Sue stared sightless at her pages of notes for a few seconds, waiting for her focus to return.

‘Fine,’ Cordelia said. ‘Maybe it is a bit soon for revenge sex. But the way I see it, we could sit down here, ticking things off a list that you’ve ticked things off of at least ten times before, or we could get a bottle of some of that fancy wine you keep in the cellar, or two, take them upstairs and watch zombie Christmas movies together until we pass out. Yeah, like a night off? You’ve heard of those, right? And you can pretend that you are bashing in Rory’s brains with the butt of a rifle until they splatter up the wall.’ Cordelia wrinkled up her nose. ‘Too much?’

‘Do you know what? Not, not too much at all. I’ve had it up to here with reality for a day.’ Sue dropped her pen on the table. ‘Come on then, Cordelia Thorne, introduce me to the world of zombie reindeers.’

23 December

4

It was the brightest of December mornings, with frost fringing the windows, and turning the grass to crystal underfoot. As Sue strode down to the church hall, her trusty clipboard under her arm, she felt two things. Sharing her troubles with Cordelia had helped, even if the girl had the tact and sensitivity of a tank, which, it turned out, Sue was really rather grateful for. She had always been a no-nonsense sort of person, and if there was one thing that could be said about Cordelia’s advice style it was that it was most certainly no nonsense. And it just felt better to have told someone, anyone. At least she didn’t feel quite so lonely now, even if she still had the worst of it to face – telling the children, realising that it was true that Rory really was gone this time. The second thing was that she had a terrible hangover. Cordelia really did know how to drink, and halfway through the second bottle of wine, Sue discovered that zombie vampire elves could be quite entertaining, although she’d so far resisted Cordelia’s efforts to get her to introduce an undead theme to the grotto.

Still, Sue felt more positive. Today would be the day she would find Poldore a new Santa, and with that one last task ticked off her list, she’d decided to do something different, she’d decided to take one piece of Cordelia’s advice, and not the casual sex part, she was going to delegate the rest of the arrangements for the pageant and the nativity to the rest of the committee, after all she’d arranged everything so meticulously that a monkey could oversee the operation. Or Eddie Godolphin, at the very least.