A Winter Flame (4 page)

If people wanted a James Bond party, Eve Douglas didn’t just supply the music and a gold statue, she drafted in lookalikes of Bond villains complete with white cat, arranged for vodka
martinis (shaken not stirred) to be served on arrival, Aston Martin taxis, and on one occasion engineered an appearance by Pierce Brosnan. Eve went the extra mile with everything she did and the
result was that her accountant was a very happy man. Eve’s Events was a profitable and growing business and she had been approached on three separate occasions the past year alone by
companies wanting to buy her out. She had kept their details, never thinking she would open the file. But Eve knew that she couldn’t run Eve’s Events and Winterworld. Well, she could at
a push, but Eve’s style wasn’t diversifying – she liked her energies channelled to one place. She would need to think very carefully about which path she was going to take.

Eve carried a sleeping Phoebe into Alison’s lovely barn conversion of a house.

‘She’s out for the count,’ she smiled, putting Phoebe down on the sofa in the lounge.

‘Come and have a coffee,’ said Alison, waddling into the kitchen. ‘I’m not letting you go without giving me some more details on your inheritance.’

Eve took a seat at the island in the centre of the huge kitchen/dining room and watched Alison making coffees. She had never seen her usually tall and waif-like friend so round – or as
content. Serenity was coming off Alison in waves.

‘You look so beautiful,’ said Eve.

‘Piss off,’ laughed Alison. ‘I haven’t seen my feet for weeks and I’m ravaged by heartburn and backache. Tell me something to take my mind off things.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘I want to know everything. I still can’t believe it all. Rupert thought I was drunk when I told him.’

‘I know how he feels,’ chuckled Eve. ‘I can’t take it all in myself. Aunt Evelyn of all people, with all those secrets under her belt. It’s . . . crazy.’

Alison brought over two mugs and an opened biscuit tin.

‘Dunk one of those chocolate ginger biscuits, they’re to die for,’ she commanded. ‘Are you still going to keep Eve’s Events running?’

‘I don’t see how I can. It’s more than a full-time job and I can’t do two full-time jobs. I’ve had a couple of offers to sell over the years, so I’m going to
put out some feelers.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Alison. ‘You’ve worked so hard.’

‘Well, I took a leap of faith starting it up so I’m just going to have to take another one letting it go,’ Eve sighed, reaching for a biscuit. ‘Oh and I haven’t
told you the best bit. Aunt Evelyn only left me half of it. The other half she left to a total stranger – A Mr Jack Glass. I can’t wait to find out who the hell he is.’

‘Pardon?’ Alison stopped mid-biscuit chew.

‘You heard right. Aunt Evelyn never mentioned him at all. But yet he’s one of the main beneficiaries of her will. And that is as much as I know about him. Until I meet him in a few
days.’

‘And she never mentioned the name to you?’

‘Not once.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘Two months before she died,’ replied Eve with a small cough. Usually she visited her aunt once a month but her work commitments had been so heavy recently she’d missed a visit
and rang Aunt Evelyn instead. She felt rather ashamed of that now – especially as it would only have cost her a couple of hours of her time and she could have spared that really if
she’d tried. Her Aunt Evelyn looked forward to seeing her so much.

‘Dear God,’ said Alison, resuming scoffing of biscuit. ‘Your aunt really did have a lot of secrets in her life, didn’t she?’

‘So many that I don’t think I knew her a quarter as well as I thought I did,’ sighed Eve.

As soon as Eve got home, she unfolded her aunt’s simple plans and those far more detailed drawings by the architect over her large dining table; she saw more
possibilities every time she did so. In the middle of the land, her aunt had foreseen ‘an enchanted forest’ of Christmas trees with a twirly path cutting through the middle. Evelyn had
drawn a horse and trap on the path along the route with the word ‘snow ponies’ written above it, and a miniature railway line was also present. At the left side of the forest was a
reindeer enclosure and stables. To the right were a collection of log cabins, one labelled gift shop, one a restaurant and some unnamed. At the far end of the development was a funfair dominated by
a sketch of a huge carousel. Santa’s grotto was one of five more log cabins next to the funfair. Three of the cabins were bracketed together and called ‘honeymoon cabins’. One was
marked as ‘the wedding chapel’. Eve peered at it while shaking her head. Surely her aunt wasn’t that batty as to think that anyone would seriously want to be married in a theme
park? This was South Yorkshire, not Las Vegas after all. A vision of Santa in black sunglasses and tassels, singing ‘Suspicious Minds’ whilst smelling of peanut butter and burgers,
suddenly came to mind. It wasn’t a pretty image.

