Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

‘That’s because there are hardly any left in my handbag,’ Coco said sulkily. ‘I only wanted a few more.’

‘I’m afraid I flushed them all away — cutting out the middle woman, as it were,’ I confessed and then she slightly hysterically accused me of wanting to ruin her figure, her career and her entire life.

Tilda told her she should be grateful someone cared about her health, but if she found herself constipated she would brew her up a nice dose of senna pods.

That seemed to have a remarkably calming effect.

Jude did remember to come back for supper, which was just sausage rolls, tomatoes (the very last of the salad), smoked salmon sandwiches and more microwave cake and meringues (with swirls of squirty cream, of course). We’ll all be as fat as pigs by New Year.

Guy had noticed some additions to the jigsaw and accused me of putting them there, as if it was a crime. When I admitted my guilt, he said pettishly that since I was so good at it I might as well finish the whole thing.

He and Coco have so much in common, it’s a pity they didn’t make a go of it!

I told him I’d got it for everyone to share and we’d all done a bit of it, even Coco (probably the upside-down bits in the wrong place), so he could stop throwing his rattle out of the pram.

‘Hear, hear!’ said Becca.

Honestly, hurt male pride over something as trivial as a jigsaw? And okay, beating him at snooker and then Scrabble first probably didn’t help. .

I would quite happily have continued playing Monopoly, Scrabble or Cluedo with the others all evening, but no, Coco had us all practising our scenes in the play again, though mainly she just wanted an audience to watch her unintentionally hamming it up with poor Michael. I think it’s called overacting.

However, I caught the bug and started hamming it up a bit myself — and then, to my surprise, Jude began playing up to me, so it was not such a drag as it might have been.

I fell asleep last night on another of those long, moralising passages from Gran’s journal, this time describing what Mr Bowman said in his prayers (which obviously he must have said aloud, since she wasn’t telepathic) and how grateful she was that he hadn’t turned her away like her parents had.

Then she compared her lot at length to some scene in The Pilgrim’s Progress, which apparently had a Slough of Despond, though that does seem a bit harsh on Slough.

Times were so different then: I still couldn’t understand how Ned could have been so heartless as to abandon her.

When I let Merlin out, I saw that it hadn’t snowed any more, but nor did the winter wonderland show signs of going away any time soon: it was all deep and crisp and even, as the carol says.

Jude was downstairs again soon after I was, but I don’t mind if it becomes a habit, since he doesn’t get in my way while I’m making my preparations for the day. In fact, it’s handy having someone to ply me with cups of tea or coffee while I’m working, tend the fire and do other odd jobs around the house, though so far he’s shown no sign of taking me up on the vacuuming.

Becca was down quite early too, but Jess has now been let off morning horse mucking-out duties, to her huge relief. I expect she’s already in training to become nocturnal when she’s a teenager.

This morning’s first task had been to remove the remaining meat from the turkey carcass and put the bones on the stove to simmer for stock. Then I turned what was left — which was a surprising amount, really — into a good spicy curry to go into the freezer. A few bits of turkey found their way into Merlin, too.

I’d finished this and the kitchen was filled with the aroma of gently simmering stock and rich spices by the time Becca and Jude came back in from the stables, adding a not-unpleasant hint of warm horse and hay to the mix.

‘Something smells good,’ Jude said appreciatively.

‘It’s just stock and turkey curry for the freezer.’

‘What are you doing now?’ asked Becca. ‘Isn’t that the old mincing machine?’

‘Yes, I found it in one of the drawers.’ I finished screwing it down firmly on the edge of the kitchen table. ‘I’m making mince for burgers — that’s what we’re having for dinner tonight.’

‘What, you’re turning my best steaks from the freezer into burgers?’ demanded Jude predictably, spotting them on a plate.

‘There aren’t enough steaks for everyone, but minced up there is enough to make burgers — and they’ll be delicious, you’ll see,’ I promised, turning the handle briskly.

