"Slowly, Tia."

Luke helped her into the back seat of the SUV he rarely drove while I stuffed her bag of medication into the footwell on the other side. The doctor had prescribed so many pills Tia would rattle if she jumped up and down, and she'd been discharged with a long list of dos and don'ts. No horse riding for at least six months.

On the way home, we stopped off at Woodley Hall, the house Luke grew up in and where Tia still lived with their mother. The country pile screamed old money.

"Nice," I said as we turned into the drive.

"It is now. It was in an awful state when our father died," Luke said. "We almost lost it after he ran out of money. I'm sure that's what caused his heart attack."

Tia gasped from the behind me. "We nearly lost our home?"

Luke nodded.

"I didn't know that."

"Well, you do now."

Luke had tried to shield her as she grew up, convinced he was doing the right thing. I wasn't so sure—the world might be full of shit, but living in a bubble was no better.

"I always knew he was an arsehole," Tia muttered.

"Tia, don't call him that. He was still our father."

"Some father. Did you know he cheated on Mum with the girl from the florist?"

Luke slammed the brakes on. "He what? What makes you think that?"

"Because I saw them when I was little. I was supposed to be asleep, but I woke up and saw them in one of the spare bedrooms, doing..." She closed her eyes and shuddered. "It."

"Fucking arsehole." Luke walloped his palm against the dashboard. "Shit."

Wow. This family was almost as dysfunctional as my own.

Luke's mother was reading a novel in the lounge when we arrived. When he'd called earlier to tell her Tia would be staying with us for a while, the news was met with a vague comment of, "I hope you both have a good time, darling," and that was that, almost as if Tia was popping over for a brief visit rather than moving out for weeks.

Even now, Mrs. Halston-Cain made the effort of raising her eyes from the book seem like a chore. When she saw me standing behind Luke, a slight look of puzzlement came over her face. I say slight because most of her facial features had been frozen in place by Botox.

"Who are you? Do I know you?"

"I'm Ashlyn. You saw me yesterday at the hospital." And ignored me completely.

"Ash is my girlfriend," Luke said.

"Oh. What happened to Caroline?"

"I broke up with Caroline three months ago."

"Such a shame. Caroline was a lovely girl. It would have been a wonderful family for you to marry into, what with her father being a banker and her mother being such an active member of the hospital fundraising committee. Girls like Caroline don't grow on trees, you know. Are you sure there's no chance of you getting back together?"

Hey, don't mind me, lady. I'm only standing right next to your son.

"Mother! Show some tact and don't be so rude to Ash."

"Sorry, darling," she said, when in reality she was anything but. "So, Ashlyn, what do your parents do?"

"My dad's an accountant, and my mum's a teacher."

Nice, normal professions, I thought, but still her face fell. I was tempted to tell her the truth, that my mother was a drugged-out hooker and my father was a sperm donor, just to see her reaction. But I couldn't do that to Luke.

"Never mind, dear, I'm sure you'll find a nice man to marry one day, in spite of that." The words, "Just not my son," remained unspoken at the end of her sentence.

Her attitude didn't go unnoticed by Luke. "That's it. We're getting Tia's things, and we're leaving," he snapped.

Tia rolled her eyes at me and mouthed, "See."

Yes, I did indeed see.

When we arrived back home, Luke supported Tia while she hobbled up the steps into the house. Her ankle may not have been broken, but it was still the size of a grapefruit, and her newly pinned arm prevented her from using crutches. The hospital had given her a cane instead.

"It makes me feel a hundred years old," she said as she shuffled through the hallway.

"Better than hopping. Want me to get you a top hat and a pair of tap-dancing shoes to go with it?"

She glared at me, but this time she was smiling.

Luke got Tia settled on the sofa in the den while I carried her stuff upstairs. Six suitcases, three trips. How long did she plan on staying?

The following morning found me in the kitchen, eating breakfast with the newest addition to the household. I'd got pretty good at making egg white omelettes without too many burnt bits, but I couldn't help wishing I had the bowl of Lucky Charms Tia was snarfing down with her good arm. In the background, the TV played one advert after another for all things festive. The Christmas season now started in September and ran until Easter took over on the first of January.

"What are you and my brother doing at Christmas?" Tia asked.

"Luke's made dinner reservations for the pair of us at a restaurant in town. Have you got plans with your mother, or do you want me to see if they've got space for one more?"

"Mother has plans, but I'm not part of them. I never am. She said Mrs. Squires would make me something nice for dinner, but she won't. She hates me."

"I doubt she hates you."

