I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,80

brought me up between them. I think it was quite obvious from an early age that I wasn’t going to marry a nice girl one day and continue the family line. They hoped I’d grow out of it but when they realised it wasn’t to be, they both came to terms with it and accepted me for who I was. Mum married again. She met a charmer of a man who whisked her up the aisle after getting her pregnant with my sister. After their wedding, he changed from Dr Jekyll into full-on Mr Hyde and decided to thrash my sexuality out of me. When my mother found out, she thrashed the living daylights out of him with her best frying pan and that was the end of that marriage. My mother and my grandmother stood by me when I went to prison and they were both waiting at the gates to take me home when I came out, battered and bruised.

‘I worked my bones off to give them everything they deserved for their unstinting love. Years later, I took them to a Royal Variety performance in the London Palladium, dripping in diamonds they were. They had their picture taken with the stars of the day since I knew most of them personally, because I’d loaned or sold them jewellery from my shops.’

‘We’ve got pictures of them all over the house,’ said Robin. ‘I never met Charlie’s grandmother but his mother became every bit my mother too. She was the best lady who ever lived. That’s where Charlie gets it from.’ Robin’s face melted into a soft smile.

‘And my father,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ve often wondered if he knew, even then, because I remember him saying to me, “Charlie, you are what God made you, don’t you ever forget that.” ’

‘How the world has changed,’ said Bridge.

‘I don’t much like the world as it is,’ said Charlie. ‘There’s so much hate flying around. And that’s why I’m enjoying this glorious bubble so much, just us, new friends and nothing but loveliness in the room.’

‘Anyone for Yorkshire puddings while I’m in the mood for making some batter? Speak now or forever hold your peace,’ called Luke from the kitchen.

‘YES,’ came the united answer.

Chapter 25

Luke had made everyone hats out of old broadsheet newspapers. Bridge hadn’t got him down as the origami type, but then she didn’t really know this version of Luke Palfreyman at all. Mary’s hat had tinsel around the top. The birthday girl hat, Luke called it. Charlie looked like an admiral, Bridge like a nurse. They put them on before taking their places at the table; Robin draped a tea towel over his arm and assumed the role of sommelier, filling everyone’s glass with red, white or rosé wine, according to their choice.

Jack and Luke brought out the turkey and bowls full of vegetables, Yorkshire puddings, stuffing, various sauces and pickles, everything that a Christmas dinner should consist of and more. There was barely enough room for it all on the long table, which Charlie had made an excellent job of dressing. He’d found a surfeit of red tablecloths and Christmas-patterned serviettes in a wooden sideboard, waiting in readiness for the paying diners who should have been turning up today. He had also found some ‘luxury’ crackers – according to the box – in there too, but seeing as Luke had gone to so much trouble with his home-made ones, he’d left them where they were. Also in the sideboard was a box of long, tapered red candles and an elaborate five-armed candelabra worthy of a place on Liberace’s piano. It made a fitting centrepiece. Luke’s newspaper crackers didn’t look at all out of place, positioned by the forks. In fact, co-ordinating with the hats, it could almost have been a designer ploy. But then Bridge had the belief that ‘shabby chic’ had started because someone had made a total cock-up of painting a chest of drawers and sold it with sales patter bullshit as a style that could really take off. And it did. You could pass anything off as anything else and charge a fortune for the privilege if you had enough chutzpah – and a fool with a fat wallet to fall for it.

There wasn’t a more festive room in the whole of Christendom: lit candles, log fire, soft snowflakes falling outside, snow on snow; Perry Como, Frank Sinatra et al singing in the background; a table groaning from the load of Christmassy food with its heavenly