In the greek midwinter, p.1
In the Greek Midwinter, page 1
IN THE GREEK MIDWINTER
MANDY BAGGOT
For Springsteen, the best cat in the whole world. 23 April 2003-30 June 2023. Sleep tight.
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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
More from Mandy Baggot
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Mandy Baggot
About Boldwood Books
1
ST AGNES CHURCH, LITTLE PICKERING, WILTSHIRE, UK
‘Stick him with the sword! Right in the guts! Now… thrust and slice! Nathanial, remember what we talked about. I want to see the menace begin in your soul, translate to the eyes, and come to absolute fruition in your sword! This is Herod you’re fighting! The tyrant who ordered a massacre of innocents!’
Geoffrey himself gave a roar from his position in the pews, the noise echoing all around the holy pillars and back again, startling Bonnie so much that she dropped half a mince pie right into Jen’s lap.
‘Bonnie!’ Jen exclaimed, brushing crumbs into her hand, and then wondering what she should do with them.
‘Sorry,’ her best friend replied. ‘But I wasn’t quite ready for him to shout like he was introducing wrestling.’
Jen focused back on the dramatisation on the red carpet at the front of the church before a candlelit altar. While one of her hands held the pastry crumbs, the other was using a pen to make notes. And, right now, none of them were particularly positive. Had she given Geoffrey too much of a free rein on this project?
Next, in a crescendo of cymbals, cellos and clarinets, many heads of plastic baby dolls rolled across the performance area like footballs and then there was an explosion! What looked like blood burst from cylinders at either side of the ‘stage’, coating everything and everyone in range with bright red liquid. Bonnie screamed, the rest of her mince pie dropping to the floor, while Jen got to her feet, notebook and crumbs flying, shifting out of the pew.
‘Geoffrey, there’s blood all over the church!’ she shouted. ‘And the vicar has evensong in twenty minutes!’
Geoffrey looked as if he needed some of the red liquid injected into him to replace what had drained from his face. ‘Those weren’t… meant to go off… until the actual performance.’
Jen surveyed the damage. Pools of red on the ancient flagstones. All Geoffrey’s actors’ faces covered and dripping like they had roles in Evil Dead. The beautiful grey stone pillars decorated with holly and ivy now resembling a crime scene. And the performance had been way too dark even for the historical society’s Christmas party. It was going to have to be back to the drawing board for that and somehow getting St Agnes cleaned before the village congregation arrived.
‘This is a sign,’ Bonnie whispered, arriving at Jen’s shoulder, ‘that Paris is calling and you must go.’
Jen sighed. ‘It seems I can’t even go back to the office and brainstorm this dramatic piece until after I get elbow deep in Cillit Bang.’
‘Think of Paris,’ Bonnie said, making her voice dreamlike as if she were in a cutesy, fuzzy festive TV commercial. ‘The romantic mist over the Seine. The creamy, sugar-sweet chocolat chaud. The Eiffel Tower and David down on one knee with the kind of solitaire that every Disney princess dreams of.’
Currently Jen’s view was not the golden lights of France’s most famous landmark, nor a ring to rival Aurora’s. With this crimson concoction of Geoffrey’s dripping off things she hoped didn’t pre-date Dame Judi Dench, it was hard to remember that in a few days she wasn’t going to be here in Little Pickering.
‘I can see it now,’ Bonnie carried on as centurions, or whatever it was Geoffrey’s actors were supposed to be, palmed their faces, shaking blood-tinged fingers in the air. ‘Chocolate-filled croissants for breakfast, chocolate-coloured poodles trotting around the boulevards, a cream and chocolate Chanel bag for your best friend’s Christmas gift…’
The minutes were ticking by, and the vicar was nothing if not punctual. Geoffrey seemed to be stuck like one of the statues of Jesus carved into the marble, mouth agape at the chaos he himself had created. There was only one thing for it: to lead by example. It was time for the CEO of Christmas Every Day to be the competent, capable and professional manager and business owner that she was.
Jen shrugged off her bright red coat and pushed up the sleeves of her spruce-green jumper.
‘Right now,’ Jen said to Bonnie, striding towards the door to the vestry, ‘the only gift I’m looking for is the bucket-shaped kind.’
2
CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY, LITTLE PICKERING, WILTSHIRE, UK
‘Are you sure you don’t want some?’
