He patted her shoulder, pushing aside any concerns about whether spending time with a woman he should stay away from would be good for his emotional health. ‘I’m a non-working man, remember. Happy to help.’
Hannah arrived at Honeybun’s kitchen door at nine-thirty. Freezing fog had eerily blanketed the village and moisture beaded the coat she hung up. Along with a blast of chill winter air, she brought in her backpack, her laptop, paperwork, a bottle of white wine and a packet of Oreo biscuits. ‘You bought a table,’ she observed, straightening a soft blue jumper that clung. She glanced at the English farmhouse units and brass handles. ‘It’s not scrubbed pine or pippy oak but I like its clean lines.’ She patted the black table top.
‘My Swedishness came out. Try it for size.’ He took down two wine glasses and a plate for the Oreos to keep his gaze from what her jumper clung to while she set out her things.
Though she accepted a glass of wine she plunged into her record-keeping needs, outlining what was being handed over to tenants and what remained the responsibility of the landlord. It was easy stuff. He created templates while she edged her chair nearer and watched him changing formats and introducing colour coding.
‘You actually like doing this?’ she asked, chin on hand.
He was creating the final sheet. The first glass of wine had gone down and he was almost used to her being so close he could smell whatever she’d used on her hair. ‘I do.’ His tapping fingers didn’t pause on the keyboard. ‘Though if I’m going to sit at a computer for fun I prefer to play with images.’
She sat up straighter. ‘Like …’ She drummed her fingers in an elaborate pantomime of thinking. ‘Like graphics for ads?’ She looked at him hopefully.
He grinned, saving the spreadsheet template. ‘Like that. Give me a minute to check on the girls.’ He ran upstairs, silently popped his head into the room, counted two kids sleeping peacefully in the street light shining in through the as-yet uncurtained windows and ran down again.
Hannah hadn’t moved from her seat but had taken down her hair. He liked it down. At Rob’s wedding it had brushed his hands as they’d danced.
‘Here’s the logo for Carlysle Courtyard.’ It glowed from the laptop screen, golden-yellow lettering surrounded by green. She twisted her hair back up again, this time with fewer escaping tendrils. ‘I need ads, flyers and posters. Do you want to do the creative stuff and I’ll do the resizing for various social media channels?’
‘Sure.’ He freshened their glasses of wine and they worked together for another hour. Then Hannah closed her laptop. ‘It’s nearly eleven! I’ve kept you too long but it was great of you to give me your time. You can do this stuff twice as quickly as I can.’ Her eyes sparkled, possibly because she’d drunk half a bottle of wine. She stretched, her body moving sinuously beneath her top and a lock of hair floating free again.
He found himself reluctant for the evening to end. ‘I was sorry to hear you’d lost the shop.’
Her sparkle drained away. ‘I thought I could keep it but I was outmanoeuvred.’
‘Really?’ He tried to make the word an invitation to confide. Curiosity was human. He’d left her in Stockholm two weeks ago apparently settled into Swedish life with a Swedish boyfriend and a business in the beating heart of the city.
She sighed. ‘Albin—’ Lines of grief puckered the skin above her eyes.
‘Albin’s your boyfriend?’ She’d never officially told him she had a boyfriend. She’d left that little morsel to her brother.
She sucked in a wavering breath. ‘He—’
Nico’s phone began to ring where it lay on the table. Loren flashed up on the screen.
Hannah must have read it because she sprang to her feet. ‘I’ll leave you to answer,’ she gabbled, scooping her possessions into her backpack.
It wasn’t a call he could ignore anyway. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, watching her hurry into her coat, looping a lilac scarf around her neck. She sent him a small smile and mouthed, ‘Goodnight and thank you,’ as he said, ‘Hello, Loren,’ into the phone.
‘How are the girls?’ Loren asked, sounding ineffably weary.
‘Fine. Sleeping peacefully. We visited what we hope will be Josie’s new school today and she liked it. The social worker, Gloria, is coming on Friday to visit Maria.’
The door clicked shut behind Hannah.
Nico turned his attention to being a dad.
