Two

      After that lovely little episode, I really didn’t want to leave the house. I’d have much rather hidden myself away under my fleecy blanket on the sofa and watched one of the DVDs Roberta had bought me for Christmas than have family round for a big New Year’s Day lunch.

      Okay, okay … I knew the cat hadn’t actually opened up an Amazon account and ordered me a couple of Hollywood’s golden oldies, but there’d been precious little else under the tree this year, just a lovely scarf from my older sister, Candace.

      It probably didn’t help that I’d put the scraggy little fir in exactly the same spot Mum and Dad had always had a tree when the cottage had been our family home. Present-day reality was competing hard with memories of so many happy Christmases here, filled with both laughter and bickering. Now Mum and Dad were gone the house seemed far too quiet, even if I chattered away to Roberta as I tried to reacclimatise to seeing the cottage not as just ‘Mum and Dad’s’ but as my new home.

      I sighed. When I’d dreamed of how my life would turn out when I’d been younger, this was so not what I’d been expecting. I’d always had some half-conscious idea that by the grand old age of thirty-seven my life would be like a John Lewis Christmas ad—perfect and stylish, grown-up and full of warmth. But instead of the loving husband and cheekily cute children I’d imagined, I was all on my own, only a cat and a few presents I’d wrapped myself in cheap Rudolph paper to keep me company. I’d even had to fill my own stocking (mostly with chocolate, save for a wrinkled satsuma I’d nicked from the fruit bowl) and put it at the end of my own bed.

      I stared at the gaping hole under my Christmas tree. It seemed to grow bigger and darker the more I looked at it.

      Ed had always been terrible with money but good with presents. There’d been an explosion of badly-wrapped parcels under our tree when we’d been married. Things he’d splashed out on that we probably couldn’t afford, not on a musician’s pay, anyway. I allowed myself to miss that, at least, even if I’d forbidden myself from missing the man himself any more.

      My ex had been the lead singer of a band called The Shamed, who’d had one big hit and a couple of not-so-huge ones back in the early noughties. They’d been making an okay living, though, doing gigs all over the UK, especially on the university circuit.

      But then a contestant on X Factor had covered one of their songs, leading to a flurry of iTunes sales and things had started to change. Ed, who’d never let common sense get in the way of his career planning, had started dreaming of bigger record deals and arena tours. He’d even boasted about pinching Take That’s comeback crown. So when the opportunity to do a late-night reality show on a minor-league cable station had come his way it had been too much to resist.

      He’d spent almost three months locked up in a house that looked like a mini-version of Ikea—without the nice meatballs—battling it out with other D-list celebs for the grand prize of … well, not a ton of money, that was for sure … but, for the lure of resurrecting his profile and the band’s career.

      And it had worked, thanks to an infatuation with a glamour model almost half his age. The story had made the front pages of the tabloids and internet gossip columns. Thanks to his new-found notoriety, the band had signed with a new record company and were planning a greatest hits album. Ed had got everything he’d ever wanted. It didn’t seem fair.

      I sighed. That was it. I couldn’t stand staring at the tree any longer. It was coming down this evening when my sister and her family had gone home. I had to leave the past behind, stop dwelling on what couldn’t be changed and move forward.

      Speaking of moving forward, it was probably time I got both myself and the house ready …

      I spotted Roberta, stretched lazily out on the sofa with her eyes half-closed, and felt a stab of jealousy, but I still rubbed her tummy before I jogged up to my bedroom to get dressed.

      I opened my wardrobe and sighed. I didn’t even bother perusing the left end of the rail, clothes from before the divorce: colourful, pretty and way, way too small. Instead I stared at the right-hand side of my wardrobe, where there were flowing fabrics, dark tones and a healthy amount of elastic. My ‘wardrobe of doom’, as I’d christened it because, basically, anything from it would be a good fashion choice for the Grim Reaper.

      I pulled a pair of charcoal trousers from a hanger and reached for one of my ubiquitous black tops, then ran downstairs to do some last-minute tidying.

      Just as I stuffed a pair of socks I’d found behind the sofa into the sideboard, the doorbell rang. I headed for the door, and on a last-moment impulse, I grabbed the scarf Candy had given me for Christmas and looped it round my neck. It provided just the right splash of colour to my black-and-grey combo, the soft pinks and neutral tones complementing it perfectly. How did she do that? If I didn’t know better I’d swear my sister had rigged the house we’d inherited from our parents with secret video cameras.

      I pasted on a wide, I’m-happy-to-see-you smile, and swung the door open so enthusiastically that the wreath tied to the knocker bounced a couple of times. Standing on the step was Candy, flanked by her husband, Mike, and my niece and nephews.

      My sister threw her arms around me. ‘Happy New Year!’ she said, squeezing hard, then pulled back to look at me. ‘You look nice today. Love the scarf,’ she added, with a knowing glint in her eye.

      Candy, as usual, was dressed down but elegant in shades of taupe and grey, chunky silver jewellery on her fingers and at her throat. You’d never guess that she’d had three kids in the last eight years. She didn’t look any bigger than she had back in her twenties. Sometimes I tried to get cross that she’d sucked up all the skinny genes before I’d been born, but I could never manage it. Besides, as I kept chanting to myself every time I looked in the mirror, you don’t need to be skinny to be happy, right?

      ‘Happy New Year,’ I replied, maybe not quite as brightly. I attempted to hug my nephews—Callum, eight, and Noah, four—but they raced past my legs and into the house, probably in search of Roberta, who, most sensibly, had hidden herself in the airing cupboard as soon as she’d heard the doorbell ring.

      Mike, who was carrying both a cool bag and a cardboard box full of food and drink, leaned in to kiss me on the cheek as he passed by me on his way to the kitchen, and my niece Honey (six going on sixteen) presented her cheek for me to peck as she swept past in her pink satin dress and tiara.

      I closed the door and followed Mike and Candy through into the kitchen—still the well-constructed but rather orange pine units my dad had installed in the eighties—and found them unpacking enough food for a small army. Candy had made a huge lasagne and a sliced-tomato