‘The dumpsters did it, huh?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Only a besotted fool would think a declaration of love would be acceptable with a side serve of prawn heads on a thirty-four degree day.’

  ‘I am besotted. And a fool. Also—now that you know how very good at not coping I, too, can be sometimes, maybe you need to think about that.’

  She shook her head. Then she shimmied herself up a little and over a little until she was sitting across his lap and she had her arms around his neck, and she had her face so close to his face.

  ‘I’m done with thinking. Maybe we both need to realise it’s time we forgive ourselves. It’s time we decide that it’s okay for us to feel happy again.’

  ‘I’ll be happy if you stay in Clarence,’ he said, and he pressed a kiss just below her jawline. Just below her ear. ‘Be a physio, be a couch potato, be whatever you like. I don’t care, I just want you here.’

  ‘I’ll be happy,’ she said, ‘if you drive with me to Katoomba to collect all my belongings and then drive with me back here so you can be a publican.’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ he said, then he shifted his head a little, because if ever there had been a time to seal a deal with a kiss, this was it.

  He pressed his lips to hers, and she started to kiss him back and wrap her arms around him even tighter and run her fingers into his hair, along his scalp, in a way that was doing very lovely, urgent things to his nerve endings, but then she pulled back and said, ‘Wait.’

  ‘Let’s not wait,’ he said. ‘I’m done with waiting.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘we’re forgetting something.’

  He racked his brain. What more was there? Him and her, together. Sure, the future was completely unsorted, but did that matter? Not a scrap.

  ‘Carol,’ she said. ‘Joan Sloane. The Christmas cake war.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That.’

  ‘I’m going to have to go and see Carol tomorrow at the hospital. And you know what? I’m going to take the cake tin, and I’m going to go through her drawers here and find that scrapbook. I won’t read it, but I’m going to take it all in tomorrow and tell her what we know. At the hospital.’

  ‘Really? You won’t wait till she comes home?’

  ‘I think definitely at the hospital. It’s neutral territory. And if she does react badly and relapse into some sort of fainting event, we’ll be close to medical help. And by we, I mean me and Carol, obviously,’ she said, patting his cheek. ‘I can tell you all about it when I get home.’

  He took a breath. Pressed his forehead to hers. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  She moved back a smidge—just far enough so he could see her eyes as she frowned at him. ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I know I don’t. I want to.’ That wasn’t quite true. ‘I want to want to.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  He could feel himself getting a little sweaty and a little heated, and it was probably anxiety because he had just committed to doing what he really didn’t want to be doing: visiting a hospital. But Jodie was squirming on his lap a little more, and she had her teeth on his earlobe, and one of her hands was unbuttoning his shirt, and he was feeling very much like things were about to get a little too frisky to be conducted on Carol’s front steps, when she said: ‘I know the perfect way to distract you between now and when we head into the hospital tomorrow.’

  She stood up, dangled a set of keys provocatively, then unlocked the door and sauntered inside, leaving the door wide open behind her.

  Christmas Day

  The little dining room in Carol’s house was busier than it had been in years, which was making her feel a little weepy. But that was enough of that nonsense, so she set the last trivet on the table, straightened the silver serving spoons, then hurried back to the kitchen to check on the bird that was currently roasting in her oven.

  She had tried to talk Jodie out of buying a turkey, because surely a chicken would do, and it wasn’t as though Jodie had any patient money coming in yet. The sleep-out conversion wasn’t quite finished, the medical bed and medicine balls and other paraphernalia she had collected from Katoomba were still living with the empty kegs in the pub’s storage shed, and the little sign for the front garden—Clarence Physiotherapy Practice—that Will’s brother Joey had made was propped up in the old front room that was now Jodie’s bedroom.

  And there were those silly tears again. Carol picked up the corner of her apron and dabbed it to her cheeks. ‘This will be a happy day,’ she said to herself. Momentous … potentially volatile (because she hadn’t really thought Joan would accept their invitation, but perhaps Jodie had exceptional powers of persuasion and had convinced Joan they wanted to thank her for her medical expertise in the judging arena) … but happy.

