I'll Be Home for Christmas: A heartwarming feel good romantic comedy Read online

  I’ll Be Home for Christmas

  A heart-warming, feel-good romantic comedy

  Karen Clarke

  Books by Karen Clarke

  The Little French Café series

  Escape to the Little French Café

  Summer at the Little French Café

  I’ll Be Home for Christmas

  Seashell Cove series

  The Café at Seashell Cove

  The Bakery at Seashell Cove

  The Christmas Café at Seashell Cove

  Beachside series

  The Beachside Sweet Shop

  The Beachside Flower Stall

  The Beachside Christmas

  Being Brooke Simmons

  My Future Husband

  Put a Spell on You

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  The Christmas Café at Seashell Cove

  Hear More from Karen Clarke

  Books by Karen Clarke

  A Letter from Karen

  Escape to the Little French Café

  Summer at the Little French Café

  The Café at Seashell Cove

  The Bakery at Seashell Cove

  The Beachside Sweet Shop

  The Beachside Flower Stall

  The Beachside Christmas

  Acknowledgements

  For Tim, with all my love

  One

  The last thing I wanted to see when I was supposed to be escaping Christmas was an oversized tree, trussed with tinsel and baubles and an angel with a startled expression stuffed on top. It was almost identical to the one I’d left behind, which had been up since November when my mother had declared it was ‘legitimate to start Christmas’.

  Also, why was it snowing, when it never snowed in this part of France? The Île de Ré proclaimed itself ‘a Mediterranean island lost in the Atlantic’ and when I’d visited my aunt, almost six years ago, the week had passed in an endless succession of cloudless blue skies – in March. I’d hardly expected tropical weather in December, but hadn’t predicted snow the second I arrived. Thanks a lot, global warming.

  Still, as I stared at the enormous pine tree dominating the café window, almost blocking the words ‘Café Belle Vie’ in gold letters on the glass, I had to admit it would make a good photo for the travel blog I was planning to launch, once I had some decent pictures… and had done some travelling. I fished my phone from my pocket and took a couple of snaps, liking the slightly blurring effect of the gently falling snow.

  Beyond the twinkling tree lights were customers in the café – lots of them, chatting and laughing. I imagined inserting myself among them and being sociable. It was ages since I’d mingled with that many people, much less chatted and laughed. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d laughed at all since Gran’s death, nearly eight months ago.

  My gaze tracked a woman and child heading towards the entrance, the girl’s eyes aglow as if she’d had a glimpse of Narnia. If she’d lived here all her four (five, six?) years, she might never have seen snow before.

  ‘I want hot chocolate, Mummy, and a great big cake like this,’ she said, voice carrying on the chilly, afternoon air, demonstrating the size with a pair of small gloved hands. ‘Maybe two cakes.’

  English.

  ‘You can have some hot chocolate, but no cake,’ said her mum with a smile in her voice. ‘We’ll be having dinner soon.’

  ‘Can we have a snowball fight?’

  ‘There’s not enough snow yet, Holly.’

  Holly? It seemed the universe was determined to remind me of Christmas at every turn.

  I huddled into my pale blue furry coat – the one my friend Anna said made me look like Sully from Monsters, Inc. – as if I’d landed in Antarctica instead of a fishing village on the west coast of France, and imagined Mum saying, ‘Go on,’ as if coaxing Tess, our ancient Collie, into the garden on a rainy morning.

  I hitched up my holdall, treading gingerly across the cobbles as the snow settled around me, glad I’d worn my old Doc Martens and allowed Mum to wind her woolly scarf around my neck before leaving the house that morning.

  Entering the café behind the woman and her daughter, I was hit with a blast of warmth and two of my favourite smells: ground coffee and freshly baked pastry (the others being lemons, pizza and cut grass after rain), and my appetite rebooted. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, when Mum insisted I demolish a bowl of porridge to ‘line my stomach’ as though I was planning to drink my body-weight in gin, rather than heading to the airport to catch a plane.

  Watching her dart around the kitchen in her ancient jeans and roll-neck sweater, I’d felt a rush of affection and almost asked her to come with me, but she’d been to Chamillon a few months earlier to attend her sister’s wedding, and I knew she wouldn’t want to leave the farm again so soon. Plus, she was helping organise the Christmas play at the local village hall and preparing to host the Bailey family Christmas at the farmhouse – which wouldn’t be the same without Gran, and was the main reason I’d opted to give the whole thing a miss this year.

  ‘It won’t be the same without you, Nina, but your aunt will take good care of you,’ Mum had said, pausing to massage my shoulders, her arms and hands strong from years of sheep-shearing. ‘Just try to have a nice break.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I’d promised. I hadn’t mentioned I was going to use the time away to try and get my travel blog off the ground, preferring to present it when I’d got some posts to share.

  When he dropped me at the airport, Dad had wrapped me in a bear hug, almost crushing my ribs, as though I was embarking on an expedition fraught with danger. ‘Sure you don’t want me to sort the bastard out?’ he’d said gruffly. ‘It’s not too late, you know.’

