Once Upon A Winter (11 page)

‘Why don’t you take your cake upstairs and have it with Nana Gwen?’ Nell suggested. ‘She’d like that.’

‘But I’m not allowed to eat food in the bedrooms,’ Joshua pointed out. ‘Because of crumbs.’

‘No, but Nana Gwen’s room is different, isn’t it? She has that table with the tray on top. And she eats her own food in there.’

‘OK.’ The boy beamed, and popped another cake into a second bowl. ‘See
ya.’

‘See you, Joshua.’ Daniel smiled at the boy’s retreating back.

‘One cake left,’ said Nell, peeking into the paper bag.

‘You have it,’ said Daniel. ‘By rights, it’s yours.’

Nell reached for a knife and took the cupcake out of the bag. She proceeded to slice it into two halves. ‘We can have a wing each.’

But Daniel just stared at his share, as if she’d offered him a bag of gold. ‘Nell, are we going to have dinner together, or not?’ he said gently.

‘We just have, haven’t we?’ Nell didn’t meet his eye.

Daniel scraped back his chair, stood up and went to the door. He peered around it, then softly pushed it shut. ‘You know what I mean, Nell.’ He turned to face her. ‘I want to take you out.’

‘Daniel,’ she muttered, standing up and forcing her heavy, clumsy legs to propel her over to the sink. She didn’t know what else to say, other than his name.

In a few long strides, he was by her side. As she turned in a panicked blur to open the dishwasher, they collided. His hand firm against her waist, his face loomed over hers. Before she could pull back, their lips met. The kiss was over in seconds. Brief but tender. A statement of intent.

‘I like you, Nell,’ he murmured. ‘Not because I feel sorry for you, or because I want to make things up to you. I
like
you, and I want to spend more time with you.’

Nell stepped back. ‘Daniel . . . It’s complicated . . . My life’s complicated.’

‘Only because you make it that way. My life’s not simple, either, but I’m not asking for anything either of us can’t give. I’m not going to pressure you, Nell.’

‘You’re doing it right now, though.’

‘Well - apart from now. But all I want is to set a date for our . . . date. I can’t make a reservation if I don’t have a day or a time.’

‘OK.’ Nell exhaled raggedly. ‘I’ll ask Emma. She’d have to
babysit somehow. And it’s just one meal, Daniel. We wouldn’t be going “out” out.’

‘Fine.’ He nodded, and grinned. ‘You set the pace.’

The door creaked open slowly, and Nell retreated several steps away from Daniel, wondering if it was plain to see that her lips were tingling. It had been so long since she’d been kissed like that. And had it ever been as sweet or meaningful with Silas? Perhaps it was simply time dulling the recollection. Amazing in itself, because Nell had never felt its reputedly healing powers at work until now.

‘Mum?’ Freya poked her head tentatively round the door. Her eyelids looked droopy. ‘Are you going to tuck me in?’

‘Did your programme finish, sweetheart?’

Freya nodded.

‘Well, come on then, let’s go up and brush your teeth.’

‘I’ll, um, leave you to it then.’ Daniel followed them into the hall. ‘You’re probably shattered. I know I am. Maybe I’ll run into you tomorrow . . .’

‘Maybe.’ Nell smiled tensely, afraid of the thump, thump, thump of her heart, which seemed to be trying to compete with the rush of heat swirling in her stomach at the thought of his lips brushing against hers again.

But Daniel just ruffled Freya’s hair, smiled at Nell and shrugged on his coat. Lips weren’t going to come into it, not even on her cheek. Maybe because Freya was staring at them rather transparently. ‘Say goodnight to Joshua from me,’ Daniel said, unlatching the front door.

‘I will,’ said Nell. ‘Thank you for the wine.’

‘And thank you for dinner.’ He nodded. ‘Take care.’

Daniel shut the door behind him. Nell blinked at it for a few moments, then remembered her daughter.

Freya was grinning smugly, as if she had orchestrated the entire evening. ‘You
like
him, Mum. You like Mr Guthrie.’

‘No,’ said Nell, too quickly, ‘no, I don’t. He’s nice, but . . .’

‘He’s the nicest man you’re going to meet in Harreloe,’ said Freya, dragging herself up the stairs ahead of Nell, ‘and he likes you back. I told you this sort of thing always happens in films and books. Are you going to date him?’

