LITMIR.BIZ

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charm bracelet he’d given her had been exactly the wrong thing to say.

      How was she meant to have known it was precisely what he’d done? The bracelet was nice, but it was hardly ‘The Gift of the Magi’. And it wasn’t as if she’d actually meant him to bugger off and give her space to think.

      Driving through the night to his parents or, more likely, his brother’s as it was nearer to the pub, had been yet another show of Monty’s emotions outweighing his ever-decreasing common sense. It was taking what little remained of her fortitude to keep the terrifying thought at bay that her marriage may have absorbed its final blow.

      She was so tired of it all. The fighting, the worrying, the fear.

      She plodded back to the mirror and gave herself a wan smile. As much as she hated him leaving in a roiling cloud of hurt and fury, with Monty gone she had a few days to wrap her head round where they were as a couple and, more pressingly, where they stood as debtors.

      Right now, both were looking grim.

      They might have their car back, but chances were high it would disappear again. It turned out that Monty had put the debt collector’s fee on one of his secret stash credit cards. At least the regular minimum payments explained where the money had gone for the council tax, the water bills and the mortgage. She swallowed down the increasingly familiar tang of guilt, knowing the shop should’ve really been raking it in during the lead-up to Christmas, but … it was as if all the stress had tamped out any sort of creative fire that still might be flickering somewhere deep within her.

      She stared at her phone, willing a message notification to ping up.

      Nothing.

      She supposed she could always text him. Find out if he was lying in a ditch somewhere.

      No. She stuffed it back in her pocket. She wasn’t ready. The chances of a phone call degenerating into something she well and truly regretted were too high.

      So here she was, listlessly making faces at herself, when a normal Boxing Day wouldn’t have seen so much as a moment to loiter. With Christmas over and done with, Freya’s mum would’ve roped her into some project or other (baking, sewing, painting name tags for the cows). The children and Monty would’ve been put to work, too. None of them would’ve had a moment to think about how awful it had truly been. Then again, it wouldn’t have been awful because her mum would have been alive, full of practical advice she would no doubt have followed, and everything would have been less … different.

      She put a few stray ribbons back into the wrapping paper box and set it at the foot of the stairs along with Monty’s favourite jumper. The one with the worn elbows. He would be less than pleased when he realized he’d forgotten it.

      She pulled her phone out again, willing a message to ping up. One full of misery and woe and, of course, fathomless apologies for being such a class-A twat on her first Christmas without her mother.

      She sighed heavily and dropped onto the cold, stone stairwell. She hoped he felt as miserable as she did. There’d been no need to take the dog. Dumbledore adored it here. All of that cow poo to roll around in. New things to smell. But no. If Monty was miserable, everyone else had to be, too. Score one to Monty!

      She’d actually looked up selling a kidney last night to see if that could put an end to their financial woes. It turned out, if she were able to find an organ broker and get herself to Brazil, she could pay their council tax, Felix’s school trip fees and, at a push, the water bill.

      She pushed herself up again. The chores weren’t going to do themselves. As she crossed to the sitting room, she made a note to throw down a few of the lambs-wool rugs her mum used to dot about the place. The stone floor, so cool and wonderful in the summer, was a recipe for chilblains in winter.

      ‘Tea, Dad? I’ve got the spiced one that Auntie Helen gave you if you like. The chai?’

      He wouldn’t. He was a traditionalist. She didn’t know what her auntie Helen had been thinking. White and two sugars from as far back as she could remember.

      ‘All right, sis?’ Rocco leant into the sitting room, one of his big paw hands spanning the thick doorframe. If ever a man had been born into a farmer’s body, it was her brother. Thick, lightly curled dark hair flopping over beautiful green eyes. A physique perfectly suited to wandering amidst their towering herd of Friesians. ‘Dad? I’m off to the cowshed, all right? Buttercup and Jessamyn won’t be long now.’

      ‘Mmm … what was that, son?’ Their father, Lachlan, looked up from his own large hands, which he’d been staring at since Freya had asked him about tea.

      ‘Okay, Dad? Are you all right there in your chair? Want some more wood on the fire?’

      Bless. Rocco had just filled up the wood burner.

      ‘I was just asking him if he WANTED SOME TEA.’

      Rocco wiggled his finger in his ear and made a goofy face. ‘He’s a bit forgetful, Frey. Not going deaf.’

      ‘Sorry.’

      Rocco shrugged and flashed her that bright smile of his, a bit of straw in his hair from the morning. He never let things get to him, except when it came to the animals. The dairy herd was his pride and joy. If he looked after himself the way he looked after the barns, he might have himself a wife by now.

       Only so many hours in the day, Frey.

      ‘So what’s my little sister up to, eh?’

      ‘Tea.’

      Rocco gave her one of those ‘you’re fooling no one’ looks. ‘No big projects to tackle? No gingerbread villages to make?’

      She laughed. A few years back, when the children had been six or seven, she’d been obsessed with building not just a gingerbread house but an entire village. St Andrew’s more like, their father had hooted, when he saw the large dining-room table covered in edible buildings.

      ‘Not this year.’ She steeled her face with a cheery smile so that she wouldn’t burst into tears and tell her big brother that everything was going horribly, horribly wrong. Her business was failing, her marriage was failing and she’d been absolutely completely idiotic to ever leave the farm and think she could make a success of her own business. Not that she was wallowing. (She was.) But if she confessed all her woes, she’d be admitting that the faith they’d put in her all those years ago when they’d packed her off to get her degree in art and textiles had been for nothing. And, of course, they would try to help. ‘Maybe we’ll do something when Charlotte gets here.’

      Again she received one of those looks from her brother. The type that said he was watching her. That he had her back if she needed it. Little did he know.

      ‘I’m off to the cowshed, Dad. If you need anything—’

      ‘Off you go, fussbucket.’ Their father shooed him with his big, veiny hands. ‘Your sister’s got everything under control.’

      Freya gave her brother’s bum a little play-kick and grinned at him. Best big brother ever. In the world. The universe. Perhaps she could nominate him for something. An OBE? Did they make dairy farmers caring for aging, Alzheimer’s-tinged parents Officers of the Order of the British Empire? She hoped so.

      Regan came barrelling down the stairs. ‘Uncle Rocco! Are you going out to the cowshed? Can I come?’ She’d been obsessed with the winter calving.

      ‘That’s right, chicken.’ He pulled her plaits, which normally would have put her in paroxysms, but this time only elicited a beaming smile. ‘Put on your bibs. I’ll meet you in the boot room.’

      Freya’s eyes drifted round the sitting room while she waited for her father to make up his mind about tea. The Christmas tree was glittering away in the corner. The stockings had been rehung by the vast inglenook fireplace without much care. She resisted rehanging them in a more aesthetically pleasing style. Regan had been trying to help.

      Half the children’s

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