Christmas Cakes and Mistletoe Nights Read online

  Danny and I have wandered, at a leisurely pace, almost two hundred miles across the canals of our green and pleasant land. We started outside my former home on the Grand Union Canal near Milton Keynes and since then have taken in Birmingham, parts of Staffordshire and Worcestershire, before heading up onto the Shropshire Union waterway. We’ve stopped where the mood or the work has taken us and have travelled far from home.

  We’re slowly wending our way up through miles and miles of open countryside towards the towering Pontcysyllte Aqueduct – a part of the canal that rises high above the landscape of Wales – which, by all accounts, is spectacular. The picturesque town of Llangollen is our ultimate destination and, as Danny said, we hope to moor near the town there for a short while and take a break. One of the problems with not having a permanent residential mooring is that we can only stay put in one place for two weeks at a time – at the most – and then the Canal & River Trust require us to move on.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ I say. ‘We could do with a cuppa after all that exertion.’

  ‘Any biscuits?’

  ‘There’s only a few left, but I’ll bake some fresh ones later.’ Danny likes my homemade oat cookies baked with hazelnuts, grated apple and raisins. I make them with maple syrup instead of sugar in an attempt to keep them on the healthy side. I’m not entirely sure it works.

  As I go to move, Danny grabs my hand. ‘You are OK, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I thought you were a bit quiet this morning. I know that you miss Lija and Stan.’

  ‘I do.’ Like mad, if I’m honest.

  Lija now owns the café outright and I fret about how she’s managing to run the place. It’s not that she isn’t perfectly capable, but I know how much hard work it is to cope single-handed. I hope she doesn’t start telling the customers to eff off. She does get very sweary. Words beginning with F are by far her favourites. She sprinkles her conversations liberally with them. Also, Lija can’t quite compute the concept of the customer always being right, though I’ve tried to explain it to her on many occasions. She treats most of them as if they’re necessary evils – and I try to point out that when you’re running a business they sort of are. Even the tricky ones.

  So she’s not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, so to speak. Although some adore her. Much as people adore Basil Fawlty. Stan, on the other hand, is completely loveable. My elderly and endearing neighbour lives in the cottage right next door to Canal House and very quickly became a surrogate father to me or, at the great age of ninety-three, more probably a surrogate grandfather. He’s a delightful old boy and the hardest thing is not seeing him every day when he comes in to the café for his lunch and a chat. He sits at his favourite table down by the canal, under his favourite apple tree, in his favourite holey cardigan, and watches the world go by. Being apart from them both is the hardest thing about my new adventure and there’s nothing I’d love more than to see them now.

  Lija and Stan might not be related by blood, but they were always kinder to me than my own family ever were. It’s fair to say that I had a troubled relationship with the woman I called Mum all my life – only to discover when she died that she wasn’t my real mum at all. She was my father’s second wife and took me on as a baby as my own mother had died. I had no idea of any of this until Miranda herself passed away. The sad thing is that it seems as if she never really considered me to be her daughter at all. You have no idea how sad that made me and I still know so little of my birth mother beyond her name.

  I’ve got a sister too – or a half-sister if we’re being pedantic. What can I tell you of Edie? Bless her. My dear sister is Troubled with a capital T. She was always Mum’s favourite and I guess I know why now. When Mum – Miranda – died it was Edie who inherited everything. Despite me being the one to stay at home and care for her for years, Miranda decided to cut me out of her will. I didn’t get a penny, or one iota of thanks, for all the love and attention I lavished on her. Edie – who’d scarpered to New York as soon as she was able – was handed it all on a platter.

  Miranda could never get over the fact that my mother was always my father’s first love and this, I suppose, was my punishment. To compound the damage, my sister kindly sold my home and the café from beneath me, cutting me completely adrift. If I’m looking for silver linings in this, it at least gave me the impetus to throw in my lot with Danny and leave them all behind. At that point, it seemed as if I had nothing left to lose.

