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Автор Trisha Ashley
Trisha Ashley
The Magic of Christmas
Dedication
For my son, Robin Ashley,
with love.
Contents
Title page
Dedication
Prologue: December 2005, Winter of Discontent
Chapter 1: Old Prune
Chapter 2: All Fudge
Chapter 3: Bittersweet
Chapter 4: Mushrooming
Chapter 5: Sweet Mysteries
Chapter 6: Driven Off
Chapter 7: Loose Nuts
Chapter 8: Well Braced
Chapter 9: Soul Food
Chapter 10: Cornish Mist
Chapter 11: Popped Corks
Chapter 12: Just Desserts
Chapter 13: Raspberries
Chapter 14: Slightly Curdled
Chapter 15: Drink Me
Chapter 16: Unrehearsed Entrances
Chapter 17: Tart
Chapter 18: Simmering Gently
Chapter 19: Stirring
Chapter 20: Freshly Minted
Chapter 21: Slightly Stewed
Chapter 22: Given the Bird
Chapter 23: Put Out
Chapter 24: Flambé
Chapter 25: Crème de Coeur
Chapter 26: Crackers
Chapter 28: Cold Snap
Chapter 29: Clueless
Chapter 30: Unscheduled Appearances
Chapter 31: Middlemoss Marchpane
Chapter 32: Hoar Frost
Chapter 33: Well Stirred
Forget the Jimmy Choos, Chocolate Shoes And Wedding Blues Is the Only Accessory You Need For Spring 2012…
Twelve Days of Christmas
About the Author
Other Books by the Same Author
Copyright
The Magic of Christmas is loosely based on one of my earlier novels, Sweet Nothings, with the addition of a lot of new material. I felt there was so much more to say about the village of Middlemoss and all the characters who live there, especially Lizzy and her friends in the Christmas Pudding Circle, the annual Boxing Day Mystery Play and the vanishing squirrels!
Prologue: December 2005, Winter of Discontent
The venue for the last Middlemoss Christmas Pudding Circle meeting of the year (which was usually more of an excuse for a party) had been switched to Perseverance Cottage because Lizzy’s thirteen-year-old son had come down with what she’d thought was flu and she wanted to keep an eye on him.
Later, looking back on the events of that day, it seemed to Lizzy that one minute she’d been sitting at the big pine table in her kitchen, wearing a paper hat and happily debating the rival merits of fondant icing over royal with the other four members of the CPC, and the next she was frantically snatching at the card listing the symptoms of meningitis, which she kept pinned to her notice board, and shouting to Annie, her best friend, to ring for an ambulance.
At the hospital, Jasper changed frighteningly fast from a big, gruff teenager to a pale, sick child, and Lizzy tried urgently to contact her husband, Tom, who was away on one of his alleged business trips.
But as usual he didn’t answer his mobile and was nowhere to be found, so all she could do was leave messages in the usual places … and several unusual ones.The hospital radio was softly warbling on about decking the halls with boughs of holly, but Lizzy, filled with a volatile mixture of desperate maternal fear and anger, wanted to deck her selfish, unreliable husband.
It was just as well that Annie was such a tower of strength in an emergency! During that first long day while Lizzy anxiously waited for the antibiotics to kick in, her friend popped in and out between jobs for the pet-sitting agency she ran, visited Perseverance Cottage to feed the poultry and let out Lizzy’s dog, and reassured Tom’s elderly relatives up at the Hall that she would keep them updated with every change in Jasper’s condition.
