What Happens At Christmas... (24 page)

He nodded. ‘A tux is essential in Hollywood. There's a black tie event almost every week if you want to get involved in that sort of thing. Yes, I've got one, though I don't use it very often here in Devon.' A thought struck him. ‘By the way, how are you getting to the ball? The traditional pumpkin coach pulled by magic mice, or something more prosaic?'

‘It depends whether you consider an eighty-year-old Rolls Royce to be prosaic. It certainly beats the crap out of a pumpkin as far as I'm concerned.'

‘Howard's sending the Roller, eh? You've definitely made a conquest there. So, the bouquet of flowers is from him, maybe?' Holly felt sure she could detect more than casual interest behind the question, even if he was doing his best to sound nonchalant. She found herself grinning.

‘No, they're from Justin.' She was delighted to notice a flicker of something cross his face. Could it maybe even be jealousy, she asked herself? She savoured the moment for a few seconds before owning up. ‘You may not realise it, but you are currently in the presence of the self-appointed marriage guidance counsellor to the inhabitants of Brookford.'

He wasn't even pretending to look nonchalant now. ‘You're what?'

‘Are you a betting man, Jack Nelson?'

‘I've been known to play the occasional game of poker.' He caught her eye. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘I'm prepared to bet that Justin and his wife will be back together again before too long. What odds would you give me on that happening?'

‘I won't place any bets – but if you can make that happen, there'll be a lot of people in the village who'll owe you, starting with Justin.' He raised his eyebrows. ‘Want to tell me about it?'

‘Definitely not. We marriage guidance professionals have our code of ethics, you know.' She finished her wine. ‘There's more left in the bottle. Hang on and I'll go and get it.'

Jack stood up. ‘Not for me, thanks. I've got to get back to the work in progress.'

Holly smiled at him. ‘Of course, the screenplay. So, how did things work out for your slutty heroine? Has she been suitably punished for sleeping with the wrong guy?'

‘I've been a bit stuck on that one, but an idea's just come to me now. Prince Charming thinks she slept with the bad guy because he saw them together, but it turns out she didn't after all. So all's well and the good guy still loves her.'

‘He does?' Now it was her turn to try, and fail, to sound nonchalant.

‘Um, yes, probably. We'll have to see how the plot develops.'

Holly followed him into the kitchen. He walked across to the room, avoiding the mistletoe en route. But, to her surprise, before he got to the door, he stopped and turned back, a nervous smile on his face. ‘Thanks for the wine. And I didn't mean you looked awful'

She smiled back. ‘I know.'

‘Have I told you you're gorgeous?' There was something more than humour in his voice now. She felt a tightening in her throat.

‘Several times, but please don't stop.' She was still doing her best to sound casual.

‘Holly…' He stopped, searching for words. ‘Holly, you probably think I'm mad.'

‘Well, anybody who jumps into freezing water for fun can't be totally sane.' She kept it light, sensing that he was trying to find the courage to tell her something.

He managed a little smile. ‘I really do think you're gorgeous. I think you're bright, you're fun, you're stunningly different from any other woman I've ever met, and you're very, very desirable.' Now it was her turn to feel self-conscious. He cleared his throat and reached out to take both her hands in his. She felt him move closer to her and raised her face towards him, her eyes closing in anticipation of his kiss. She felt his lips barely brush against hers and then he pulled back. She opened her eyes and saw the conflict on his face.

‘That was nice, Jack.' Her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

‘Oh Holly, if you only knew…'

‘If I knew what, Jack?'

‘If you knew about me.' In response to her expression, he managed a little smile. ‘It's all right; I'm not an escaped convict or anything, but there's stuff I've got to tell you.'

‘No time like the present.' She gave his fingers a gentle squeeze.

There was a long pause and then he let go of her hands. ‘I'm sorry, Holly, but I'm going to need some time. I will tell you, I promise; I just can't find the words right now.' His voice was half-choked with emotion. He turned and headed for the door. He seemed to be in a hurry to get out. She took a deep breath and did her best to sound normal.

