The Waitress

Christmas all over the world

His mother's big beach-side house seemed a million miles from Broadbeach, the Gold Coast, Australia and yet in some ways it felt like it was just next door.

Except for the weather.

Broadbeach had been so warm when he left – too warm (though the locals warned it would be worse when he came back – "February is a bitch" Jaz had told him).

Here though it wasn't hot or steamy.

It was cold.

Freezing cold.

Bollocks freezing weather if he was honest.

And there would be no salads and no gelato here in his mother's little seaside village. But they weren't entirely different, there was still a beach. Still a place to run – though he would be a lot more rugged up on the Suffolk Coast than he would be running along the main beach at Broadie.

Broadie.

He laughed when he'd called it that to his confused family.

He'd gone Australian on them – well that's what his brother-in-law had said.

The family all asked him how Australia or Queensland had been and he'd referred to his location not as Queensland or even Brisbane or the Gold Coast, leading to a lot of headscratching.

But he could call it Broadie.

It felt like he'd earned the right since he had friends there now – substitute family. Sure, he liked his co-stars but there was something about the Blue Wave gang. They made him feel welcome, one of them. Maybe it was because he came on the scene at the same time as Melody. He didn't know. But he liked it. Liked it a lot. He'd told his mother as much during her third degree when he arrived earlier that day.

You know the one – "Are you eating well, you work too hard, have you made any friends out there?"

He always looked tired when he arrived back from a shoot and she'd been surprised to see him so relaxed. She'd asked what the difference was and he'd told her everything straight away – fessed up about his new friends. Even telling her about Melody, asking his mother if she still had contacts with a couple of the bigger orchestras to help one of his new friend track down her mother. Diana Hiddleston had been in theatre management back in the day and she knew everyone – well it always seemed like it to Tom. Her heart had gone out to the young woman. It might have been the story or the way Tom talked about her. Though he kept insisting they were friends, another younger sister – maybe his assistant's future girlfriend – he certainly had a crush he'd said trying to throw her off adding Mells to the ever-expanding "daughter-in-law possibles" list.

They were friends.

And she was a long way away with big plans for the future.

And he was here.

With his own plans and with his family – back to enjoy Christmas. Back in gray wonderful old England, surrounded by his sisters and their husbands and children, his mother, aunt, and cousins.

Of course, it didn't escape him that he was on his own. Alone in a crowd again. He loved his family. But they all seemed to have someone. Have their own families and lives. He was part of it all and yet somehow not. There was a big crowd during the day, he was surrounded constantly by people but when he went to bed, he went alone.

He was happy in Australia, happy not to have someone, everyone was just one big happy group, some in relationships, some not. But here as much as this was his family he felt like his other half was missing, whoever that might end up being.