Nobody was in any particular hurry to wake up in the morning. Gram was first out of bed and, still wearing her snowman onesie, hunted around in the kitchen until she found a catering-sized insulated pot in which she could make coffee that could sit out in the hall and keep itself warm as the adults who might want it woke up. She made more in bugs for herself and her husband, poured some milk into a jug and found a packet of sugar and a handful of teaspoons then put everything onto a tray and took it into the hall. Gramps was just emerging from the tent when she got back and was very grateful for his coffee.

“Mugs!” Gram exclaimed in alarm as she handed her husband his.

“Um, mugs to you too?” he replied, puzzled.

“Sorry!” Gram chuckled. “I just realised I made coffee and brought out everything I thought people might want with it but forgot to provide anything to put it in!”

“I wouldn’t worry for now.” Gramps chuckled, angling his head pointedly towards the stage whose curtains could only do so much to muffle the snores of varying pitch and tone that came from behind them. “I don’t think anyone will be needing one any time soon. Let’s enjoy these then go get them together.” They sat down on two of the chairs by the side of the hall and opened one of the curtains over the nearest window, enjoying the early morning light that it let in.Outside, snow still covered the ground but no more seemed to be falling.

As they sipped their coffee they chatted about how surprisingly well they had slept and how good the children had been, having given them no bother at all once they went to sleep and the only sounds they made were when one or other of them wanted something from the snack table or made a visit to the bathroom. All were sleeping peacefully and looking incredibly content. It was a little strange to think that at least three of them would not see another Christmas, but their Samantha had been so happy and excited to cook for them and had seemed to enjoy every moment of her big day so much that they could not bring themselves to feel sad for any of the girls.

It was not surprising that the children would start to wake up before the adults and that, once one was up, it was only a matter of time before the woke the others. Amanda was first, and her act of sitting up was enough to awaken her brother and Amelia who slept on the other side of him. Not feeling like getting dressed yet but being naked not having the same allure on Boxing Day morning as it had the day before, Amanda hunted around for her pyjamas. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed or in any way ashamed of her nudity, it was just that, for her at least, the novelty had worn off and she craved the cosiness that pyjamas provided. Rachel, when she woke up, seemed to take the same view, as did Amelia.

It came as no shock to anyone that Willow was resistant to the idea and stubbornly insisted that she would not put anything on until a grown-up told her that she had to, or that Ella and Caroline, now that their harvest date was confirmed to be just over half a month away, wanted to make sure nobody forgot that they were meat-girls. The surprise hold-out was, in fact, Nadine! Samantha’s young cousin who had been so freaked out about the idea of being mistaken for a meat-girl that she had initially refused to come to the party at all and had tried to ban her family from doing so was now among the most reluctant to cover her delicious-looking naked young body!

“Don’t over-do it!” Gram warned, coming back from the kitchen with a tray of coffee mugs and seeing them investigating the snack table. “Pretty sure there’s breakfast planned for everyone!” After indulging in light pre-breakfast snacks, it was still Christmas after all, the children helped to separate, re-zip and roll up the sleeping bags and let down the air mattresses, the best technique for which, they found, was for one person to squeeze the cap valve while another rolled up and down to force out the air. Soon they had all the bedding packed up and neatly piled in a corner.

Of the adults on the stage, Laura and her brother Martin seemed to be the first ones up, with Josh following close behind, coming down the steps into the hall already fully dressed. They all helped themselves gratefully to coffee then Laura asked Gram to go to the kitchen with her to help get breakfast ready while Josh, Gramps, Martin and the children were tasked with carefully starting to take down the decorations.

“What are you going to do with those?” Nadine asked as Josh carefully flattened the stand on the back of the Samantha cutout that had been kneeling on a platter, ready to to wrap it back up in its protective layer of bubble-wrap and slip it back into its cardboard sleeve.

“We hadn’t really decided.” he admitted. “We do want to keep some but I know Sam liked the idea that some people might take them home. Why?” he asked his sweet, naked niece with a smile. “Is there one you particularly like?”

“I love the one by the coats where she’s playing snowballs!” Nadine grinned cutely. “We had a lot of fun in the snow yesterday so that one would definitely remind me of the party!” Josh couldn’t help but chuckle, thinking of the fun that he and Amelia had enjoyed in the snow when everyone else was asleep.

“Well, if it’s okay with your daddy,” he replied carefully, wanting to respect a fellow parent’s boundaries, “then we’d be happy for you to take that one home!” Clapping her hands together with joy, Nadine scampered up onto the stage to wake Mike and tell him the good news.

