25/12/2024

The Christmas morning chat outside church focuses on lunch, and Mick relates his crash course in festive cooking courtesy of Joy. Alice quietly wishes Joy well with her secret proposal plan. Later Alice diverts Brian while Kate prepares lunch. She’s pleased to see Brian in such a good mood. He jokes he’s anxious about whatever Kate’s secretly cooking up. Alice admits that she’s been asked about applying for a job similar to her old one at Pryce Baumann. Kate’s prepared a Scandi Christmas meal and furnished the yurt. Everyone’s delighted. Jakob was taken completely by surprise, but admits to Alice he was looking forward to turkey! He checks in with her, and she asserts she’s feeling better generally. Brian makes a heartfelt speech and they toast a bright future. Joy urges Mick to take a cracker as she nervously gets everything in place for her big moment. But just as they go to pull the all-important ‘proposal’ cracker, there’s a ring of the doorbell. Joy’s stunned and ecstatic to see her daughter, Rochelle. She explains her children are with their dad. There’s some confusion as Mick mentions just missing her at the hospital when she visited her mum following the car accident, but Rochelle covers. Over lunch, Rochelle lightly bats away all Joy’s questions. When Rochelle makes to pull a cracker Joy has to intervene, retrieving her message to Mick from inside and hastily improvising the joke. As Rochelle goes off to get another bottle of wine, Mick tells Joy that today couldn’t have been more amazing.