  ‘Carol?’

  The voice came from the doorway.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Jodie did a twirl to show off the little green sundress she had found in the vintage store over on Narli Lane. It was a darling thing, spotted and frilly, and Carol reflected on how much change she had seen in Jodie since she’d come to live with her in Clarence. The girl’s eyes shone. Her cheeks had some colour. She had plumped up a little.

  Seeing her so young and so pretty and so smiley, with her dark red hair fashioned in a loose knot on the top of her head, reminded Carol so forcibly of when she herself had been a young woman living in this very house that it was hard not to reflect on all those sentimental songs and stories the radio carried on with at Christmas time each year: should old acquaintance be forgot and cattle lowing over new babies and hearts unfolding like flowers …

  She was the old acquaintance in the songs now, but not Jodie. The girl had her life ahead of her, and it would be a joyous one. A wondrous one. Carol just knew it.

  ‘What time did we say again, pet?’ Carol asked.

  ‘One o’clock,’ Jodie said.

  And like a cuckoo in a clock had just heard them, one sharp knock sounded against the little metal frame of the flyscreen door at the front of the house.

  Jodie’s eyes opened wide as she looked at Carol.

  ‘That’s not Will,’ she said. ‘He’s more of a wander-in-and-say-g’day-in-the-kitchen person.’

  Carol took a big breath in and let it out again. She squared her shoulders, lifted her apron over her neck, hung it on the hook on the back of the kitchen door, and said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m ready.’

  ‘I’m really proud of you, Carol, for doing this.’

  Carol allowed herself a little unladylike snort. ‘I’m really proud of myself.’

  Joan Sloane had not arrived at Christmas lunch empty-handed: prawns in a dish with ice (welcome); a bottle of red wine with a fancy label (delicious); and a reindeer-shaped dish filled with rumballs (problematic). Carol made a mental note to put her own rumballs back in the pantry before comparisons could be made.

  Joan had barely made it through the door and into the narrow corridor before Will was jogging up the stairs and into the house.

  ‘I’m not late, am I?’ he said, slightly breathless. He smelled like almond croissants and Bangadoon creek water, Carol thought, as he hugged her and smacked a boisterous kiss onto her cheek. ‘Getting away from my niece took some ingenuity.’

  ‘I don’t know what you are wearing,’ she said.

  His hair was wet and he was in board shorts that sported pictures of a surfing Santa and the most ridiculous T-shirt Carol could recall seeing. Huge lettering danced across the front in red: ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS TO BE THE FAVOURITE UNCLE.

  ‘You look perfect,’ said Jodie.

  Carol watched her great niece fling her arms around Will. Jodie looked so terribly happy, and Will looked so terribly happy, she felt those tears again.

  Damn it, three times in one day! Today was not a time for crying … even though she was the only one who knew the decision she’d made.

  Also, it was ridiculous to cry now, in her eighty-fourth year, when she had finally been blessed with the Christmas gift that meant so much to her: her precious Wallace family historical artefacts would not, now, need to be put in a dusty box, to live on a dusty shelf, to be stored in a dusty museum where the average age of visitors was well over sixty.

  Jodie had given her that gift by agreeing to make Clarence her home.

  Carol looked at Joan and felt a surge of pity that was almost (but not quite) as big as her envy over Joan’s triumph in the Christmas cake war.

  Joan had not had anyone to leave her family memories to.

  ‘I have something to say,’ Carol said, once the turkey had been decimated and the dusty red bottle breached and the rumballs consumed. She paused, and took a breath to make her big announce—

  ‘I make an excellent rumball?’ Joan said.

  If Carol didn’t already have lungs full to bursting, she would have hauled in even more at this cheek. Said at her own table, no less.

  Will gave a short laugh, which he quickly turned into a cough. Possibly Jodie had given him a little kick under the table, because he looked over at her with a half grin, half shrug.

  Carol frowned at him. ‘I am attempting to be magnanimous, Will,’ she said, ‘which is not at all funny.’