‘Take your time, Jack. I'll be here.' She smiled at him as he turned back towards her, his hand on the door handle. ‘And thanks for bringing the bouquet of flowers.'

He managed a weak grin this time. ‘Just an old-fashioned romantic, that's me.' And he left, closing the door behind him. Holly stood there for a good while, staring at the back of the door, wondering what he was trying to find the courage to tell her. She thought back to the moment his lips had, all too briefly, touched hers and she sighed. She had never, ever, felt like this before about any man. It was disconcerting, yet immensely exciting. That slightest hint of a kiss had been magic. She reached down with her right hand and gripped her pulse. Her heart was racing. Was this what love felt like? She muttered a silent prayer that Jack would find the words that were eluding him and turned her attention to the bouquet.

The flowers were, as she had thought, from Justin. Attached to the cellophane bag was a tiny envelope. Inside was a card with a simple message.
With warmest thanks for being a shoulder to cry on. Justin.
Holly smiled and looked down at the dog.

‘Don't you start getting ideas. I'm not sending you flowers, even if you are a damn good listener.' She considered pouring herself a drop more Prosecco, but decided against it. She found an old cork and stuffed it into the bottle as its own cork had swollen up. Then she replaced it in the fridge and addressed the dog again. ‘But I will give you your food.' The dog suddenly woke up. The ‘F' word was as important in his vocabulary as the ‘W' word.

After feeding the dog and then herself, Holly decided she had better try to do a bit more tidying upstairs. She would wait until the morning to prepare her double bed for Julia and Scott, so she concentrated on the third bedroom that her dad had used as a study. It had been here that she had found the box full of letters. She started sifting through the stuff on the floor on the far side of the room but within five minutes, she stopped dead. To her considerable surprise, underneath a pair of old curtains and some files, there were no fewer than three cardboard boxes, all marked with her name. Taking a paperknife off his desk, she slit the tape on the top one and peered inside. To her amazement, it was full of neatly wrapped Christmas presents. Each present was marked with a little Christmas card, her name, and a year. The one in her hand was 1989, the one directly below it, 1990.

Holly set this box down and opened the second one. Inside were more wrapped presents, the date on the top ones, 2013 and 2014. She opened the third box and found more of the packages, this time dated 1998 and 2000. One by one, she picked the boxes up and carried them downstairs. She cleared her dinner plate and glass, opened the boxes and began to unload the presents onto the kitchen table. She laid them out in chronological order until she had an unbroken line from 1989 to 2015. In all, there were twenty-seven packages of various shapes and sizes; one for every Christmas since her father had left her, right up to the present. The first one, dated 1989, was quite large, while the last one was no bigger than a bar of soap.

Holly pulled out a chair and sat down. She realised that, unlike the Christmas tree in Jack's house next door, she was going to have a lot of presents on the floor around hers. She wondered what to do. Part of her was crying out to open them now, while another voice told her to wait. In the end, the voice of caution won, but not entirely. She decided to wait until Christmas Day for most of them, but felt she could at least open one of them now. Having made that decision, the question was which? The answer was inevitable to an engineer. Start at the beginning.

Holly took the other presents and arranged then on the floor around the base of the tree, leaving only the first one on the table. This was considerably bigger than any of the others, but quite light. She picked it up and took a deep breath before opening it. At Christmas 1989, she would have been just seven. What had her father chosen as a toy for a little girl that age? She tore the paper off and found a cardboard box with a Perspex cover. Inside it was a teddy bear, but not just any teddy bear. As a regular viewer of the
Antiques Roadshow
, even without the name on the box, she immediately identified the tag in the bear's left ear as the trademark of German toymaker, Steiff. This little bear was a classic. Very carefully, she opened the box and slid the bear out. He was a brown bear with a black button nose and she sat him on the table in front of her and studied him. There was a label pinned to his chest marked with a number, and his glass eyes stared back at her impassively. He sat comfortably on his bottom, his orange pads pointing at her. He was just gorgeous. Holly knew full well that if she had seen him when she was seven, she would never have wanted to let him go. As it was, she slept with him in her arms that night.

