by Kirsty Ferry
Ailsa looked at him, trying to read the meaning in his face. ‘Like Ella,’ she said suddenly. ‘When I mentioned her and how I wished I could warn her. You said not to do that.’
‘Exactly like Ella.’
‘You could have saved her – you could have warned her. If we were really there—’
‘We were really there,’ he interrupted softly. ‘Don’t doubt that at all.’
Ailsa thought she would collapse and Ned held her more tightly, shoring her up, almost. None of this made any sense; she couldn’t even believe she was saying such things. She was probably dreaming again. The warmth of the room and the exhaustion had finally hit her and she had dozed off …
‘But why? Why couldn’t you tell her?’ her voice seemed to be coming from very far away.
‘What could I say? “Come away with me, Ella. I’ll look after you. I’ll make sure you’re safe.” I couldn’t do that. To do that, I would have had to rip her away from Adam and there was never anybody else for either of them. There never will be. They were soulmates, it’s as simple as that. I loved her, in my own way – how could anyone not love Ella – but he was born for her. Just like I was born for someone else.’
‘Soulmates.’ Ailsa whispered the word. ‘I guess I’m in that sort of business too – I try to make sure they have the best start to it all. I deal with people in love every day.’
‘So do I, much of the time. I have to make sure people are in the right place, at the right time. I have to make sure the wheels are in motion. And I had to take you to that particular Christmas, because there was never another like it, not after what happened. Not after she died.’ He stared into the distance, as if he was seeing it all again. ‘I didn’t go the next year, the year after it all happened. It had only been a couple of months, and the family were in mourning anyway, but I had a good excuse not to go. I went after that, but it was never the same. As I said to you yesterday, what was the point of letting them know? They might as well have enjoyed the time they had together and they did.’
‘But what keeps her here?’ Ailsa’s eyes drifted over to the piano, where the little angel was now, somehow, propped up against one of the glasses. ‘The angel! She’s moved!’
Ned laughed. ‘She has. Maybe it was Ella. Look, I think there’s something else there too. Come on.’ He took her hand and led her over to the piano. ‘And in answer to your question, I suspect it’s love that keeps her here. Love for the Park, love for Adam and probably, knowing Ella, a love for her piano. Ah, here we go. Perfect.’
He reached over and produced a bottle of champagne that was sitting in an ice-bucket, just behind the piano, out of sight.
‘That’s from the wedding party!’ protested Ailsa. ‘You can’t have that.’
Ned turned to her, a twinkle in his eye. ‘Wrong brand. Look.’ He held the bottle out, and she saw that it was indeed a different sort to what the happy couple and their guests had been merrily swigging all day. In fact, it wasn’t even a brand the hotel sold.
‘How on earth …?’
‘Nothing to do with earth,’ replied Ned with a wink. ‘Now – shall we?’
‘The glasses—’
‘—are ours,’ he continued. ‘Not left over from the party at all. I promise you.’ He popped the cork and upended the bottle, filling the glasses for them. He held one out to Ailsa and she took it, hesitating only briefly before taking a drink. It was awfully good champagne, she had to give whoever had provided it credit for that.
‘How did you get in here?’ she asked him. ‘And how did you get the angel and the champagne?’
‘I’m just going to claim it was another little bit of Christmas magic,’ he replied with a grin. He raised the glass and toasted her. ‘To us. And to Christmas. To all of our Christmases – especially the Carrick Park ones.’
‘The Carrick Park ones?’ Ailsa knew she sounded dim, but it felt absolutely surreal. Why, if she half-closed her eyes, there was a Christmas tree, with a bent-over top, wavering just out of focus. If she turned to face it – it was gone.
‘Did you see it?’ asked Ned, following her gaze. ‘The tree? Yes – the Carrick Park Christmases. This one, here and now, and the other one. The one you wished for on Christmas Eve.’
‘I saw the tree. But you left me. You took me to the other Carrick Park, and you brought me back – then you left me! It wasn’t much of a Christmas here, was it?’