‘Of course not!’ said Nell. Again, too quickly. ‘How
would it look, me dating your Deputy Head? More or less living in the same house as him. Just think how messy it would get.’

‘I think it would be easy,’ said Freya with a shrug, padding into the bathroom. ‘Why wouldn’t it? Josh and I both like him. Aunt
Em said you would never go out with anyone Josh and I didn’t like. But we do, so there’s nothing to stop you.’

‘Your aunt is a big mouth.’

‘And
she
said you’re a scaredy-cat.’

‘Brush your teeth and get to bed, young lady,’ said Nell, without being dictatorial about it. ‘I’m not scared. Just practical.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Freya, sounding dangerously like Nell herself.

Nell stalked into her daughter’s bedroom and started flinging aside the duvet. Out flew the small, matted teddy bear Freya kept hidden beneath it. Realising she was taking out her frustration too obviously, Nell quickly neatened up the duvet again, and just left a corner of it turned down, for her daughter to slip under. She frowned at the teddy a moment, before tucking it in on one side.

Silas had won that bear for Freya, at a travelling fair they had gone to once, when the twins were babies. He could win anything he set his mind to, as if he wasn’t even trying. In retrospect, Nell realised it was how he had won
her
. Far too easily.

But that foolish, needy girl - a complete pushover - was gone.

Unfortunately, Nell was still trying to work out who had taken her place.

Three missed calls. Daniel stared at his phone. He’d deliberately not answered it. It was lying there, on top of his small, square, kitchen table, beside his mug of coffee, daring him to be a man and not a mouse.

He jumped as it buzzed again. The screen lit up. ‘
Lauren
’.

She obviously needed to speak to him about something important.
Saturdays were the busiest day of the week for her, and yet this was the fourth time today that she’d tried to get hold of him, never leaving a voicemail. That wasn’t Lauren’s thing. She expected an immediate connection. But ‘important’ in Lauren’s mind did not necessarily equate to anyone else’s definition.

Daniel had never invited her here to the Annexe at Bryn
Heulog. It had been his choice to move out of their house on the small Meadowlands estate. One of them had to. Even a divorce as free of ill will as theirs required some level of detachment.

As he’d packed his belongings, Daniel had wandered around their
uber-modern, three-bed detached home and realised that he had had very little to do with the colour of the walls or the carpets, or the patterns of the drapes and blinds, or even the preference of decking over a paved patio in their garden. He had funded most of it, a chunk of his inheritance had gone towards it. Daniel had even wielded a paintbrush. But he had let Lauren make the fundamental choices.

Yet he couldn’t recall if that in itself had been his choice, or whether Lauren had made that decision for him, too.

Moving out had been the first major independent action Daniel had taken since the start of their marriage. The house had seemed more Lauren’s than his, even though he had made the heftiest financial contribution.

Since then, he had come back to the house on occasion, or he and Lauren had met up in bars, or at the solicitor
’s. Lauren had never pushed to come to the Annexe. She had been considerate enough not to let her curiosity overshadow tact.

It wasn’t that it was a hole. Far from it. The Annexe was just tiny. Four rooms giving on to a short, narrow hall. One small bedroom. A lounge with a two-seater sofa, a bookcase and TV stand. No bath in the bathroom, it had been converted into one of
those showers advertised in magazines, with a door and a seat. The kitchen comprised a table, two chairs and a row of cupboards, with all the necessary features compressed into a small, functional space. Everything in the flat was beige, magnolia, white, or floral, and geared towards the ageing matriarch who had lived here prior to Daniel.

John Mason had assured him he could change the décor if he wished. DIY beyond a simple painting job was not Daniel’s strong point, though. Nothing was in a state of disrepair, it was simply more old-fashioned than Daniel was accustomed to.

Living here was also only temporary, not a long-term answer to his predicament. It seemed pointless to go to all the effort of stamping his own identity on the Annexe only to move out a few months down the line. And, in all honesty, he wasn’t sure what his own taste might be. No one had really given him the opportunity to test it out until now.

The phone was still buzzing. Before he could talk himself out of it again, Daniel grabbed it and accepted the call.

‘Hello, Lauren.’ He spoke resignedly.

‘Danny!’ S
he seemed surprised. ‘I was beginning to think I’d never get hold of you today . . .’

‘You should have left a message.’

‘I want to talk to a human being, not a machine. You know I hate voicemail. Anyway’ - she sounded excited - ‘are you busy tonight? I mean, I know it’s a Saturday, and it’s short notice, but I’ve been trying to reach you all day.’

