Christmas Surprises at Mermaids Point by Sarah Bennett

Author:Sarah Bennett [Bennett, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

6

Ivy

‘Mum?’ Ivy followed the quiet question with a tap on the door of what had once been the dining room in their cottage and waited, half-hoping her mum had managed to drop off to sleep.

‘Come in, darling.’ As she entered the shadowed room she saw her mum was already struggling to sit up straighter, and Ivy hurried over to help rearrange and fluff the pillows. ‘That’s better,’ Jennifer Fisher said as she rested her head back. ‘Here now let me look at you.’

Trying to ignore the hint of breathlessness in her mother’s voice, Ivy held out her arms and turned in a slow circle to show off the outfit she’d chosen for the evening. ‘What do you think?’

‘You look pretty as a picture. I thought when you brought that dress home it was the perfect shade of green.’

Ivy laughed. ‘And here’s me remembering you saying it looked like an old sack of nothing.’

Jen lifted a finger and wagged it at her. ‘And I wasn’t wrong, but I always had faith in your skills as a seamstress. Apart from the colour, it’s barely recognisable.’

Ivy brushed a hand over the velvety material which had drawn her eye in a local charity shop a couple of months ago and allowed herself a little smile of pride. The vintage 80’s party dress had been unstitched, trimmed and reshaped into a fitted knee-length tunic. Gone were the puffball shoulders, replaced by long sleeves that ended in a point which partly covered the backs of her hands. She’d added iridescent beads, reclaimed from a moth-eaten handbag, to the tips of the points, and round the high collar of the tunic. The dress had cost her a fiver, and the ladies in the charity shop had thrown the bag in for free because Ivy was one of their most loyal customers. ‘I am rather pleased with the way it turned out.’

‘So you should be.’ Her mum patted the side of the bed next to her. ‘Now come and tell me all about your plans for the evening.’

‘It’s nothing special,’ Ivy said as she picked up her mum’s hand and traced her fingers over the paper-thin skin. ‘Just a pre-Christmas drink with Laurie and a few others.’ After several years of not speaking, Ivy and her former best friend had recently taken tentative steps to rebuild their friendship. It was too early to say whether they’d ever get back to anything like their former closeness, but Ivy was just grateful to be back on speaking terms.

‘Nice of her to invite you,’ Jen said, echoing Ivy’s own thoughts. ‘It gives me such peace of mind to know you’ll have a friend like her around in the months to come.’

‘Don’t Mum.’ Ivy closed her eyes, all the joy she’d been feeling about the prospect of doing something normal for a couple of hours seeping away.

Her mother flipped their hands so she was the one doing the petting. ‘We have to talk about it, darling.’ When Ivy kept her eyes closed, her mum shook her hand gently.

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