‘I completely agree – which is why I wanted to spend longer with you. What we did and the time we had here just wasn’t enough. I did leave – but then I found there was something worth coming back for. I didn’t want to wait until next year. Maybe I should have done; by rights, I should have done. You’re not supposed to rush these things – even though I was desperate to start the next part of our lives. I think seeing Ella and Adam brought it home to me. It didn’t take me long to decide I had to turn around and come back for you. When you know, you know. As I told you.’
He smiled down at her and she was drowning in those eyes again. ‘When you know what?’
‘When you know you’ve found your someone – your soulmate – the person you were born for.’
‘Ned!’
‘I know – it’s safe for me to tell you all this, though, because you won’t remember it. I can tell you anything. I can tell you that I love you and it tears me apart whenever I have to leave you. Always has done, always will do.’
‘But we barely know each other. We spent one day together!’
‘One perfect day.’ He refilled her glass. ‘Go on, enjoy it. Before you forget. We’ll have other days, though – lots of them.’
‘I’m not going to forget—’
Ned nodded. ‘You are, my love, because it has to be that way. You wish on an angel and the wishes are as fragile as their wings. They’re real, but not real. It’s weird – even now, after so long, I find it hard to explain.’ He laughed and took her hand, rubbing the soft pad of her thumb with his. The touch, combined with the second glass of champagne was enough to make her legs go wobbly. And immediately, the whole scenario seemed rather – normal. She was meant to be in here, with him, sipping champagne and talking about angels.
‘An angel?’ she managed. ‘My china angel? That one?’
‘If that’s the one you think you wished on, then yes, that one.’
Ailsa opened her mouth to respond, then checked herself.
She took a deep breath and tried again. ‘I didn’t have the china angel when I wished I could spend Christmas with Lydia and Ella,’ she said quietly.
‘So you didn’t,’ replied Ned, just as quietly. He took the glass out of her hand and placed it carefully on the table next to his.
‘There was just you in the room. Just you and me.’
‘Very true.’
‘So what are you trying to say?’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I—’
But the words were lost as he leaned down and kissed her. ‘What was that?’ he teased as he pulled away.
‘What are you?’ Ailsa asked, searching his face for an answer.
‘I’m yours for as long as we live,’ he replied, his eyes amused.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said, lost.
‘Can’t you feel it? In here?’ he asked. He placed her fingers on his chest, just over where his heart was beating.
As he pressed her hand against his body, all sorts of images began to flood into her mind – images of things they’d done or things they were going to do. Times they’d shared, but hadn’t yet shared. Laughter and tears, now, in the future, in the past; and a deep, deep abiding love that was as firm as the ground they were standing on, as solid as the walls of this old house they both loved.
‘How?’ she whispered. ‘How is that happening?’
‘One word. If you had one word to describe it, what would you say?’
His voice was hypnotic, and she felt compelled to answer: ‘Soulmates.’
‘Soulmates,’ he repli
ed. ‘You’re right. That’s what happens. We’ve found each other again, like we always do. And that’s the way it works in your world as well. I just have to split my time between our two worlds, which is always the problem. Like I said, I hate leaving you.’
‘But – if this is real – if it is real – what if you have to go away again? What’ll happen?’
Ned grinned. ‘In your world, I’ll be the sort of boyfriend who has to work away a lot. You’ll think I’m doing a normal sort of job, but really I’ll be doing this. You won’t remember any of this conversation at all. And that’s something I have to deal with – all the time, all through our lives. I love this bit, though. I love to see your face when you realise.’
‘I don’t quite know what I’m realising,’ replied Ailsa. The champagne really had gone to her head – the whole room was getting fuzzy and she was finding it difficult to focus on him. ‘I don’t want to forget this Christmas. I don’t want to forget all about the Carricks and the ice-skating and the Lord and Lady of Misrule. Or this. Having champagne with you, seeing my little china angel.’ The panic crept into her voice.