‘What is it, Lauren? Is something wrong?’

‘No, far from it. Can you come over? To the house? If you haven’t had dinner yet we could get a takeaway from Calista’s. I’ve had a knackering day, but I managed to get away early. Now I fancy a quiet night in.’

‘Is this a good idea, Lauren?’

‘Seriously, Danny, come on, we’re still friends, aren’t we? We’re not going to start throwing plates at each other, or pretending the other one doesn’t exist.’

Daniel swallowed hard. Only two women in the world called him Danny. His mother and his wife.
Ex
-wife, he corrected himself. He had never had a problem with it; but tonight, hearing it from Lauren irked him, as if she had no claim on it any more.

‘Please,’ she wheedled, ‘I don’t want to talk about this over the
phone, but I want your input A,S,A,P.’

Daniel sighed. ‘All right. I’ll be over in about forty-five. I’ll walk, and pick up some pizza on the way, if you want? I can phone the order through before I leave here.’

Perhaps on the way back home later he could take refuge in the Leaping Stag, and have a well-deserved pint with the landlord. By then he would need it.

‘Great,’ said Lauren. He could sense her smiling. ‘I’ll have my usual. Thanks, Danny. See you soon.’ And she hung up.

With a groan, Daniel heaved himself to his feet and went into the bedroom to change out of the clean but baggy sweats he’d put on after his shower, and into something half-decent for setting foot outside the Annexe. He found a clean lumberjack shirt and a pair of fresh jeans. Everything else seemed to have migrated to the laundry basket, which was spilling over like the magic porridge pot from the classic story he’d read to the Reception class last week.

Tomorrow would hardly be a day of rest, Daniel acknowledged glumly. Washing, drying, ironing would be his lot, and if he wanted to be sensible rather than disorganised, he would have to start putting aside clothes for his trip to Sorrento in a fortnight.

At least the suitcase was beneath the bed. He could just slip things into it as he went along, and then shove it back under again out of the way. His mother, counting the days until his arrival in Italy, would be proud of him.

*

‘Danny - hi!’ Lauren flung open the door. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d remember your key or not, so I was looking out for you.’

‘It’s still on my key-ring.’ He passed over the pizza boxes, so he could untie his laces and slip off his shoes.

The hall floor was wood laminate, but the lounge carpet was a risky pale cream that Lauren had naively assumed would remain pristine indefinitely, if she fussed over it enough.

‘I was clearing out the cupboard under the stairs,’ she said, heading for the kitchen, as he slipped off his coat, ‘and I found a pair of your old slippers. I put them out for you, if you want to use them. I can keep them here for now, too, if -’

‘Don’t bother. Just throw them out, one of the soles is coming unstuck. They should have been chucked out ages ago.’ He hesitated. ‘Actually, I was thinking, you should probably have the key back. I can’t just let myself in whenever I feel like it.’

‘Danny, don’t be silly, we agreed, didn’t we? You could have stayed living here, too, if you hadn’t been so stubborn. At least until we got things sorted.’

He shook his head as he shuffled in his socks to the kitchen. ‘That wouldn’t have worked. We would have been kidding ourselves if we’d tried it.’

Daniel leaned against the doorframe and studied the woman he had been married to. The woman who had dictated his orbit for the last twelve years. It was the first time he’d come face to face with her since receiving the Decree Absolute.

In faded skinny jeans and a floaty top, she looked as if she’d stepped out of a celebrity magazine. Still the same blonde bombshell - as his father had outdatedly referred to her - that she’d always been. Tall, leggy, tiny-waisted and shrewd. A Barbie doll with brains.

‘Your hair’s longer,’ he remarked observantly. ‘How
d’you manage that? It can’t have grown that much since I last saw you.’

She seemed to find this funny. ‘They’re extensions, Danny. Do you like them? You’d never guess, would you?’

‘No.’ Her hair fell almost to her waist; ruler-straight, as if she took it off and ironed it every morning.

‘Come on’ - she gestured with her head to the lounge - ‘let’s take the pizza in there. Relax a bit. Do you want a beer? Just help yourself from the fridge.’

He fished out a bottle and followed her through. Lauren sunk on to the shaggy, gold-threaded rug in front of the modern electric fire, which hung a third of the way up the feature wall.

