Free A Perfect Christmas by Lynda Page Page B

would immediately drop whatever she was doing at a summons from him, fretted and fussed over him like a mother with her young child, and would have no word said against him. Her efforts to look immaculate all the time were on his behalf also.
    Cait would often study her own reflection in the mirror and sometimes feel she had inherited her mother’s looks, sometimes her father’s, but in truth she resembled neither of them so assumed she must take after a more distant ancestor. There was no way of checking that, though, as both her parents were orphans and the past too painful for them to discuss. As far as she was aware her father had never held down a job and it was an inheritance of her mother’s that kept the family in the comfort they enjoyed
    Neither of her parents was at all demonstrative towards her. It seemed to Cait that they showered all the affection they had on each other, and had none left to give her. As a young girl she had suffered many rejections by her mother, being told that she was acting selfishly in demanding her time when she knew her father was in need of it, or that Nerys was far too busy suddenly to drop everything on her account. As a result, from quite an early age, Cait stopped asking for any attention from her, to avoid the pain of being pushed away. She did well enough at school but never pushed herself to excel so failed to reach anywhere near her full potential. So long as she got out of the house and went to school, her parents were satisfied. She’d long ago stopped trying to work out what exactly they both found lacking in her that prevented them from showing her any affection, and barely more than their passing attention. Consequently she could only imagine what it would feel like to be hugged and kissed and made a fuss of, allowed into the private circle from which she had always been excluded.
    The young Cait had showed all the signs of developing into an intelligent, caring and lovable girl. Unfortunately for her, though, she’d had a mother who stifled all these qualities in her, so the youngster had no choice but to observe Nerys’s ways of doing things and follow her example. Her mother was very brusque and matter-of-fact in her approach to others, especially those who worked for her, and would never allow them any sort of familiarity. If they acted informally with her, she always put them firmly in their place. Since Nerys had no acquaintances with children, Cait was a very lonely child, and when it came to going to school had no idea how to make friends. Her abrupt manner did her no favours either.
    One day, though, she was in the playground eating some sweets when a girl approached her, and told her that if she would give her one then she would allow Cait to play with her. Cait was a quick learner. This set the pattern for how she would gain friends in future. Most of these relationships were short-lived, but she would regularly entice people to befriend her by offering them inducements she knew they’d be unable to refuse. That was how she had acquired the two friends she palled around with now, Gina and Clare, who worked with her as typists for a fruit and vegetable wholesaler’s.
    As an attractive girl Cait was not short of admirers, but the only way she knew how to treat them was to behave exactly as her mother did with her father. That had to be the right way, surely. Consequently she smothered any man she went out with, knowing what he wanted or was thinking before he did and making herself indispensable to him.
    One day when Cait was sixteen, Nerys had sat her down and bluntly informed her that, although the age of majority was twenty-one, her parents would consider themselves free from any responsibility for her once she reached the age of eighteen. They’d expect her to leave home and make her own way in the world, which was why she was being told in advance so she’d have plenty of time to make arrangements. Nerys informed her that she had been given no choice