Money: Luke Hemmings

26

25th of December 2015

'I cannot believe how extravagant your Christmas is!' I exclaimed as I followed Luke into the garden, which had been set up into a Christmas wonderland.

'We have a pretty big family and getting us all together is quite hard so when we do,' Luke said gesturing to everything with a laugh. 'We like to go all out.'

'I can see that,' I said picking up a glass of champagne with a smile. 'It is beautiful though.'

'Just like you Belle.'

'Cheesy,' I giggled as we made our way over to Jack, Celeste, Ben and his girlfriend Blair, who were over by the Christmas tree which was situated on the tennis court.

Liz had bought and decorated the tree, following the theme of gold, red and green, which she had decorated the whole backyard in.

'Glad to see you two could finally join us,' Ben said with a laugh. The Hemmings brothers all look scarily alike, with Jack and Luke almost passing as twins on some days.

'Sorry, somebody couldn't settle on what to wear,' Luke said, rolling his eyes and putting an arm around my waist.

'Hey! I have never experienced a black-tie Christmas before,' I protested with a laugh.

I had settled on a silver muted silver bodice and full-length skirt, my hair in a low neat bun, matched with dainty silver earrings and a necklace. It was extremely out of my comfort zone, but I liked it none the less.

'Don't worry, neither had we,' Blair said with a supportive smile, Celeste nodding in agreement. Celeste and Jack had obviously been dating for years, but before that Celeste was not apart of this ridiculous world at all. Blair, however, comes from old money but nobody was as rich as the Hemmings, as their father is one of the richest men in the world.

'It's daunting at first, but you get used to it after a while,' Celeste said with a smile and Blair nodded in agreement. I was used to it though. I just was not used to all the family members and happy smiles, as that was something that had faded from my family a long time ago.

'I like it, it is nice,' I said with a grin before Luke kissed the side of my head as we all continued to chat about what our New Years plans were before Andy came and got us to tell us that lunch was ready to be served.

The array food was like something you would see in a Hogwarts feast, it was insane. Ham, turkey and chicken lined the table, sitting atop wooden platters, decorated with wreaths and baubles. Every type of vegetable you could imagine was mixed in with the meats and salads, it was almost slightly overwhelming at the amount of food that was in front of us.

'Red or white Annabelle?' Ben asked as he was filling everyone's wine glasses.

'Red please,' I said with a smile as he filled my glass almost to the brim with a cheeky smile on his face. 'Thank you, Ben.'

Lunch was filled with a kind of laughter and happiness that I had not experienced since my Mum had passed away. It was the first time in a long time I had zero need to take any sort of drug, and I partially owe some of that to Luke.

I am not even sure how I was allowed to stay at Luke's for our whole three-week break, but I suspected that he had told his Mum what had happened and that was that. Liz had been treating me like her own daughter since I had been here, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was somebody's daughter.

'Are you having a good time?' Luke asked later into the day. Lunch had finished a while ago and we had just finished eating dessert and it was safe to say, I was well and truly full.