  Edie and I have made up, after a fashion. We’re still speaking – just about – but I’m not sure that leopards ever change their spots and I no longer trust the relationship between us. When you’ve been hurt like that, and so cruelly, it’s hard to think about that person without dwelling on what they’ve done. Before the dust had even settled, before I knew what would become of me or where I might live, Edie hightailed it back to New York to be with her married lover. She’s still waiting for him to leave his wife – which is never going to happen – and I haven’t seen her since. We have the occasional, strained conversation – where there’s clearly a lot that goes unsaid – and I hope that will change in time. I feel that I’ve mostly forgiven her for all the horrible things she did – sort of. But in truth, it’s Lija and Stan who I pine for.

  I love Danny to pieces and would go to the end of the earth with him – not just a pleasant part of Wales. But there’s still a nagging pull to my former home. The café and the house were mine for so long that it’s hard to completely cut my ties. I worry about Lija and Stan. I talk regularly to them both when I can get a good phone signal – never a given on the boat. The internet connection is even worse, even though we have a dongle or dangle – or something like that – to assist. It still means that Skyping is usually out of the question. Hence I don’t chat to them quite as much as I’d like. They both assure me that they’re managing perfectly well without me, but that doesn’t stop the longing. I love my life on The Dreamcatcher and my heart is definitely here with Danny, but I can’t help but feel that a small yet significant part of it has been left behind.

  Chapter Two

  Later, we moor up for the night and the next few weeks, hopefully. Even on a Sunday when there are usually day trippers galore, this seems to be a quiet stretch of the canal and we’ve found a spot not too far from Danny’s work so that he can walk to the building site in the morning. There’s also a local pub nearby in case we want to wander along the towpath for a swift half later. However, Danny has stoked up the woodburner and there’s a comforting warmth spreading through the cabin which will be very hard to leave. I think there’s a bottle of cheap red wine in the cupboard so the lure of snuggling up on the sofa instead of venturing out into the cold might prove too strong. Diggery certainly looks comfortable cuddled up snoozing on one of the cushions. His nose twitches occasionally as the scent of cooking wafts his way.

  The Crock-Pot has been on all day, turning some budget cuts of meat into a delicious stew. Danny is doing hard, physical labour at the moment and eats like a teenager. I’ve given up watching my carb intake as we have a big bowl of rice or potatoes every night to fill him up and, weak-willed woman that I am, I can’t resist.

  I open the side hatch and look out over the canal. Within seconds two ducks appear, looking for an easy dinner. I find them some pumpkin and sunflower seeds and they snaffle them up, gratefully.

  Danny, out of the shower, comes to put his arms round my waist. ‘Smells wonderful. What’s cooking?’

  ‘Fridge stew. I need to walk into the town centre tomorrow and get some supplies. We’re out of almost everything.’

  ‘I’ll be paid in two days, so we’re doing fine this week.’

  ‘I wish I could do more,’ I say. I’ve not found it as easy to get casual work as Danny has. Anything on offer short-term tends to be physical work – mainly on construction sites or heavy-duty gardening. I can’t really try for shop work or waitressing as we’re on the move too much. If we’re staying put somewhe
re for more than a few days, I’ve been displaying a sign with the hope of selling some cakes to passing trade. Some days it’s gone better than others and I have to balance baking enough with making sure that we don’t have any left over. It worked reasonably well in the last days of summer, but it’s not so good now that the weather has changed and there are very few people on the towpaths who are keen to stop and buy some homemade cake.

  ‘You do what you can,’ Danny says, pragmatically. ‘You can’t do any more.’

  ‘There’s only so much cooking and cleaning I can do,’ I tell him.

  ‘I know.’ He gives me a squeeze.

