The Yuletide Child

People stared when she drove into the village, but the little car was still in very good condition. Ross had offered to buy her a new car but she wouldn’t part with her flower wagon for anything. It was her last real link with her old life, with ballet and all her friends. None of them were great letter-writers. At first they had rung her occasionally, but it was months since she had heard from any of them. Michael had sent her a postcard from New York a week ago. He and the company were on the last leg of their tour and he was looking forward to opening there soon. Ross had seen the card on the kitchen table, picked it up and read it, scowling. He was still jealous. He wanted her to forget all about the life she had once led. It was alien to him; he had had no part of it.

‘Is he still writing to you?’ he had asked her, looking up with laser-bright eyes.

‘That’s the first I’ve heard from him in months.’

‘How’s he getting on with his new partner? She looks pretty sexy.’

‘I think Michael’s happy with her.’ She didn’t tell him that Michael had rung her the morning after the first night of this new ballet. It had been rapturously received, but Michael had not been entirely happy with Sasha’s performance.

‘She hasn’t got your fire or your vulnerability,’ he had said, sighing. ‘She’s a little cold.’

She had been secretly pleased to hear that.

‘I still think he’s gay,’ Ross had said.

She’d shaken her head. Michael was intensely masculine, a very powerful man with incredible muscle power although he was so thin. But she knew why Ross wanted to believe Michael was gay. He found it hard to believe that her relationship with Michael had been platonic; they had been partners, friends, colleagues, never lovers, but Ross did not believe in platonic relationships.

As she set off she looked up uncertainly at the sky. There was definitely snow in those clouds. But with any luck she should reach Jenny’s house before the first flake began to fall.

Ruth Nicholls heard the noises just as she was making her lunch. She knew what they meant. ‘Oh, no!’ she groaned. “Fred’s trying to escape again!’

Cleo gazed at her cynically, green eyes aslant.

‘Don’t look at me like that! I know what you’re thinking! What else can I do with him in this weather? He’d freeze to death outside,’ Ruth snapped. ‘And stop staring at my chicken. You aren’t having any of it.’

The thudding noises grew louder. Ruth went to the kitchen window to stare down the garden. The walls of the shed were visibly shuddering under the onslaught.

Angrily, Ruth marched to the back door. ‘I wish I’d never brought him here! He is more trouble than he’s worth.’

Cleo agreed; she detested Fred, who kept trying to murder her, not that he had any chance of succeeding. Cleo was far too quick-witted and fast-moving. She could also read minds. Especially Fred

’s. He had a low-grade mind, cunning yet stupid. Cleo didn’t even have to look at him to know what he was thinking. She lived on a much higher plane. She had been a queen in Egypt and she never forgot it.

For a second she considered accompanying Ruth to watch what happened to Fred, but other impulses prevailed. A delicious fragrance wafted to her; she hummed softly to herself as she leapt upwards. By the time Ruth had reached the shed Cleo was on the kitchen table eating the thinly sliced chicken laid out on a plate, delicately separating it from the uneatable heaps of salad.

Why did that woman eat all this green stuff? Very occasionally Cleo ate a morsel or two of grass, for private and personal reasons, but Ruth actually appeared to enjoy mounds of herbiage. It was inexplicable, but then most of Ruth’s actions seemed extraordinary to Cleo.

From the end of the garden Ruth’s voice rose angrily. ‘You brute! You stupid, destructive animal! Look what you’ve done! It will take me hours to put those shelves back up again.’

Cleo had finished her snack. She lazily turned her elegant head in time to see Ruth hurtling backwards at great speed before she tumbled on to the grass. A streak of grey flashed away up the garden. Cleo yawned in disgust. Fred had won again. When would that woman ever learn?

Oh, well, time to go and take a look at the damage he had done to the inside of the shed. Cleo liked to keep a close eye on everything that happened within her domain.

She stepped out of the open kitchen door then paused, shivering, throwing a glance upwards. Livid, low-sagging clouds massed overhead; there was a strange deadness to the light Wrinkling her nose, Cleo breathed the icy air.

Yes, no doubt about it. Those strange, cold, white things were coming again. She remembered them from other winters. She liked to watch them falling down, if she was feeling kittenish she might even dance on her hind legs to catch them, taste them on her tongue, but they made it very difficult to get about. You sank down into them and they were wet and cold. Cleo hated her smooth, sleek coat to get wet.

Ruth was getting up, moaning, wincing. Maybe at last she would get rid of Fred? Life around here would be much easier if she did. Not so interesting, perhaps.

The phone in the kitchen began to ring and Ruth limped past to answer it, pushing her tousled brown hair back from her flushed, scratched face. Cleo heard her say, ‘Oh, hello, Henry, how are you?’

The local doctor grunted. ‘Who cares how I am? I’m only here to look after everybody else. I don’t expect tender loving care, or even sympathy from anyone.

Ruth recognised his mood. Poor Henry, he was probably being rushed off his feet at the moment. Cold weather always meant a packed surgery.

Drily, Ruth said, ‘Glad you’re okay. I’m fine, too.’

‘Don’t you be sarcastic with me, Ruth!’ he growled. ‘Can’t stop. Just ringing to let you know tonight’s village meeting has been cancelled. Lucy Prescott is agitated because she thinks it will snow before nightfall.’