Eve put her pen down and closed the book. Organizing a black-tie corporate event with dancing waterfalls was one thing – seeing that this ridiculously ambitious theme park was built,
marketed, advertised and managed was another.

Eve looked up at the ceiling and imagined beyond it, right up into the stars, where her aunt would be sitting with Stanley looking down at the havoc she had caused in her great-niece’s
brain. She would know that Eve wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge she had set her.

‘You wicked old bird,’ said Eve to the sky. ‘What the hell have you done to me?’

Ideas were crowding to get into her brain. She needed that smoking elf to keep them at the door and let them enter one at a time. But first things first – she better meet up with this
‘Jack Glass’ and suss him out as a business partner. Eve worked alone as a rule, but for ‘quite a few million pounds’ she just might be persuaded to see if she could put up
with the man.

Over the next few days Eve worked on tying up the future of Eve’s Events, as well as overseeing a fortieth birthday party and sourcing a consignment of green-tinged
champagne for an Irish wedding. If she were going to sell up, she wanted to make sure that the right people took over and things went as seamlessly as possible for her clients. She met with the
three companies who had expressed interest in buying her out. By far the best offer was from the biggest of the three: ‘Paul’s Parties’. Paul Hoylandswaine was a local
entrepreneur with his finger in more pies than a room full of Little Jack Horners. He was a bruff but straight man who didn’t do bidding wars or time-wasting: he knew what he wanted and went
straight for the jugular. He said that if Eve was serious about letting her enterprise go, she wouldn’t find anyone who would look after it and continue to build it up more than he would, and
he’d have contracts drawn up in two days for her to sign. Eve hadn’t wanted to move quite that fast, but Paul Hoylandswaine said he wasn’t going to ‘fanny about’
whilst she hummed and ha-ed. The deal was on the table with a now or never sticker on it; he didn’t stop balls rolling when they were in motion. Eve had a massive moment of panic. If
Winterworld folded, she would have nothing. She knew where she was running Eve’s Events, but Winterworld was a trip into the dark, scary unknown. But the moment passed and Eve found her hand
extending to shake his and the deal was done.

Winterworld would have to be a success, because Eve didn’t go backwards – at least not in business. She might have been stuck in the past in her personal life, but in her career, she
would only ever allow herself to move forwards. She wasn’t a natural gambler but this was an extraordinary business which merited out-of-the-box thinking. As she signed on the dotted line she
knew that however much of a knobhead this Jack Glass turned out to be, she would have to get on with him now.

Eve loved working for herself with no boss to answer to and she was disciplined enough to do that. Winning new clients excited her; earning lots of money thrilled her. People liked her and
trusted her and found her easy to deal with – that was indicative in the repeat custom she received. She knew she was taking a massive gamble on Jack Glass being the same. What if he was an
obnoxious cretin whom no one wanted to do business with?

She remembered taking Jonathan off to a very expensive hotel in Denmark for the weekend after banking a particularly massive cheque. These days she hadn’t anything as exciting to spend it
on though. All her money went into the bank and sat there twiddling its thumbs.

She had scribbled quite a few alterations on Aunt Evelyn’s plan for the park as well. The wedding chapel had been changed to a second gift shop and café, for a start. Food,
that’s where the money was – not in silly whimsical chapels that would probably bring in one booking a year and be a total waste of a building. The reindeer enclosure had been changed
into a coffee shop and picnic area. Livestock only ran up vets’ bills although it did, she supposed, make some commercial sense to have the ponies, if they were to be working and earning
their hay or straw or whatever they ate pulling hired carriages and were not just stuck in a field pooing. She even wondered if there was any mileage in the idea of selling snow-pony poo to
gardeners (it was just a thought). She had also claimed one of the log cabins near the restaurant as an ice-cream parlour. If she could get Violet on board that would be fantastic. Not just because
she made the best ice cream in the world, but because she would have an ally firmly in her camp in case Mr Glass turned out to be a right old tosser with no business acumen at all. Any friendly
weight on her side would help in levering him out. She would be meeting him tomorrow anyway. And all the many questions she had about him were at last going to be answered. Or so she thought.

