The Reluctant Elf (Kindle Single) Read online

  Yes, I tell her, and every day until Aunt Kate is well again. There’s no way I’ll leave her. Mabel and I will be spending Christmas in Wales.

  ‘Please leave your contact details with reception,’ says Dr Lonergan. ‘And will you be staying at her house?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll be there if you need us. Oh. I haven’t got keys.’

  ‘Everything she had in the car is in the cabinet by her bed. If her keys are there, feel free to take them with you.’

  ‘Thank you. Can I go back in to her now?’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry this happened so close to Christmas,’ she says from the doorway. ‘This probably isn’t how you thought you’d be spending the holiday.’

  Definitely not. Then I remember why Aunt Kate couldn’t come to London this year.

  The reviewer and his family don’t know about the accident. They’ll still arrive on the 24th expecting a Christmas holiday.

  I lean down to kiss Aunt Kate’s cool cheek.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about anything, Aunt Kate, just concentrate on getting well. I’ll take good care of the B&B until you’re fit again, I promise.’

  When the reception nurse gives me the phone number where Cook is staying I ring it straightaway. I’m going to need a lot of help over the coming week.

  ‘Hello, is that Ms Evans?’

  ‘No, it’s her niece Bronwyn. Who’s this?’

  I remember that Bronwyn is Aunt Kate’s cleaner. Perfect. I’ll need her help too. She listens as I explain who I am.

  ‘What do you want?’

  She sounds angry. Surely she isn’t blaming me or Aunt Kate for what happened?

  ‘Well, I wondered when your aunt will be able to come back to work.’

  ‘Probably in the new year,’ she says.

  ‘The new year! But we need her now! I understand that she’s recovering from the accident, and maybe she can’t cook easily with a broken arm, but I was hoping…’

  ‘It’s impossible. We’re leaving tomorrow morning,’ she says. ‘We’re going to Spain to recuperate.’

  ‘What, both of you? But you’re the housekeeper and you weren’t even in the accident. Aren’t you coming to work either?’

  ‘No, as I said, we’re going to Spain. You can’t expect me to send my poorly auntie on her own.’

  ‘But who’s going to clean the B&B while you’re gone?’

  ‘I didn’t know I’d be needed, did I? With Kate in hospital, I didn’t think there’d be any work for me anyway. I’ve got to go. Auntie is waiting for her lunch.’

  ‘Wait, please, wait,’ you skiving little cow, I don’t say. ‘If your aunt can’t come to work, could she at least tell me what I need to know about the place? I’ve never even been there.’

  ‘She’s not up to talking right now.’

  ‘Could she, I don’t know, email me or fax the B&B or something with some instructions? Here’s my email address.’

  I’m not convinced she’s writing anything down.

  ‘Please. I have no idea what I’m doing. Can you please ask her to at least do that before you leave?’

  She sighs. ‘I’ll ask her, but we’re very busy. We have to pack and EasyJet charges a fortune for checked bags. I don’t know how we’re going to get everything into carry-ons.’

  I’ll take their luggage concerns over singlehandedly hosting a critic and his family any day.

  It’s still raining when we leave the hospital. I should have asked reception to call us a taxi.

  ‘Here, button up, Mabel, so you don’t catch a cold.’

  A car pulls up and the door opens.

  ‘You again?’ I say to the taxi driver who dropped us off.

  ‘I waited.’

  ‘We went in over an hour ago. You didn’t need to wait.’

  ‘You’re probably my only fare for the day,’ he says. ‘Are you going back to the train station?’

  ‘No, to my Aunt’s B&B.’

  I read him the address from the letter Aunt Kate sent with directions for our arrival.

  Again he corrects my pronunciation.

  ‘Mummy, we’re staying at Aunt Kate’s when she’s not there?’

  ‘Yes, because we’ll want to see her every day until she’s well, won’t we? And we can make the house look lovely for when she comes home.’

  We don’t have any alternative. In three days a houseful of guests will arrive. Someone has to be there to welcome them or Aunt Kate won’t have a business to come home to.