  ‘Sorry, Carol.’

  ‘I took something,’ she said. ‘From the archives, back when I was filled with rage, thinking that you, Joan, had somehow stolen my family recipe. Will and Jodie already know this, because they were with me when I took it. I want to give it back to you today.’

  She got up from her chair and moved to the sideboard. Earlier, she had placed the Willow tin from Joan’s museum donation and the scrapbook from her family collection in there. She brought them both out now and set them on the table in front of Joan.

  ‘You’ll see a post-it note,’ she said. ‘Look at that page.’

  Joan opened the scrapbook as directed, and Carol was heartened to see the care with which Joan handled the pages. History mattered. She was glad Joan understood that.

  Will and Jodie exchanged a glance.

  ‘The man in the photo—this one—’ Carol said, pointing but hovering just above the surface, ‘is the man whose wife enclosed her fruit cake recipe in a letter to him in New Guinea.’

  ‘To Bluey?’ Joan raised her eyebrows, fished up her glasses from the chain dangling around her neck and inspected the photo. ‘But the name. It says … Oh.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carol. ‘Sergeant Bruce Wallace. Your father and my father were mates.’

  ‘And only mine came home,’ said Joan. ‘Oh, darling.’ And Joan reached over to grasp Carol’s hand, and before she knew it, for the fourth time that day, Carol was crying.

  When she could speak, she said, ‘I had a little epiphany while I was lying in the hospital, after Will and Jodie showed me the little historical mystery they had uncovered when they put together the pieces from your article in the Clarence Gardens newsletter.’

  ‘What was your epiphany?’ said Jodie.

  ‘I realised that by being such a nitwit over who baked the best cake, I was denying myself an opportunity to make a friend. One who not only shares common interests—like cooking and committees and bossing people around—but with whom I also had a shared history. I have a little something for you, too, Jodie.’

  Jodie was looking a bit pink in the face and her eyes were over-bright.

  Carol reached into her pocket and pulled out a small box. ‘This is symbolic, pet, because you’ve already got one. But I’d like you to open this box anyway.’

  Jodie took the box and lifted the lid.

  Inside was a key to the house.

  ‘I do already have one,’ said Jodie.

  ‘I am giving you the key as a symbol,’ Carol said. ‘I’m giving it to you because I’m giving you the house. I want you to live in it. I want you to run your practice here.’

  ‘I live here already. With you, Carol.’

  ‘Unfortunately, darling girl, it’s not all about you, is it? So you’re going to have to learn to not be so selfish. I will be moving into Clarence Gardens.’

  Jodie’s mouth opened. ‘Into the old fogeys’ home?’

  ‘We don’t call it an old fogeys’ home. It’s an aged living facility.’ Carol lifted her glass and held it up.

  Joan held up her glass and the two of them clinked.

  ‘Here’s to the next adventure,’ said Carol. ‘Now, before I finish, I popped a little something for you in the Willow tin, Joan.’

  Joan picked up the tin and lifted the lid, then she held aloft a small bundle of papers that was inside.

  ‘What are these?’ she asked, then answered her own question. ‘Recipes?’

  Carol smiled—rather nobly, she thought—because it had given her a pang to share them. ‘Since my mother was good enough to share one recipe with your family, I thought you might care to have some others of hers, since you’ve done a reasonable job of baking her fruit cake.’

  ‘Apricot tart? Oh, lovely. I’ll make that one first,’ said Joan.

  ‘Fools rush in,’ said Carol testily. ‘The pastry can be a little sticky, it takes a skilled hand—you might not have the knack—but it was a fan favourite in our household growing up.’

  Joan gave Jodie a small wink, which Carol pretended not to see, then said, ‘Do you know, Carol, in the Clarence Gardens kitchen there are two identical fluted tart tins. What say you and I challenge each other to a bake off?’

  ‘An apricot tart war?’ Carol said, delighted.

  Jodie groaned and Will laughed, and then the four of them were all raising their glasses and wishing each other Merry Christmas, and Carol thought to herself that life was—still, even at eighty-four—marvellous.