‘You’ll not forget, not properly. It’ll be just like a dream – a really vivid dream; the sort you want to escape into, the sort you remember time after time. It’ll always be there. You’ll just think you dreamed it all, with me in it. You already told me I’ve appeared in your dreams. That’s why – this has all happened before for us, and you’re simply remembering fragments of our lives.’
Ailsa shook her head, trying to put it all together. ‘Can you tell me one thing, though.’ She blinked and stood up straighter, determined not to slump into an inelegant heap on the floor. ‘If you had a life then – and if I was part of it – if I was Ailsa Cavendish, like we pretended – then what happened to me? How did you explain my disappearance – the disappearance of the version of me that was there? If I did disappear? People didn’t really get divorced too often then, did they? And I’m worried that you told them I’d died or something. Or maybe I did die! Good Lord. I’m confusing myself.’
Ned laughed and pulled her closer; he steadied her and kissed her, and smiled into her eyes. ‘None of those things happened. Do you want to know why we didn’t go to Carrick Park the year Ella died? Why I had a good excuse not to go?’
Ailsa nodded, entranced at the story, determined that, whatever he did to her, she would never forget any of this.
‘Well, my love. We didn’t go, because you were just about to give birth to our first son.’ Ned’s eyes twinkled. ‘A bonny lad, he was, born on Christmas Day, as it happens. And he grew up happy and strong and healthy, in a muddle of siblings. There was no better reason to stay at home, really.’
Ailsa stared at him. ‘So we were really married? We stayed married? And we had children together?’
‘We did,’ said Ned with a smile. ‘We always do.’ He raised his hand and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘Like I said to you, some people are just born for one another. They find their soulmates in whatever life they lead – but they don’t always recognise them straight away. Unless you’ve got a job like mine, in which case you kind of know certain things. And I sort of help things along.’
‘So we’ve been together before,’ Ailsa said slowly, trying to make sense of it all.
‘We’ve already lived a few lives together,’ replied Ned softly. ‘You only saw a little part of one of them. One day, I might take you back to another one. But for now, I think we have to concentrate on this one.’ He moved his hand, tracing his fingers down her cheekbone. ‘I have to do it. I’m sorry. But I do love you, and I’ll always come back to you. Remember that. When you wake up, you’ll just remember that we met and chatted on Christmas Eve, and I was perhaps a guest at the wedding, hovering somewhere in the background. Then afterwards, I came and found you, and handed you a little china angel that I thought must have fallen off the tree. But you kept it, because they’d never put china angels on the tree, and the rest followed after that, as natural as breathing. It just felt right – you knew we were meant for one another. And so we are, and so we will be.’
His voice was soft and lulling her into a daydream; a daydream where she was skating on a frozen lake, and his arms were wrapped around her and they were both terrible at it. And Adam Carrick was picking Ella Dunbar off the ground because she’d slipped, and Lydia Carrick was laughing fit to burst over their antics … You’re hereafter known as the Lord and Lady of Misrule! she declared, and Adam shouted Whatever do you mean by that …
Ailsa’s mind began to drift, as it did just before she fell into a deep sleep, and she felt her whole body relax. She was vaguely aware of being picked up in his arms and felt a gentle kiss brush her forehead before the darkness and the silence all around claimed her.
Then she was in bed, in the midst of the most delicious dream she’d ever had.
BOXING DAY
The alarm clock woke her at seven, and Ailsa stretched, rolled over and saw the china angel on the bedside table, sitting on top of the book about Carrick Park.
She wondered for a moment what it was doing there – it was a funny little thing, very sweet with a soft body and silver wings. Then she remembered and she began to smile. Ned. The guy from the wedding party last night. He’d given her it, hadn’t he? Nobody recognised it as one from the Carrick Park tree, so Ailsa had brought it upstairs and claimed it as her own.
Her mobile phone was blinking as well, and she pulled it towards her to read the message:
Are you around for breakfast? I am. Fancy sharing a table?
Ailsa laughed and began to type a response.
Good morning, Ned. Yes, I’m here. See you at eight?
Sounds good to me, he responded.
