Read Snow Angels, Secrets and Christmas Cake for Free Online Page B

best wife and mother, I make perfect canapés, cook the most golden goose and after all that I will still have enough love and libido left to delight my husband in the bedroom.’
    I’d Googled the glitzy top the woman was wearing and bought it there and then, thinking if I wore that top on Christmas Day, Simon might love me again.
    Simon. I finished my sherry. Yes – Simon was bound to arrive soon, or call. It was all so sordid and unseemly and things like this didn’t happen to people like us. Oh how we’d laugh at the blundering bailiffs who probably hadn’t even read the correct address. The paper they’d handed me was lying on the counter top, I reached for it and my eyes skimmed along the page looking for the wrong road, the incorrect house name (we didn’t have a number – you’re no one with a house number). But there it was ‘The Rectory, Chantray Lane.’
    My eyes filled with tears as my brain began to adjust to the possibility that this might just be happening... to people like us.

3
    Christmas Roses and Champagne Truffles
Sam
    B efore the bailiffs arrived I’d been keen to escape Tamsin’s theatrical Christmas madness. I was looking forward to taking Jacob home to tea and cinnamon toast in front of our little open fire. We’d snuggle up, watching the glittering, silent snow outside and when he was in bed asleep I would start baking for the morning. This was my life now – and since Steve had died I’d been desperately trying to keep everything on track for both me and Jacob. I hadn’t always succeeded, but thanks to Tamsin, who’d been my safety net – I was finally getting there. But looking at Tamsin sobbing by the beautiful Christmas tree while two guys hammered signs on the outside doors I realised I had to be her safety net now.
    Like everyone else, my first thought was that this was all a big mistake – but when Tamsin couldn’t get hold of Simon, we all realised this was very real.
    ‘What am I going to do?’ she was pleading, looking over at me for an answer. I couldn’t speak, I had always been the one asking Tamsin what I should do – this was the first time she’d ever asked me.
    I gave it a few seconds to take everything in, then took a deep breath and
    went outside with Hugo to talk to the two men. My nephew was shaken, but wanted to get to the bottom of it all and I linked him as we both walked out into the freezing cold evening. Once outside we asked for details and the bailiffs confirmed that that not only was the house being repossessed but their company was in receivership, too. What made the whole thing horribly worse was that Simon had seen this coming – and had disappeared. I wasn’t surprised. I’d never really taken to Simon he was all about how things looked and how much everything cost. Tamsin always seemed so bloody grateful to have him, she refused to see anything bad in him at all and I felt she made excuses for him. I remember once going for dinner and he was bragging about their new home in France. One of the guests remarked that they too had a house in the same region and I watched his face change – he was suddenly so angry that he wasn’t the only one with a house there. ‘Yes, but yours is one of those little places near the river,’ he said. ‘Infested with rats those places, wouldn’t touch them myself.’
    ‘Oh Simon, don’t be so mean, Anouska’s French farmhouse is beautiful,’ Tamsin had cajoled. She feigned a light laugh and I noticed her hand discreetly slip under the table to touch his knee, a pacifying gesture she’d thought no one would notice.
    ‘What?’ he said and everyone stiffened, waiting for the Tamsin-baiting to begin.
    ‘And what the hell would you know about French property, Tamsin? All you ever do is shop!’ he said, looking around the table for someone to laugh, join him in his bullying. But everyone looked away and Phaedra asked Tamsin for the pâté recipe to try and move the conversation on.
    The rest of the