Last Christmas Read Online Free PDF

his expense.
    No point thinking about what might never happen. Noel could almost hear his mother’s voice. It had been her favourite phrase when he was growing up. Way back when they’d had some kind of relationship, before she’d turned into the mother-in-law from hell and, according to the kids, Granny Nightmare. Not that he’d ever had an easy relationship with his mother. Noel had spent most of his childhood feeling that somehow he’d disappointed her. Particularly after his younger sister was born, who apparently could do no wrong. He envied Cat her relaxed relationship with her mother, Louise, who was Granny Dreamboat in every way possible.
    Cat. Something was happening to them. He felt like the sands were shifting beneath him, and the world was changing without him. Ever since Cat had started the blog, and the Happy Homemaker thing had taken off, Noel felt Cat had had less and less time for him. All she seemed to focus on was her work and the children. The money it brought in was undoubtedly welcome, particularly when his own job was looking increasingly dodgy. But when a whole week had gone by and he’d barely seen Cat, let alone spoken to her, he wondered if it was all worth it. Sometimes Noel wondered if there was any place in Cat’s heart left for him anymore. And, after the way he’d behaved on Christmas Day, he wasn’t sure he blamed her.
    This was no bloody good. Time he pulled himself together and got on with some work. Noel started to check through the plans he’d drawn up before Christmas for the air-con system at a nearby leisure centre and sighed as he saw the notes from the architects querying why he couldn’t match their exact specifications. When would they learn that the real world didn’t operate in shiny boxes and out of plush offices but in the mathematical parameters that physical laws allowed you?
    A head popped round the corner. Matt Duncan, looking mighty chipper with himself.
    ‘Have you heard?’
    ‘Heard what?’
    ‘Davy Chambers has copped it.’ Matt drew a finger underneath his throat, with barely concealed glee.
    Shit. Dave Chambers was going? Dave was part of the furniture at GRB. If he was going, no one was safe.
    Noel shivered. January seemed to have set in both chill and drear. He had a feeling a cold wind was blowing over the horizon.
    So, Christmas over, turkey stuffed, cooked and eaten, house full of plastic toys—mainly broken—children back at school. It’s time for a spring clean. Yes, I know, technically we’re still in winter, but post-Christmas, full of New Year’s Resolutions, is as good a time as any to clear out the rubbish and it’s always good to start the year as you mean to go on…
    Catherine stopped typing and looked idly out from her eyrie-like study at the top of the house as a half-starved crow flapped and flopped its way across the frosty attic roof. Bloody blog. Bloody Happy Homemaker. Some days she wished she’d never started it. It had begun as a piece of fun, posted between Ruby’s feeds, something to keep her sane while she worked out what to do about her career.
    Catherine,whose idea of domesticity involved the minimum amount of cleaning compatible with reasonable hygiene requirements, had struck on the idea of an ironic take on the life of the twenty-first-century housewife—or homemaker, a term Catherine utterly loathed. She’d sat down and typed sarcastically:
    So, here you are, once a busy, successful businesswoman, tied to the home with a squawling baby and a stroppy toddler. Is it possible to be a twenty-first-century homemaker and survive, sanity intact? By applying the same management skills to your home life that you did to your work, I believe that not only can you survive, but that you can actually embrace the challenges being at home throws you. A happy home is one organised with military precision, which is why every Sunday evening we sit down as a family and work out our timetable for the week. A colour-coded copy sits