  I’d breathed in his familiar scent of old barns and dried manure, overlaid with Mum’s jasmine-scented shower gel, and considered his offer for a moment, imagining Scott’s face as he turned to see Dad bearing down on him in his tractor… except, Scott had moved on and so had I, and I couldn’t condone murder. Not even by tractor.

  ‘Honestly, Dad, I had a lucky escape,’ I’d said, wondering whether it would be better or worse to admit that my ongoing grief was more about losing Gran than Scott. ‘It’s in the past and I’m over it.’

  He’d held me at arm’s length, the soulful dark eyes my brother had inherited – mine were the same clear-grey on a good day as Mum’s – searching my face for clues. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ I’d reassured him, affectionately taking in his everyday look of blue-checked work shirt tucked into old Levi’s, worn with a leather belt and matching boots. He always looked out of place anywhere but the farm. ‘I just want to escape for a week or so, that’s all.’

  ‘Your gran loved you, you know.’ He’d always been able to see right through me. ‘She wouldn’t want you to be unhappy.’ His eyes had filled
, and I’d reminded myself she was his mother and he was still mourning her too.

  ‘I know,’ I’d said, pulling him in for another hug, unable to admit how responsible I felt for hastening her death.

  ‘And you’ll be all right on the plane on your own?’

  ‘Dad, I’m thirty!’

  ‘I know, but…’ Blinking, he’d eyed a mop-haired man in a black coat and a red and gold scarf, scoping the area through little round glasses as he hoisted a rucksack out of a taxi. ‘I don’t want you sitting next to someone like that.’ He jerked his head at the man, who gave him a startled look.

  ‘Like a grown-up Harry Potter?’ Some would say – specifically my older brother Ben – that Dad was overprotective, but I knew it killed him that he hadn’t been able to prevent me from getting hurt; or do anything about it when I was. ‘I’ll probably just listen to a podcast, or some music on my phone.’

  ‘You don’t like flying.’

  ‘Dad, I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘The flight’s less than two hours.’

  His face – leathery from years of farming in all weathers – had been mapped with worry as he squeezed my shoulders and said, ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing, love.’

  Now, standing in the café, a babble of impenetrable voices competing with the whoosh of the coffee machine and clatter of crockery, I wondered whether I’d done the right thing, coming to stay at my aunt’s. I’d considered accepting my friend Anna’s offer to go with her to Spain and ‘pick up men’ (she hated Christmas), or take off on my own to a remote part of Ireland – both places would have been a good starting point for my blog – but worried being alone would give me too much time to think. To remember that this was the week I was supposed to get married, before I called off my wedding and effectively killed my gran.

  ‘Nina!’

  At the sound of my name, I turned to see my cousin Charlie weaving between tables and felt my spirits rise at the sight of his smiling face.

  ‘Hey, Chuck!’ I raised a palm in greeting and let him grab me in a gentle headlock and ruffle my hair with his knuckles. Charlie had always been my favourite cousin – I had loads on Dad’s side; his three brothers had twelve children between them – but I was closer to Charlie as we had been more like brother and sister growing up.

  ‘Heartbreak haircut?’ he enquired, when I’d laughingly wriggled free and was attempting to smooth my short, tousled layers.

  ‘You should have seen it seven months ago.’ I grimaced, recalling the crop I’d replaced my shoulder-length waves with after cancelling the wedding. I’d thought it would make me look ‘edgy’ and I’d start wearing cute dresses with cowboy boots instead of my usual jumpers and jeans, or appear ‘elfin’ like Emma Watson had. Instead, I’d looked like a choirboy, and had to wear more make-up because I kept being asked for ID. ‘I tried to spike it up a bit on top,’ I said, fluffing my too-short tresses. ‘Dad said it looked like I’d brushed it with a Brillo pad. I cried more about that than anything,’ I added, which wasn’t remotely true. I’d cried floods after walking in on Scott at the art gallery, his hand on his latest protégée’s buttock (again) and hearing him say it was nothing (again), and had cried until I nearly made myself ill when Gran passed away shortly after.

  Charlie’s laugh was as warm and encompassing as I remembered – as if he was laughing with me, not at me. ‘It’s natural to want to reinvent yourself,’ he said. ‘After my last break-up, I grew my hair to my waist and dyed it pink.’

  ‘Idiot!’ I punched his arm, already feeling better than I had in ages. ‘I was a bit of a cliché for a while,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t think I was the sort to react like that after a break-up.’

  ‘You’re only human, or so I’ve heard.’ Charlie paused as I unwound my scarf, perspiring a little in the coffee-scented heat. ‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ he said.

  ‘I expect my mum gave your mum all the gruesome details.’

  ‘You know what they’re like, especially when they get together.’ He gave a comical wince. ‘I’m sorry about your gran, too. I know you were really close.’

