I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,96

announced.

‘Certainly, madam,’ Luke said.

‘This is good, this is really good,’ said Jack, sounding surprised.

‘It’s absolutely divine,’ said Charlie. ‘I shall be diving in for seconds. Pass the gravy please someone.’

‘Cholesterol!’ barked Jack, who was decidedly jolly this morning, Bridge noticed. She raised her eyebrows at Mary but Mary’s expression remained blank. Jack was on a quick-defrost setting. Shame it was too late now. His loss would be Bridge’s gain.

‘So Christmas is over for another year then,’ said Bridge with a sigh of lament.

‘Absolutely not,’ said Charlie in protest. ‘This is only the second day of Christmas. It doesn’t end until Epiphany. The twelfth night. The Christmas season is getting shorter and shorter and it should be illegal. I always think of the poor workers forced into shops today to sell goods.’

‘This weather will be a blessing for them in that case,’ said Robin.

Jack didn’t say that he would have been in the office by now had he not been snowed in. He knew how sad that would have made him sound.

‘I think we need to hear from Radio Brian,’ said Mary, getting up from the table. Bridge saw how Jack’s eyes followed her all the way across the room. Interesting, she thought. Mary, oblivious, switched on the radio and Brian’s dulcet tones emerged mid-flow.

‘…had a lovely Christmas. I was talking to my friend Malcolm this morning and they’re having a Boxing Day leftover breakfast fried up in a pan with some butter.’

‘So are we, Brian,’ Jack called over to him.

Robin gave him a sideways glance. Was this really the same stiff suit he had been introduced to only three days ago?

‘The weather outside is indeed frightful but the other BBC is telling us that a thaw is on its way, starting tonight, so if you’re going to go out and make a snowman, you’d better do it today,’ Radio Brian continued. ‘There’s a lot of snow to melt, isn’t there, so I expect to hear flood warnings.’

‘Oh my goodness, I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Charlie. ‘All this snow has to go somewhere, doesn’t it?’

‘Snow, floods, what’s next – locusts, boils, frogs?’ Robin asked the air. ‘I tell you the end of the world is nigh. We’d better paint a red cross on the door.’

‘Oh, shush and eat your breakfast, Robin. You’re putting me off, talking about boils,’ Charlie admonished him, tucking in with the zeal of someone not put off in the slightest.

‘…reports of intermittitent phone lines working…’

‘Intermittitent,’ echoed Bridge with a snigger.

‘Bless him,’ said Robin.

Jack responded to that nugget of news like one of Pavlov’s dogs switching on anticipation at the ringing of a bell, but then again his phone was upstairs and he decided he’d check for any communications later, if he remembered; he was in no rush to leave the table. No sooner did he think that than there followed a freeze-frame moment in which he marvelled at himself for having thought it.

I don’t want to get back to reality, said Robin inwardly. He felt protected here in this odd little inn. It was as if it was enchanted, like the Beast’s castle when Belle walked in and found all the luxury food waiting for her. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised if clocks and candelabras had started dancing around the room singing ‘Be our Guest’. Charlie had been like his old self; they’d located sunshine again in Figgy Hollow after months completely smothered by shadow. If it meant Charlie could be well, he’d stay in this spot forever, letting it be Christmas every day, even if it meant an eternal diet of cold turkey and cranberries.

‘My friend Malcolm’s just been around to his neighbour, he says, for a carrot because they used all theirs up yesterday and his grandson needs one for the nose of his snowman and no one’s got any. He’s had to use a beetroot.’ Radio Brian began to laugh heartily as if he’d told the world’s funniest joke.

‘I think he’s been on the mulled wine again this morning. Either that or he’s read your cracker jokes, Luke,’ said Bridge, nevertheless infected by Brian’s laughter.

‘I haven’t made a snowman since I was a boy,’ said Charlie. ‘I want to make a snowman. I know, let’s have a snowman-making competition today.’

‘I’m up for it,’ said Luke.

‘There’s a shocker,’ replied Bridge.

* * *

While Mary and Robin were tidying up around the fire, and Bridge and Charlie were in the kitchen washing up, Jack slipped upstairs and into the middle bedroom like an SAS