Ash was standing in the kitchen, having just cleaned it for the millionth time. The salads were made, all three of them a huge step-up from the salads of shredded iceberg lettuce, cucumber rings, and anaemic tomatoes she’d grown up with. One was a Christmas salad with raspberries, strawberries, dates, and walnuts on a bed of greens; it looked amazing. There was also a giant platter of shrimp—“prawns”, as the Aussie called them—and lemon wedges in the fridge, and the ham was glazing in the oven. Jules had happily done Ash’s bidding for most of the morning fuelled by sparkling wine and Christmas cookies.

Even the table was set.

It looked beautiful—white tablecloth and napkins, ironed to perfection; Ash’s good dinnerware—also white; Riedel wine glasses—sparkling, white, and red; water glasses; Chloe’s good silverware; and as many blue decorations and candles as there probably were in all of Australia, including a centrepiece of a tall glass vase filled with tiny glass ornaments—also blue.

There were these things at every place setting called crackers, long tubes with ribbons on either end, decorated in silver and blue. Ash said they were traditional, but traditional where? As beautiful as everything was, there was nothing traditional about this Christmas.

No ceramic dishes shaped like Santa brimming with red and green M&Ms, no Christmas stockings in all shapes and sizes hanging from the fireplace, no fireplace, no bedraggled tree cut down by the menfolk and dragged inside, then decorated as though by a kindergarten class. No snow.

No, this Christmas was anything but traditional. It was perfect.

“Oh,” Jules said, finally realising. Her eyes flew back to the ornate table. “It’s formal.”

“Yeah, sorry, I don’t mean to be a bi— Um … a cow or anything …” Ash trailed off.

“No! Oh, my god. That’s on me. I totally flaked is all. I mean, at home we just wear jeans and sweaters. I even wear my Uggs.” She saw Ash cringe and laughed. “So, you dress up here?”

“Yep.”

“Is that, like, everyone?”

“You mean in the whole country?”

“Yeah.”

Ash shrugged. “Not everyone, but yeah, it’s kind of a thing. For us anyway.”

“Okay, so what are you wearing?”

Ash hung the dishcloth on its hook and grinned. “I’ll show you.”

*

The guests were due at 12:30pm but Ash, dressed in an elegant silk sheath dress, didn’t seem surprised when they heard the buzzer just after twelve. “That will be the girls. They’re always early.” She picked up the handset and peered into the tiny grey screen. “Happy Christmas!”

A muffled chorus of “Happy Christmas” bleated through the speaker. Ash hung up and surveyed the room as though daring a throw pillow to be out of place. When it occurred to Jules that Matt would be with Callie and Thea, her breath caught.

Something had shifted between them that day at the beach.

She looked down at her strappy silver heels and satin dress in ice blue. She’d brought the outfit in case they went out somewhere, like to a club, and although Ash had reassured her a dozen times, she felt way overdressed for daytime.