Thinking that the end of the party would be as good a time as any to distribute the cutouts to friends and family who wanted them, Josh Laura’s bag of what she called “Potential Essentials” from behind the curtain and began to rummage through it. The bag contained two roles of tape, a packet of blu-tac, a box of drawing pins, a packet of sticking plasters, a pack of safety pins, a tape measure, three biros, a spare notebook, a universal phone charger, assorted other bits and bobs and the thing Josh was looking for – a black Sharpie! With this, he wrote “Platter” on the cardboard sleeve so that it would be easy to tell which picture was inside. He did the same with the other two half-sized cutouts, labelling them “Sitting Sidney” and “Crouching Elf”.

It would be nice, he thought, to put at least one in his new children’s bedroom, maybe two so that they could have one each once the remodelling that had planned was completed. He was fairly sure that Willow was going to want at least one of the Sidney pictures but he thought it best to talk to his wife before promising any others.

As the two who had enjoyed the most wine the night before, although everyone had got rather merry up on the stage once relieved of childcare responsibilities, Clive and Mike were the last two down off the stage and made a bee-line straight for the coffee before joining in with helping to take the decorations down. Josh admitted as he looked at the ever-growing pile of boxes and bags that he had not give a whole lot of thought to what would happen to everything afterwards – he had just been accumulating for the party! The stocking gifts and going own with their recipients and the crackers being used up would perhaps create a little extra space but everything else was going to have to be found a space back in the garage! At least, he smiled, he was going to be able to provide his new children with one of the best-decorated houses in town for a good few Christmasses to come!

Going out into the lobby, he disconnected the snowflake projector and made only a semi-successful attempt at packing it back into its box. Next he packed away the two standing cutouts that had been positioned there to greet the guests, removing the tinsel garland from around Sidney-Samantha’s neck and labelling their sleeves “Sidney Front” and “Snowballer”. He then fetched the last two from the hall, carefully folding, packing and labelling them “Sidney Back” and “Standing Elf”.

With everyone working together, the process of taking the decorations down went surprisingly quickly and within an hour, the whole evening of careful preparation had been undone. Josh asked Mike to come outside with him and help take down the snow machines and dismantle the system he had set up to feed them while Martin and Clive put all but two of the tables away and Laura supervised the setting of the remaining tables, once again in a T formation, for breakfast. While all this was going on, Gramps enlisted the help of Rob and Merlin to dismantle and put away the sound system, making sure to take the CD out first and giving the three memory sticks that contained Samantha’s playlists to his daughter. To keep them safe for the time being, Laura put these in a plastic baggie along with the one that held the photographs and the video of “Rosie the Christmas Turkey” and stored them safely in her handbag.

“Hey, did you just get a message from my mum?” Amelia asked, approaching Laura with her phone in her hand. Laura took hers out and checked, finding indeed an apologetic message from Penny explaining that it was still snowing very heavily up where Amelia’s sister and her family lived so it was not safe to drive and asking if Amelia would be okay to stay with them one more night.

“Did she tell you what had happened?” Laura asked.

“Yeah.” Amelia shrugged, not seeming too upset. “Guess you’re stuck with me for a bit longer! Unless,” she added with a cheeky giggle, “you want to cook me up for breakfast? I’m sure my sister would understand!”

“Hmm…” Laura pretended to consider this offer before making a show of checking the time. “Aww darn it! That would take too long! Guess we’ll have to put up with keeping you around?”

“Shucks!” Amelia giggled. “Sucks to be you, huh?”

“What do we think?” Laura asked Josh as he came in through the fire doors and stamped the snow off his feet. “Can we handle one more night with Amelia?”

“I’m sure we’ll cope somehow!” Josh winked at his young concubine, making her giggle. “Family got snowed in up there?” Excusing herself from Amelia for a moment, Laura approached her husband and took him aside for a quiet conversation.

“I know we were thinking the new kids were going to need a lot of support and reassurance their first proper night on their own with us,” she reminded him, “but look at them, they’re happy, confident and fitting in perfectly already!” It was true. Looking at Rob and Amanda joining in with the others in setting the table for breakfast, and remembering how they had been the day before, it would have been easy to forget that they were newcomers to the family and had not grown up as part of it.

“Yeah it’s great!” Josh agreed. “But why do I feel like you’re trying to make some sort of point?” Josh knew his wife well enough to know immediately when she was laying the groundwork for some sort of big suggestion.