Bonnie had morsels of a Greg’s triple chocolate muffin underneath her fingernails as she devoured the treat in Jen’s car. Greg’s was like Greggs, except it wasn’t a national company, it was run singlehandedly by Greg and the business premises also combined the Little Pickering post office and an Amazon hub locker.
Jen looked at her own hands. In comparison to Bonnie’s, she had red staining under her fingernails that made her look like she had either had a fight with a bingo dabber or had murdered someone. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to get rid of it yet and she had one last meeting before she could sign off for the evening. Not that she ever really signed off from work. Business owners didn’t often get the luxury of clocking off or ‘leaving things until the morning’. Particularly small businesses who relied on repeat business, reputation and recommendation. Jen had managed to assure the vicar that if the staining on his altar cloths didn’t come out in the wash, or if they returned like some sort of ode to the Turin Shroud, she would hire a team of professional cleaners but she wasn’t certain he was going to let her use the church for rehearsal space again.
‘You should just get Geoffrey to do the nativity,’ Bonnie said between bites.
‘I’ve been organising the dramatic piece for this group for four years now and we did a spin on the nativity in year one and year three. Year one was The Three Wise Hens and year three was What if Jesus Had a Twin.’
‘Christ!’ Bonnie exclaimed. ‘I mean, not Christ.’
‘Actually, that was what we called the twin,’ Jen answered.
‘How did I miss that one?’ Bonnie asked, licking her chocolatey fingers.
‘Well, I think you were going through your salted caramel phase,’ Jen said. ‘A bit like you’re going through this chocolate phase now.’
Bonnie stopped chewing. ‘Are you food shaming me?’
‘No,’ Jen said. ‘But back at the church you said the word “chocolate” about a million times and when you get that kind of obsessed about something it usually means there’s something on your mind, so why don’t you tell me now before we get to the point where you’re locking yourself in one of my Christmas rooms with the Ferrero Rocher and pledging yourself to the ambassador.’
‘I did that once!’ Bonnie exclaimed, scrunching up her Greg’s bag and dropping it onto Jen’s rubber car mat.
Jen waited, knowing her friend was about to open up. Bonnie had been opening up to her since they’d first met at the retirement home five years ago. Sitting on reception, Bonnie had lifted her head from the magazine tucked under her computer keyboard and asked Jen if she thought her face was square or oval and, if it was square, did she know any contour tricks. Over a weak nursing home tea, their friendship had begun. Bonnie was one of only three people Jen trusted. Actually, she supposed it was four now with David.
Bonnie sighed and hugged her bag to her body. ‘OK… there is something.’ She sighed again. ‘My sister. She’s moved back home.’
‘Oh no,’ Jen said immediately.
As much as Jen knew Bonnie loved her sister, sh
‘I swear she’s only done it because Mum’s literally just finished redoing the spare room and Andrea loves a bit of ochre.’
‘That can’t be the only reason,’ Jen said, turning a little in her seat.
‘Well, she mentioned something about splitting up with “Jules” and then she burst into tears. But she’s always been so dramatic. Her crying about something is more on demand than BBC iPlayer.’
Jen had only met Andrea once. It had been at a Boxing Day meal – a pretentious spatchcock turkey gifted to Andrea by a client – and whether Bonnie’s sister knew it or not she had spent the whole meal telling everyone around the table how much better London was compared to Little Pickering.
‘I don’t even know if Jules is a real person. She’s never talked about a Jules before and suddenly she’s crying like she’s watching the ending of It’s a Wonderful Life.’ Bonnie shivered. ‘But what I do know is the thought of her being at home all the time, with no end date, is filling me with dread. And apparently making me talk about chocolate all the time.’
Then Bonnie gasped.
‘Can I move in with you? Why didn’t I think about it before? Your flat is even nearer to the vets! I’ll be able to get at least ten minutes more shut eye before I start work.’
Bonnie had swapped the nursing home reception for the vets a year ago now. According to Bonnie it was more euthanasia but less all-round excrement.
Jen felt panic starting to build and she squeezed in her core, using that inbuilt emotion-controlling tactic she’d perfected over the years in every foster placement she’d lived in. Don’t show anything. People will use it. She might trust Bonnie, but that didn’t mean it always came naturally.
‘You don’t want to live with me,’ she said as calmly as she could.
