A Typical Family Christmas by Liz Davies

Author:Liz Davies [Davies, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, laugh out loud romantic comedy books, Christmas chick lit, chick lit british, chick lit best sellers
Publisher: Lilac Tree Books
Published: 2019-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Brett had to wait outside the garden centre for a few minutes until it opened, and he spent the time in his car listening to Radio 2. It felt awfully strange to just sit there, with nothing to do; no emails to open, no meetings to attend, no phone calls to make.

Of course, he did have all those things to do – he just wasn’t in work to do them. He felt an odd mixture of naughty relief and guilt, and an uplifting sense of freedom, and he wished every day could be like this, with nothing much to do, except potter about. He was realistic enough to realise that if he didn’t work, the opportunity for “pottering” would be considerably less because he wouldn’t have the money to do much pottering with, and certainly not any spare cash to spend on expensive slices of cake in garden centre cafes. It was ironic, he mused – if one had the time, one didn’t necessarily have the money, but if one had the money then one didn’t have the time, because one spent all their sodding time trying to earn the sodding money in the first place. There must be a happy medium, and he didn’t mean when he retired, either. He didn’t want to have to wait another fifteen years or so; he might be able to afford to retire before then if he accessed his private pension early, but the state said his official retirement date was over a decade and a half in the future, when he might be too old and decrepit to enjoy it. He wanted to enjoy it now, while he was young enough to appreciate it.

Dear God, there must be more to life than this.

Sod it, now he’d gone and depressed himself, just when he was enjoying his stolen day, too.

Desultorily, he clambered out of his car, shutting the door with a soft thunk, and dawdled over to the entrance, clutching his newspaper. He deliberately left his phone in the car. Work shouldn’t be bothering him anyway, not when he was ill, and if Kate called him, she’d assume he was in a meeting or something. His mother, if she wanted him, would have to wait. There was no life or death situation he could think of that would require his input. She could decide for herself whether she cooked anything for dinner – she didn’t need his approval. Although, when she’d suggested cooking the lamb (dear lord, that lamb... it had been almost farcical), she’d been lining her ducks in a row, so if Kate had made a fuss, his mother could have legitimately claimed that Brett had agreed for her to cook it. His mother could be a wily old girl at times.

After ordering a hot chocolate (it was Christmas, after all) and a mince pie with a dollop of cream, Brett selected a table and shook open his newspaper, immersing himself in the goings-on in the world. He usually read

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