Twelve Days of Christmas: A bestselling Christmas read to devour in one sitting!
“One of the best writers around!” Katie Fforde“Full of down-to-earth humour.” Sophie KinsellaTrisha’s bestselling Christmas book will have you hooked from start to finish – the perfect read as those cold winter nights draw in.Christmas has always been a sad time for young widow Holly Brown. So when she's asked to look after a remote house on the Lancashire moors, the opportunity to hide herself away is irresistible – the perfect excuse to forget about the festivities.The owner of the house, Jude Martland, is also avoiding Christmas since the last one saw his brother run off with his fiancee. But forced to return home unexpectedly, Jude arrives to find that his family are running amok – with Holly seemingly at the centre of it all.As the blizzards descend, there is no escape. With nowhere to go, Holly and Jude get much more than they bargained for – and a Christmas they will always remember!
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TRISHA ASHLEY
Twelve Days of Christmas
Copyright
Published by Avon an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London, SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2010
This ebook edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2017
Copyright © Trisha Ashley 2010
Cover illustration © Robyn Neild
Cover layout design © Debbie Clements
Trisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9781847561152
Ebook Edition © October 2010 ISBN: 9780007412297
Version: 2017-10-26
Dedication
For my good friends and fellow 500 Club members,
Leah Fleming and Elizabeth Gill, with love.
Contents
Prologue - The Ghost of Christmas Past
Chapter 1 - Pregnant Pause
Chapter 2 - Little Mumming
Chapter 3 - Weasel Pot
Chapter 4 - Rose of Sharon
Chapter 5 - Hot Mash
Chapter 6 - Horse Sense
Chapter 7 - The Whole Hog
Chapter 8 - Deep Freeze
Chapter 9 - Daggers
Chapter 10 - Wrung
Chapter 11 - Slightly Tarnished
Chapter 12 - Deeply Fruited
Chapter 13 - Christmas Spirits
Chapter 14 - Toast and Treacle
Chapter 15 - Advent
Chapter 16 - Comfort
Chapter 17 - Rapping
Chapter 18 - Ice Maiden
Chapter 19 - I Should Coco
Chapter 20 - Flickering
Chapter 21 - Loathe at First Sight
Chapter 22 - Outcomes
Chapter 23 - Pieced Together
Chapter 24 - Birkin Mad
Chapter 25 - Christmas Carol
Chapter 26 - Socked
Chapter 27 - Knitting
Chapter 28 - Christmas Present
Chapter 29 - Abominable
Chapter 30 - A Bit of a Poser
Chapter 31 - Fool’s Gold
Chapter 32 - Puzzle Pieces
Chapter 33 - Turning Turkey
Chapter 34 - Slightly Thawed
Chapter 35 - Acted Out
Chapter 36 - Piked
Chapter 37 - Bumps
Chapter 38 - Photo-Finish
Chapter 39 - Signs and Portents
Chapter 40 - Twelfth Night
Acknowledgments
Prologue
The Ghost of Christmas Past
Even though it was barely December, the hospital ward had been decked out with a tiny tree and moulded plastic wall decorations depicting a fat Santa, with bunchy bright scarlet cheeks and dark, almond-shaped eyes. He was offering what looked like a stick of dynamite to Rudolf the very red-nosed reindeer, but I expect you need explosive power to deliver all those presents in one single night.
My defence strategy for the last few years has been to ignore Christmas, shutting the door on memories too painful to deal with; but now, sitting day after day by the bed in which Gran dwindled like snow in summer, there seemed to be no escape.
Gran, who brought me up, would not have approved of all these festive trappings. Not only was she born a Strange Baptist, but had also married a minister in that particularly austere (and now almost extinct) offshoot of the faith. They didn’t do Christmas in the way everyone else did – with gifts, gluttony and excess, so as a child, I was always secretly envious of my schoolfriends.
But then I got married and went overboard on the whole idea. Alan egged me on – he never lost touch with his inner child, which is probably why he was such a brilliant primary school teacher. Anyway, he loved the whole thing, excess, gluttony and all.
So I baked and iced spiced gingerbread stars to hang on the tree, which was always the biggest one we could drag home from the garden centre, together with gay red and white striped candy canes, tiny foil crackers and twinkling fairy lights. Together we constructed miles of paper chains to festoon the ceilings, hung mistletoe (though we never needed an excuse to kiss) and made each other stockings full of odd surprises.
After the first year we decided to forgo a full traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings in favour of roast duck with home-made bottled Morello cherry sauce, which was to become my signature dish. (I was sous-chef in a local restaurant at the time.) We made our own traditions, blending the old with the new, as I suppose most families do …
And we were so nearly a family: about to move to a tiny hamlet just outside Merchester, a perfect country setting for the two children (or maybe three, if Alan got his way) that would arrive at neatly-spaced intervals …
At this juncture in my thoughts, a trolley rattled sharply somewhere behind the flowered curtains that enclosed the bed, jerking me back to the here and now: I could even hear a faint, tinny rendering of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ seeming to seep like a seasonal miasma from the walls.