  Acknowledgements

  A big thanks to the blog Me and My Big Mouth for the post about the soldiers’ cake tin (https://meandmybigmouth.com.au/ the-soldiers-cake-tin/), which gave me the heart of my story. Having already set a novel in Clarence (A Town Like Clarence, HQ Fiction, 2022) with a New Guinea war secret at its heart, when I started hunting around for inspiration for a reason why two senior Australians would engage in ‘war’ over their Christmas cake recipes, I stumbled upon this blog post and was delighted to see the note from the 1944 newspaper saying the cakes would make it all the way to New Guinea. The blog post suggests substituting lard for butter due to war rations ruined the cake, but Clarence is in dairy country (at least, it was dairy country in the 1940s) so this seemed a not too difficult workaround.

  The other story I stumbled upon was exactly that: a story. Written by Truman Capote, the short story A Christmas Memory is still in copyright so I didn’t include a quote, but if you can manage to procure a copy, have the tissue box handy! Wow. Just wow. If my story has just a pinch of this emotional impact, I will be forever thrilled.

  When we write these stories, we are usually writing well in advance of the finished anthology coming out in book stores. I was lucky to be writing mine in December 2024 when Christmas Twilight Markets were being held in my local district. Me, Kid #4 and the dog toddled off on a ‘research trip’ to our markets and enjoyed ourselves immensely. I took loads of photos, ate chicken skewers and dumplings, and included the local fairy on stilts and the portaloo drama in my story directly inspired by the market.

  I was totally strapped for time when this story was being written—I initially said I couldn’t do it—but then Penelope Janu rang me and said, ‘Imagine I’m standing right beside you, asking you to write a story for our next anthology, and I’m looking at you with puppy dog eyes.’ Well. Who could say no to that? Working with Pen and Pamela and Renae has been an absolute delight.

  The Night Before Christmas

  PENELOPE JANU

  About the Author

  PENELOPE LIVES on a farm in the Southern Highlands of NSW with a distracting husband, cattle she becomes more attached to than she should and, now they’re fully grown, six delightful children who come and go. Penelope has a passion for creating stories that explore social and environmental issues, but her novels are fundamentally a celebration of Australian characters and communities. Her first novel, In at the Deep End, came out in 2017 and her ninth novel, The Summerfield Saddler, was released in December 2024. The Night Before Christmas is Penelope’s fourth novella. Penelope enjoys riding horses, exploring the Australian countryside and dreaming up challenging hiking adventures. Nothing makes her happier as a writer than readers falling in love with her clever and adventurous heroines and heroes. She loves to hear from readers, and can be contacted at www.penelopejanu.com.

  To my son, Max, who rocked Harry Potter glasses.

  Chapter 1

  The outskirts of Summerfield are much as I remember them: gatherings of sheep and cattle, glimpses of river, corrugated sheds and bright blue skies. To the west, a bottle-green ribbon of gums and eucalypts marks the entrance to the national park.

  Sixteen years ago, my parents wedged me into the back seat of their dilapidated van, boxes of leaflets on one side, organic vegetables on the other, pots and pans at my feet. They claimed they’d had enough of Summerfield, a town hostile to out-of-town greenies battling to close the mine, but there was more to it than that. We were in debt to the general store, the co-op and the hardware. We owed money to landlords and the council. As we drove through the main street, I leaned over the boxes and, glasses pinned to my nose, stared out at the memories. I’d spent four years of primary school and two years of high school in Summerfield, which was almost half my life. The town might’ve taught me how to run and hide, but it had also taught me how to ride a horse, care for a dog, listen out for birdsong in the morning.

  I slow my ute at the sweeping bend that’ll take me into town. A sparkling new sign in emerald and silver: WELCOME TO SUMMERFIELD. My hands stay firmly on the steering wheel.

  ‘No excuses, no U-turns.’

  When Gordon Henry’s blue-eyed, brown-furred kelpie leans over the console, I rub under his chin.