Chapter Sixteen
It was the second day of what Hannah thought of as The Great Courtyard Clean-Up and Christopher Carlysle was striding about, huffing and puffing that he hadn’t bargained for ‘all these costs’. Estate workers backed a truck in to load up builders’ debris and Cassie hovered around uncertainly. Her Hunter boots and waxed jacket looked as if they’d never seen mud.
Hannah, in contrast, wore here-to-work jeans, boots, an old coat and a woolly hat. She tried to soothe Christopher while remaining realistic. ‘I know. The situation’s not of your making. But these people—’ she waved at the traders watching through doorways ‘—they’ve paid deposits and their first month’s rent. They have agreements. They’ve given up other tenancies to come and be part of Carlysle Courtyard. They’ve paid for signage on their shops and they have their livings to earn.’
Christopher turned puce, frying her with a glare. ‘Your fee is way out of order. Three thousand pounds? Pah!’ With one last, scathing look around he stomped to his Land Rover and was soon roaring down the drive.
Hannah had approached the meeting prepared to renegotiate the fee, which was, after all, a figure she’d plucked from the air in a moment of annoyance, but his snotty attitude reminded her of Albin and so she watched him leave, then turned back to Cassie. ‘Do we still have a deal?’
‘We do!’ Cassie clutched Hannah with her manicured fingers as if prepared to keep her by force. The wind buffeted them and a disembodied voice from the Crafties unit swore about bloody dust in his eye as Cassie pulled up her coat collar and drew closer. ‘I know Christopher was gruff. I’m afraid he’s upset.’ A groove dug itself in between her brows.
‘I understand,’ Hannah replied politely, though she didn’t, not really. It was more than ‘gruff’ to be so overtly angry when Hannah was rescuing the project. Working on the adage of knowledge being power she added encouragingly, ‘Is it something I’ve done that’s upset him? Other than charged a fee?’
Cassie flicked back her hair, eyes wide and alarmed. ‘You? No!’ For an instant she looked as if she might cry. She sighed, as if seeing there was nothing for it but to explain. ‘Simeon … he’s not great at seeing things through. It was OK when he was younger, I suppose, but now he’s over forty Christopher feels keenly that he should have achievements to show the world. He absolutely thought that Simeon had managed it with Carlysle Courtyard and Simeon did work jolly hard. But then he went off …’ Her bottom lip trembled. ‘Christopher feels Simeon’s failed again. It’s the disappointment making him tricky. Or maybe he’s got some weird idea that you succeeding will make Simeon look worse in comparison and that’s why he’s barking at you. I am sorry.’
Sympathy now entering her heart, Hannah smiled. ‘Thanks for explaining.’ Poor Cassie was obviously doing her best and Christopher was probably a perfectly nice guy if you met him under the right circumstances. ‘So,’ she said brightly, thinking Albin had made her unnecessarily cynical about people with money. ‘The cleaning and clearing of the units is underway and my goal’s to have them all ready for traders to bring in their stock on Wednesday the ninth, six days away. They’re free to open for business any time between that and the Christmas Opening on the nineteenth. That gives me two weeks and two days to get the outdoors perfect and blitz the publicity. I’ve emailed you the link to the Carlysle Courtyard blog along with the social media usernames and passwords.’ She wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t earn every penny of that three thousand pounds. She’d worked long into last night, unable to sleep for spreadsheets dancing before her eyes and mulling over how sweet Nico
had been. Hot/cold, Jekyll/Hyde Nico Pettersson.
When Cassie had approved Hannah’s idea to buy planters of heather and ivy for the courtyard and swished off in her Merc, Hannah’s attention was grabbed by an untidy woman in her fifties dashing out of Paraphernalia, beaming as if Hannah were her dearest friend. ‘You’re Hannah? I hear you’ve come to save us,’ she cried. ‘I’m Gina from Paraphernalia. I’ve put the kettle on. Come on in! Can’t wait to meet you.’
As she was by now chilled through and Gina was a tenant she’d not yet met, Hannah was only too pleased.
Over steaming coffee cradled in chilly hands, Gina glared around the interior of what would be her shop. ‘Look at all those splatters on the floor! And the emulsion’s scratched. I’ve got boxes of dreamcatchers, crystals and ceramics all over my living room but I can’t bring them into this mess.’
