True to form, Edna asked immediately, “Well, Hilary, how’s university?  Found yourself a boyfriend yet?”

Hilary blushed bright red.  “No.”

“Come on, now. You can tell Auntie Edna.  My Janice started going out with her Dave in her last year at Langton.”  She pinned Hilary's hair up in clips randomly.  Langton was the local comprehensive, a bit country-fied but with a reasonable reputation. .  “Lorraine and Janice really enjoyed school.  It were brand new when our girls started, weren’t it, Joyce?” 

The co-owner of Vogue Salon, Joyce, was rolling up Mrs Phillips’ lank, wet, grey hair in enormous rollers.  “Brand new,” she echoed.  “I've heard the grammar school’s really old and the classrooms quite pokey.”

“Well, how much do you want taken off, dear?” asked Edna, her scissors poised by Hilary's head.  “It’s quite short already.”

“I don’t really want it cut.  I want it done in a page boy style.”

Edna rolled her eyes at Joyce.  “That’s a new one on me!”

Joyce shrugged.

Constance had called it a “page boy” style.  Maybe that wasn’t exactly the right term, but Edna was a hairdresser.  She should know.  “Sort of straight, curled under at the bottom.”

The bell jangled as the next client opened the door, a blast of icy December air cutting through the warm hair-drier fug, and she wished them all a happy Christmas.  “Won’t be long,” called Auntie Edna.  “How do you mean curled under?”  She looked again at Joyce, who was now settling Mrs Phillips under the hood-drier with “Woman’s Own”.

Hilary took strands of her hair in her fingers and tried to demonstrate, but Edna was looking at the clock. 

“Tell me someone in the village who’s got hair like it?” demanded Edna, her hands now on her hips.

“My friend, Caroline Bryant.”

“Can't think what she looks like.  I don’t know the posh people round here.”  Edna sniggered at Joyce as she said this.

“Well, Alice Newton, then.  She had it done in London, at Vidal Sassoon.”

“This isn't Vidal blooming Sassoon.  This is Water Langley!”

“Caroline said she blow-dried hers.”

“I haven't got time to wash and blow-dry your hair today, love.  I’ve got seven ladies to see, then go home and stuff my turkey.  Your hair isn't going to curl under.  It doesn’t go that way.” 

Eventually, Hilary agreed to a dry trim, which wasn’t what she wanted at all.

“Don’t know where you get your blonde hair from, Hilary,” said Edna, as the apprentice swept up the trimmings.  “All the Bowles family are brown.  Your Mum was dark before she went grey, so were your grandmother and your Auntie Barbara.  What colour was the milkman’s hair, eh?”

Hilary bolted out the hairdressers.  Someone else was calling her a bastard. 

Back at home, things were frenetic, as they always were on Christmas Eve.  Hilary's mother and grandmother were in the kitchen, up to their eyes in turkey and stuffing, trifle, mince pies and Christmas cake, while Frank sat in front of the television watching a film and saying how wonderful it was not to be at his desk at Chenham City Council.  Margaret was fuming.  “Sits there doing absolutely nothing!” 

“Come on now,” said Mrs Rayner.  “You don’t want anyone else in this kitchen here.  It’s cramped enough as it is!  And men just get in the way.”

Hilary went into the living room to forage for wrapping paper, gift tags and selotape, all to the accompaniment of the gun shots - from her father’s film.  “Boys’ stuff!” was how her mother sniffily described her father’s choice of television.  Later on, he would be watching sport on “Grandstand” while they listened to “Carols from Kings” on the radio in the kitchen.  As she reached for the selotape, which had rolled behind the settee, she looked carefully at her father’s hair - brown, streaked with grey.  The gun shots having brought his film to a close, the credits were rising up the screen and Frank stretching out in his easy chair.  Her arms full of wrapping stuff, she retreated upstairs to her room, before he could ask her to make him a cup of tea (as he was would), incidentally passing her parents’ wedding photograph on the stairs.  Frank’s hair had been an even darker shade of brown then and her mother’s hair, under her veil, raven black.