  Granted, I’m not the most domesticated of goddesses, but I’ll do my best. The B&B should impress the reviewer on looks alone. Even though I’ve never seen it, thanks to Aunt Kate’s descriptions over the years I can picture it as clearly as if I lived there. Its grand two story Victorian façade, formal parlour and library, large hall and dining room will be the perfect backdrop for Christmas. There’ll be cosy evenings playing board games in front of the roaring fire or snuggled up with a book on one of the embroidered sofas. If the sun shines during the day then the guests can relax in the conservatory that looks out to the hills. It sounds like heaven. The rating will just be a formality, really.

  Besides, it’s not like I have any idea how to get in touch with the guests to explain what’s happened anyway.

  Like it or not, I’m about to become a B&B hostess.

  Chapter Three

  I have to tell the taxi driver again to slow down. He seems to have little working knowledge of his brake pedal and keeps swerving over the centre line. But after thirty fraught minutes, we turn into a steep drive.

  ‘Are you sure this is the address? It doesn’t look right.’

  The winter-bare trees have shed many of their branches, which the taxi’s wheels crunch over as we pull into the circular drive. And the house is, well…

  He takes Aunt Kate’s letter from me again.

  ‘Yes, this is it. I’ll get your bags.’

  I know I should get out and help him, but I’m rooted to the back seat.

  The house is completely derelict. The once-white stucco and mock-Tudor façade is streaked and stained with neglect. The elements have bowed and bloated the window sills.

  Speaking of the elements, the attic is exposed to them. One corner of the steeply gabled roof is tile-free. The wooden joists poke out like badly broken bones.

  I just can’t reconcile what I’m seeing with Aunt Kate’s descriptions of her dreamy gingerbread house in the woods. This isn’t a dream house. It’s a nightmare.

  ‘This place is a dump!’

  I begin to sob as the enormity of what I’ve promised Aunt Kate sinks in. That reviewer and his whole family will arrive, to this, in less than seventy-two hours.

  ‘Mummy, is it haunted?’

  Mabel, usually the first one to want to explore, holds my hand tightly.

  It’s certainly haunted by the ghosts of Aunt Kate’s failed dreams. How could I have let her live in a place like this for all these years? I should have come up long before this.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not haunted, sugarpea. After all, it’s Aunt Kate’s home.’

  ‘Then why are you crying?’

  ‘Oh, I’m being silly. It’s just that there’s a lot to do before Aunt Kate’s guests arrive.’

  The driver opens my door. ‘Is everything all right?’

  His deep brown eyes are full of concern. Or maybe he thinks I can’t pay his fare.

  My legs shake as I stand up. ‘Not really, no. In fact it’s about as far from all right as I can imagine. We’ve got paying guests coming for Christmas in three days and the cook and housekeeper are buggering off to Spain. I’m all alone here.’

  ‘Oh, well, Bronwyn has always wanted to go to the Costa del Sol.’

  ‘Well I’m glad she’ll finally get to work on her tan, but where does that leave me? I can’t run this whole place by myself. I have no idea what I’m doing. And look at it.’

  Tears fill my eyes again. It’s hopeless. I can’t even cook.

  The look of pity on th
e driver’s kind face gives me an idea.

  ‘Can you cook?’ I ask.

  His expression turns from pity to suspicion. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if you can, I’ll give you £1,000 cash to help me for the next few days. Until the 26th when the guests leave.’

  ‘Well I can’t really-’

  ‘Please! I don’t know what else to do. My aunt is in a coma. That’s why we were at the hospital. And it’s too late now to cancel the guests’ stay. Not that I’d even know how to get in touch with them. So they’re coming, and it’s a reviewer and his family. Aunt Kate scheduled them because she needs a star rating or the bank will force her to sell the B&B. This is her whole life. Do you know my aunt?’

  He shakes his head, rubbing the dark stubble that peppers his chin. ‘I only know Bronwyn because we were at school together. A thousand quid you said? Cash?’