Daniel took the proffered plate of pepperoni pizza and sat in the furthest armchair, the leather slippery compared to the jacquard of the floral sofa he was used to at the Annexe.

‘So, what was so urgent that I had to drop everything and come over?’ he said.

Lauren chided him. ‘Now, I didn’t phrase it quite like that, Danny. But I’ve got good news.’

He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

‘We’ve had a firm offer on the
house.’

‘Really?’ Daniel paused with a pizza slice half-way to his mouth.

‘Only a grand less than the asking price. So we didn’t need to lower it, after all. It’s a young couple, mid-twenties. They’re getting married next spring, and they’re really keen. They’ve both got good jobs, so the mortgage isn’t going to be a problem.’

Daniel glanced around,
not quite so hungry any more. ‘Ironic, when you think about it. We were about the same age when we settled down here, too. Younger, actually. If only we could have seen into the future . . .’

Lauren moaned. ‘Danny, you’re not going to get all maudlin on me, please
.
This is good news! It frees us both up. It means we can move on with things. They want to proceed as quickly as possible. It’s win win.’

‘You’ve accepted already?’

She flicked back her ash-blonde hair. ‘Of course I have. I tried calling you, but you wouldn’t answer. Out on one of your “runs” probably. I wasn’t going to hang around, or try to squeeze more money out of them. We’re not being short-changed, in my view. And I just want to get on with things. We’ve had the house on the market for ages.’ She frowned impatiently, clearly infuriated by his reaction. ‘Don’t
you
want to move on?’

‘You’ve seen an apartment you like, haven’t you?’ he surmised. ‘Still in Chester, like you wanted?’

Lauren held back for a moment, as if trying to curb her enthusiasm. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘Near work. It’s perfect.’

‘Well.’ Daniel put down his plate on the floor. ‘I’m pleased for you.’ But he knew he didn’t sound it.

Her blue eyes flashed as she sprang heatedly to her feet, her own pizza discarded for now, too. ‘This is
so
typical of you, Dan. Distorting something good. Raking over everything a million bloody times. I can’t stay here in this village any more. It’s not the pastoral dream it once was. This is your world now. You’re the king of it. Everyone loves you around here, and they all hate me for dumping you.’

He could have said, ‘No, they don’t,’ but it would have been a lie. The general population of Harreloe lay the blame for the demise of Daniel’s marriage squarely at Lauren’s feet.

Since he’d moved out, it hadn’t ever worried him that he might run into her in the Main Street, or the pub, or even at Calista’s café. Lauren’s routine took her out of the house, into the silver Mini Cooper they had once shared, and straight over the hills towards the A55 and Chester. She was assistant manager of a small, exclusive boutique on Bridge Street. Her friends were in Chester. Her family, too, lived just outside the city, in Christleton. Everything she now wanted from life was there, and not in this Welsh ‘backwater’.

Daniel doubted if she even came back to the Meadowlands house
sometimes during the week, or at weekends. There had never been a shortage of spare rooms on offer for her in town, even when they had been married.

‘You could have had this house, you know,’ she said now, standing in the centre of the lounge and looking as if she was trying to keep calm with some bizarre
T’ai Chi moves. ‘You’ve dug your roots in this bloody village, and it would have made more sense for you to just buy me out. But no, you had to play the martyr. Poor, gallant Daniel, so hard done by, taken to the cleaners by his bitch of a wife.’

‘Lauren,’ he said sharply, ‘I’ve always made it clear to people that you didn’t throw me out. It was my choice to rent the Annexe. I need to sell this house as much as you do. I want to stay in Harreloe, yes. For now, at least. But not
here
. I couldn’t live here. I can’t exist side by side with ghosts, Lauren . . .’ His voice tailed away.

Oh God. He was
so
not over this. Like having a perfectly laid dining table, with the finest china and gleaming wine glasses, and then watching as an inadequately trained conjurer whipped the table cloth out from underneath.

His life had smashed around him, and he had been forced to stay calm and accepting about it.

But not any more.

Lauren was watching him. ‘There’s something different about you tonight, Danny,’ she said, her whole demeanour softening again, less defensive. She took a step closer, eyes narrowed, as if analysing what had changed. ‘You’ve got more . . .
spirit
in you . . .’

Daniel took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Do you remember a girl called Nell Mason - from St
Cecil’s? Her actual name’s Ellena, but no one at school seemed to call her that.’