let her get away with that.
I leapt down onto the pavement behind her, chasing her back down the street, away from my territory. My family.
We didn’t need no stupid cats hanging around here.
I didn’t intend to actually catch her, which was just as well, as Perdita positively flew across the street, up over the fence at number 12, and away. Still, I think I’d made my point.
Slowing to a stop beside a comfortable-looking patch of grass in the shelter of an evergreen hedge, I lay down to recover from my exertions. Running is not one of my favourite activities. Actually, walking is a bit much too. I like to think I was made for warming a person’s feet by a fire, and eating. Puffing a little, I tried to catch my breath. I’d just rest for a moment, then I’d head back to the car. After all, I was excited to discover what ferry, France and chateau meant.
But then I heard the slamming of car doors, and the unmistakeable sound of an engine starting. And that was the moment my adventure really began.
‘Right. Is that everything?’ Daisy buckled Lara into her car seat, ignoring her baby daughter’s indignant wails drowning out the Christmas music she’d put on the car stereo, as Oliver did the same with Luca on the other side. Five months old and they already hated everything Daisy tried to do. Surely it had taken longer for that sort of objection to set in with Bella and Jay? Maybe it was because there were two of them this time. Double trouble, Oliver called them, and not without good reason.
In the row behind, Jay was trying to fasten his own seatbelt over his booster seat. Beside him, Bella rolled her eyes with the kind of disdain only a fourteen-year-old could manage, and took over, clipping it in with ease.
How had it come to this? Inside, Daisy couldn’t help but feel that she was barely older than her eldest child. But out in the real world, she had four kids, a needy dog, a ridiculously large car, and a trip to make across the channel the day before Christmas Eve. Not to mention a husband who looked exhausted and grumpy before the whole adventure had even begun.
It was Christmas. A time for family, fun and celebrating, surely. Not stress eating smoked salmon from the packet and fantasising about a gin and tonic on the ferry at eleven in the morning.
‘Suitcases are packed. Claude’s in his crate.’ Oliver ticked the items off on his fingers as he recounted the list, raising his voice to be heard over the twins’ escalating cries and the sound of Slade announcing the arrival of Christmas. Still, at least the babies tended to pass out the moment the car was in motion. They just had to get on the road. Quickly. ‘We have nappies, presents, snacks and passports. Anything else?’
‘What about the hamper?’ The same question her mother had been asking every time she’d called that morning from France to check if they were on their way yet.
‘Wedged in the back seat between Bella and Jay. I figured it was safer than leaving it with Claude.’
‘Good call.’ Claude almost certainly wouldn’t like smoked salmon, or any of the other contents of the M&S hamper, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try them, just to make sure. He’d eaten a whole bowl of cashew nuts the week before, plus a slice of cheesecake from her plate the week before that. She’d just nipped upstairs to check on the twins and when she got back – gone. The blasted dog was ruled by his stomach.
‘Remind me why your parents couldn’t just buy food in France?’ Oliver asked, as he slid into the passenger seat, scowling at the fairy lights flashing on the dashboard. So she was driving then. Right.
‘Apparently it’s not the same.’ Which Daisy would have thought was rather the point. Why move to France in the first place if you really only wanted M&S food in a slightly sunnier climate? Maybe it was for the wine. That would make sense.
‘I still don’t understand why we have to go at all,’ Oliver grumbled, and Daisy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from responding that he was the one who said what a brilliant idea it was when her parents first suggested spending Christmas with them in their new house in Normandy. If she’d answered the phone that night they could be eating mince pies in the peace of their own home right now.
Or possibly not. Her father could be very hard to say no to when he had an idea in his head, and as their only child she did feel a certain obligation to them. But at least she would have tried. Who asked their daughter to traipse across the Channel two days before Christmas with four kids and a dog in tow?
Daisy took a deep breath. It would all be fine. It would be a lovely, family Christmas. They’d all be together, playing board games, or maybe charades. She and Mum would cook a wonderful Christmas roast, and they’d all eat too much pudding. Claude and Petal would beg for turkey scraps, Jay would pull everyone’s crackers for them, and the twins would sleep through the night finally.
Well, maybe not that last one. Even the season of miracles had its limits.
But the important thing was they would all be together, having precious family time.
Daisy smiled to herself. There. Everything felt much calmer now she’d focused on what really mattered. She kissed the twins in turn. They scowled back.
‘Right, kids, everyone okay back there?’ she called, back through the seats. No response. ‘Bella?’
Daisy peered further back. Of course. Bella had her phone out and was staring intently at the screen, her headphones clamped over her ears. Jay was already deep into some game or another on his tablet. She glanced at Oliver for some parental support.
Oliver was playing Candy Crush on his phone.
Another deep breath. This one didn’t help nearly so much.
‘Right!’ she snapped, reaching between the front seats and whipping Oliver’s phone from his hand.
‘Hey!’
‘Hand them over.’ She held out a hand for Bella and Jay’s devices, and they both stared at her in horror. ‘This is a family holiday. Time for us to reconnect as a family unit. To talk, share our thoughts, play together. Not stare at individual screens for the next three days then go home again.’
‘So, what? You’re going to lock up our phones?’ Bella raised her eyebrows. ‘Seriously?’
‘If that’s what it takes.’ Did she even have somewhere to lock them? Daisy cast her gaze around the car and spotted her mother’s old vanity case that had been turned into a first aid kit, sitting on the floor of the back seat. That would do.
‘But I’ll miss everything!’ Bella wailed. ‘How will I know what’s going on at home, with my friends?’
‘You can ask them when you get back,’ Daisy said. Leaning across the twins’ car seats, ignoring the squeaks from the babies, she plucked the tablet and phone from Bella and Jay. Then she flipped open the vanity case and dropped them and Oliver’s phone on top of the half full packets of plasters and some antiseptic cream that had gone green around the lid.
‘What about