  ‘Yes, and I’ll even give you half today and half on the 26th. I’d need you to cook and help me get the place fixed up before they come. Well, basically I’ll need you to do whatever you can to help. Is it a deal?’

  I pray he’ll say yes. Otherwise Mabel is going to have to pick up some carpentry skills pretty quickly.

  He puts his hand out and envelops mine in its warmth. ‘Deal. I’ll drive you to the cash machine back in Rhyl. I’m Danny. What’s your name?’

  ‘Lottie, and this is Mabel. Nice to meet you.’

  I just hope he’s more domestic than I am.

  This is probably going to sound impossibly spoiled and sheltered, but I only lived away from my parents for a few years when I went to university. That’s where I fell in love with Mabel’s father and, full of excitement and the folly of youth, played fast and loose with the birth control.

  I knew almost as soon as I saw those two pink lines on the wee stick that I wanted the little person growing inside me, and that my parents would be supportive. I never imagined just what a support they’d become.

  I waddled through my final year’s classes, morning-, noon- and night-sick but so excited to meet my child at the end of the term. She came into the world with a full head of hair and a strong set of lungs and we’ve been a family of two ever since.

  I moved back to my parents’ Hampstead house where my old room was waiting for me. Mum painted the spare room lilac and stencilled fairies all over the walls for her granddaughter.

  By then Celine had been part of our family for nearly my whole life. We didn’t have much extra money when I was growing up but with both Mum and Dad working at the university, they needed someone to look after the house and, sometimes, me. Celine started as a one-day-a-week cleaner but she soon worked her way into my parents’ hearts and stomachs. She always found time to cook delicious dinners on the days she came. Eventually the whole family was addicted to her Filipino dishes and she stayed with us every day.

  When I was around ten her landlord tried extorting her for more rent. Falsely believing she didn’t have a work permit, he threatened to report her to Immigration if she didn’t pay up. That was when Dad invited Celine to live with us. Her salary remained the same but she’d never have to worry about her living situation again. As long as the house in Hampstead was in our family, Celine had a home.

  With such a fantastic cook in the house it’s no wonder I never really learned my way around the kitchen. Perhaps if I’d lived with Mabel’s father things might have been different, but that was never going to happen.

  Mabel, Danny the driver and I arrive back at the B&B, me with a lighter bank account and Danny with a grin on his face.

  The house’s prospects haven’t improved in our absence. If anything they look even more dire.

  ‘Time to go inside,’ I say to Mabel, taking the hand she offers me. A tiny part of me hopes that we’ll be surprised. Maybe Aunt Kate concentrated her efforts inside where her guests spent the most time. Then who’d care if the outside was a bit shabby?

  Aunt Kate used to be an opera singer, so maybe she’s draped the rooms in sumptuous velvets and brocades. She always had an eye for lovely furniture, and dragged me along Notting Hill's Portobello Road and Grays Antique Market nearly every weekend that she visited. We searched for chairs or tables with elegant legs (Aunt Kate has a thing for elegant legs), brocade footstools and gilded mirrors. All those purchases over the years must have found their way into the B&B.

  By the time I wriggle the key in just the right way to open the large wooden front door, I’m nearly sure it’ll look like the prop room at the Royal Opera House.

  I take about two steps inside the dim hall. ‘Oof. Shit!’

  ‘Mummy, are you okay?’

  I don’t know which to rub first, my throbbing toe or my knees where they’ve hit the floor. ‘I’m fine, I just tripped.’ Motherhood is full of small lies.

  ‘You said a swear word.’

  ‘Yes, that wasn’t very clever of me, was it?’

  ‘I guess your Aunt planned some renovations,’ Danny says. When he sheds his giant coat I can see that he’s a bit older than he first seemed, and a few years older than me, probably in his early thirties. ‘There must be fifty tins of paint here.’

  Exactly why they should be in the middle of the front hall is another matter. As I look around, my hopeful bubble bursts. This is no Royal Opera House.

  Three tall windows run along one side of the wide hall and a staircase climbs up the other side. But the grimy windowpanes let in only weak light.

