Twelve Days of Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page B

examine the innocuous-looking ham filling, ate it.
    ‘It’s such a pity that Mo and Jim had to go off suddenly like that, isn’t it?’ Noël said. ‘But it couldn’t be helped. I only hope you don’t find it too lonely up there – there is a cleaner twice a week, but the couple who used to look after my brother, the Jacksons, retired and my nephew looks after himself when he’s home.’
    ‘That cleaning girl is a slut: I don’t think she ever does more than whisk a duster about for half an hour and then drink tea and read magazines,’ Tilda said. ‘But I expect you will soon have everything shipshape again, Holly.’
    ‘I’ll certainly make sure the areas of the house I use are kept neat and tidy, ’ I said pointedly, because it was a common misconception that home-sitters would also spring-clean and do all kinds of other little jobs around the house and garden and I often found it as well to make the real position clear from the outset. ‘I’m here simply to make sure the house is safe and to look after the animals. I believe there are a dog and a horse?’
    ‘Lady – she was my great-aunt’s horse, so she’s ancient,’ Jess said. ‘Me and Grandpa went up in the golf buggy yesterday afternoon and again this morning and I filled her water bucket and haynet, but I couldn’t get too close because I’m allergic to horses. I sneeze.’
    ‘That’s a pity,’ I said sincerely, because I could have done with a knowledgeable, horse-mad child.
    ‘Yes, but I’m all right with dogs as long as I don’t brush them, so I took Merlin out for a run.’
    ‘That’s something,’ I agreed, assuming Merlin to be the dog I’d been told about.
    ‘We left Lady in for the day, with the top of the stable door open, in case you were late arriving – it goes dark so early at this time of year,’ Noël said, ‘and you wouldn’t want to be bringing her in from the paddock in the dark, before you’ve got your bearings.’
    ‘No indeed,’ I said gratefully.
    ‘Jude sets great store by her, because she was his mother’s horse,’ Noël said, eating one of the strange pinwheel sandwiches with apparent relish. I had tried to swallow the rest of mine without chewing.
    ‘He was happy enough to leave her in the Chirks’ care again, but I’m not sure what he will think about someone he has never met taking over,’ Tilda said.
    ‘Ellen, who runs Homebodies, has been trying to contact Mr Martland to inform him of what has been happening. Will you please explain, if he calls you?’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ said Noël, ‘and he is bound to, in the next day or two. He may then call you up, too.’
    ‘I admit, I’ll feel happier when he knows there has been a change of house-sitter.’
    ‘Well, it’s his own fault for staying away so long,’ Tilda said. ‘We didn’t think he meant it when he suddenly said he didn’t intend coming back from his trip to America until after Christmas, did we, Noël?’
    ‘No, m’dear, because normally, as Jess said, we move into Old Place for Christmas and New Year. My sister Becca also stays from Christmas Eve until Boxing Day, too – you probably passed her house on the way here, New Place? Big wrought-iron gates, just the other end of the village.’
    ‘Of course she passed the damned house,’ snapped Tilda, ‘did you think she was parachuted in?’
    ‘Turn of speech,’ he said apologetically, but twinkled at me.
    I suddenly wondered if Alan and I would have ended up like this, with me bossing him about and him good-naturedly suffering it? There was no denying that I was bossy and organising. But then, he had had a stubborn streak, too . . .
    ‘Still, it would have been a bit difficult this year, what with my poor brother passing away last January and then Jude falling out with Guy,’ Noël sighed.
    ‘It wasn’t Guy’s fault, really,’ Tilda said dispassionately, ‘that girl just got her hooks into him.’
    I didn’t ask who Guy was because, to be honest, I