A Typical Family Christmas Read online

  A Typical Family Christmas

  Liz Davies

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  A Typical Family Christmas

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Liz Davies

  Copyright © 2019 Liz Davies

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are invented by the author or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental

  The author asserts the moral rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Published by Lilac Tree Books

  Cover designed by: Y. Nikolova at Ammonia Book Covers

  Chapter 1

  ‘My mother is coming to us for Christmas,’ Kate announced, then stepped back and waited for the fallout. A stunned silence followed, but it didn’t last long.

  ‘Why does she have to come?’ Her youngest, Sam, was the first to object. ‘It’s bad enough having to put up with the other one.’

  ‘She is your grandmother, and so is “the other one”.’ Kate did quotation marks with her fingers and glared at her son.

  ‘Nana Peters does nothing but criticise,’ Kate’s middle child jumped into the conversation with a moany voice of her own. ‘Turn the TV down. Do we have to watch that? Stop playing with your phone. Can’t you sit still?’ Portia’s impression of her paternal grandmother was remarkably accurate. ‘It’s bad enough with her, but with Nanny Collins as well...’ She trailed off with a dramatic roll of her eyes. ‘I don’t think I can stand two of them at the same time.’

  ‘Look,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t like it any more than you do, but she’s coming and that’s final.’

  ‘What about Nana Peters? Does she still have to come, or is it a one in, one out kinda thing?’ Sam asked, flicking Cheerios halfway across the kitchen at the sink. His aim was pretty good. ‘Do we get a choice? If so, I vote for Nanny Collins; she’s not as bad as Nana Peters.’

  ‘They’re both coming,’ Kate said.

  ‘But why?’ Portia had gone from moany to whiney in a nano-second. Then her daughter’s eyes widened and a look of horror crossed her goth-painted features. ‘She’s not staying the night, is she?’

  Kate sighed, took off her rubber gloves, and threw them in the washing up bowl. She resisted the urge to howl as they filled up with water. Damn it. Now she’d have to dry them out before she could wear them again. She hated not using rubber gloves.

  ‘Yes, she is. They both are.’ She failed to add that it wasn’t just for the one night either. It would probably be at least two. If not more...

  Pandemonium ensued. Even Ellis, who’d finally floated downstairs, her nose in her phone and buds jammed in her ears, looked up from Instagramming or Tindering, or whatever she was doing, and glared at her mother.

  Kate turned her back on her furious children and fished the gloves out of the greasy, grungy water. She should have tackled last night’s washing up last night, but she’d been too tired.

  ‘Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum,’ Sam shouted.

  Portia shrieked something unintelligible and Ellis banged her hands on the kitchen table. Knowing the noise would only escalate, Kate took a deep breath and turned to face her aghast offspring.

  The reason for the panic was clear – they lived in a five-bedroomed house when six bedrooms were needed if both nans were coming to stay. Someone was going to have to bunk up with someone else.

  And none of the three someones in question liked the idea.

  ‘I’m a boy,’ Sam pointed out. ‘I can’t share my bed with a girl.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to,’ Kate said mildly. She didn’t intend to ask anyone to share a bed – that’s what blow-up mattresses were for, and the family had one of those in the garage, somewhere. But she did intend for two of her offspring to share a room, and the most logical candidates were the two girls.

  Sam shut up and leaned so far back in his chair that the two front legs lifted off the floor. Kate had an unmotherly urge to give it a little push.

  Her son had a smug smile on his face, and Kate could tell that her daughters were itching to remove it. They probably would do so later when she wasn’t looking. To be fair to them, and Kate was the first to admit it, Sam often deserved it. He could be a right little so and so. Kate blamed his father.

  Kate blamed his father for a lot more than Sam’s attitude.

  ‘What does Dad say about Nanny Collins coming for Christmas?’ Ellis was the most adept of the three children at playing one parent off against the other. She was the eldest, ergo she’d had the most practice.

  ‘Your father is fine about it,’ Kate replied, taking a days-old loaf of bread out of the cupboard and hunting for something, anything, to make sandwiches with. Actually, she hadn’t mentioned anything to Brett yet. She’d only found out herself last night during her twice-weekly call to her mother, and when she’d gotten off the phone she’d been so surprised that she’d needed a bit of time to process the information. The two nans disliked each other intensely and did everything they could to avoid being in the same place at the same time, so both of them coming to stay for Christmas was unheard of.

  ‘Corned beef?’ she asked her children hopefully, holding up a tin.

  ‘I bet he isn’t fine,’ Portia said, not taking anything her mother said on face value, as usual. ‘And no thanks, I’ll risk school dinners. At least the baguettes there don’t have mould on them.’