“Well, all I was thinking…” she paused for a moment, looking for the right words. “I’ve already said I’ll take them back to the home when we finish here, or mostly anyway, so they can collect their things and say goodbye to their friends there. That’s probably going to take several hours anyway. Then tomorrow I don’t mind taking them out on my own, or I can see if Mum and Dad would like to take them on an outing somewhere. You should take Amelia into town this afternoon, look around the sales and stuff, then find a nice little hotel for the night and book a show. I’m sure nobody will think twice about a loving Daddy treating his daughter to a night out at the theatre and a fancy restaurant then not wanting to have to get her all the way home once she’s all tired out. What do you say?”

“I…” Josh wondered for a moment if this was a trap but his wife’s attitude to things over the last few weeks was enough to convince him that it was not. “You wouldn’t mind? Me not being around, I mean to help with the new ones?”

“It’s not like they’re babies.” Laura reminded him. “And this way I can give them full attention without having to worry about including Amelia too, and she won’t spend the whole day tomorrow making excuses to try to get you on your own for a quick bunk-up!” she teased. “Let her have a night and day or so where she feels like your one-and-only!”

With the plans made, Josh beckoned Amelia over and Laura went back to arranging breakfast, looking up to see the young girl jumping up into Josh’s arms and hugging him tightly before kissing him with unbridled passion, clearly very happy with the proposed arrangement!

Finally it was time for everyone to sit down to breakfast which was a mix of food that needed using up from the day before and fresh croissants and other pastries that Laura had baked in the oven that morning from packets of pre-made pastry along with fruit, assorted jams, yoghurt and cereal bars. The intention was to leave very little in the way of food that needed to be taken away again and the guests did not let Laura down. By the time breakfast was finished, the leftovers all fitted into three fairly large Tupperware pots. With breakfast over, the children all freshened up and got dressed, even Willow who finally received the required instruction from a grown-up, in the form of her dad Martin, that she had to put her clothes on for the journey home.

With the exception of her skull that Laura packed carefully to take home, Samantha’s remains in the green bags were put out into the large bin in the yard along with the black bags containing the other rubbish. The final two tables were put away, the chairs stacked and the hall swept. As Josh had predicted, when the offer was made, Willow asked to take home the front-facing Sidney figure. Laura reserved the sitting Sidney and the platter-kneeler to keep at home as well as the standing elf. Gram asked if she and Gramps could have the one with Samantha in her Sidney outfit showing off her rump and Josh suggested that they also keep the crouching elf themselves to use as part of their Christmas decorations each year.

Just as they were starting to debate the logistics of how they were going to get everything home in just one car, especially as Laura had others things to do that day rather than keep driving back and forth to the hall, Mr Jenkins sent a message to say there was no hurry in clearing their stuff out and the next booking that had been made for the hall was on New Year’s Eve so as long as he got the keys back on the thirtieth to give to the next customers and everything of theirs was gone by then, it would not be a problem. He had his own keys, of course, so there would be no issue with him and his trusted assistants coming in to load and operate the sacred dishwasher!

Everyone seemed a little reluctant for the gathering to end but Martin and Clive reminded everyone that they would all be together again very soon for the party at Sidney’s which was both to celebrate Willow’s birthday and to welcome Amanda and Rob into the family. There were slightly tearful but enthusiastic hugs all round and sworn promises to keep in touch as the time came for everyone to go their separate ways, Miranda and her girls leaving first, taking Rachel with them, then Martin, Clive, Merlin and Willow then finally Gram and Gramps along with Mike and Nadine who they had promised to drive home.

In the back of the car as they drove, Nadine looked thoughtful.

“What’s up, Pumpkin?” Mike asked, curiously.

“Can anyone rent that hall?” his daughter asked.

“I think so, yeah.” Mike replied. “Why?”

“I’ll be ten by next Christmas, right?” asked Nadine, not sounding as if she was dodging his question but rather that she felt she needed to gather all the relevant information before explaining to him what was on her mind.

“That’s generally how years tend to work, yes!” Mike chuckled and Nadine nodded thoughtfully, going quiet for a few minutes before sharing her thoughts.

“I was thinking,” she explained, “maybe next year, you and Mummy can rent the hall and host Christmas there for everyone like Auntie Laura and Uncle Josh did and maybe,” she wriggled a little in her seat, “perhaps, I mean, I’m not sure yet, by maybe, if you wanted, I could be the turkey?”


THE END
But the story will continue in “Year of The Turkey”!

Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year to One and All!