A Winter Flame (12 page)

‘It was Evelyn’s money to do with as she wished,’ said Violet in response. ‘She was a woman very much of her own mind.’

‘Like her great-niece then,’ said Jacques. ‘Only softer.’

He said it factually, not unkindly, but still Violet felt duty bound to jump to Eve’s defence.

‘Eve’s not hard, Jacques, however she may come across at the moment. She’s just . . .’ Violet realized she might be saying too much. Jacques was too easy to talk to, to
trust. If he was a con-man, he’d be really good at it, Violet thought. She shut up and walked over to the fridge to check for out-of-date food that might need throwing away.

‘You were saying,’ Jacques prompted her. ‘About Eve?’

‘She’s hurting,’ said Violet. She had no intention of spilling her cousin’s business and being disloyal, but at the same time she didn’t want Eve to be judged
harshly. ‘Eve hasn’t been Eve since her fiancé Jonathan died. He was a soldier, killed in Helmand on Christmas Day, five years ago.’ She tipped some rather rank milk down
the sink and ran the tap to sluice it away.

‘Ah,’ said Jacques. ‘And she can’t move on.’

‘No,’ said Violet. ‘She can’t.’

She hated the thought that Eve was existing until the day she died to be reunited with Jonathan. She had often thought about blowing out the candle, hoping that Eve would see that as a sign from
Jonathan that they must part and she should start to live, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it and betray her cousin. She didn’t know if that was the right thing to do or not.

‘She was always so smiley,’ said Violet, not liking that the Eve of today wasn’t the real Eve. ‘Okay, she always hated Christmas and probably with good reason . .
.’ Violet pulled the rein hard on herself. Eve’s rotten upbringing with a purely selfish mother wasn’t her story to tell. ‘But she was – is – a great person,
with a big heart, a kind, sweet soul. She’s just stuck in a rut. And she won’t get out of it whilst that flame is still burning.’
And it will burn forever and Eve will end up
like Evelyn – mourning until she is an old lady.

‘Flame?’ inquired Jacques.

‘The candle in her office,’ said Violet. ‘As long as it burns, she reads that as a sign that Jonathan is still hers and she is still his.’

‘Oh no. I’ve just blown it out,’ said Jacques with a gulp. ‘I thought it was a fire hazard.’

‘Oh God. We have to relight it.’ She turned to the drawers behind her and started hunting around for a match. Jacques took the cupboards above.

‘Got some,’ said Violet. ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell Eve what you did. In fact, don’t tell Eve you were here at all. She’ll kill us both.’

They both walked back into the office to see the strangest thing – the light was back and dancing on top of the candle.

When Violet arrived at her mum’s house, Susan was sitting at the kitchen table, laughing at today’s apology in the
Trumpet.

‘Listen to this,’ she said.
“In Saturday’s edition, it was reported that Mrs Christine Buckley was always renowned for being an elephant lady. We did, of course, mean
that Mrs Buckley was always renowned for being an elegant lady. We apologize to Mrs Buckley for any distress sustained.”
I’m sure none of them read the newspaper before it goes to
print.’

Violet chuckled.

‘They must print an apology at least three times a week. Sometimes they have to apologize for the apology because the apology ends up being worse than the original mistake.’

‘I should cut them out and collect them,’ said Susan, pulling a mug out of the cupboard for her daughter. It was the one with butterflies on it – Nan’s old cup. ‘I
wish I hadn’t thrown that one away now that advertised the special weekend offer for an eleven-inch, crusty penis with five toppings of your choice. The owner of Luigi’s must have gone
barmy at that.’

Violet laughed heartily then clamped her hand over her mouth because her old room was directly above. ‘How’s the invalid?’

‘Asleep. I’ve just been up to check on her. Don’t go up, Violet, in case you wake her. As you know, I’m a great advocate of sleep for the poorly.’

‘I promised Jacques I’d get her to sign some documents,’ said Violet. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

A few minutes later, Violet had returned, hating herself for having had to wake up her cousin, stick a pen in her hand and watch Eve sign her name before flopping back on the pillow again. Eve
hadn’t even checked what she was signing her name to, which was most unlike her.

‘Poor thing,’ said Violet, lifting up her cup. ‘She’s zonked out.’

