“Oh, hush, you.” Dad flashed her a quick smile. “It’s for later. For the guests. Your mum wants to get in and make more mince pies, so I thought I’d get this batch made up now. We can reheat it later.”
“Bet you need to taste it first though, right?” Molly teased.
“Of course!” her dad sounded insulted she’d even ask. “I couldn’t serve sub-par mulled wine to any visitors now, could I?’
“Is that nearly done, Glen?” her mum asked, bustling into the kitchen from the hall. “I’ve got another five sorts of mincemeat I want to try out today. Ooh, Molly, since you’re not busy, you can help me.”
For a second, Molly contemplated claiming she had something very important to be doing elsewhere, but in truth, a morning spent up to her elbows in pastry with her mum didn’t sound all that bad.
“I’ll grab my apron,” she said, and slipped off the table to the hook behind the door.
“Great.” Was that surprise in her mother’s voice? Molly turned round just in time to see her parents exchanging a look. What did that mean? She supposed that most years she might have begged off the baking, but this year… okay, she’d been a little homesick the last six months. It was nice to have some time with her mum, that was all.
For the first three batches of mince pies, they worked mostly in silence, or singing along to the Christmas tunes on the radio. But, just as Molly dug out the fourth sort of mincemeat – suet free cranberry and apple, apparently – Philippa turned down the music.
“So, how’s London?” she asked.
Molly froze, jar of mincemeat in hand. How was London?
Her mum had asked the question with the deliberate nonchalance Molly remembered from her teenage years – the sort that tended to indicate that she already knew the answer and was just waiting for Molly to decide whether to tell the truth or lie.
She hated those questions.
“It’s fine,” she said, placing the jar on the counter next to where her mum was rolling out the pastry. “You know. Busy. Always something fun going on.”
Apparently, anyway. Other than after work drinks with the same people she saw all day, Molly hadn’t really had much time or energy for seeing the sights or the bright lights. Her flatmates – all of whom had been living together for over a year before she came along – had their own lives. Boyfriends, friends, fancy jobs and big nights out. Most evenings Molly just curled up with a bowl of pasta on the sofa and caught up on the telly.
“And how’s the job?” her mum pressed. “I must say, it’s nice not to have you working over the holidays for once.”
It was nice. Except… part of her missed the buzz of being part of the hotel family, all stuck together making the best of the situation as Christmas parties got out of hand, or the chef ran out of sprouts, or whatever. The huge office she now worked in, even with its open plan layout and ‘town hall’ company meetings, just didn’t have the same feel of comradeship. Not even when they were out doing karaoke.
“The job’s fine too,” she said, finally. “I mean, it’s kind of weird to just be sitting in front of a computer most days. But the people are nice. And I’ve made some really good friends.”
Well, one friend. Jenna. Unless you counted Stefan from accounts, which Molly still most definitely did not.
“That’s good.” Philippa handed her a double-sided cutter, and Molly began cutting out rounds of pastry for the bottoms of the pies, while her mum got on with greasing the trays. “I did worry…”
“Worry about what?” Molly tried not to snap but, really, when were they all going to get over the idea that she was the helpless baby of the family? They’d let Dory go off to New York on her own without a moment’s concern, hadn’t they?
“Well, that you might be a little bit… lonely, I suppose.” Her mum gave her a half smile as she pushed the tray towards her. “You have so many friends here, plus your career at the hotel… it was a bit of a surprise when you suddenly decided to leave. I worried that maybe we’d done something to make you want to go.”
Molly’s heart felt too big for her chest. “No. Of course you didn’t.” She wrapped her arms around her mum in a floury hug. “How could you think that?”
“You just seemed so happy with your life here until, suddenly, you weren’t. We just didn’t understand what had changed.”
What had changed? What had made this year the year she’d fulfilled that vague, annual resolution of getting out, moving on, finding a new life somewhere else?
Molly bit the inside of her cheek, very afraid she knew the answer. She’d wanted to prove something. To Dory, with her perfect life. And to Jake, who’d pushed her away and avoided her for a whole year, the idiot. And to herself, she supposed. To prove that she could get what she wanted as much as the next person, even when it had felt like she couldn’t.
But she hadn’t ever wanted to upset her parents.
“Nothing had changed, Mum,” she promised, not even sure if it was a lie. “I’d had ‘move to London’ on my hopes and dreams list for years, you had to know that. God knows I talked about it often enough!”
“Don’t blaspheme at Christmas,” her mum snapped, on reflex. Molly hid her smile behind her hand. As a once a year churchgoer who was letting her eldest daughter live in sin with an American, most of the year the odd slip like that would pass completely unnoticed. But at Christmas, Philippa’s religious heritage tended to come back in force – if not enough to actually make her do more than attend the midnight mass at the local church. “And yes, you talked about it. We just…”
“Never thought I’d do anything about it,” Molly finished for her. “Of course not.” Why would they? She was the child who never finished anything. Her mother had files of childhood mementos for all of them. While Dory’s was filled with merit certificates and glowing reports, and Tim’s with photos of complex models and computer competition wins, hers had mostly half finished paintings and stories that only lasted half a page. She was the daughter who took two years of driving lessons but never quite got around to putting in for her test. The one who switched A Level subjects twice before the end of her first year of sixth form. The one who never brought the same boy home twice.
She was, officially, a flake. And to think Tim was more worried about Jake’s history of one-night stands! At least he’d managed to pursue an actual career and stick at his training long enough to start it. The best she had to offer the world of consistency and dependability was seven years working on and off at one hotel – even if she’d had six different jobs there during that time.
“It’s not that we thought you couldn’t, love,” her mum stressed. “It was just…”
“You never thought I’d get things together long enough to do it. I understand.” Molly shook her head and stepped away, reaching for another jar of mincemeat just for something to do. “But I did. I got myself that job, found myself that flat, and made myself a new life. All by myself.”
“Yes, you did,” her mum said firmly. “And we are incredibly proud of you, you know that?”
That feeling was back in her chest. The one that made her feel like her heart might burst. “You are?” The words came out small, and Philippa smiled.
“Of course we are. You decided you wa
nted something, set out to get it and you did it, all by yourself.” She brought a hand up to cup Molly’s cheek, then flapped at it to try and remove the flour she’d left behind. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t decide you want something else, if it turns out it’s not right for you. You can always come home again. Okay?”
Molly nodded, her throat tight. Yes, she knew there would always be a place for her here, if she needed it. But taking it would mean not following through on yet another thing in her life. It would mean giving up. Everything she’d worked for, every bit of credibility she’d gained, would be lost.
She’d be flaky Molly, living at home again, back at the hotel – if she could even get another job there.
And did she even want to leave London? The job was okay, her flat was reasonable, and she had friends. Okay, she had a friend. And all she had back in Liverpool was her family, friends she’d known her whole life, a community she felt part of, a job she loved and… Jake, living just an hour away and popping in whenever he was on their side of town for meetings.
Could she go back to that life, if she wanted to? No, probably not. God, how would she cope with seeing Jake over the family dinner table every other Sunday, tucking into his roast dinner and pretending that he’d never kissed her, never wanted her in the way she wanted him? Badly, she’d bet.
No. The safest plan was the one she’d come home with. Seduce Jake, fulfil her resolution and get this crazy lust out of her system. Then she could get back to building the life she’d dreamt of in London.
Who knew? Maybe she’d even have a new man to bring home with her next Christmas.
Chapter 10
Jake was beginning to suspect that there wasn’t a single Terry’s Chocolate Orange left in the whole of Merseyside.