  The truth is that I’m quite lonely during the day when I’m not selling so many cakes and chatting to the people who stop to buy them. I’m not unhappy, but I just wish that there was someone I could talk to properly or a little job I could go to. When I ran the café we had people in and out all day and I miss the company. Plus Lija was always around and was endlessly entertaining. I miss her potty mouth and stroppy ways more than I can tell you. Stan always had a good story to tell too – he’s seen a lot of the world in his day – and I worry that Lija isn’t looking after him properly now I’m not there to nag her. She has what you might call a ‘casual’ approach to everything in life. Though she regularly assures me on the phone that she’s very solicitous of Stan’s needs.

  As I’ve told you, I looked after my mum for years, when she was bedridden – mainly with imaginary sufferings – and it was tough, so tough. I never had a moment to myself or the time to even think about what I wanted from life. Yet, now that she’s gone, that’s left a gaping hole too. I feel slightly adrift and not just because we’re wandering the waterways of England like nomads.

  ‘I’ve lost you,’ Danny says into my musings. ‘Where have you gone?’

  ‘Thinking,’ I admit.

  ‘About home?’

  I nod. There’s no use pretending. ‘I do feel a bit homesick.’ If I didn’t have all day by myself to think about it, then, perhaps, I wouldn’t be as bad. I have Diggery for company but – delight that he is – that’s not quite the same as human conversation.

  ‘This job will peter out soon.’ Danny moves away from me and pulls the bottle of red from the cupboard and waves it at me, needlessly questioning my desire for a glass of wine. I nod. So, it’s a night on the boat rather than at the pub. ‘We can head back towards Milton Keynes then. If we don’t linger too long anywhere, then we could be back in time for Christmas.’

  Sometimes you forget just how long it takes to get anywhere by canal. Most of the time, we toddle along at walking pace and that makes a hundred miles seem like one hell of a distance.

  ‘It’s definitely doable,’ he adds when he sees the sceptical look on my face.

  ‘Christmas.’ I sigh. ‘That would be lovely. Lija would let us moor up on the jetty next to the Maid of Merryweather.’ This old boat has a strong pull for me too. It was my darling dad’s treasure and, as a girl, I used to spend as much time as possible with him on it. Edie and Miranda were distinctly less keen, so it was always a special place for me as I had Dad all to myself. We’d tinker about, polishing it, touching up the paintwork, and Dad would fiddle with the engine, losing hours just happily pottering. We had family holidays on it too which were always a mixed bag of emotions as I loved every minute of it, but Miranda and my sister would moan for England. They were both more five-star kind of women rather than canal fans. And then, when Dad died, I stopped using it on the canal. Until it was pressed into service again as a make-do shop, it sat in the water going nowhere and is now in a parlous state of repair due to lack of use and neglect. The boat was the only thing that came to me in Miranda’s will and, for that, I’m so grateful – even though it needs a small fortune spending on it to bring it up to scratch. At least there is something of my past that is still tangible.

  ‘I’m sure Lija would be delighted to have us back.’ Danny grins. ‘I bet she hides it well though.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lija’s default setting is grumpy.

  He pours us some wine and we both take a welcome glug.

  ‘You could give her a call after dinner, if we’ve got a decent signal here.’ He picks up his phone and checks it. ‘Looks OK.’

  I get a little thrill of excitement. Our first Christmas together on The Dreamcatcher and I can’t wait. It would be so nice to be able to share that with Stan and Lija too. ‘Are you sure we could do it?’

  ‘Why not?’ He shrugs. ‘That was the whole idea of this lifestyle. To go where the mood takes us. Admittedly, it would be a lot easier if we won the lottery. But we shouldn’t feel tied if we want to move on. Flexibility. That’s our new watchword.’

  ‘Have I told you today that I love you?’

  ‘Only once or twice,’ Danny says. ‘There’s room for more.’

  We’re still like a couple of lovebirds so, despite Danny working a physical job all day, he still finds plenty of energy to get physical at night time too. My love life until meeting him could, at best, be called pedestrian. Now I feel as if I’m speeding along the outside lane of the motorway, engine revving. My previous long-term partner, Anthony, never made me feel wanted as a woman, so I’m a late starter in the passion stakes. I’m determined to make up for lost time though. Perhaps if I did have a full-time job, then I wouldn’t be able to keep up with him. As it is, I’m having fun trying.