Yes, Ailsa thought as she stretched and sat up. Working Christmas Day hadn’t really been too bad, all things considered. It meant, at the very least, she could spend some of Boxing Day with a dark haired, dark-eyed man called Ned, who she very much wanted to get to know a whole lot better …
Chapter Nine
CHRISTMAS YET TO COME
One Year Later
‘Is Ned definitely going to make it back for Christmas then?’ Tara was clicking half-heartedly through the bookings screen.
Tara had, as far as she was concerned, drawn the short straw – she wasn’t working the rest of Christmas Eve, so she would, she had moaned, have to put up with the family stresses instead. She was just getting ready to hand over to Louisa, and Ailsa was keeping her company for a little while before going home herself.
‘He should make it,’ agreed Ailsa. ‘He was caught up with some IT job in the Highlands, but he promised me he’d be back. So I believe him. He’s never let me down yet.’
‘I bet you’re pleased you don’t have any weddings tomorrow. It was hard work last year, wasn’t it?’ Tara pulled a face, then dragged a plate with the remnants of a slice of Christmas cake on it closer to her. ‘Rosa’s going to make me fat. Honestly, they’ll be stuffing me and putting me on the table for Christmas dinner.’
‘It was hard work, but it had a decent outcome. I wouldn’t have met Ned otherwise. Anyway, did Rosa tell you that she and Joel are heading to Cornwall in the New Year? I can think of warmer places to visit, but there you go. She might make us scones when she comes back.’ Ailsa broke off a piece of her own cake and popped it into her mouth, one eye on the main doors. ‘She’ll more than likely come back pregnant, though. I’ve warned her.’
Tara laughed. ‘That’s kind of you!’
Ailsa grinned. ‘It wasn’t me, it was Ned. Can you remember when she brought her niece in to see us, when her sister Jessie was up at Staithes for something to do with her bookshop?’
‘Ah! Lottie. Yes, she was a cutie.’
‘Ned said then. He said “Oh, there’s a twinkle in her eye – she’ll have one of her own by next Christmas.”’
‘And you believed him?’ Tara shook her head and continued demolishing the cake. She pressed the last few crumbs toge
ther into a little wodge and finished them off, licking her fingers, just to make sure.
‘He’s rarely wrong. I mean you for instance—’
‘Stop it!’ Tara held up her hand. ‘No thanks. I don’t want to know!’
‘Okay. Fair enough.’
Ailsa was just about to continue the conversation, when a gentle breeze wrapped itself around her legs and shivered up her spine. She knew without even looking that he had come, just as he’d promised.
‘Ned!’ Sure enough, as she turned to face the main doors, she saw they were opening. Ned came through them, blown in on a light flurry of snow. He paused, kicking the slush off his boots, diamond sparkles in his dark hair as the snowflakes settled and melted and disappeared.
‘Hey gorgeous!’ he said, opening his arms wide.
‘You made it!’ cried Ailsa, hurrying over to meet him. She fitted into his arms and he kissed her, his nose cold but his lips warm on hers. ‘The roads are okay then?’
‘The roads are fine,’ he said. ‘And of course I made it. I’ll always be back for Christmas, never worry about that.’
‘Always?’ she teased him, brushing some snow off his shoulders. Beyond him, the snow was lying in the gardens, and Ailsa thought about all the Christmases that Carrick Park had known. She recalled the dream she’d had again last night, the one about ice-skating near the Abbey and Ella playing carols in the drawing room. It must have been a special sort of place. It still was a special sort of place.
She blushed as she recalled the second part of the dream; the part where the scenery had changed and she was mistress of a big old Georgian house she thought was possibly up in Edinburgh. In that dream, her stomach was as round and as hard as a football, and Ned was kissing her as he pressed his hand against her bump, and she covered his hand with hers and together they marvelled over the whole thing.
She didn’t think she’d ever dare tell him that one – or the fact that in her half-waking, half-dozing sleep, she could almost swear she’d felt the baby kicking and stretching around inside of her. She had been thrown when she woke up, just as slim as she usually was, and certainly not in a big old house in Edinburgh.