Never Say Goodbye Read Online Free PDF Page B

her. Certainly they always loved coming to stay, and when they were with her she made sure to clear her diary so she could spend every minute of every day with them. It was no less than they deserved, and considering how much she enjoyed their company it was certainly no hardship to put her own life on hold. Not that she had much of a life these days, but that was hardly the point.
    By the time they’d downed their drinks and devoured the mince pies (she managed half of hers before passing the rest to Oscar) there was no time to stop and view the Christmas lights on the seafront, as promised. They simply drove underneath them, Oscar and Nell squealing and cheering in excitement and waving to children in other cars, before joining Bay View Road which wound up and around the southerly headland, past Kesterly Park and the Aquarium. Their route took them along the stretch known as Fisherman’s Walk, where a dozen or more colourful cottages had seen a couple of centuries come and go, until they finally arrived at the more exclusive end of the road. Here properties were mainly gated at the front and enjoyed panoramic views of Westleigh Bay at the back.
    Stillwater, Bel’s black and white Victorian villa, was no exception. Though it wasn’t quite as large as some of the mansions further along the street, it was still far too big for one person, but Bel had no plans to move out any time soon. In truth, she’d never had plans to move in, since she’d bought it as a renovation project, but by the time most of the work had been carried out it had become clear that she needed to stay in Kesterly for the foreseeable future. Her sister, who lived a few miles away in Senway village and who had found Stillwater for Bel in the first place, was sick. She needed help, and being as close as they were there was no way Bel would ever have let her down.
    So with her newly renovated property not yet sold, she’d moved everything down from London in order to be closer to her sister and brother-in-law, and of course the children. Now, three years on, she was still in the house, and unless she wanted to make her life even more complicated than it already was, it was where she was going to stay.
    Empty, but complicated, that was her world, which should have been a contradiction in terms, but in her case it wasn’t.
    ‘Where are we going to put the tree?’ Nell cried, as they piled in through the glossy black front door. ‘I know! It can go here, in the hall, because it’s very, very tall and the ceiling is right up there so there’ll be plenty of room.’
    ‘But then you’ll only be able to see it from the window in the roof,’ Oscar complained, gazing up at the magnificent glass dome that Bel had designed and installed to flood the ebony staircase and whitewashed landings with light.
    ‘That’s where Father Christmas lands,’ Nell reminded him.
    ‘Yes, but you have to see it through the window, don’t you, Auntie Bel?’ he objected, ‘or people will think we haven’t got one.’
    ‘Well, not necessarily,’ Bel responded, dropping her bags next to an ornate limestone fireplace where a real fire could burn to welcome guests as they arrived. ‘We can always put some lights around the porch to show we’re nice and Christmassy,’ she suggested, ‘and I was thinking perhaps the tree could go in the sitting room, next to the fireplace so Santa won’t have a problem finding it when he comes down the chimney.’
    ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ they cheered.
    ‘But is the ceiling high enough in there?’ Oscar worried.
    ‘If it isn’t, we’ll just chop a little bit off the top of the tree,’ Bel replied. ‘I expect we’ll have to do that anyway, or the fairy’ll be swaying around on the end of a stalk like a silly old drunk.’
    Shouting with laughter, they charged across the hall and into the room that Bel loved best in the house. By knocking down several walls she’d created an open-plan kitchen-cum-sitting room that occupied the