  ‘Are you ready to eat now?’

  ‘I’m starving.’

  Danny sets the table and I dish up the casserole. Diggery wakes from his slumber at the sound of clanking cutlery and jumps down from his cushion. He’ll circle us like a shark until we’ve finished eating, knowing that I’ll put a little of the stew in his bowl when it’s cooled down enough for him to eat.

  The evenings are drawing in now and Danny runs the generator so that we can have the lights on without draining the battery. We have a solar panel on the top of the boat, but there’s not enough sunshine around at the moment to make it much use. When we eat our supper, I always put a candle on the table for a bit of atmosphere. I never want to lose the feeling of romance that we have now. It’s possible to keep that alive, isn’t it? I know that it takes more than a pretty scented candle and a few well-aimed glasses of red, but the little things are important too.

  We have a worn leather sofa in the main part of the cabin, the worst of its wrinkles and bare patches covered with a hand-crocheted shawl and two Union Jack scatter cushions. There’s a multicoloured rag rug on the floor and the lovely woodburner tucked in the corner. The coffee table doubles as our dining room and that’s about it. There’s not much room for anything else. The galley kitchen is just about big enough to turn round in, but we have a little oven – something that Danny never really used – and I can rustle up most of what we need. There’s a neat bathroom with a shower that functions well most of the time and a double cabin that houses our bed. There’s another tiny cabin with a narrow, single bunk that’s basically our cupboard-cum-dumping ground. That’s pretty much home.

  ‘Food’s great,’ Danny says, gratefully. ‘You’re a fine cook, Fay. I seriously lucked out when I moored up at your café.’

  I laugh. ‘Funny, but I think the same too.’

  We finish our meal and Danny pushes our plates aside. ‘I’ll wash up in a minute,’ he says, ‘But first, come here.’

  I cuddle up next to him and he puts his arm round me. Diggery gets in on the action too and forces a space between us to snuggle down. I rest my head on Danny’s shoulder. Outside, the night is closing in.

  ‘This is the life,’ he says. ‘Glad we did it?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ It’s not all plain sailing – literally; I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve dropped one of the ropes in the cut or left the windlass behind at a lock or chosen a spot to moor up that was right next to a wasps’ nest. Yet I wouldn’t change it for the world.

  ‘No stress, no strains. No monthly targets to hit. No burning the midnight oil just to keep ahead.’
He sighs contentedly. ‘We are living the dream.’

  ‘On The Dreamcatcher,’ I point out.

  ‘I see what you did there,’ Danny teases.

  I turn to him. ‘I’m glad you persuaded me to run away with you.’

  ‘Hmm. As far as I remember, you didn’t take too much persuasion.’ He starts to kiss me and, as always, everything else goes out of my head. He tastes of woodsmoke and red wine.

  ‘Let’s wash up later,’ he murmurs against my neck.

  ‘Much later,’ I agree as Danny’s fingers find the buttons of my blouse.

  Diggery, disgruntled at being edged out, heads to his bed.

  Then my phone rings.

  ‘Leave it,’ Danny whispers as he makes short work of another button.

  ‘Might be Lija.’ I reach out for my mobile while trying to keep my lips on his. When I manage to grab my phone from the table, the display shows it is, indeed, my dear friend. ‘It is.’

  ‘Passion killer.’ Danny sighs, resignedly. ‘Take it. I’ll go and wash up now.’ However, there’s a twinkle in his eye when he says, ‘We’ll resume this later.’

  Quickly, I answer my phone before it cuts to voicemail, trying to button myself up as I do. ‘Hello, lovely,’ I say to Lija. Danny eases himself away from me, takes our dishes and heads towards the sink. I curl up on the sofa with my wine ready for a girly chat. ‘How are you?’