‘I have to believe you,’ he said, watching me with that now-familiar quirk of the lips, ‘everything else you’ve cooked so far has been!’

‘It certainly has and Jude should offer you a permanent job,’ Becca suggested with a grin.

‘He couldn’t afford me.’

‘Yes I could, I can’t imagine why you persist in assuming I’m on my uppers.’ He paused on his way out, presumably to change and shave, since he was back to the Mexican bandit look. ‘Can we have chips with the burgers?’

‘You can have my version of them, done in a baking tin in the oven with a little olive oil and a few herbs.’

When he came back, looking about as civilised as a Yeti can get, he helped me to cook breakfast for everyone again before he went off to the studio, reminding me to come down after lunch and bring him something to eat, so clearly the pattern of our days is now going to be like this. Perhaps he just wants me on tap, in case of a sudden urge to check the pose, or something? Or then again, it may be just a cunning ruse to get his lunch delivered daily until Edwina returns to the lodge.

After breakfast Tilda got up and she, Noël and Becca decided to watch an old film on video — they seem to especially love musicals.

Jess and Guy were all for going out with the sledges again, but I think Michael would have been quite happy to carry on sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and discussing recipes with me; except that Coco said that if he wasn’t going out they could practise their love scenes together, and he changed his mind. In the end we all went out, though I came in earlier than the rest to make another chocolate blancmange rabbit for later, seeing as the first one hadn’t just gone down well with Jess, but had also been a surprise hit with everyone else. Then I set out a nice lunch of turkey and ham pie, warm garlic bread (garlic paste and ready-to-bake baguettes from the larder) and the last of the tinned pâté.

When lunch was cleared I left for the studio with Jude’s substantial picnic and the big flask of coffee.

By then Coco had got her way and she and Michael were to practise their parts for the play this afternoon — only not alone, but with Noël helpfully reading mine and Jude’s parts and Jess in attendance as Props, wearing her crown.

Jude had finished making the armature and was welding bits of leaf-shaped metal together around it when I went into the studio, though he stopped and gave me a protective visor like the one he was wearing.

‘Sparks aren’t going to fly as far as the dais, are they?’ I asked, though I noticed Merlin had taken one look at his master and retired underneath it.

‘No, but the light from the torch is very bright, better to be safe than sorry,’ he said, and then went back to work. As yesterday, he just seemed to want to have me around, without actually needing me.

The torch was fuelled by two different sorts of gas cylinders and I thought it all looked a bit dangerous, though he seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

‘Are you really going to teach Jess to do that?’ I asked, pouring him a cup of coffee when he finally stopped to eat his late lunch.

‘Yes, why not?’ He sat down on the edge of the dais next to me. ‘It’s safe enough if I watch her all the time — I know what I’m doing. I’d like to leave it until she comes for part of the summer holidays, though, when she’ll be thirteen.’

‘Does she spend most of the school holidays with Noël and Tilda?’

‘It depends — her parents are away a lot. You’ll have gathered that Roz and her husband Nick study wildlife and make documentaries, so Jess does end up here with Noël and Tilda quite a bit. But sometimes she gets to fly out to exotic locations, too.’

‘You’re her favourite uncle, she cheered up no end once you came back.’

‘She’s seems to have taken a shine to you, too — like Merlin, she’s happiest if we are both in the same room!’

‘I’m sure I was just your stand-in and you’re her real security figure,’ I said. ‘She does seem surprisingly accepting about her parents being away so much and having to go to boarding school.’

‘Actually, she loves it. It’s a surprisingly old-fashioned and Enid-Blyton sort of school, where the girls can go riding and keep pets, but after thirteen they have to leave, so that will be difficult for her. It’s not how I’d want to bring up my children if I had any, would you?’ he said, and gave me a swift, sideways glance that I found impossible to interpret. ‘I’d want them around, not packed off somewhere away from home.’