Sitting in Mr Mead’s office, Eve rolled
his
name around in her mouth. The spelling, she had learned, was
Jacques Glace,
not Jack Glass
.
She imagined
a number of personalities which that name would suit. A fifty-something French fop with frilly cuffs, a giant quiff and a blue rinse. Carrying a toy poodle. Or a very young, arrogant, nerdy-student
type with a big coat and a Masters in philosophy, a long Dr Who scarf wound around his neck. Eve still couldn’t work out how Jacques Glace had managed to jointly inherit a very valuable chunk
of land from her aunt. She considered the possibility that Aunt Evelyn had acquired a young, slim, six-packed Jacques Glace as a gigolo, and the land was his payment for ‘services
rendered’. She dismissed that immediately as being totally daft and so out of character for Aunt Evelyn it couldn’t be taken seriously for a second. Then again, everything she had
learned about her aunt recently was out of her character – did she really know old Evelyn that well? The disclosures of the past couple of weeks had made her wonder. The sweet, quiet Aunt
Evelyn who lived surrounded by very old sepia-coloured memories and had a penchant for Mr Kipling cakes was not the woman she recognized from all the recent revelations. It was how Lois Lane must
have felt when she discovered who Clark Kent really was.

Eve had thought of nothing else but plans for the park since she had visited White Christmas. But she wanted to run it her way and not have to make joint decisions. Maybe – she hoped
– he’d be willing to act as a silent partner and let her get on with it. With two cooks, the winter broth was more than likely to get spoiled. Anyway, Mr Glace would soon realize that
he couldn’t be as imaginative or good at organizing as she was; and when he saw that he would recede into the shadows and go and buy a boat to live on and ring up every year to check on the
profits. She could live with that arrangement, she supposed.

Eve looked out of the window at a very rainy, bitter October day as they waited for the arrival of Jacques Glace. The Christmas lights were already up, strung across the central Barnsley street.
If the start of Christmas became any earlier, Britain was going to end up being like Aunt Evelyn’s house and not bother taking its decorations down. The shops had been filling up with
Christmassy things since early September, forcing everyone to start feeling the pressure. Eve could have quite happily taken a flight to somewhere hot and sunny as soon as she saw the first
Christmas card on a shelf and not returned until 2 January. However, Christmas for Eve’s Events was a lucrative time – she had to stick around and be tortured by it.

As she sat waiting for Mr Glace to turn up – he was already late by an annoying ten minutes – she mused about Christmases past. She supposed she must have had some happy memories
about the season, but they were buried beneath the weight of the unpleasant ones. For every recollection of being at her Auntie Susan’s, stuffed full of good food, there were five of her
mother either drunk, sleeping off a party or snogging like a teenager on the sofa with a transient boyfriend. Eve remembered having fish fingers for Christmas lunch once because her mother was too
stoned to cook anything else. Ruth Douglas flitted from man to man and home to home like a not-altogether-there butterfly and Christmas was an excuse to become even more of a sybarite than usual.
Eve always felt as if she were outside a huge snow globe looking in at other people’s merriment and enjoyment of Christmas whilst being unable to be part of it. The memories of her
Christmases past were scented with cannabis, stale beer, and cheese and onion crisps. And the one Christmas which she felt might herald her entrance into that giant snow globe was the unhappiest
and most terrible of them all.

Footsteps thundering up the stairs disturbed her reverie and ruled out the possibility that Mr Glace was a light French fop. He sounded more like a carthorse with Dutch clogs on.

Whatever she expected Jacques Glace to be like it wasn’t the man who blustered into Mr Mead’s office with a knitted hat on, complete with ear flaps and woven woollen plaits. He had
an Arctic explorer coat on, the collar pulled up to his nose, and the biggest padded gloves that Eve had ever seen. The weather, however bad it was, didn’t warrant that amount of anorak. This
was Barnsley town centre, not Antarctica.