  For a second, my eyes went swimmy and I had to keep them fixed on Charlie’s nose. He pulled out a chair at the only free table and said, ‘Sit down and I’ll bring you a drink.’

  ‘Where’s Dolly?’ Blinking, I unbuttoned my coat and looked around for my aunt. The last time I’d visited her presence had been obvious right away – she’d been on her hands and knees, her bottom in the air, attempting to coax a cat out from under one of the tables.

  ‘Upstairs.’ Charlie tilted his eyes to the ceiling, indicating the apartment above, where he and Dolly lived – or at least, where Charlie still lived. Dolly had moved into Frank’s cottage on the opposite side of the harbour after their wedding. ‘She’s hunting for a Christmas CD to play for the customers.’

  I eyed the heavily-decorated tree and array of holly garlands, the pine-studded wreaths on the walls, and a row of red Christmas stockings with furry white tops hanging from the wooden counter. ‘What’s with all the decorations?’ I said. ‘I was expecting… not this.’

  Charlie grinned. ‘Mum usually goes for a typically French theme – a tree with ribbons and candles and a star on top – but this year, she wanted to show the locals how the Brits do Christmas.’ His gaze trailed mine. ‘Looks like our living room in the nineties, but with a coffee machine, and customers and better flooring.’ He cast an admiring gaze at the solid, maple boards beneath our feet.

  ‘Looks like ours does now.’ As I glanced at the little girl I’d followed into the café, standing behind her mum and staring in awe at some reindeer-shaped cookies, I felt a pang for my own childhood, when I’d believed in Father Christmas long after my brother revealed the man who delivered our presents on Christmas Eve was Uncle Hank – Dad’s oldest brother, chosen for the task because he (literally) had the stomach for it. ‘I thought I was escaping all this.’

  ‘You always loved Christmas.’ Charlie looked as though he was remembering too, when our families got together and everything normal was suspended in a magical bubble for a week. ‘We thought you’d like it.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ I said, feeling bad that I’d sounded less than enthusiastic. ‘I mean… I would normally love it, it’s just…’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Charlie rubbed a hand over his wavy, blondish hair. It had grown since I’d last seen him in person – Mum had lots of photos of him on her phone from Dolly’s wedding – and he was sporting a close-cut beard, like most men in their early thirties seemed to do. He looked more mature and I supposed I did too, with the new lines I was certain I’d developed over the past few months. Catching sight of my reflection these days wasn’t a pleasant experience. Mum had taken to carolling, ‘Turn that frown upside down, Nina!’ stretching her mouth into a grin with her hands until I couldn’t help smiling back.

  ‘We might have got a bit carried away,’ Charlie admitted, pointing to a clump of mistletoe by the door. ‘Mum didn’t want your memories of Christmas to be tainted by that… by whatsisface letting you down.’

  ‘That’s kind of her.’ I sloughed my coat off. ‘But letting me down sounds a bit mild. Like air from a balloon.’

  ‘Yes, after it’s been popped by a little prick.’

  My snort of laughter caught me by surprise. ‘Good one, Chuck.’

  ‘Happy to oblige.’ His friendly brown eyes twinkled with good humour. ‘Now, coffee or hot chocolate?’

  ‘I’ll have coffee and pastry, please. Lots of pastry. Can I help?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Pain au chocolat?’

  ‘Thanks, at least seven.’

  Still smiling, he returned to the counter and I dropped onto the padded chair seat, some of the tension seeping out of my body, despite being surrounded by at least half of all the Christmas decorations in the world. Was that an inflatable Santa in the corner, with a bulging sack slung over one shoulder? It was, an adorable little black dog in a knitted Nordic sweater sleeping beside it, the owner
– an elderly man with ruddy cheeks under a white beard – engrossed in what looked like a newspaper crossword. I thought about taking another photo, then decided to text Mum that I’d arrived safely instead. I’d just pressed send when I heard a blast of ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ followed by another familiar voice, calling my (extremely full) name.

  ‘Nina Katrina Augustine Bailey!’

  ‘Hi, Dolly!’ I stood to receive my aunt’s hug, which was as heartfelt and strong as ever and squashed the breath from my lungs. ‘It’s really good to see you,’ I said, recognising her favourite Elizabeth Arden perfume beneath the vanilla-and-spice baking scents clinging to her clothes.

  She pulled back and squinted as though bringing me into focus. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ she observed, which couldn’t be true with the amount of comfort eating I’d been doing, which meant hardly any of my old clothes – the clothes I’d worn when I was with Scott – fitted me any more. ‘I like your hair,’ she said. ‘You look like your mum when she was younger and it was still that nice chestnut colour.’

  ‘Not like the member of a terrible boy band?’

  ‘Silly.’ Her brown eyes were shiny with tears and she yanked me close again, rocking from side to side. ‘It’s been too long, lovely girl.’

  ‘Dolly, I’m sorry I didn’t make it to your wedding,’ I said, reluctantly breaking free. ‘I just… I couldn’t…’