Canyon Moon | H.S.

Countdown's End (81)

"Can I get you anything, Natalie love?"

I blink a couple times, focusing in on Anne standing between the kitchen and the living room, looking at me expectantly.

"No thanks, I'm alright." I say softly.

"How're you coping?" Vicky asks from across the room, a sleeping Layla in her arms.

I can't help but chuckle slightly, leaning my head back against Harry who's sitting beside me on the sofa, arms wrapped lazily around my large stomach.

"I think I'm doing alright," I say gently, the atmosphere in the room nice and calm after a full on Christmas morning, "my feet are starting to swell now, which is no fun, but I've stopped having leg cramps, and my back's been better."

"I remember when I was pregnant with Max my back was so sore I had to be in a wheelchair for a while." She says, chuckling at my wide eyes. "It wasn't anywhere near as bad with Layla, thankfully."

"Where is Max?" Harry asks, his low voice rumbling in his chest.

"He and Gemma are trying to build snowmen with the pitiful amount of snow in the garden." Tom replies with a chuckle, his eyes glancing towards the corridor that I know leads to the back door.

"Better her than me. I think that would finish me off!" I say, making Vicky laugh softly.

"We tried to tell him to be gentle with you, but I don't think he really understood."

I wave her off, not actually minding. I wasn't able to dance with him as he wanted, but other than that it's been a great day. Max sat on my lap while I read him a story and then played with his cars while I gave Layla a cuddle.

"Do people want to do gifts now?" Anne asks, coming in from the kitchen with four mugs. "I can go get Gem and Max."

In previous years, Harry's immediate family and I have given each other gifts on Christmas eve to avoid any awkwardness with me not really knowing the extended family. I don't really have that problem anymore so, apart from Max and Layla opening a few small gifts before lunch to keep them appeased, we haven't given anything out yet.

"Sure. I'll go get them, mum." Harry says, shifting behind me to stand up.

It took me a ridiculously long time to Christmas shop this year, my brain just all over the place. I started thinking about gifts on tour, whenever I had a free moment, and I realised, happily of course, that I had a lot of people to buy for.

Gone are the days when I'd only buy a gift for my mum, or even when I'd just buy for Bekah. Now I had to make sure I had gifts in enough time to wrap them and post them wherever they needed to go.

Luckily, I can get away with painting portraits for a lot of my gifts. Sometimes it feels like I'm just taking the cop out option, but Harry kept reassuring me that people love getting personal gifts and paintings, so I stuck with it.

It wasn't easy though, with the limited amount of time I actually had to paint, but I just about managed it, literally finishing the last one the day before Harry and I flew to Manchester for Christmas.

Maggie and Celeste are in the process of looking for a house together, so I painted them a portrait of the two of them based on a photo on Maggie's Instagram. I still prefer working with real subjects, but I'm getting better at painting from photos. With the two of them living in Paris, and both of them being naturally drop dead gorgeous, every photo of them is just stunning, so it wasn't hard to find one that would work. Hopefully they'll like the painting of the two of them sitting outside a little café, staring at each other lovingly. Maggie told me that someone offered to take their picture, and managed to capture this incredibly sweet moment.