"For Christmas dinner last year, she gave me chicken nuggets and microwave chips."

"Okay, I'll admit it doesn't sound like she went all out."

Tia dropped her spoon into the bowl. "She's rubbish at cooking, she doesn't clean properly, and she gets in everyone's business. She's been our housekeeper since Dad was alive, and I'm sure she's only around because she has too much dirt on Mother to be fired."

"So you want to come with us to the restaurant, then?"

"Yes, please."

I sent Luke a text asking him to change the booking, and a few minutes later, he called me back.

"The restaurant's full. The manager said there's no way they can accommodate an extra person."

"Did you tell them we wouldn't need a bigger table? We can all squash onto ours."

"I tried that, but no go."

"Shit. Tia's dreading Christmas Day with Mrs. Squires."

"I can understand that—Mrs. Squires makes Ilse Koch look like she was just a bit misunderstood."

"If she's that bad, we can't leave Tia on her own. Is there another restaurant we could try?"

"I doubt we'd get a table at this short notice. How about we stay home?"

How about we dish up cardboard with a side of charcoal? Because that was how bad my version of a roast dinner would be.

"Nora's off, and you realise my culinary skills are limited?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm not fussy. Could you pick up some pre-prepared meals and bung them in the oven? And maybe something for dessert?"

Okay, that sounded doable. "I can probably manage that."

Oh, what I would have given to be able to call Bradley at that moment. He'd have rustled up a four-course dinner and a couple of waiters to serve it without batting an eyelid. And knowing Bradley, probably a band and some dancing girls as well.

My mind wandered back to the year he'd attempted to recreate the "Twelve days of Christmas" out of the well-known carol. The five gold rings were all right, but let me tell you, swans are not as peaceful and serene as they look.

"Bradley, what were you thinking?" I'd asked.

"I was thinking they'd stay in the swimming pool where I put them."

Mack wandered past, looking at her phone. "According to Wikipedia, swans pair for life. That's so romantic."

Deep breaths. "And we've got seven? What's the spare one gonna do? Have a three-way?"

"They can fight to the death in territorial disputes."

Marvellous. A bloodbath for Christmas. "Will you put the phone down and help us look? Does anybody know where they went?"

Bradley held up his thumb, complete with a nasty red welt. "One of them pecked me."

My husband gave Bradley a death stare. "Somebody get me a gun. We can have them for lunch."

Bradley's face turned the colour of the swan feathers stuck all over his sweater. "No bullet holes in the walls! I've just redecorated."

Half an hour later, I'd rugby tackled the last bird in an upstairs hallway and gone to take a well-deserved shower. Five of the birds got relocated, and the last pair still lived on the lake out back.

Perhaps Christmas at Luke's wouldn't be so bad after all. I broke the news about us cooking to Tia, and she cheered up a bit.

"I'd better go to the supermarket, then," I said.

While I lived at Hazelwood Farm, I'd got by with provisions from the local shop, but they didn't have much of a selection.

"Can I come? I never get out much, and my ankle feels much better today."

"Sure, why not?" That way, she could pick out her own ready-meal. "I'll call a cab."

"No need. Mother's driver can take us. She's hosting some boozy lunch at home today, so it's not as if she'll need him."

"Sounds like a plan."

I'd never had to do my own shopping—Toby decided what I should eat, and my housekeeper went out and bought it—so the whole experience was a novelty. And then somehow, on the drive into town, "we'll just pick up a lasagne or something and maybe a trifle," turned into "we might as well get a turkey and all the stuff that goes with it. I mean how hard can it be?"

The car park was packed, but the driver dropped us off right at the entrance to the store. Being rich did have some advantages.

"Call when you want to be picked up," he said. "I'll wait somewhere safer."

Safer? Safer? What did he mean, safer?

All became clear when we found a trolley and headed inside.

Over the previous decade, I'd probably visited every war zone in the world. I'd swum with the Navy SEALs and slogged through survival training in the jungles of Belize. I'd trekked across the Antarctic, and I'd completed the Marathon de Sables. But none of that compared with the horrors of Sainsbury's the day before Christmas.

To say it was chaos was like saying World War II was a minor disagreement. We could barely move for people, and not two minutes after we got inside a catfight broke out over a packet of Brussels sprouts. Seriously. I mean, who even liked those? At home, we had our own tradition. Toby bought the nasty little suckers, and after lunch, my friends and I lined them up out back and used them for target practice. First person to shoot three from a hundred yards won an Easter egg.

But today, I had no gun and no bullets and also no clue what I was doing.

