We Whisk You a Merry Christmas
Anna Martin
Copyright © 2020 Anna Martin
We Whisk You a Merry Christmas by Anna Martin
www.annamartin-fiction.com © 2020 Anna Martin
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. Characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any person depicted on the cover of this book is a model and is not affiliated with, nor do they endorse, this story.
The walk from the train station to his mum’s house was normally about fifteen minutes, but tonight it took longer due to the amount of snow on the ground. A lot longer. But Brandon really didn’t want his mum driving out to pick him up, not in this weather.
Even if his shoes were wet and his toes were cold and the frosty wind kept getting stuck in his throat.
There was something very reassuring and very familiar about this trudge uphill through the village. Even though it was dark out—it got dark by four in the afternoon at the moment— Brandon was pretty sure he could make the journey with his eyes closed.
His mum still lived in the same house Brandon and his sisters had grown up in; a terraced house behind the High Street that almost backed on to the bakery. When they were kids, Brandon had thought of the alleyway that connected the shops to the houses a secret passage. Along with Saffron and Olive, he’d played many games of Super Secret Spies back here.
Brandon let himself in through the back door because that was just the way things were done. Knocking on the front door was for guests and the postman. And he already knew he’d find his mum in the kitchen, at the back of the house.
“Hi, Mum.”
He shut the door behind himself quickly to keep the cold out, then leaned down and hugged her close, not pulling away until she did.
“I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Me too.”
“Sit down,” she said, ushering him into a chair. He still took his shoes off first and left them by the door, and hung his coat up on the hook. His bag could wait until later. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes, but if you’ve got something you need me to get rid of…?”
That made her laugh. “You want a cup of tea and a bit of cake?”
“Mum,” he said seriously. “I really, really do.”
Letting himself be fussed over was easy. Brandon knew he didn’t come home as often as he should; partly because his mum came into London fairly regularly with her friends and she always took time to stop by and see him. But that meant coming home was always a treat, and despite being thirty four, Brandon didn’t mind the attention from his mum.
Within ten minutes of walking through the door Brandon had a cup of tea and a piece of yule log chocolate cake in front of him. His mum sat opposite him at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around her own mug.
“How’s things?” she demanded. “How’s work?”
“Good. Busy,” he said. “Always busy. How are things here?”
She stilled, and Brandon was suddenly nervous. “Bran, there’s something important I need to talk to you about.”
“Okay,” he said around a mouthful of cake.
“We sold the bakery.”
Brandon swallowed hard. “You sold it?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
His mum squirmed. “August. I’m sorry. I thought you were coming home in September, then you didn’t because of that big contract at work, and I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”
“That’s okay.” He knew the bakery had been up for sale for a while, but he hadn’t thought to ask if anything had happened. That was probably self-preservation rather than self-interest. If he didn’t ask, he didn’t have to know. “Who has it now? Are they going to turn it into flats?”
“No,” his mum said emphatically. “A man bought it—he’s your age, actually. His name is Alex. He just picked it up and kept going.”
“So it’s open? Like it used to be?”
She nodded. “Yeah. People around here are really pleased, too. Alex is a good person, and a good baker. He’s been able to keep the tradition going.”
“I mean…” Brandon knew he needed to reassure her. Selling the bakery had been a huge deal and had caused plenty of arguments. But his mum didn’t want to keep it open on her own and neither Brandon nor his sisters wanted to move back to Newton Green to take it over. “We’ve known for a long time this was going to happen. I’m not upset,” he said, reaching out to give his mum’s hand a squeeze.
Later, when the cake was gone and his plate washed up, Brandon wandered through the house. He couldn’t help but appreciate that his mum had decorated for Christmas, like she did every year, even though there was no one but her to appreciate it.
Then again, that was probably not strictly true. Brandon knew his mum had a busier social life than he did; she was the treasurer for the PTA at the local primary school, having never given up her spot even after all three of her kids had left. She worked with a local children’s charity too, and volunteered at the food bank, and had been a member of the local Women’s Institute for donkey’s years.
That was part of the reason why Brandon didn’t feel quite so bad that neither he nor his sisters lived in Newton Green any more.
Bits and bobs had been rearranged on the mantlepiece above the fire to make room for two wicker reindeer sculptures that Brandon had bought for her a few years back. In the middle of the two reindeer were a hodge-podge of different school and graduation photos, and in Olive’s case, a picture from her wedding.
He picked up the frame and smiled.
Brandon looked more like Olive and their mum than Saffron and their dad. Both Brandon and Olive had thick, dark hair that got frizzy when it was humid out, and brown eyes that had hints of hazel. Saffron, on the other hand, wore her wavy, strawberry-blonde hair almost to her waist.
Olive was practical, a born scientist, and it made perfect sense that she now worked for the Scottish government advising on climate change. Brandon hoped that one day she’d move back down here, but she’d made a life in Edinburgh with her husband. Brandon set the photo back on the mantlepiece and made a mental note to book flights to go see them soon. Maybe by the time he got round to it, the baby would be born.
That was another thing that got his stomach all knotted up—Ollie getting married was one thing, but having a baby so soon after the wedding was another. Brandon had thought that she would want to wait, to dig further into her prospering career. But Thomas loved kids, and it seemed like he was going to be the stay at home parent when Olive’s maternity leave was over. It was all very 2020 of them.
Both his sisters had big, exciting things happening in their lives; Ollie with the baby, and Saff out exploring the world, and Brandon couldn’t help but feel jealous. When he’d moved to London it had been such a big thing in their family—he was the first to go to university, the first in the family to get a degree, and it had felt, at twenty-two, like the world was at his feet. Having a flat in Lambeth meant he could walk to his job in Soho, if he wanted to, and London life suited him.