Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

‘Thank you for telling me all that, though,’ I said. ‘I do feel so much better about Ned now I understand that he did really love her, in his way. And she never forgot him, you know: just before she died she said his name and smiled, and I’m sure she could see him in the room.’

Jess, who’d been obediently silent throughout, now piped up, ‘Does that make you my auntie, even if you don’t marry Uncle Jude, Holly?’

‘I suppose I am, in a distant sort of way,’ I agreed. ‘But there’d be no question of me marrying Jude even if we weren’t cousins, so it’s all academic.’

‘But people do marry their cousins, don’t they?’ she insisted, but fortunately by then Noël, Becca, Tilda and even Guy had gathered around me to warmly welcome me into the family, the missing Martland come home: a bit like the one ewe-lamb that was lost in the parable Gran used to tell me when I was little.

Jude went off down to the studio and took Jess with him, though she had to promise not to go anywhere near him while he was welding. I hoped he would tell her to drop the whole matchmaking idea, because if he did have any designs on me, they were not likely to be marital but more of the quick-fling variety. He’d made it clear he was not looking for anything more. . and so had I, come to that.

Still, feeling a flush of sudden warmth towards the world, I made Coco an egg white omelette, which looked vile, and took it through to her with a glass of fizzy water. She was in the morning room huddled miserably in front of the TV, though due to a burst of snowy interference it was hard to tell what she was watching. She actually thanked me for the omelette, though she did say that fizzy mineral water made you fat.

‘Spoil yourself,’ I said encouragingly, leaving her to it while I went back to the kitchen to study my recipes and whip up a dessert to follow tonight’s fatted calf — or fatted pike, in this case.

The drive is now clear of snow, even if it is still banked up on either side of it, and right after breakfast there was a loud tooting of horns and we all poured out to see that Liam and Ben had towed Coco’s sports car up to the door.

It was distinctly battered around the rear bumper and they’d gaffer-taped one end of the registration plate to the back to stop it completely falling off.

‘Oh my God,’ Coco exclaimed, clutching a hastily-snatched waxed coat (how the mighty are fallen!) around her thin shoulders. ‘My poor car!’

‘Better have it looked at by the garage in Great Mumming, before trying to drive it anywhere very far,’ advised Liam.

‘Yes, these low sports cars are useless on snow anyway and even if you made it to the motorway, you’d be blinded by spray from other vehicles,’ Ben said critically. Then he spotted a bashful Jess and said kindly, ‘Hello, we’ve heard you’ve taken to swimming in ice holes like they do in Sweden and places!’

She blushed. ‘I just fell in. I thought it was completely frozen, but the bit right in the middle wasn’t.’

‘Done it myself years ago, when we were skating on it,’ Ben admitted. ‘Do you remember, Liam? Soaked me to the skin and I went home freezing.’

Jess brightened. ‘Oh, did you?’

‘She still wasn’t supposed to be down near the river on her own,’ Jude pointed out.

‘Well, I don’t expect she’ll do it again — I didn’t,’ Ben said.

‘How are the roads doing?’ asked Jude.

‘I don’t expect there’s any sign of the main one being cleared and my car dug out?’ Michael asked hopefully. ‘Not that I’m in a hurry to get away, but I don’t want to be a burden on you for longer than I can help it, Jude — you’ve been very kind.’

‘I’m in a hurry,’ Coco said. ‘I’m desperate to get out of here!’

‘We saw the snowplough go through on the Great Mumming road earlier, but no traffic’s been through yet. Maybe later today,’ Liam said. ‘But you can’t get down to it anyway yet, because the hill below Weasel Pot is too bad. It might be all right tomorrow, if it keeps thawing like this.’

‘Me and Dad walked down first thing and the end of Weasel Pot Lane is one big snowdrift, though it’s sinking. You can see the red roof of your car,’ Ben added consolingly to Michael, ‘so the snowplough didn’t run into it by mistake. Often happens, that does.’

‘Oh. . that’s good,’ Michael said nervously. ‘Thank goodness I didn’t buy a white car — and I’ll certainly never follow SatNav again!’

‘If the Three Wise Men had had SatNav, goodness knows where they would have ended up,’ agreed Noël, who had delayed coming out long enough to wrap himself in his overcoat, deer-stalker hat with flaps and scarf.

