Coming HOME

It was a time to be with those you loved - but where exactly was that?

- Jill Crawford

Maggie gazed out of the train window at the big, fat snowflakes swirling like white rose petals in the leaden sky. What a day to travel. But she’d promised her parents she’d spend Christmas with them this year.

After all, as Iain, her partner, had said, the festive season and families go together like cheese and pickle, or strawberries and cream, depending on your taste.

They'd been together for about 18 months, and they’d spent their first Christmas with Iain’s grandparents, a lovely couple who'd been his only family since he'd lost his parents at the age of 14.

Obviously Maggie had missed not being with her own kin, but had enjoyed getting to know his gran and gramps, and could see how close they all were.

‘Your folks next year,’ Iain had said on New Year's Eve. And they’d laughed as Maggie jokingly said that, by then, she’d probably be ready to face Uncle John’s guffaws at the awful cracker jokes, and Aunt Mildred’s comments about how she would have made the bread sauce differently.