‘I’m so sorry, Eloise,’ my mother had crooned to me in French over the phone. ‘But Papa is so busy and needs to spend some time outside of Paris this Christmas.’
‘Why can’t I come too?’ I’d asked.
‘I love you, petite fille,’ she’d replied, not answering my question. But I hadn’t thought she could love me very much if she didn’t want to see me at Christmas.
I hadn’t known it then, but I would spend the next fifteen Christmases in Sanderson Bay and I would never spend Christmas with my mother again.
Thinking about all of this now makes me feel even more lonely and despondent. Despite it coming up to my sixteenth Christmas in Sanderson Bay, sixteen Christmases without my mother. Despite it being ten years since she died and that sound of her voice getting more and more distant with each passing year, I always miss Maman the most at Christmas.
I rub my eyes and force myself out of bed.
Come on, Eloise, I say to myself. You’ve got a café to run.
*
I’m late opening up and Ben and Sascha are standing outside waiting for me. Ben smiles at me, that big genuine smile – a smile that has come on in leaps and bounds since the first night he arrived when it came across as part smug, part reluctant – and my stomach flips again.
‘You’re late opening,’ Sascha says as she pushes past me into the café. Ben holds back, gesturing that I should go back inside first and holds the door open for me.
‘And you’re here very early,’ I reply. ‘Shouldn’t you be serving breakfast to your guests?’
She waves dismissively at me. ‘Geoff has it all under control,’ she says.
‘Isn’t Saturday your busiest morning?’ I ask.
‘No Sunday, and not at this time of year.’
‘So why are you here?’ I ask, sensing Ben’s presence behind me. I wonder what he’s thinking, witnessing this back and forth between us. I know exactly why Sascha is here – she will want to know why I didn’t invite everyone back to the café after the Christmas carols last night – but I want to see if she’ll ask me outright in front of Ben.
‘To have some tea of course,’ she says. ‘And one of those maple pecan Danishes.’
‘What sort of tea?’ I ask going behind the counter.
‘That horrible ginger stuff you made me.’
‘Right, glad you like it.’ I turn to Ben. ‘Can I get you something too?’ I ask.
‘Russian caravan,’ he says. ‘I’m growing quite fond of it.’
And I’m growing quite fond of you, I think to myself.
‘Would you like a Danish as well?’ I ask.
He nods and sits down at a table, opening the newspaper he’s got tucked under his arm to the crossword page. I stop myself from staring and try to tell myself it’s just the young Inspector Morse vibe he’s giving off. That’s all. It’s got nothing to do with the way his smile makes me feel.
‘So what happened last night?’ Sascha asks quietly, leaning over the counter as I make the teas – a grass green teapot for her, a pillar box red one for Ben. ‘Why did you sneak off early?’
‘I didn’t sneak off,’ I reply. ‘I was just tired and I wanted to be on my own. You know how Christmas makes me feel.’
‘Is this because your aunt was in her wheelchair last night?’
‘Partly. It’s hard watching her deteriorate and knowing there isn’t anything I can do to make it better. It feels like a reminder that one day she’ll be gone, just like Mum.’
Sascha reaches across the counter to squeeze my arm. ‘Christmas can really make these things hard can’t it?’ I know that Sascha has a fractious relationship with her parents – they have never visited Sanderson Bay in the year I’ve known her and it’s not something she talks about much. I also know that she and Geoff are staying in the Bay for Christmas on their own. ‘Our last Christmas as a twosome,’ Sascha had said with a smile. Whatever the story is with her family, I’m glad that she has finally got the chance to make a family of her own.
‘It’s impossible not to get nostalgic at Christmas,’ I say, passing her the Danishes. ‘Take these and I’ll bring your tea over.’ I don’t want to talk about Christmas and the memories that always resurface.
The café begins to fill up quickly with both locals and weekenders, so I don’t get much chance to talk to Sascha again, who is sitting with Ben as he patiently explains each cryptic crossword clue to her.
After the initial shock of realising that I wouldn’t be spending Christmas in Paris with my parents wore off on that first holiday at Sanderson Bay when I was thirteen, I tried to make the best of the situation. That seems to have been a personality trait of mine for most of my life – making the best of things. I learned to make the best of things at boarding school, at university, while I was doing my abandoned PhD – all the while knowing the disappointment my father was feeling. I hadn’t really understood why my parents didn’t want me to come home for Christmas but by Christmas Eve I’d realised I was, in fact, having fun.
I’d helped James decorate the flat above the café – the café itself had already been decorated when we arrived, much to my delight – and I’d helped Miranda make mince pies. We’d been to Hull to go Christmas shopping and to watch the Salvation Army band play Christmas carols and I’d spent my allowance on presents for my aunt and uncle, which I’d wrapped carefully in my bedroom and put under the big Christmas tree that took up most of the space in the tiny living room in the flat above the café.
The flat that was now mine, the flat that didn’t have a single Christmas decoration in it. Neither did the café for that matter.
‘Have you put Christmas decorations up all over the hotel?’ I ask Sascha as I pass her table. I’d seen a tree in reception and the decorations in her and Geoff’s flat the day before.
‘We have,’ she replies.
‘The dining room looks like Santa’s grotto on acid,’ Ben grumbles quietly, not looking up from his crossword.
‘Do I detect a Grinch?’ I ask. He looks up and smiles at me.
‘I’m not big on Christmas,’ he admits.
‘You’re one to criticise anyway, Ellie,’ Sascha interjects. ‘I don’t see a single bauble anywhere in the café.’
‘No,’ I say hesitantly. There’s a reason I haven’t put decorations up yet. ‘When I was a kid, before I moved to England, we never decorated the apartment in Paris before Mum’s birthday on the 14th of December.’
‘New start, new traditions,’ Sascha says, stopping me before I get too maudlin. I notice Ben is still looking at me. A little furrow has appeared between his eyebrows as though he wants to ask a question. ‘All the businesses in Sanderson Bay decorate in time for the big Christmas lights switch-on. You’ve missed that now, so you need to get on it. You can get a Christmas tree this afternoon from the farm along the cliff road,’ she goes on bossily.
‘I was going to order one online,’ I say.
‘Get a real one,’ Sascha says.
‘But I don’t have a car. Am I meant to drag it three miles home along a dual carriageway?’ I remember the little blue Citroën that I sold to one of the undergraduates in my cubism class fondly. And I remember her telling me how much she’d miss me as she drove away. That had been a surprise.