was glad that he’d gone back to school, where he could be distracted from worrying about his mum. And at least now Eve was safe and being looked after.
‘She’s not your responsibility anymore,’ were the words she longed to say to Gabe, but she knew that he would always feel responsible for Eve, come what may. It was something she’d taken on when she married him, but back then Eve had been well. Marianne hadn’t factored in this, or the impact it would have on her marriage.
Normally Marianne wouldn’t have minded, but now it made her uneasy. She’d always accepted Eve for Steven’s sake, but since Eve had split up from her ex, Darren, a year ago, she’d become more and more needy. And from where Marianne was sitting, it seemed like the person she needed most was Gabriel.
‘Peekaboo!’ Cat was lying on the floor on her tummy, face to face with her granddaughter, whose nose was pressed up so close to her own, Cat was surprised she could still breathe. ‘Peekaboo’ was always guaranteed to make Lou Lou giggle, which it did now.
‘Boo! GaGa! Boo!’ Lou Lou gurgled, clapping her hands in delight. Cat loved the fact that her granddaughter was trying to say her name already. It gave her a warm glowing feeling all over. In fact, considering her inauspicious beginning, literally born in a barn to her 16-year-old single mother, Mel, Cat still couldn’t believe how happy Lou Lou made her. An unexpected blessing, despite the uproar it had caused in all their lives, especially coming so soon after Cat had lost her beloved mum, Louise, after whom Lou Lou was named. Now Lou Lou was part of the family, and it was as if she always had been. And Cat couldn’t help a sneaking feeling of gratitude that she had this second chance baby, to replace the one she’d lost around the time Mel had got herself pregnant.
‘Peekaboo,’ said Cat again, and Lou Lou giggled as if it were the funniest thing in the world. Cat giggled too. She’d forgotten how much babies laughed, and it made her realise she didn’t laugh enough. Sometimes it felt as though the years of responsibility, looking after the children, and her mother who had developed Alzheimer’s frighteningly young, had taken their toll. Lou Lou was teaching her how to laugh spontaneously again, which was an added and unexpected bonus of being a granny.
Mind you, it was hard to remember to laugh sometimes, when you were working till late to make up for the chores lost due to time spent playing with your grandchild. Luckily Cat who had developed a somewhat unexpected career as a TV chef since coming to Hope Christmas, was in between TV series at the moment, as she seemed to be doing more than her fair share of childcare, since Mel had gone back to sixth form college to start AS Levels in the autumn. When she got the green light for the new programmes she was planning: A Shropshire Christmas, a programme devoted to local recipes and traditions from Shropshire’s past, things were going to get a bit more tricky.
‘We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it, Lou Lou, won’t we?’ Cat said, tickling her granddaughter.
It wasn’t Mel’s fault – for the first few months of Lou Lou’s life, she’d been great. Accepting her loss of freedom without complaint, dropping out of school for a year to care for her daughter, allowing Cat the time to continue with her working life relatively uninterrupted. And when sixth form college was first mooted, Mel had protested, saying ‘Lou Lou’s my responsibility, Mum, I can’t hand her over to you.’
Never had Cat been prouder of her daughter, or loved her more, despite the difficulties involved in trying to support her. But there was no way that she and Noel were going to let their beloved daughter miss out on her education. So when Lou Lou was eight months old, Mel went back to college, Lou Lou went to nursery part time, and Cat found herself suddenly being far more of a hands-on granny than she’d quite intended.
The results had been worth it. Cat loved the time she was spending with Lou Lou, and Mel who was working really hard for her exams was predicted good grades. She wanted to go into journalism, and had found a course she was interested in at Birmingham so she could study and live at home. Which was wonderful, but Cat felt with some degree of certainty, that Granny was going to be called on even more often than before.
And that was fine, of course it was.
‘Don’t be so negative,’ Cat chided herself, it was just that at a time in her life when she’d hoped to have a lessening of responsibilities, she felt that she was getting bogged down in even more. And it was hard not to feel a little resentful. Was life never going to get easy?
Since Christmas, Angela, who up until now had always been very independent, seemed to need more of their help, which was worrying. It only seemed like five minutes since Cat’s own mum had been ill, and Angela had quietly stepped into the breach and been immensely supportive. Cat wasn’t ready to lose her too.
‘Banish that thought from your head, right now, Cat,’ she muttered, concentrating instead on trying to make Lou Lou laugh some more, which was much more cheering. ‘And on the bright side, your clever mummy has been earning some money,’ she added.
‘Mama, mama,’ agreed Lou Lou, giggling as Cat tickled her tummy.
Mel had managed to get herself a book deal via her anonymous blog, Mum Too Young. She’d written a quirky, funny take on life as a teenage mum, complete with cartoons, which she’d self-published. It had been a great hit, and Mel had since been taken on by a publisher. She’d retained her anonymity, ‘I just don’t want to start sixth form college with baggage,’ she’d said, ‘I want to be the same as everyone else,’ – which made Cat want to weep for her daughter. She had given up so much by having Lou Lou so young, and coped so well with it. But Cat did wonder if it was a good idea for Mel to keep her two lives secret.
The phone rang, reminding her that she was supposed to be working today as well as looking after Lou Lou. She’d been waiting for a call from her agent, Anna, re her proposed new Christmas book and series. She’d been a bit distracted with babysitting of late, and hadn’t been as assiduous about chasing it up as she’d intended.
‘Catherine, honey, how are you?’ Anna was the only person who ever called Cat, Catherine.
‘Fine,’ she said, propping the phone in one hand, while tickling Lou Lou with the other. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit tied up today, I’ve got Lou Lou.’
‘I’m very sorry to be the bearer of bad news,’ said Anna, who tended to be blunter than Cat’s original agent, Jenny, who’d retired some years back, ‘but they’re not interested in the new series. They feel A Shropshire Christmas is a bit too retro.’
‘What?’ Cat was staggered. ‘But it was their idea.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Anna, ‘but you know what these TV companies are like. They want to freshen things up a bit, bring in a different cook. They’re talking about Sienna Woodall, she’s the latest thing, apparently.’
And ten years younger. The words lay unspoken between them. Cat should have seen this coming. She’d had a lot of jokey comments from the crew during her last series about fading to grey, and needing to botox, now she’d passed 45, and there had been several nasty swipes in the press about middle-aged spread – ‘A greying corpulent whale’ as one reviewer had not so kindly put it. It was true, she couldn’t shift the weight as easily as she once had, but she was hardly obese. It was so unfair. No one complained about Jamie Oliver putting on weight.
‘I’m sure something else will turn up,’ continued Anna, in a not terribly convincing manner. ‘You’re still in great demand.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Cat, with an optimism she didn’t feel. ‘I always knew it would happen
