Chapter 28
AS AUTUMN MORPHED into winter, Margery, Johnny and Helena fell into a natural harmony as cohabitees.
Helena and Johnny had a rota for the shopping, with Helena doing her share on her days off, sometimes accompanied by Margery.
She felt it was the least she could do to make up for her pitifully small rent.
In the evenings, Margery liked to watch old episodes of Poirot, for which Helena and Johnny would often join her, curled up under blankets by a roaring fire.
In the mornings, Johnny was always up and out for a run at the crack of dawn, and Margery rose after Helena had already left for work, so there was no clash in terms of bathroom usage.
At the weekends, they cooked, baked and walked the dogs together.
Sometimes, if Margery didn’t feel up to it, Helena and Johnny would go for a longer walk up in the hills.
She realised how nice it was not to feel pressured to exercise unless she felt like it, how much she preferred walking, or going for a gentle jog, to the hill sprints and HIIT workouts Noah had made her do.
Likewise with the food she prepared, Margery and Johnny were always grateful and always complimented her cooking.
It felt wonderful to be able to cook whatever she fancied, not having to stick to Noah’s strict calorie count and dietary requirements.
She worked her way through all her favourite bakes, enjoying watching Margery and Johnny’s reactions to her recipes and taking sheer pleasure in each mouthful of deliciousness she ate.
Slowly, Helena began to gain a few pounds to replace some of the weight the heartbreak had caused her to shed.
The weight gain suited her, even Johnny had told her so.
Her cheeks filled out, her curves returned, her skin improved, her hair became shinier.
She began to feel genuinely joyful again, as if the broken pieces of her shattered heart were slowly being glued back together.
In the run up to Christmas, Johnny, Margery and Helena drove to the garden centre and chose a tree for the sitting room.
The fresh scent of pine needles filled the room as they hung decorations, drinking champagne at Margery’s insistence and listening to carols.
Helena made a wreath to hang on the front door, something her mother had taught her and that she had done each year in her memory, until she had moved in with Noah, who had insisted on having a fake tree and a fake wreath to avoid mess.
She dried orange slices in the Aga, tying them up with cinnamon sticks and red ribbons, and nestling them amongst pinecones, foliage and holly.
She also made a Christmas cake, packed full of dried fruit and brandy.
She chose and wrapped presents for Margery and Johnny, placing them under the tree, trying not to think about all the joyful traditions she was missing out on with Raffy, of writing letters to Santa, the excited anticipation of it all.
A few days before Christmas Day, Johnny asked whether Helena and Margery would be happy if Nathalie and her children joined them for Christmas dinner, necessitating a last-minute shopping trip to choose suitable gifts.
Apparently, Johnny had learned that they had no plans and that Nathalie, being a disastrous cook, would be offering her family microwaved turkey meatballs.
This idea had appalled Johnny, who had insisted that they come and join their meal instead, horrified at the thought of anyone having to eat such a poor substitute for Christmas dinner and all the trimmings.
Helena was glad of the opportunity to see Nathalie again, to get to know her a bit better.
Despite her resolution to stop and chat to her the next time she had seen her out and about, they’d barely crossed paths.
She hadn’t realised Johnny and Nathalie had met.
She wondered how they’d got talking, whether Johnny and Nathalie were interested in each other romantically.
With his trimmed but somehow always scruffy beard, rumpled clothes and crinkly eyes, she knew he wouldn’t be everybody’s type but there was something appealing about him.
And Nathalie was gorgeous. She could probably date anybody she wanted.
Helena felt a rumble of jealousy at the thought, instantly reprimanding herself for her bitterness.
Just because she had the worst love life known to man and way too much emotional baggage to appeal to anyone, didn’t mean that everyone else deserved the same.
It was perfectly natural for two single, attractive people living within close proximity to seek each other out and couple up.
Instead of dreading the idea of Christmas without Raffy and Noah, much to her surprise Helena found herself actually looking forward to it, despite missing Raffy more than ever.