‘If there’s a bit more of a thaw tomorrow, we could go down and dig your car right out,’ suggested Guy. ‘Then it’ll be even easier to spot. It’s pulled off the road, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Jude helped me push it onto the verge. . or where we thought the verge was, because it was a bit hard to tell at the time.’

‘I could come back to London in your car with you when it’s clear, couldn’t I?’ Coco suggested, fluttering her false eyelashes at Michael hopefully, his rebuff clearly forgotten in her eagerness to get away. ‘The AA can rescue mine later.’

‘I’m going to see the friends I was to visit first — and actually, I’d thought of finding somewhere local to stay so I could watch the Twelfth Night Revels: I’ve heard so much about them now that I can’t bear to leave without being there. Though I won’t mention it when I leave, of course.’

‘Good man!’ Noël said.

‘You’re one of us,’ Becca agreed.

‘And naturally you’re welcome to stay here for it,’ Jude said, though not altogether enthusiastically.

Coco was pouting. ‘I don’t want to stay for some stupid Morris dancing that no-one cares about anyway. Guy, you’ll just have to drive me home, that’s all there is to it. Then I never want to see you ever again.’

‘I’m not leaving before Twelfth Night either,’ Guy said.

‘But last year we did!’

‘Yes, but that was because I’d just had a punch-up with Jude. I don’t have to get back to work until afterwards, so I might as well stay.’

‘I think you’re all mad — I just want to get home!’ she wailed.

‘I do think that the least you can do is take Coco back home, Guy,’ Jude said. ‘It’s your fault she got stuck here after all, and anyway, you never take part in the Revels.’

Guy raised a quizzical dark eyebrow at his brother. ‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’

‘I certainly feel my days have been enlivened by your company for long enough.’

‘We could dig my car out tomorrow too, it’s sitting in a snow-drift behind the house,’ I suggested.

‘Why? You’re not going anywhere yet,’ Jude snapped at me rudely, then brushed past into the house, only to reappear a few minutes later ready to go down to the studio. ‘I’ll expect you after lunch,’ he tossed at me in passing.

‘Holly is Jude’s muse,’ Becca explained to the boys, who looked blank.

‘And she’s a distant cousin,’ added Noël. ‘Isn’t that lovely? One of the family.’

‘Everyone’d guessed that already,’ Liam said.

I did go down to the studio as ordered, but diverted long enough to give Laura a quick update on what had been happening, mostly the edited lowlights, like being outed to the entire family as an illegitimate relative, until I told her about the accident.

‘But you could both easily have died!’ she exclaimed, horrified. ‘Thank goodness Jude heard you! Are you really all right?’

‘Fine — but afterwards I fell to pieces, because it made me realise that Alan couldn’t have stopped himself running onto the ice to rescue that dog — sheer instinct takes over in that sort of situation and I’d have done just the same for Merlin. It was. . cathartic. I cried buckets over Jude Martland and he was very comforting.’

‘So there you are, he has a kind heart!’

‘And then he kissed me. Or I kissed him — he’d put a lot of whisky in my tea for the shock and I wasn’t myself. He could give George lessons,’ I added thoughtfully.

‘Holly!’

‘Don’t get excited: he was the one who stopped. He said he hadn’t meant to take advantage of me when I was upset. . but he’d probably just thought better of it. I told him it didn’t matter, it was just shock and whisky, and we’d forget it.’

‘Is that possible?’

‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘Apart from him being my cousin, he’s already made it plain he’s not looking for any long-term commitment and I’m not about to repeat Gran’s mistakes with another Martland male, either.’

I didn’t dwell on my increasingly confused feelings about Jude, but I’m sure she read between the lines because she knows me too well.

Jude stopped working straight away when I went into the studio and wolfed down his lunch, so he must have been hungry. After that, he feverishly drew sketch after sketch of me with Merlin, almost as if he suspected I might suddenly vanish into thin air, before going back to his welding.

He was stripped to his T-shirt again. . and it’s no use: I may know he’s not my type and he’s out of bounds because he’s my cousin — but my God, I have to admit there’s something terribly sexy about him when he’s welding!