"We could start with the turkey?" Tia suggested. "We'll need one of those for sure."

"Okay, poultry. Aisle three."

Except when we got there, we were greeted with a bewildering array of choice. Big turkeys, small turkeys, organic turkeys, RSPCA certified turkeys, turkey bits in packages.

I stared at the shelves. "Why the fuck are there so many different kinds? Oh shit, Luke'll kill me if he hears me swearing around you."

"I have no idea. And I won't tell him about the swearing if you don't."

"Deal. How about this one? The turkeys on the label look happy."

And that seemed as good a reason as any to buy it.

"That'll do. Who wants to eat an unhappy turkey?"

Next up, we hit the produce section. Recalling Toby's insistence that I should eat variety, I tossed a vegetable of every colour into the trolley. I had no idea how to cook most of them, but I could work that out later. What was a Romanesco cauliflower? Was it supposed to be green like that?

"What do you th— Hey!" I hauled Tia out of the path of a speeding trolley pushed by a woman who could barely see over the handle. "Watch it."

She gave me a barely apologetic shrug. "It's every woman for herself."

Tia clutched at a shelf for support. "I think I twisted my ankle."

"Do you want to sit down? I'll find somewhere."

"I'm not abandoning you in this mayhem."

Hmm... "Why don't you sit in the trolley? It's big enough."

"Is that allowed?"

"Do I look like I give a shit?"

Her giggles bubbled over. "Okay."

With me lifting, Tia scrambling, and a bit of assistance from a handily placed vegetable rack, she ended up in the trolley with her leg stuck awkwardly over the top as I steered towards the dairy aisle. Now we were making faster progress. This was a good thing.

I added cream, milk, and ready-made custard to the trolley then leaned back against a shelf to take stock of the situation.

"What else do we need?" I asked.

Tia had made herself useful by googling the ingredients for a traditional Christmas dinner on her smartphone.

"I think we've got everything for the starter and main course, but we haven't got anything for dessert. Head for the bakery aisle."

I wheeled the trolley in that direction, dodging sprinting toddlers and lost husbands. A Christmas pudding whizzed past my ear, thrown by a red-faced man shouting at a harried-looking mother in an argument over the last carton of eggnog. I should have worn body armour. Honestly, this was worse than being on the frontline. At least the rules of engagement were easy to understand out there.

We finally made it to the checkout, and Tia passed the groceries up to me as I stacked them on the conveyor belt. The shop assistant gave her a dirty look for sitting in the trolley.

I pointed at her puffy ankle and cast. "She got wounded in a battle over cranberry sauce in aisle twelve."

The shop assistant looked confused, but a couple of people behind us sniggered. After a nasty moment with an unreadable barcode, we got everything bagged up and paid for, and I called for an evacuation.

The car sped towards us, the chauffeur wearing the grim look of a man under siege. I hauled Tia into the back seat, threw the bags in the boot, and leapt in after her.

"Drive! Drive!" Tia shouted, then collapsed into a fit of laughter as the man stepped on it.

At times in my life, I'd wondered whether it was really necessary to employ someone to do my shopping for me. Never again. The first thing I'd do when I got back home was give my housekeeper a raise.

Luke arrived home that evening to find the kitchen looking like a crime scene. Tia and I had arranged stools in front of the oven so we could watch our cake cook through the glass window.

"I've just had mother on the phone," he said. "Apparently Mrs. Wilkinson from the bridge club saw someone looking remarkably like Tia riding around Sainsbury's in a trolley this afternoon, holding a turkey in her lap and wearing a Santa hat."

"Really?"

"Mother was horrified. Said it was most unladylike. You guys wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"Nuh-uh," Tia said. "Of course not."

"Had Mrs. Wilkinson been drinking?" I asked, not daring to make eye contact with my partner in crime.

"Hmmph." Luke didn't look entirely convinced but chose to head upstairs.

"The Santa hat was a nice touch," I said. "What did you do with it, anyway?"

"I stuffed it in the cupboard above the blender."

The kitchen timer dinged. Well, here we go. My first cake. It was a team effort, really. Tia had read the instructions off the internet while I measured and mixed. I just hoped it turned out edible.

"Ready?"

I grabbed a tea towel, fetched the cake from the oven, and put it on the counter.

"It looks cooked," Tia said, peering at it. "But why is one side lower than the other?"

"Buggered if I know." I gave it a prod. "Maybe that side got hotter or something."

"We could hide it with icing."

"Or cut a slice off. We'll manage something; don't worry."

With the hard part done, we'd be having a good Christmas, of that I was determined.