‘Nothing better than sleep for the poorly,’ nodded Susan, and Violet thought back to the days when she was young and not so well, and Mum tucking her up in bed with a fat, cosy,
hot-water bottle.
You get to sleep and let the fairy nurses make you better in your dreams,
Susan used to say.

‘I’ve made sure the candle is fine, and I’ll be off in a moment to take these forms to Jacques. He wants them quite urgently.’

‘Oh, her favourite person,’ said Susan. ‘What’s he like, this Jacques Glace? She’s got a real bee in her bonnet about him, hasn’t she? She woke up yesterday
shouting out his name, and not in a very complimentary way.’

‘I think he’s lovely,’ said Violet. ‘Big, cheerful, friendly, handsome too. He’s got short grey hair and nice shiny eyes and big solid shoulders like Pav. He winds
her up terribly,’ said Violet. ‘He is an imp. He keeps making flirty jokes and saying that he’s going to marry her. It doesn’t go down very well, as you can
imagine.’

‘Ah,’ said Susan. Then she fell so quiet that Violet knew there was something Susan wasn’t telling her.

‘Mum, what is it?’

Susan didn’t answer. She just stared at her cup for a few minutes and seemed to be building herself up for a massive revelation.

‘Mum?’ prompted Violet.

Susan lifted her head. ‘Patrick. Patrick. Patrick,’ she stammered.

‘What’s this – butcher’s Tourette’s?’

‘Patrick’s asked me to marry him,’ Susan blurted out. Then she waited for her daughter’s reaction with a fearful expression on her face.

‘That’s brilliant!’ said Violet, breaking into a big smile and throwing her arms around her mum. ‘He’s a lovely fella. I’m thrilled for you.’

‘Are you okay with it, really?’ said Susan, collapsing into a sigh of relief.

‘Of course, I am,’ said Violet, taking a celebratory swig of coffee. ‘You’ve been on your own for far too long. You deserve to be happy with a nice man.’

‘We should make it a double,’ said Susan. ‘I can’t understand why you don’t marry that lovely man of yours.’

Violet nursed her cup. ‘We’re okay as we are,’ she said, unable to convey the voice to back up the words. She didn’t want the tears to come to her eyes, but they did all
the same.

‘Love, what’s up?’ said Susan. ‘Don’t you love him any more? Don’t you keep any more big secrets from me, my girl. I’ve had enough of that sort of thing
for five lifetimes.’

‘Love him?’ Violet gave a dry chuckle. ‘I love him so much it hurts me. But he’s nine years younger than me, Mum. Six years ago he was a teenager. He’s too young to
commit for ever.’

‘Oh, Violet, how do you know that?’ said Susan, stroking the white-blonde hair back from her daughter’s face. ‘Your dad and I were only bairns when we married. And we
knew what we were doing.’

‘Dad wasn’t nine years younger than you. Pav might think he wants to settle down, but one day he’ll realize that he’s drop-dead gorgeous, married to a forty-something,
and twenty-year-old women with pert boobs and no wrinkles will be flinging themselves at him.’ Violet pushed the tears back with the tips of her fingers.

‘Violet. Listen to me,’ said Susan, taking her daughter’s hand. ‘Love – and I’m talking proper, deep love – doesn’t come along as often as you
might think. And when it does, you have to grab it with both hands and hang on to the gift that life gives you. You’ve only got to think of her upstairs if you need any proof of that one. I
never thought I’d meet anyone else after your father died. But I have, and I’m lucky for that. I don’t know that in ten years’ time Patrick won’t have an affair or get
run over by a bus, but I can’t turn down my chance of happiness because of what might never happen. We only have the here and now as a definite.’

Violet nodded. She knew what her mother was saying was right but she was still frightened to commit herself wholly to Pav. She needed to keep something back in reserve to protect herself because
otherwise, when the day came when he would leave, there would be nothing left of her.

The
Daily Trumpet
would like to amend the entry made in last Friday’s journal. We did, of course, mean that Mr Donald Hill was a famous factory mogul, not a
famous fat Tory mongrel as printed.

We recognize this has caused some distress to Mr Hill and his wife, Brian, and wish to extend our sincere apologies.

It took over three damp, miserable, cold weeks before Eve could stand for more than two minutes without the pain in her back dragging her into a curled foetal position. Behind
Susan’s back one day she got dressed, which took forever, and then opened the back door to see if she could walk to her car. She couldn’t. Who would have thought a variation on a
childhood illness could have laid her so low. She conceded defeat and got back into bed before her auntie discovered her and slapped her legs.