‘I don’t want to live with my sister,’ Bonnie said, her breath beginning to steam up the car windows so much that the shining outline of the converted barn that housed Christmas Every Day began to disappear in the blur of condensation. ‘And you’re going to France in a couple of days, so if I move in then, you won’t have to set your lights to come on on a timer or get Natalia to water the plants.’
Think, Jen, think.
And then it came to her. Natalia – her assistant. Another person she trusted.
‘Actually, Natalia’s moving in,’ Jen said fast. ‘Tomorrow.’
Bonnie went to say something else and Jen knew she had to make it clearer.
‘With her brothers.’
Bonnie screwed up her face in confusion. Was it any wonder? Because it did make zero sense. But she kept talking anyway.
‘I needed as many elves on board for the flash mobs. Natalia’s brothers are between jobs and Natalia’s house… has rats.’
‘Rats?’
‘In the loft,’ Jen said. ‘Horrible. A whole family of them eating away at the… beams.’
Bonnie sat stock still and Jen knew she’d gone too far. She stopped talking and waited for Bonnie to call her out.
‘Jen,’ she began. ‘I’m not stupid. You know that, right?’
She did know that. Bonnie was as switched on as the Little Pickering Christmas lights right now. But Jen couldn’t show weakness. She dug deep, knowing she could claw her way out of any situation. Like that family of fictional rats in the loft of a three-bedroom terrace…
‘What’s going on?’ Bonnie asked. ‘It sounds very much like you don’t want me moving in with you.’
Jen couldn’t bring herself to say anything else. She pulled at the door handle and stepped out of the car into the icy evening chill. She breathed deep, taking comfort in the bright strings of lights around the eaves of the barn, the thick spruces that marked the entrance lit up in gold, silver and green, the reindeer and sleigh made from recyclable materials…
‘Jen,’ Bonnie said, out of the car too and following her as she walked towards the barn. ‘You’re worrying me now.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Jen said, pulling her keys from her bag and slipping a brass one into the lock on the thick wooden door. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘How long?’ Bonnie asked, her hands wrapped around a hot chocolate, sitting on the bright red sofa in Jen’s open-plan office.
‘Not long.’
‘Days? Weeks?’
Jen shook her head.
‘Please tell me that means it’s only been hours!’
‘It’s been… since September,’ Jen said, sipping at her hazelnut coffee. Internally, she cringed. Bonnie would be hurt that she hadn’t told her, but when you had spent a lifetime keeping things to yourself it was hard to change the default.
‘Let me get this straight,’ Bonnie began, taking a baby marshmallow out of the top of her mug and squeezing it between her thumb and forefinger. ‘You moved out of your flat and you’ve been living here at the office since September, and you never told me.’
Jen took another sip of her drink. ‘I didn’t tell anyone.’
Did that make it better?
‘Jen!’
Apparently, it did not make it better. Jen didn’t say anything else.
‘Does David know?’
Jen shook her head. ‘I said I haven’t told anyone.’ And she hadn’t been planning to tell Bonnie either. ‘Because, you know, after Christmas, things will hopefully be better.’
Hope.
You always had to have hope or what else was there? Things weren’t so bad. Yes, she might have had to cut costs and move out of her flat, but she had the business, and the business had four display rooms with plentiful cupboards for her clothes and one now housed a sofa bed she could squirrel away behind garlands of tinsel and a framework of candy canes. Milo, who owned the gym below had also asked no questions when Jen said her shower at home was broken and was it possible to use his facilities. With light, heat, her favourite pillow, her teddy bear, Bravely, the fancy coffee/hot chocolate machine and running water shared with martial arts enthusiasts, she had everything she needed. Things could be a whole lot worse.
‘Is the business really in trouble?’ Bonnie asked, her brown eyes studying her intently.
Jen shook her head. ‘It’s a lean spell, that’s all. You know how it is, summer is always more difficult when your speciality is Christmas.’
She had known that from the outset when she created the company. But Jen knew a business had to be driven by passion and her heart was always powered by December. Yes, she could diversify, might be forced to if momentum didn’t pick up, but she truly believed this situation simply required her to work harder, make people see their lives would be incomplete without an event provided by Christmas Every Day. Except in a few days, she was leaving the business and all the events in Natalia’s capable hands while her boyfriend, David, took her to France.
‘You should have told me, Jen,’ Bonnie continued. ‘You should have said something before you started sleeping in a Santa cupboard.’
‘It’s not a cupboard,’ she protested.
‘You could have moved in with me.’
