They waited about ten minutes, till Angela was breathing more comfortably, but try as they might, they couldn’t get her up.
‘It’s my hip,’ she kept saying, ‘it’s rather painful.’
She was looking very pale and shaking slightly. What if she’d broken it? Cat felt her anxiety levels rising,
‘Do you think we should ring an ambulance?’ Cat asked, looking at Noel worriedly.
‘You can’t, not on Christmas Day,’ said Angela, in a very determined manner. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Well you can’t stay down there,’ Cat pointed out.
In the event, after another ten minutes, Noel and Cat were able to help Angela up onto one of the kitchen chairs. By now the children had all come in, agog to know what was happening.
‘Granny’s had a bit of a fall, I think it’s probably best if we take her to hospital just to get things checked. It might take hours for an ambulance to come out today. Angela, do you think you could manage to get to the car? We’ll take you to casualty.’
‘I don’t want to ruin things,’ said Angela, but she looked faint and not very well, and was clearly very far from being fine. ‘What about Christmas lunch?’
Lucky she hadn’t had that glass of Prosecco yet, Cat thought with a pang, but Christmas lunch was going to have to go on hold. ‘It can wait. Sorry, guys, you’ll have to have sandwiches for now,’ said Cat. ‘Mel, can you take charge till we’re back?’
‘Sure,’ said Mel, who was bouncing Lou Lou up and down in her arms.
Paige pulled a face. ‘Does she have to be in charge?’ she said, ‘Mel’s so bossy,’ but Cat silenced her with a look.
Then together with Noel and their son James, they walked slowly out of the kitchen, down the oak beamed hallway, and out of the house, awkwardly manoeuvring Angela along the snowy path and into the family car.
It was a twenty minute drive to the hospital, but fortunately, it being Christmas Day, they were seen very quickly, and the cheery doctor pronounced Angela to be suffering from bruises and shock. In light of her age, and there actually being room on the wards, he wanted to keep her in for observation overnight, so within a couple of hours, as Angela insisted they get back to continue Christmas with the children, Cat and Noel found themselves on their way home.
‘That didn’t go quite as expected did it?’ said Noel with a wry grin. He looked pale and shaken, as well he might. Noel hadn’t always got on with his mother, but Cat knew how deeply he loved her.
‘You can say that again,’ Cat agreed. ‘Honestly, why does it always happen to us? It was the perfect Christmas till then.’
‘You don’t think—?’ Noel started, looking sombre as he pulled into the drive.
‘What?’ Cat asked, but she had a feeling she knew what he was thinking.
‘That this – might be, you know, the start of something? I mean Mum is in her seventies now.’
Cat squeezed her husband’s arm. She knew how he felt. When her mum had started her long slow decline into Alzheimer’s, it had been little things that had gone awry at first. Cat knew at first hand how hard it was to see a much-loved parent going downhill. She hated the thought of Noel having to go through that too.
‘Don’t fret,’ she said, trying to remain positive. ‘You heard the doctor, Angela will be fine by tomorrow.’
‘And if she isn’t?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ said Cat.
Pippa stood in her kitchen, sipping a glass of wine, staring into the garden, as the last embers of the setting sun leached away, setting the snow-filled hills alight with flaming reds and golds and casting a gold, warm light across her battered kitchen table and Welsh dresser. This was the bit of Christmas Day she’d always liked best when the children were younger: lunch eaten, presents unwrapped, everyone sprawling around the lounge either watching TV, or playing games, and most certainly gorging themselves on chocolates they really didn’t want. In the past she’d have relaxed with them all, letting Dan take over the clearing up, but not this year; this year everything was different. Everyone was being so polite and friendly, she’d wanted to scream. So as they all settled down to late afternoon boozing in front of the telly, Pippa had escaped out here, claiming tidying up duties, to avoid the feelings of suffocation which threatened to oppress her.
It had seemed like the best thing to do – the grown-up thing to do – a year on from her split with Dan to have a family Christmas as they’d done in the past. While she might have been able to cope with another Christmas without Dan, she couldn’t let the kids down, they’d been through too much already. They’d all begged her individually if Dad, Grandpa and Grandma could come like they used to.
‘It wasn’t the same last year,’ Nathan her oldest son had said a little mournfully.
‘I want things the way they were,’ added George, though at thirteen, he was old enough to know that couldn’t be the case.
Her lovely boys had coped so well and maturely with the events of the previous twelve months – Nathan in particular, who’d tried to become the man of the house, would have been enough to sway her. But as ever, it was her wheelchair bound twelve-year-old daughter Lucy, whose cerebral palsy gave her enough to deal with, who made the decision for her. Lucy had been stoical about her dad moving out, though she missed Dan keenly. So when one night she typed on the computer which allowed them to communicate, ‘Can Daddy be with us for Christmas, please,’ Pippa felt any resolve she may have had dissipate.
One of them, Pippa could have resisted, but all three? And so it had been agreed that Dan, his mother and father would come for Christmas Day.
And it probably would have been fine, if Richard’s plans for Christmas hadn’t gone catastrophically awry. Richard normally stayed with his mum and sister and visited his daughter, apparently, but his sister had suddenly announced she was going skiing with her new partner, which led his mum to declare that she was spending Christmas with an aunt whom Richard detested. This was all new to Pippa, last Christmas she’d only just met Richard, while organising a Christmas Ball to fundraise for Lucy’s respite care, and their relationship was still at a fairly tentative stage. She hadn’t factored in him coming for Christmas Day.
But what could she do? Without thinking about it, Pippa had said, ‘Well of course you must come here,’ ignoring the black looks from Lucy and the unasked what the—? questions from the boys. Richard was still new enough for her not to be sure about letting him into her home territory; still new enough for the children to be wary of him, especially Lucy. In an ideal world she would have never invited him, but in for a penny, in for a pound, she decided it would be make or break.
After all, in the last difficult year, when Pippa had finally had to accept that Dan was lost to her, Richard had been a bright ray of hope, giving her comfort that life could move on, and she could be happy once more. Never intrusive, but kind and supportive, Richard had been a rock of empathy to her during the most difficult period of her life. He made her laugh, and was thoughtful and sweet, as well as being very attractive. In the last few weeks, their relationship appeared to have gone onto a more permanent footing, and though Pippa was still not sure where they were headed,
