Last Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page B

on the freezer, so I can keep track of Kumon lessons and French club and when the baby needs her next set of jabs. I’ve even perfected my own clocking-in system. It works for me. It can work for you.
    So had the Happy Homemaker been born and, to her astonishment, had been an instant hit. Unfortunately a lot of her readers failed to get the irony and took her far too seriously. Somehow she had stumbled into some kind of zeitgeisty thing where women appeared to be sitting at home with their offspring, willing to be lectured at by a complete stranger about how to run their homes. Soon she was getting several hundred hits a day, and achieving a massive following. Her blog became so popular it even got mentioned in the broadsheets, much to Cat’s wry amusement.
    Before she knew it, she was doling out domestic advice on a near daily basis, and soon the Happy Homemaker was attracting attention in the wider world, not least from Bev, her old boss from Citygirl magazine, where she’d been features editor till the arrival of Ruby had finally convinced her that her home/work balance was all wrong. Bev rang her one day and offered her a regular feature at Happy Homes magazine, which involved both time in the office and at home. Coming as it had at a moment when Catherine had been worn out with the demands of a toddler andgoing stir crazy on the school run, she had jumped at the chance. She’d organised herself an au pair, an office at the top of the house, and had looked forward to reclaiming part of her old life.
    If only things were that simple. No one else at Happy Homes , including Bev, had the domestic ties she did. A couple of the girls had one kid certainly, but four? No one she knew apart from her and Noel had four children. They must have been quite insane.
    Initially Cat had thought that going back to work now that the kids were older was going to be a piece of cake. But as the success of the Happy Homemaker grew, so did the pressures. She was constantly in demand in the media, writing articles for the broadsheets, appearing on radio shows, and even making the odd TV appearance. If she had no domestic ties this wouldn’t matter. But while she enjoyed the attention her newfound success was bringing her, not to mention the cash, particularly after years of feeling like a second-class citizen who got pocket money, Cat was struggling with balancing it against her family responsibilities, and was particularly conscious that she was giving Noel a lot less attention than he deserved.
    And although the kids were older now, they seemed to need her more than ever, particularly Mel, who was struggling to make the transition from primary to secondary school, and Ruby who had started her first day at school without her mum holding her hand—that bloody Christmas edition photo shoot had put paid to that. Catherine had always managed to take her children on the first day of school, but in Ruby’s case she’d failed. In fact, she felt she was failing Ruby a great deal. She never had time to read with her (though, thankfully, Paige was a good substitute) and she’d only just scraped into her (admittedly dreadful) Nativity just before Christmas. When sheworked late, she missed Ruby’s bedtime. Her children were growing up and, at the moment, it felt like they were doing it without her.
    And in the meantime she lectured others on how to run their homes, bring up their children and generally cope with day-to-day living. How ironic that she couldn’t manage to retain the slightest bit of control over her own situation…
    Gabriel held Stephen’s hand as they walked down the frosty lane on a crisp clear January morning.
    ‘Look, Daddy, a robin!’ said Stephen excitedly. Their breath blew hot and steamy in the cold sharp air. It was a shock to the system to emerge from the warm cocoon of family and friends that Pippa and Dan had been providing him with for the last fortnight. He would have been lost without them. Gabriel’s parents,