  Kate looked at Ellis, who grimaced. ‘One of the boys can do a McDonald’s run,’ her eldest daughter said.

  ‘You know I don’t like you eating that rubbish all the time,’ Kate started to object, but Ellis quelled her with a look.

  She thought about meeting her daughter head on, but with little more than semi-stale bread, corned beef (assuming she could find a way to open the tin because the little key thing which should be attached
to the side of it was missing), or a rock-hard lump of Cheddar, she didn’t have a culinary leg to stand on. Besides, at seventeen, Ellis was beyond her control when it came to what she ate in college at lunchtime.

  She put the tin of meat back in the cupboard and said to Sam, ‘I’ll give you money for lunch too, shall I?’

  He hissed out a ‘Yes!’, and his eyes lit up with glee. No doubt he’d be disappearing out of the school gates and heading for the chip shop at the end of the road as soon as the lunch bell rang. At least the packed-lunch debacle had taken her children’s minds off the impending grandmotherly visits, she thought thankfully.

  Wrong.

  ‘I’m not sharing a bed with her,’ Ellis announced, jabbing a finger at her sister. ‘She snores.’

  ‘I do not! Anyway, you’re on your phone all night kissy-talking with your boyfriend,’ Portia retorted.

  ‘What boyfriend?’ Kate asked Portia with a frown, momentarily distracted from the issue of bed-sharing by this news. ‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,’ she said to Ellis.

  ‘That's because it’s none of your business.’ Ellis retorted.

  ‘Look here, young lady, you’re not eighteen yet, you know.’ The thought of her daughter being pawed by some hormone-driven boy filled her with horror.

  ‘I wish I was eighteen, because then you wouldn’t be able to tell me what to do.’ Ellis flounced over to the table and threw herself onto a chair. The chair made an ominous creaking sound. After suffering three children living in it, so did a lot of other things in the house, including her.

  ‘It doesn’t work that way, Ellis,’ she said, crossing her arms. ‘While you’re under my roof you’ll do as you’re told.’ Oh God, she thought as she listened in dismay to the words coming out of her mouth; she sounded just like her mother.

  ‘Ellis,’ she said, in a more conciliatory tone, ‘I know it’s a difficult stage for you, being halfway between a child and an adult—’

  Ellis cut her off. ‘When will you get it into your head that I’m not a child? I can make my own decisions. I’m in charge of my life, not you or Dad.’

  Talk of the devil...

  Brett darted into the kitchen, his tie slightly askew and a dollop of shaving cream on his ear. ‘Don’t speak to your mother like that. Show some respect,’ he said.

  Kate did a double-take. It was very unusual for him to be around at this time in the morning (he normally scarpered off to work before the kids rolled out of bed). It was also unusual for her husband to manage more than a surly grunt. In fact, he very often didn’t manage more than a surly grunt in the evenings, either.

  She avoided eye-contact with him, hoping he’d grab whatever he came into the kitchen for and make a dash for it. She would break the news about the impending visit later, when he was in work and otherwise preoccupied. Then she could legitimately say she’d told him all about it and that he’d said, “OK, fine, whatever”, like he usually did. One day she just might ring him up and tell him she wanted a divorce, just to see his reaction. He’d probably say “OK, fine, whatever” to that, too.

  ‘You didn’t hear what she said, did you?’ Portia jumped in, her hands on her hips, the black-painted nails reminding Kate of when her daughter used to come in from the garden covered in dirt because she’d been digging for worms. She missed those days.

  ‘I heard enough to know—’ Brett continued to argue, and Kate had to admire his tenacity at this time in the morning.

  ‘Nanny Collins is coming for Christmas,’ Ellis interjected, just as he was building up a full head of wrathful parental steam, which was a rare change for him.

  ‘Nana Peters always comes to us for Christmas, you know that.’ By this time Brett’s expression was more perplexed than annoyed. Obviously, Ellis’s words hadn’t sunk in yet, and Kate braced herself. What was about to come next wasn’t going to be pretty.

  ‘Nanny Collins is coming this year, too,’ their eldest stated, her tone expressing her hope that her father would do something about it.

  ‘Eh?’ Brett blinked. His mouth opened and closed like a netted trout, and his irritation with the children’s attitude deflated like a leaky balloon. He even did a bit of a balloon squeak as the air seeped out of his lungs.

  ‘Tell her, Dad,’ Sam piped up, even though he was going to be the least affected out of all of the kids. ‘Tell Mum it can’t be both of them. One granny is bad enough. Two...?’ He shuddered.

  ‘Your father will do nothing of the sort,’ Kate said, sounding pompous to her own ears. ‘He’s totally supportive. Aren’t you, Brett?’ Kate forced out the last sentence between gritted teeth, and glared at her husband, daring him to deny it.