The Christmas Eve preparations continued, with increasing urgency, until the Crib Service at five o'clock, briefly resumed for a few frantic hours until Midnight Mass, but at that point, Christmas would start properly and any chore not done would remain undone.  They would have bathed, washed hair, put into the linen basket the old clothes, in which they had been cooking and cleaning, and donned into their Christmas “best”.  The church, also, would be wearing its Christmas red, bold and bright after penitential Advent purple.  As usual, the church was full at Midnight Mass, but only the stalwarts managed Family Eucharist on Christmas morning, Hilary, Margaret, Mrs Rayner, Caroline, the Newton family, Mrs Phillips, plus the Pearce girls, who had not attended any other Christmas services, but burst into the vestry during the vestry prayer.  Mrs Phillips said their choir attendance was quite erratic.

The church cleared very quickly afterwards and Hilary willed her mother also to lock the organ and leave church promptly for once.  However, Margaret fell into conversation in the vestry with Father Bernard, a retired priest, and great favourite with everybody, even though his sermons were interminable.  Father Bernard had prepared Hilary, Caroline and, indeed, most teenagers in northern Essex, for Confirmation.

As if to hurry her along, Hilary stepped outside, into the cool, muggy air, Christmas lights fighting valiantly against a faint, distinctly autumnal, mist, not Christmassy at all, she thought.  The Pearce children were skipping on and off the gravestones.  “Happy Christmas!” Hilary called, determinedly magnanimous on Christmas Day, but they ran away, giggling. 

Quite certain that, in a few minutes, she would be retracing her steps back into church, Hilary hesitated by the lych-gate and said hello to Andy, who was sitting on the lych-gate seat, his long, straggly, black hair falling over his face like a curtain, as he bent over to tie his shoe-laces.

“Hello,” he replied, pulling himself upright.  She expected him to get up and leave, but he didn’t.

“I'm waiting for Mum!” said Hilary, at last.

“What’re you doing over Christmas?”

She shrugged.  “Just at home.”

“Me too.   All the grandparents are coming.”

“Same here.   Well, just my grandmother.  She’s the only one still alive.”  It was all right talking to him here, by themselves, in the lych-gate, like writing a letter, really, even though the Pearce children were still shouting and giggling, in the background.

“We’re going to Marbella on Thursday.”

“That’ll be nice.” Hilary didn’t know where Marbella was.

“I really don’t want to go.  I'm so worried about the exams last term.  If you don’t pass, they chuck you out.”

“You’ll be OK.  You work really hard, and you were in hospital with the tropical disease, weren’t you?  They don’t chuck out students who work.”

He jerked his head up sharply, sweeping his floppy fringe from his grey eyes.  “You reckon?”

Suddenly, the Pearce children burst through the lych-gate.  Davina thrust her dirty, tousled face in front of Hilary's and screamed, “Your mum!” then disappeared down the street, cackling loudly and rudely.

Hilary scuffed her new – Christmas – shoe on the tarmac.  Had Andy heard that?  Well, of course, he had!  “It’s just … them being silly … stupid … just children.” she gabbled.

Andy seemed not to have heard anything.  In fact, he seemed quite preoccupied, probably thinking about his exams, Hilary thought.  He had written reams about his exams in his letters.  She and Caroline had always thought of him and Robert as swots.  “Send me a post card when you get back from Marbella,” she said, at last.  “I mean, send me a post card when you’re actually in Marbella.”

“It probably won't reach you until we’re back.  Spanish post is very slow.”

Marbella must be in Spain then!  “I'd better go and stop Mum talking to Father Bernard,” she said.

“Er, Hil,” said Andy.  “Next term, when I'm back at St Luke’s … would you come to London and visit me?  For a weekend?”

“OK,” she replied, absently, at that moment spotting her mother emerging from the church door.

On Boxing Day, everybody from church piled into the Bryants’ living room for lunchtime drinks, crushed like sardines, clutching wine glasses and sausage rolls, in the midst of Geoffrey Bryant’s army memorabilia, cream Cyprus lace and jolly, colourful, German tankards.  They made the usual Water Langley conversations - septic tanks, soak-aways and filtration units, which houses’ toilets had flooded LAST TIME, and how putting the village on mains drainage was definitely a BAD IDEA.  Meanwhile, Mr Pearce was chasing Mrs Pearce out of their stuccoed, concrete-canopied Council house with a carving knife.  He was taken away in a police van, she in an ambulance, and Sharon and Davina taken into care.