At least the blisters on her front had dried up, but they itched like crazy and a large tub of aqueous calamine cream was her new best friend. She had smeared so much on that it had seeped
slightly through her skirt, but it would have to do; her jacket would cover it up. Auntie Susan had tried to insist that Eve took another week off, but Eve now had just enough strength to stand her
ground. Just. Plus she needed to find out what was going on with Winterworld because no one would tell her. Violet was infuriatingly vague. All she would say was that everything was going to plan,
according to Jacques, and she wasn’t to worry.

‘My plan or his plan?’ Eve asked.

‘It’s all looking fantastic,’ Violet replied. Which didn’t exactly answer Eve’s question directly, and made her suspicious.

On the morning of her first day back at work, Eve had to borrow a large safety pin from her aunt as her skirt was too big. She had lost over a stone and a half since coming down with shingles.
As Eve stepped through the door for the first time, the fresh air went straight to her brain like a triple shot of vodka and she toppled slightly.

‘That’s it, you’re going back to bed,’ said Susan, attempting to shepherd her frail niece back indoors. ‘Violet, help me get her inside.’

‘Auntie Susan, as much as I’ve enjoyed your hospitality, if I have to spend one more day in bed, I will scream,’ said Eve. ‘And I need to get back to Winterworld because
you, Violet Flockton, are being very short on detail.’

‘With good reason,’ Violet returned. ‘You needed to rest body and head.’ She didn’t add that she was terrified to tell her cousin what had been going on.
Eve’s adrenaline levels would be up to Usain Bolt’s, three seconds before his torso broke the finishing line. Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that Eve was going back to work on this
early, sunless, mid-November day so she could see all the changes for herself. Violet couldn’t keep up being evasive for any longer.

As Violet drove them closer to Winterworld, the triangular tops of the Christmas trees came into view – all white with sparkling snow. Eve felt the first stirrings of panic. She had
– up to this point – imagined that the operation had more or less ground to a halt in her absence. But the closer they got to Winterworld and saw the number of vehicles crowded outside
the gates, the more wrong she realized she had been. It was as if she had fast-forwarded a year rather than just less than a month.

As they pulled into the car park and then walked through the gates, she was seeing a very different place to the one she had left, clutching her back. This world was full of trees strung with
Christmas lights. Engineers were testing out a snow machine and a flurry of large dry flakes fell on her head for a few seconds. Workmen were hammering inside the log cabins and two of them were
fixing a tall, chunky signpost in the ground. Various arrows at the top pointed to Santa’s grotto, The Snow Ponies, Santa’s Snow-Cones Ice-Cream Parlour –
What?
The Elf
Theatre.
The Elf Theatre?
thought Eve. Where the bollocks did that feature on the original plans? There were red-and-white-striped candy canes everywhere she looked as well. Then she spotted
one of the arrows pointing to The Reindeer. Damn, she never had stopped its arrival. The sodding thing had probably arrived by now. Then a troupe of midgets in green elf suits passed by carrying
brown hessian sacks, causing Eve to shake her head in the hope that the vision would dissipate – it didn’t. They were, if the signpost was to be believed, heading for their designated
theatre. Effin Williams was barking at a trio of workmen sweeping up some broken glass.

‘
Ti trior iwsless a cachu carw!
’

‘He says we’re as useless as reindeer shit,’ said Arfon, one of the Welsh joiners, wearily translating for his Polish co-worker.

Why was everything so bloody glittery? How much tinsel was wrapped around those trees? Who sanctioned a ‘bauble market’?

‘Well, hello!’ came a big booming voice to her left. Eve turned slowly to see her nemesis, or partner, as she supposed she had better call him.

‘What have you done?’ she said, her voice no louder than a breath.

‘I’ve been busy,’ said Jacques with hearty smugness.

‘I can see that,’ said Eve.

‘I’m glad you approve, I’m rather proud . . .’

‘I didn’t say I approve,’ said Eve, her voice finding some volume. ‘In fact, I don’t approve at all – not one bit. Which part of “do not turn this into
a Christmas extravaganza” didn’t you understand? This. Is. Supposed. To. Be. Winterworld.’