  ‘We may as well try to see what we’re dealing with.’

  I hoist up the sash panes on every window so the daylight can reach the darkened corners.

  ‘It’s yucky,’ Mabel says.

  It’s worse than yucky. The walls are pockmarked with holes and painted a dreary yellowish brown.

  ‘Who’d use that colour in a house?’ I ask.

  ‘I think it was probably a different colour to start with,’ Danny says. ‘It’s yellowed over the years.’

  It’s got the patina of nicotine-stained fingers and the far corner is streaked with water damage. The varnish is worn off the floorboards where feet have trod over the decades, and everything needs a good wash. Whatever Bronwyn does with her time here clearly doesn’t involve soap and water.

  Slowly we walk through the rest of the house like fearful tomb raiders. Every gasp from Danny or Mabel makes me jump, expecting the worst. It’s obvious that the house was once grand. Probably before the First World War. The sitting room is large, overcrowded with Aunt Kate’s elegant-legged tables. I run my hand over a small mahogany side table.

  ‘Mabel, do you remember when we found this, in that skip in Highgate?’

  She smiles. ‘You climbed in with the rubbish.’

  The things I do for my Aunt. ‘And we brought it home and Dad stripped it?’

  Mabel’s smile fades. ‘Mummy? Will Aunt Kate die like Granny and Grandad did?’

  ‘Ahem, I’ll have a look upstairs,’ Danny says, considerately absenting himself.

  I lead Mabel to one of the silver and red Chinese silk sofas.

  ‘Honey, the doctor said that Aunt Kate should be okay when she wakes up. She’s only sleeping now so that her body can heal itself.’

  ‘So she definitely won’t die?’ Mabel’s eyes search my face. I wish I could give her such absolute certainty.

  ‘I don’t think she will. I’m not planning on it, that’s for sure. Do you still worry about something happening to me?’

  When she nods, my heart breaks a little. How am I supposed to make her feel secure? I don’t have the authority to tell the Grim Reaper to bugger off and bother someone else.

  I hug her little body to mine. ‘Well I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. We’ve got too much living to do!’

  She returns my smile.

  ‘Let’s go see what the rest of the house looks like, okay?’

  ‘Yes, that’s quite enough of this morbid talk for one day,’ says my world-weary seven-year-old.

  Danny bounds down the stairs just as we come
out of the dining room. ‘What’s the prognosis down here?’ he asks.

  ‘It looks like the ceiling is coming down in the dining room and there are mouse droppings in the kitchen sink. How’s it looking upstairs?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Mushrooms are literally growing on the floorboards in the bedrooms, and mould up most of the walls.’

  ‘Maybe you could cook them.’

  ‘Not unless you want to risk poisoning. I think your Aunt was optimistic when she got all that paint. This place needs more than a coat on the walls. It needs a structural engineer.’

  Nobody has ever accused Aunt Kate of pessimism.

  ‘Well we’ve only got three days to do what we can and hope the place doesn’t fall down before the guests leave. At least the furniture is all right. There’s just too much of it. But yes, Aunt Kate is definitely an optimist.’

  While Dad went to university, studied hard and gained respectability in professorial circles, his little sister was traveling by campervan across Europe trying to make a go of her musical career. Whenever their parents told her she was nuts, she just laughed and hugged them. There wasn’t much that Aunt Kate couldn’t overcome with a giggle, a hug, a wing and a prayer.

  She did achieve some success as an opera singer, and performed small parts in most of Europe’s capitals.

  She was never great with money though, and often accepted payment for her roles in clothes instead of cash. After ten years she came back to England with trunks full of gowns and little else. But she didn’t mind that. ‘My life is rich,’ she said. ‘My bank account doesn’t need to be.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘What are you doing?’ Danny asks the next morning, possibly wondering why I’m standing on the dining room table in my pyjamas holding my phone towards the crumbling ceiling.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, pulling my robe around me. ‘You’re early.’

  It was nearly midnight by the time he left last night. We’d worked straight through but when I got up this morning it didn’t look like we’d made much difference.