Read Online It Would Be Wrong to Steal My Sister's Boyfriend by Sophie Ranald - Free Book Online Page A

and the special nut roast Granny makes for Dad and me, and the Christmas punch that Grandpa mixes up. Every year it’s the same and every year from about the first of December I can feel a warm, fizzy excitement building in me as I think about it. I know it’s a bit tragic and I ought to have grown out of it by now, but I love Christmas, and although she’d never admit to something so uncool I know Rose does too. When I was putting my stuff away in the drawer Serena had carefully lined with white tissue paper, I saw she’d brought her special knickers that have little reindeer and sprigs of holly on them.
    I was woken the next morning by bright light flooding into the room through the filmy white curtains, and realised the snow, which had been beginning to fall as we walked home from the Rose and Crown after last orders, had settled. I turned over and lay quietly for a while, enjoying the peculiar silence a blanket of snow brings with it, looking at the enticing lumpiness of my Christmas stocking, and wondering whether it would be safe to wake Rose. It wasn’t long before the anticipation got too much for me and I got up, showered and dressed, by which time she was awake.
    “Happy Christmas,” I said, and she said happy Christmas, grinning cheesily and doing a little bounce on her bed.
    “Shall we open them?” she asked.
    “Let’s,” I said, “And then let’s do the noble thing and take some coffee up to the olds.”
    We ripped the wrapping paper off a wonderful haul of Burt’s Bees lip salve, Urban Decay eyeshadow, stripy wooly tights, chocolate seashells, a bottle of truffle oil for Rose and a giant jar of Marmite for me, paperback books and iPod socks, taking as much pleasure in the opening as we did when we were kids unveiling new clothes for our Sindy dolls and boxes of crayons. Finally everything was unwrapped, and the chocolate oranges unearthed from the stockings’ toes, and our beds were littered with shiny paper.
    “Good loot,” I said.
    “Good loot,” agreed Rose. “You go on down, I’ll get myself ready and be there in a sec.”
    When I went into the kitchen Serena was already there, wearing rather racy red satin pyjamas and manhandling a massive turkey into the oven.
    “Christ, what was I thinking when I bought this monster?” she said. “It only needs to feed seven and it’s the size of a hippo. I’ll be eating leftovers for months. Happy Christmas, Ellie.”
    “Happy Christmas,” I said, and once she’d parked the turkey I kissed her smooth, honey-coloured cheek. “We’ve just opened our stockings. Gorgeous stuff. I never knew Dad had discovered Burt’s Bees.”
    Serena laughed. “I’d tell you I’m trying to turn him into a metrosexual but you’d never buy it,” she said. “Although of course it’s not Luke who’s the metrosexual, it’s FatherChristmas. Maybe it’s one of Rudolph’s jobs to get him
Grazia
every week.”
    I started singing to the tune of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, “You know
Grazia
and
Cosmo
and
Tatler
and
Stylist
,
Harpers
and… No, it’s no good. I can’t think of any more.”
    “
Vogue
wouldn’t fit the meter,” mused Serena, “And
Marie-Claire’s
no good either, nor
Elle
.
InStyle
doesn’t quite scan.” She tried singing it, and it sounded so daft the two of us were leaning against the kitchen counter giggling like loons when Rose walked in, looking absolutely radiant and appropriate in that way Rose has, in a cream-coloured silk wrap dress with her hair piled up on top of her head with a couple of lovely sparkly combs, and caramel-coloured slouchy boots and the chunky outsize pearl beads that she’d had in her stocking, which I took as a sign that she wanted to make Serena happy, and made me feel a bit relieved.
    Once all the food had been prepared to Rose’s standards, Dad, Rose and I bundled up in layers and layers of scarves and coats and mittens and went outside and built a snowman, finishing it off with a carrot for a nose