Tilda was reclining on the sofa, resplendent today in an orange satin blouse and a long black skirt, though I thought she looked a little tired under the lavish makeup. Jess was sitting on the floor doing a vampire jigsaw on the coffee table, the lid with its gory picture propped up in front of her.

'There aren't enough corners,' she said by way of greeting.

'Life's like that sometimes,' I commiserated. 'Or sometimes there are too many.'

She gave me a look from under her fringe.

'Have you tried the phone up at the house today? Only you'll find it keeps going dead, because of the wind,' Tilda said.

'The wind?'

'Blows the wires about, but it's much worse than usual,' Noel said. 'We hadn't noticed until George Froggat he owns Hill Farm further up the lane told us. One of the poles is leaning at an angle between here and the village, so the wire is practically down. He called BT and they say it'll be after Christmas before they can get someone up here to look at it, but those poles have wanted replacing the last two years and more.'

'That's a nuisance,' I said, but thinking that at least it might spare me one or two of Jude Martland's irritating calls!

'It will be if it falls right down and cuts us off completely,' he agreed. 'Jess's mobile works, but not terribly well.'

'And only if I walk down the lane towards the village,' Jess said. 'Uncle Jude phoned when we got back yesterday and the phone was a bit dodgy even then, wasn't it, Grandpa?'

'Very, I could only hear what he was saying intermittently.'

'I suppose he was fretting about Lady again?'

'Her name did crop up,' he admitted. 'But then he said something about you coping, so I expect he has realised that everything will be absolutely fine. The line went dead after that and he didn't try and ring back again.'

'Anyone would think we would all fall apart without his lordship home,' Tilda scoffed. 'But even when he is here, he spends most of his time shut up in his studio.'

'Did you want me to get you anything from the village?' I offered.

'George brings us the paper every morning, that's why he stopped by, but you could fetch us a bottle of sherry from the pub,' Tilda said. 'In fact, you should have lunch there; they do a good ploughman's or a pot pie.'

'Do they? That would be nice,' I said, remembering that I hadn't had lunch yet and breakfast seemed an awfully long time ago, 'but I'll have to do it another day because I wouldn't be able to take Merlin in.'

'Oh, the Daggers won't mind.'

'The who?'

'Daggers. The Dagger family have always had the Auld Christmas. In fact, Nicholas Dagger plays the part of Auld Man Christmas in the Revels on Twelfth Night,' Noel said. 'Jude is Saint George and I used to be the Dragon, only I've had to hand the part on to a younger man.'

'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 Christma.s.sy 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,' Noel 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,' Noel 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 cla.s.smates, 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.

'He forgets to eat and I'm sure he hardly ever cooks,' Jess explained, leading the way to the third and final door. 'He does have something hot in the pub occasionally, though, if Henry calls for him on the way there.'

'Speak of the devil,' I muttered, because the old gardener had presumably heard the knocking next door and come out from curiosity already.

'Afternoon,' he said to me and then added to Jess, 'if those are more of Tilda's blasted burnt offerings, then you can keep them!'

'These aren't burnt,' Jess said. 'And if you don't want them, just give them to Richard, he seems keen on them. Oh, and remind him about the Senior Citizens lunch tomorrow and don't let the minibus go without him.' She thrust the package at him. 'Right, now we've got other things to do. Bye, Henry.'

'Women!' Henry muttered, closing the door.

We pa.s.sed the little church in its neat graveyard. Next to it was a dark-green painted corrugated iron building, little more than a shed, that according to a sign was the parish hall, but the rest of the village was across a small stone bridge over the stream, where we were nearly flattened by a big, glossy four-wheel-drive vehicle taking it too fast.

It stopped and reversed, nearly getting us again, and the side window slid down to reveal a pair of annoyed, puzzled faces.

'Where's the Great Mumming road?' demanded the driver, who was shaven-headed and seemed to have been designed without a neck, since his chin just ran away into his chest. 'The SatNav says we can turn down to the motorway from there.'

'This little lane can't be it, can it?' said the woman next to him, resting a handful of blue talons along the window. 'We must have missed the turn.'

'No, this is the road to Great Mumming but only if you're a sheep,' Jess said. 'That's why people keep following their SatNavs.'

'Are you being cheeky?' the man said belligerently.

'No, she's simply being truthful,' I said quickly. 'Apparently it isn't much more than a track so the SatNav has an error. You'd be better off turning round and going back down the way you came.'

'Left at the bottom of the hill and you'll get to Great Mumming,' Jess put in.

'Oh, b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, what a total waste of time!' he said.

Without a word of thanks the window slid up, the car shot forward, turned noisily in front of the church, and then streaked past us going the other way again. But we were ready for it and had run across the bridge and onto the pavement.

'Charming,' I said.