Chapter 3

Jen’s mum Lisa was now Mrs Lisa Brandlow, since her swift remarriage. She and her new husband Jack were 58 and 52 respectively, with Jack’s 18-year-old only daughter Stephanie still living at home while she locally continued her college studies.

Jack Brandlow had been a widower for many years, and had brought Stephanie up on his own, so they were more than just close, each having relied on the other for mutual support over the years. Jack Brandlow was a self-employed electrician, working as a subcontractor on extensions, kitchen refurbishments, and the like, mostly small fry, one man jobs. Lisa continued to work part-time in an estate agents, as administrative support, a job she enjoyed so much that she hoped to continue after the age of retirement in a few years’ time. Jack’s daughter Stephanie was a bright, lively girl, and very pretty, Jennifer remembered from her Easter visit to her Mum’s new abode, and had started as a student at a local college in the October.

It seems Mum and Jack met when Jack bought a house at an auction of properties that Lisa represented on behalf of her client. He bought the house to restore, and did most of the work himself, before using Lisa through her estate agency to sell it on. So they got to know one another very well during the subsequent sale and Jennifer’s mother was more than receptive to his rather tentative at first, advances. Jennifer hadn’t really had a chance to get to know Jack, having only spoken to him briefly at the wedding and had since briefly visited her mother twice in the intervening months, each time unaccompanied by the now, determinedly ex-boyfriend, Scott.

Lisa and Jack were currently extending two storeys of Jack’s present house, using Lisa’s share of the proceeds from the sale of the Webster family home, to add a master bedroom with ensuite bathroom and changing rooms upstairs, with a dining room underneath. This mid-winter, however, the work was still unfinished as Jack was doing most of the internal work himself in between his lucrative contract work. So that was one side of Jennifer’s broken family.

There was a much bigger age difference in the relationship on the other side of Jennifer’s splintered parentage.

Andy Webster and his girlfriend Layla, were aged 60 and 26 respectively. Andy ran a small haulage firm, based on the edge of the town, right next to the local airfield. His ex-wife still owned a quarter share of his business, as he wasn’t able to buy her out completely after the divorce settlement, without crippling bank loans, but he was working hard to buy back the rest of his company over the next few years.

His girlfriend Layla was a stay-at-home Mum. She had never married and kicked out her partner, who was the father of the latest of her three children, when she started her relationship with Andy. Andy had used part of his proceeds from the sale of the family home to buy an extended ex-housing association house with four bedrooms, necessary for the growing needs of his new family. Downstairs there was an integral garage and study, which Andy needed as a home office. This meant there was no dining room in the house, so they were going to rig up a temporary dining room in the conservatory for the Boxing Day meal.

Jennifer had groaned. It looked like there would have to be two separate Christmas celebrations split between the two households, each no doubt trying to outdo the other in impressing Jennifer and her other two siblings. She was sure that the atmosphere of oneupmanship at each venue would resist cutting with a hot knife.

Now, Mum had only one spare bedroom, while Dad had two, because currently all the young children could be moved temporarily into the same bedroom. So Jennifer was going to be staying with Mum throughout the festivities, while Miles and Bernie’s families were determined to rough it out at Dad’s for the two nights.

All those arrangements were still to be confirmed and Jen needed to work through the next three and a half weeks of sales calls before that fateful day dawned of Christmas shared with all her family.

Honestly, she thought, anything could happen before then, and I might not have to go through with the whole nightmarish ritual.

Jennifer and Sitesh worked in the same office, taking calls from branch stores or direct customers up and down the country for communication equipment, mostly mobile phones and tablets, software or replacement upgrades. It could be pretty stressful at times, especially as they were required to push other services, such as insurances, applications or software upgrades all the time and each had individual daily targets to reach in each ancillary product. At present, with Christmas fast approaching, there were continuous streams of orders for new customers, equipment and upgrades coming through as Christmas presents.

Jen had dreaded telling Mum that she’d broken up with that philanderer Scott and moved out of their house into a cupboard-like flat. She also felt ashamed that he’d cheated on her so often, the true facts of Scott’s serial betrayal only emerging after they broke up. Soon, her friends divulged what they had known all along but had feared to tell her. This only made Jennifer feel that his affairs were partly her fault, hence her low opinion of herself. Her Mum had adored the charming and flirty Scott and several times over the years told her that she thought Jennifer had done very well for herself to catch such a hunk in her net.

Jennifer had no man in her life so, in frustration, when she did mention the split, she somehow, on the spot, invented a new boyfriend! Later, she had to admit to herself, what the hell was she thinking?

“Hi sweetheart,” Lisa had called her on her mobile back in mid August.

“Oh, hi Mum.” Jennifer had said, knowing that she was expected to go home for the late August long weekend holiday, and wondering how she was going to get out of it.

“Just checking that both you and that gorgeous hunk Scott are still coming down for the August bank holiday?”

“Well, I am coming, but alone, Mum, no Scott.”

“That boy works too hard, Jen, you have to stop him or he’ll burn himself out. How are you two going to be making babies if your man is exhausted all the time? You should go part-time and take some of the weight off him, dear. I mean he had to work during both Easter and the May bank holiday.”