After her years at Creative Lanes, Hannah was well used to soothing traders’ ruffled feathers. ‘I can already imagine the scent of patchouli and the sound of wind chimes in here. People will love it!’ She was pretty sure of that. Buying unnecessary things to decorate one’s home was now a recognised British pastime. She rounded out with a dollop of reassurance. ‘You won’t recognise the place in a couple of days.’
Moving on, she found Posh Nosh now clear of builder rubble and stickers removed from windows. Perla and Teo were energetically washing down surfaces in the kitchen. Perla beamed at Hannah. ‘Miracle! We think we can open at the end of next week.’
‘Phew!’ Laughing, Hannah pretended to mop sweat from her brow, enjoying the sense of community that was budding between herself and the tenants. Till she could start ideas-storming her own next move she loved the feeling she was making something happen here.
The morning passed quickly. The estate workers were a cheerful bunch in their dark green sweatshirts, scraping, sweeping, cleaning and carrying. One with his arms full of ripped plastic wrapping that had once packaged building materials said to Hannah, ‘Lazy bleeders. I was a builder for years and I never left a site like this.’
Christopher would definitely not appreciate Hannah sharing the fact that the builders had marched off the site when payments got behind so she laughed it off, pretending to shiver. ‘Not even a dusting of frost can make empty bags look better.’
On Monday, the sign could be erected. From the middle of next week Hannah could pretty much leave the traders to stock their units, keeping an eye out for anyone who looked as if they might not be up and running by the nineteenth. She could turn her attention to the Christmas Opening.
It was after one when she managed to get away, whizzing along windswept Fen Drove, talking to the garden centre at Bettsbrough on her phone, getting their best price on six planted-up flower tubs and planning to add tinsel and lights.
She entered the village, enjoying the way lights and Christmas trees were decking the familiar stone cottages with festive bling. A large cotton-wool snowman had popped up to guard the school gates, his woolly hat and scarf in the school colours of plum and black. The school made her think of Josie, and Nico’s family turning up in Middledip … without Loren. Was Loren about to join them? Hannah had waited for Nico to mention her. He hadn’t, but then Loren had phoned him last night.
After parking the car she breezed into Nan’s kitchen, rubbing her hands. ‘Brr! That wind’s arctic. I think my nose has frostbite. Fancy chicken soup for lunch? We’ve got some tiger bread left.’ She halted. ‘Ooh. Someone got a present?’
On the table, a gold-painted basket cradled a pyramid of fruit, elegantly decorated with Christmassy red silk poinsettia bracts and gold ribbon. Nan assumed an air of unconcern. ‘Brett again.’
Hannah hung up her coat and took the soup from the cupboard, observing Nan from the corner of her eye. ‘He’s trying hard, isn’t he?’
Nan shrugged one shoulder, the one on the opposite side to the plaster cast. Hannah wished she’d thaw towards poor old Brett. They’d been good together and a ninety-year-old lady might not have masses of time in which to play hard to get, sad as it made Hannah feel to think it.
‘Those grapes look lovely,’ she tried tentatively.
‘Probably full of pips,’ Nan retorted. But then she grinned, her wrinkles making concertinas at the sides of her face, and blushed.
Cheered by that hint that Nan wasn’t as unaffected by Brett’s overtures as she’d been making out, Hannah chattered as she prepared lunch. ‘Rob and Leesa get back from their honeymoon tomorrow. Rob’s texted me that he wants to come and see you on Sunday.’
‘I’ll look forward to that.’ Nan beamed.
‘Me, too,’ said Hannah … although she knew he’d want a full account of what was going on with Albin.
She still hadn’t received the money Albin owed her. She’d email him later and ask what the hold-up was.
Nico felt more carefree than he had for years. It was amazing. Even though today, Friday, meant a ten a.m. visit from Gloria Russell from Children’s Services, his step felt springy as he ran on the treadmill he’d shoehorned into his bedroom while the girls played with Josie’s iPad on the bed. His feet made comforting rhythmic thumps but he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t wonder if he’d have to defend his motives for offering Maria a temporary home. He’d made up speeches in his head about Gloria being welcome to try and get her mother or grandparents to take Maria but the tot would go to strangers over his dead body – despite Nan Heather having assured him it wouldn’t be like that.
When Gloria arrived, a smiling, middle-aged woman wearing comfortable trousers and a big coat, her first words were, ‘Aren’t the herbs growing through your paving lovely? Like little cushions.’
