass too, when you’ve finished growing.’

Jess blushed, but actually I think she was quite pleased.

‘The forecast says more snow is likely on higher ground,’ Noël said, ‘so I suppose we might get cut off.’

‘Maybe, though we usually manage to keep the lane to the village open, don’t we? But you couldn’t get even the tractor over the Snowehill road to Great Mumming, now.’ George consumed the last mince pie on the plate as though he was popping Smarties, then got up. ‘Well, I’ll be going: the dog’s on the tractor and it’s bitter out there. I’ll drop you more greenery off later, Holly, you’ll want it for the decorations — this first lot’s more of a token gesture. And maybe you’ll have hung the mistletoe up in the porch when I come back,’ he added with unmistakable intent, and it was my turn to blush.

‘Oh yes, we must hang up the mistletoe later,’ Noël agreed, ‘and have lots of green stuff in the sitting room. We were just about to go up into the attic and bring down the decorations when you arrived.’

‘Then I’ll leave you to it.’

Noël showed him out, while Jess got the giggles. ‘George fancies you!’

I carried on sedately stacking the mince pie plate and the mugs in the dishwasher. ‘He fancies my cooking, Jess, that’s all.’

‘Do you think he’s nice-looking?’

‘Yes, he’s very handsome, in a rugged, outdoor kind of way.’

Noël came back in. ‘It’s bitter out there, isn’t it? And what are these two bags he’s brought?’

‘They’re your sister’s — I suppose she thought she might as well send her overnight things up with George while she had the chance, in case the weather worsens. Jess, you could help me carry them up to her room while we’re going in that direction. Take the overnight bag and I’ll have the case.’

‘I’ll look through our mail later,’ Noël said.

‘There’s already a whole stack for Jude. It’s piled on that table in the front hallway,’ I told him.

‘I’ll bring it all in later and sort it out,’ he promised. ‘A lot of it is probably junk.’

We dumped the bags in the room that had been assigned to Becca and then Noël checked again on Tilda, who was fast asleep, before we carried on up past the nursery.

Jess gave the attic door a good shove and it opened reluctantly with a protesting screech.

‘Jude ought to get that fixed, it’s always sticking,’ Noël said, pressing down a light switch and illuminating a large space, well filled with the abandoned clutter and tat of centuries.

‘There’s another, smaller attic over the kitchen wing, but there’s nothing much in it, as I recall. In the days when there were several servants, I think some of them slept there.’

‘I hadn’t even noticed a way into it,’ I confessed.

‘It’s in a dark corner of the landing and looks like a cupboard door.’

‘That would account for it’.

Noël led the way to a dust-sheeted pile between a large trunk and a miscellany of broken chairs. ‘Here we are,’ he announced and Jess tore off the sheet eagerly.

‘We need all these boxes marked with a large C, and that red metal stand for the Christmas tree,’ he began, then noticed he’d lost my attention. ‘I see you are admiring the Spanish chest, m’dear?’

‘Yes, it looks ancient?’

‘Parts of the house are extremely old and the chest has always been here. We think it might be Elizabethan and came into the family when an ancestor married a Spanish bride, or perhaps a few years later. Did I mention that family legend has it that Shakespeare once visited Old Place, too?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘though it doesn’t surprise me, since they found those Shakespeare documents over at Sticklepond recently. He seems to have got about a bit, doesn’t he? You’d probably be hard-pressed to find any large house in West Lancashire that he wasn’t alleged to have visited!’

‘Very true!’ he acknowledged. ‘You know, until recently we used to act out Twelfth Night on New Year’s Eve: “If music be the food of love, play on. .”’ He sighed wistfully. ‘Oh well. .’

‘I’m not allowed to go in that chest for dressing-up things,’ Jess said.

‘No, the mumming costumes for the Revels are in it, though the heads are stored in the hayloft behind the Auld Christmas.’

‘The heads?’ I repeated.

‘The Dragon and Red Hoss and the Man-Woman’s hat and mask,’ he explained, though that didn’t make things much clearer: the opposite, if anything.

‘You know,’ he added, looking at me with a puzzled air, ‘you already feel so much like one of the family that I keep forgetting that you are not, and don’t know all our little ways and customs. But I have mentioned the Revels on Twelfth Night, haven’t I?’

I was glad to be thought of as one of the family, even though I was doubling as cook and general factotum, because I was in a strange position: it’s easier when I’m on cooking assignments, because then I’m definitely staff.

‘Is it Morris dancing? I’ve noticed the photographs, especially in the library.’

‘That’s right, dancing and a little play-acting — just a simple ceremony. .’ he said vaguely. ‘It takes place on the green in front of the Auld Christmas and has been performed for centuries, though of course there have been changes over the years. I’ll show you some more photographs after dinner, if you like?’

‘Thank you, that would be really interesting,’ I agreed, thinking that this might be a way of getting him to tell me more about his brother Ned.

‘Oh look — sledges!’ Jess said, spotting them leaning against the wall behind the boxes. ‘Two of them and they’re plastic, so they must have belonged to Uncle Jude and Guy.’

‘That’s right,’ Noël said. ‘There are a couple of old wooden ones around somewhere too, that we oldies had when we were children — or maybe they fell apart, I can’t remember.’

There was so much clutter; anything could be up there, including Santa and all his reindeer. It could do with a jolly good clear-out.

‘I think the blue one was Jude’s and the red one Guy’s, though I expect they fell out over that, too — Guy always wanted what his older brother had and they were forever squabbling.’

‘I suppose that’s natural,’ I said.

‘In a child, but perhaps not so allowable in an adult. . though now Guy’s getting married and settling down, I expect he will see things differently. There’s nothing like having children of your own to give you a new perspective on life.’

‘I was a mistake,’ Jess announced.

‘More of a very welcome surprise,’ amended her grandfather.

‘Would it be all right if I used one of the sledges, Grandpa?’

‘Take them both down, m’dear: perfect weather for sledging and perhaps Holly will join you. I wish my poor old bones were up to it,’ he added wistfully.

Jess carried the sledges downstairs first, then came back up and started ferrying down boxes of decorations to the sitting room. I took the tree stand and a carton marked ‘swags and door wreath’ while Noël clutched the box containing a precious antique hand-carved wooden Nativity scene. By the time we’d stacked everything in a corner of the sitting room, I had to go and start making lunch.

Tilda stubbornly insisted on coming downstairs and joining us for soup, egg sandwiches and chocolate cake. Apart from a slightly black eye, she looked a little better, though moving very stiffly. Afterwards she established herself on the sofa in the sitting room and exhibited a slight tendency to issue orders to all of us, but especially me, wanting to know exactly how I would be coping with the catering over Christmas. But I didn’t really mind that, because when I cook for house-parties I’m used to consulting over the menus, so I sat down with her for a good discussion.

‘Luckily the house is extremely well stocked and I always bring my cookery books, recipe notebook and favourite store cupboard ingredients with me, so there should be no problem. There’s a shelf of cookery books in the kitchen, too.’