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her breath at the thought of it. But then Caroline reminded him that they did have another son and that David would be devastated at being left on his own at home, because obviously there wasn’t enough room at Laura and Jim’s for him too. Not that he’d been asked. Laura exhaled with relief.
    ‘Nobody is being asked.’ It was Jim who finally lost his temper.
    ‘Maybe we could just call around,’ murmured Caroline.
    ‘And we could too,’ said Angela.
    ‘Quite honestly, I don’t want either of you to do that,’ said Jim. ‘I’ve listened to more rubbish tonight than I could’ve believed possible. You’re both being silly and selfish, and Laura and I will spend Christmas on our own.’
    ‘There’s no need to be rude,’ said Angela.
    ‘He’s not being rude,’ Caroline told her.
    ‘I am,’ roared Jim. ‘I’m being so rude I’m telling you all to sod off home before I lose my rag completely.’
    ‘You know they’ll come anyway,’ said Laura later that night when he told her that they would stay at home on Christmas Day, lock the door and not let anyone in. ‘And then they’ll probably have another row. And so will we, because I can’t stand you being rude to my mother. Even if she deserves it.’
    ‘I’m not having my marriage wrecked and our first Christmas with Kirstie ruined because of our families.’ Jim’s tone was forceful. ‘No matter what it takes.’
    He’d left it very late. Even though hotels were advertising on the back pages of the newspapers, many of them didn’t have availability any more. Which made Jim think that the whole thing about recession was a con – it was only fools like him and Laura who were struggling; everyone else had plenty of money to splash out on expensive seasonal packages. Because even the cheapest of them wasn’t really cheap.
    The Sugar Loaf Lodge was a last-gasp attempt. They didn’t have an ad in the paper but he remembered going to a friend’s wedding there a couple of years earlier and it had stuck in his mind as a really nice place. Secluded but not isolated. Stylish but not stuffy. It would be lovely, he thought, to spend a peaceful, family-free Christmas there with his wife and baby. It would definitely take the pressure off Laura, who was looking pale and harried and even more tearful than usual. And although it could never become a tradition – his bank balance wouldn’t stretch to it – it would be a wonderful first Christmas for Kirstie.
    Laura was both relieved and horrified when he told her what he’d done. She was relieved that he’d decided something and that she simply had to go along with it. But she was horrified at the cost – Jim wouldn’t tell her how much it was, but she looked up the website and nearly had a heart attack when she saw the rates; she was also a little concerned that Kirstie wouldn’t wake in her own bed and have presents under her own tree and experience her first Christmas in her own home.
    ‘My head has been done in so much with all this parental arguing that I don’t care how much it bloody costs,’ Jim told her. ‘It’s worth it. As for Kirstie’s memories – there’s no way she’ll remember this Christmas, no matter what we do. So it doesn’t matter about the bed and the tree and whatever. To tell you the truth, I only wish I’d thought about going away sooner. We could have gone somewhere hot. As it is, we were lucky with this booking. It’s one of their annexe rooms that they don’t normally use for visitors in the winter.’
    ‘Are we going to freeze to death?’ asked Laura.
    ‘It’s not that at all,’ Jim told her. ‘It’s just that it’s in a separate building a couple of minutes’ walk from the house. The walkway isn’t covered. All their other rooms were booked, and when I asked if there was any chance of a cancellation, because it was really important to us to get away, they suggested this.’
    ‘It won’t be awful, will it?’ asked Laura. ‘I’m not sure about