Day Eight

Friday

Friday morning was a busy one for Holly. After taking Stirling out for his walk, she set about cleaning the bathroom and her bedroom, in readiness for Julia and Scott. She put new sheets on the bed and prepared a single bed in the next room for herself. Once that was all done, she put the old sheets in the washing machine and set about cleaning the kitchen. Finally, she washed and changed into clean jeans and a rather nice cashmere top she had always liked because it was the same colour as her eyes. At eleven-thirty, she took the dog for a quick run round the green, gave him an early lunch and then set off for Exeter just before noon.

The sky was clear and it had been a frosty night but, by this time, the ice had all melted away and she had a good run as far as the outskirts of Exeter. During the journey along winding, but not exceptionally narrow roads, she spared a thought for Christmas presents. She was planning to go shopping for a long dress today, so that made buying a present for Julia dead easy. Julia could choose something and Holly would pay for it. The other people who deserved a present were Mrs Edworthy for having looked after first her father and then Stirling, and the three new men in her life; Jack, Justin and Howard Redgrave. For Justin she decided to look for something nautical, for Jack something with either a Land Rover or a surfing connection, and for Howard, the richest man she had ever met, she needed time to make up her mind. She spent most of the drive thinking about suitable presents for him and came to a conclusion roughly at the same time as she hit the outskirts of Exeter. She would buy him something that would remind him of his years in France.

As she hit Exeter, so she also hit heavy traffic. She sat fuming in a slow-moving queue, presumably made up of last minute shoppers such as herself, gradually creeping into the city centre through a series of slow traffic lights. It made her realise how, in just a week on Dartmoor, she had already got so used to the peace, quiet and uncrowded surroundings – to the extent that a provincial city like Exeter now felt worse than London. She got to the station a full ten minutes late and saw Julia already standing outside, looking round hopefully. When she spotted the red Porsche, Julia waved and Holly drew up alongside her. Jamming her bag onto the narrow back seat, Julia climbed in. Holly was quick to apologise.

‘I'm so sorry I'm late, Jules. The traffic was horrendous.'

‘Don't worry about it. My train was a bit late, and I've only just come out of the station. To be honest, a bit of fresh air's very welcome. The train was jam packed.' She fastened her seat belt. ‘So, what's the plan?'

‘Shopping.'

Julia gave her a grin. ‘Excellent. What are we shopping for?'

‘Presents for my men, Christmas pudding and a Christmas cake, and some super smart dresses for you and me.'

‘When you say, your men?'

‘All three of them.' Holly stuck the car into first gear and pulled away. ‘I'll fill you in on the details as we go along. First things first, though, we need clothes.'

Altogether it took three hours of serious shopping to find everything they wanted and it was getting dark by the time they staggered back to the car, laden with bags. With Julia's suitcase in the back, it was a real struggle to fit everything in, but they just managed. Holly had been making a few phone calls and she called into the Land Rover garage on the way out of town, where they had exactly the right present for Jack, although getting it into the car took ingenuity. All the way home, Holly filled Julia in on the events of the week so far, up to and including her glass of Prosecco with Jack the previous night. Julia listened in silence, her head poking up from beneath a pile of shopping, before she gave her verdict.

‘Assuming you're right in your conviction that Land Rover man isn't gay and that he isn't involved with that Dolores woman and he hasn't got a wife stashed away somewhere, we've got to work out what's holding him back.' She knew Holly wouldn't be able to see her face in the half-light, so she put her tongue firmly in her cheek and played devil's advocate. ‘Maybe he doesn't like you.'

‘If he doesn't like me, why's he spending so much time round at my place? Try again, Sherlock. And, believe me; that man isn't gay.'

‘Maybe he's just one of those terminally shy boys you meet from time to time.'

‘There's nothing shy about Jack Nelson; trust me.'

‘Maybe he's a, what do they call them, Jehovah's Whatsits, and he thinks lusting after women is a sin.'