  ‘Er, um, well,’ he began, then seemed to suddenly remember what had brought him into the kitchen in the first place, and made a lunge for the fridge door, yanking it open, and grabbing a yoghurt. He was usually out of the house by now and well on his way to work. But today, of all days, he had to walk in just when she was trying to get all three children fed, watered, and off to school or college, whilst slipping a piece of bad news in, hoping the day in between would give her offspring the time and distance they needed to process the information and come to terms with it.

  Not a chance.

  Not when their father was running late for once, and they could turn to him for back-up.

  ‘Daaaad?’ Portia whined. She really did take after her grandmother, Kate thought, and it wasn’t a compliment.

  Kate knew Brett wasn’t geared up for a confrontation at this time in the morning, but it looked like he was going to get one anyway, and she watched him mentally put his manager head on and prepare for battle. He turned to Kate, using the tie-straightening gesture she knew so well.

  ‘Is this true? Is your mother coming to us for Christmas?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m totally on board with that,’ her husband said.

  ‘Well, get on board,’ Kate growled back, her patience rapidly evaporating. ‘I’ve had to put up with your mother every year since time began; it won’t hurt for you to put up with mine for a change.’

  ‘But that means we’ll have the both of them,’ Brett said.

  ‘I can see why you got that promotion last year,’ she said. ‘Was it for your mathematical ability or your powers of observation?’

  ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’ Her husband sounded hurt. ‘I just meant—’

  ‘I know what you meant. You’re going to have to suck it up, all of you.’ She glared at her family. Her family glared back, although Brett’s expression was more akin to desperation than defiance. He knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on when it came to motherly visits.

  ‘Right, you lot, get going or you’ll be late for school.’ She made shooing motions with her hands and tried to ignore the continuing rumbles of discontent. They’d get used to it – they’d have to. The nanas were both coming to stay for Christmas, and that was that.

  Chapter 2

  Kate sagged against the kitchen worktop and heaved a gigantic sigh. That went well – not. She hadn’t expected it to. The children tolerated their grandmothers, but preferably singly. The thought of having to tolerate them both at the same time freaked them out.

  She didn’t blame them, because she felt the same. His mother, Nana Peters (“call me Helen, please, children, Nana makes me feel so old”) had been coming to them for Christmas, and for any other holiday she could wrangle, since Kate and Brett had got married. Their very first Christmas together hadn’t been the cosy, cuddly Christmas she’d envisioned. Instead, it had been a be-on-your-best-behaviour-and-ignore-the-pointed-comments Christmas. No matter what Kate had done, it hadn’t been good enough, and it had set the tone of her relationship with her mother-in-law ever since. There was always something that could be commented on. Twenty-one years later, the situation hadn’t changed.

  And, to add to the delights of the forthcoming festive season, Kate’s mother was also descending on them this year.


  She loved her mother dearly, of course she did, but being in her company for more than a couple of hours drove her to distraction – she was just so miserable. All the time. There was no let up. Where Helen was subtly critical and adept at uttering pointed barbs, Beverley moaned. Constantly. The weather was a favourite topic; it was either too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy, too icy, too... anything. And at this time of year, the festive season got a battering. Beverley Collins hated Christmas and made sure anyone within earshot knew about it, sucking all the joy out of it for everyone else, until they were as miserable as she was.

  It got on everyone’s nerves, including hers.

  Kate, herself, never particularly looked forward to Christmas because of Helen (she’d usually found it to be a case of grit her teeth and plough through it) but this year was shaping up to be particularly stressful.

  It had been easier when the kids were younger. She used to suggest a walk between present-opening and lunch to get them out of the house and burn off some of the overwhelming excitement and give them all a break from being cooped up like so many squabbling chickens. Helen had always remained behind, but Kate had long ago decided that getting away from her mother-in-law for an hour or so, was worth having to come back to her kitchen to find Helen had been “helping” while she was out. So what if her mother-in-law had re-peeled all the potatoes because Kate had left the odd minuscule bit of skin on one? Or had made up a batch of batter for home-made Yorkshire puddings because they “taste so much nicer than shop-bought ones, don’t you think?” Getting away from her for an hour or so had been worth it.

  She might still have some luck with suggesting a walk with Sam, but not with the other two. Last year they’d refused to leave the house, too busy on their phones to want to have the bother of having to look where they were placing their feet, or to put on gloves which meant they couldn’t waggle their thumbs at the speed of light over their respective screens. Perhaps she ought to buy the girls a pair of thumbless gloves each for their stockings, but she didn’t think they’d see the funny side.