She missed the excitement of counting down each day as he opened his advent calendar with mounting joy.
She missed tracking down the presents he had written on his list to Santa, the anticipation of his pure wonder as he unwrapped his stocking, his imagination running wild with the miracle of it all.
She knew she would miss him terribly on the day itself and could only hope that he was happily celebrating it somewhere else in the world, that someone else would take the trouble to spoil him, to let him know how incredibly special he was.
On Christmas morning Johnny prepared a delicious breakfast of baked ham and poached eggs, croissants, coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice.
Then he drove them to the neighbouring village to attend church.
Helena was wearing a festive bright red coat she had recently found in the charity shop near work, with lipstick to match.
It was the first time she had worn colour in a long time, and she felt empowered, knowing how much Noah would have hated it.
Margery had even wolf-whistled as she had pulled it on at the door, and she could tell Johnny thought it looked good too from his raised eyebrows of approval, which secretly delighted her.
Helena loved going to church on Christmas Day, she had done so every year of her life.
Despite her mother being more spiritual than religious there was something about the tradition they had all loved.
The last few years she had been by herself, for there was no way Noah was ‘dragging himself out into the cold to sit with some OAPs on a wooden pew and listen to some boring arse drone on about a baby’.
It made a lovely change to have Margery and Johnny to sit next to.
Margery kept telling them how happy she was not to be by herself for once this Christmas.
Helena couldn’t bear the thought of her all alone for all those years.
Funnily enough, she remembered sitting next to Margery the first year she had moved into the village.
She had barely known her name, smiling politely and muttering ‘Happy Christmas’ as Margery had taken her seat alongside her in the pew.
It struck her how far they had come in their friendship, how she and Johnny had become a sort of surrogate family for her over the past four months.
She couldn’t think of two people she had ever liked more.
*
Margery may not have been allowed to sing but she could certainly belt out a tune on the piano.
Suitably tanked up on copious amounts of champagne in her attempt to drown out the pain of missing Raffy, Helena found she had lost all her inhibitions as she sang ‘Good King Wenceslas’ at the top of her lungs, joining Nathalie, Johnny, Meg and Maisy in a singalong as Margery worked her way through a book of Christmas carols.
Ted, who had refused point blank to join in, was lying sprawled out on the sofa, with Trevor, Tammy and Terry draped across his body at various intervals.
He was working his way through a mammoth bag of jelly beans, despite having already eaten his body weight in Christmas lunch.
Meg and Maisy, also full of sugar from the non-stop consumption of chocolate that, according to Nathalie, had started at five in the morning upon discovery of their stockings at the foot of their bunk beds, bounced off the walls with energy.
They twirled and pirouetted around Margery’s small living room like whirling dervishes, collapsing into fits of giggles, the hats from their Christmas crackers falling over their eyes.
Johnny had surprised Helena by whipping out an old fiddle of Jeremy’s.
She hadn’t known he could play, but clearly the musical genes were strong in their family.
He accompanied whatever tune Margery played while tapping his foot and singing in an impressive baritone.
Nathalie grabbed hold of Helena, her big green eyes shining with merriment, slightly unsteady having consumed at least as much champagne.
They swayed as they sang ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’, bopping in rhythm to the music.
‘You must come over for dinner,’ Nathalie announced after the singalong had come to an end and they had collapsed in a heap on the sofa. The children had been sent out to give the dogs a run around in the garden, with Ted reluctantly in charge.
‘I’d love to,’ Helena replied.
‘Let’s swap numbers and we can get a date in the diary,’ Nathalie said, pulling out her phone. She deftly tapped the numbers Helena recited into her contacts.
‘Oh god,’ she groaned, wincing at something on her screen.
‘What is it?’ Johnny asked, a raised eyebrow arching in amusement from across the room.
He was sitting in the only other available chair, with Margery having taken herself off to her bedroom for a much-needed rest. ‘Fan mail from one of your many secret admirers?’ Johnny smiled.
Nathalie threw a cushion at him and Helena wondered whether he was hinting at being one of them.