Disarmed, he stood back to welcome Gloria into the kitchen. ‘Are they herbs? I’d noticed they smelled nice.’ They introduced themselves and Josie and Maria came flying out of the sitting room to inspect the visitor. Josie wore a glittery Santa hat at a rakish angle. Maria’s hair had been brushed ready for the important visitor but was now scrunched into a clasp at one side, probably courtesy of Josie, and one of her socks was missing.
Gloria greeted them with an easy smile. ‘Hello! I’m Gloria. I’ve come for a quick visit.’ She chatted to the children, admiring the Pokémon cards and unicorn with a rainbow matted mane brought for her inspection. She drank the cup of tea Nico made her, more interested in a comfortable gossip about family life than firing questions, watching the children play with a benign expression that Nico felt hid how closely she was paying attention.
‘Do you girls like drawing?’ she asked, after a while.
‘Yes!’ Josie instantly scrabbled in the kitchen drawer for a pad and a blue pencil case and bossily told Maria to sit at the table. ‘What shall we draw?’
Gloria assumed a considering air. ‘How about a picture of how you feel today?’
‘I draw,’ said Maria, and took a yellow crayon and scribbled industriously on the paper.
‘That’s lovely! Can you draw me a face?’ Gloria asked.
‘No,’ said Maria positively, changing to purple crayon.
Gloria grinned. ‘If you did draw me a face, would it be a smiley face today or a sad face?’
Maria looked at her as if she were bananas and pointed to the little unicorns dotting the pencil case and said, ‘Horse.’ Josie collapsed in fits of giggles, so Maria giggled too, screwing up her bobble nose and showing off all her pearly teeth.
It was when the girls had drifted back to the sitting room that Gloria moved into a slightly more businesslike mode. ‘Loren tells me she’s made a private arrangement with you. Children’s Services just needs to make sure Maria is safe, healthy and happy during her mum’s illness and that everyone gets the support they need.’ She talked on about ‘family and friends carers’ and advised him that he may be eligible for fostering allowance or maintenance paid from the birth parents. Foster carers could get training and professional development, too.
He listened but said, ‘It’s only for one more week. The agreement is th
at Loren or her parents will take Maria before Josie and me leave to visit our family in Sweden on Friday.’
Gloria tilted her head and looked at him for a long moment. Then she smiled. ‘You have my contact details anyway, if you need anything. I’ll pop in again.’ She went into a practised spiel about reports and the fostering panel and left him lots of information for him to consider. Nico thanked her, reasonably confident he was being put into the ‘OK’ category but with the knowledge that his days as a foster carer were numbered anyway.
In the afternoon he kept his appointment with the Bettsbrough solicitor who’d agreed to handle his settlement agreement from SLS. Josie entertained Maria with the iPad in a corner of the office while Mrs Ponderoy talked him through the document and he signed his part then he celebrated by taking the girls to McDonald’s.
Fast food wasn’t usually on his radar but he knew occasional treats didn’t hurt and he didn’t want the kids to grow up with his hang-ups. Also, he felt optimistic and chilled. The urge to exert unnecessary control over his eating wasn’t breathing on him as it did in times of stress.
Maria proved herself to be familiar with Macky D’s by swivelling her head to look up at Nico and piping, ‘Mydad, c’n I ’ave a ’Appy Meal?’
‘You can.’ He didn’t remind her about saying ‘please’. They were all going to have a guilt-free burger.
As they ate, Josie worked industriously on a colouring sheet from a dispenser on the wall, eating chicken with her other hand; Maria, in a high chair, ate nuggets and flung crayons around, luckily not getting the two mixed up. Then Josie concocted a game with the plush toys that had come in the Happy Meal boxes, Maria providing sound effects. Nico drank coffee and took the opportunity to telephone his dad.
‘Hej, Pappa,’ he said, when he heard his dad’s voice. ‘How are you?’
‘Good! Fine!’ boomed Lars jovially. ‘I’ll be working with the junior team at the rink this evening. Just been collecting my cones for the slalom.’
Christmas Wishes: From the Sunday Times bestselling and award-winning author of romance fiction comes a feel-good cosy Christmas read Page 18