A Christmas Carole

Clanking chains and wise old ghosts aren’t quite what our long-suffering heroine expected for Christmas!

- Milly Johnson

Christmas seemed to come around quicker every year, thought Carole. Once upon a time she’d loved Christmas but she’d come to dread it. Everything seemed heightened and pressured, everywhere seemed busy and noisy.

She hated standing in queues with armfuls of gifts she wasn’t sure Mark’s family would even like. They were so awkward to buy for – and as snobs of the highest order, looked down on her from a great height.

Carole loved Mark, or at least she thought she did, but she had no idea why any more. He’d hurt her so many times with his lies and deceit and inability to commit fully to the relationship.

She had been so looking forward to their first Christmas together three years ago, then at the end of November he had walked out on her for another woman. She’d spent that Christmas Day alone.

He’d returned to her on New Year’s Eve and she’d been so grateful that she’d welcomed him back with open arms.

They’d spent last Christmas with his family. She’d refused even a single glass of wine because she was so terrified of putting a foot wrong but instead she’d delivered a shoe-shopsworth of wrong feet. Mark’s sister had laughed when she’d taken a bread roll from the side plate on the right instead of the left one and she’d spilt soup all down her top in her nervousness. She’d thrown up after eating the rare lamb fillets for “supper” and kept calling his brother’s new girlfriend by the previous one’s name.

Now it was Christmas once again – and tomorrow she and Mark and his family were all going out for lunch to a very exclusive country house. Carole was dreading it. Not only that, she suspected Mark was seeing someone else again.