Happily Ever After This Christmas

by C. K. Martin

  At this time of year, even mundane tasks such as that had no place in her day. This year, especially, she had bigger fish to fry. With a cup of tea as a poor substitute for a glass of wine, she looked over the paperwork that the health and safety woman had left her. There, scribbled at the top, was her name: Jo Pearmain.

  It didn’t feel familiar. Kayleigh knew everyone in these parts, or at least that was how it seemed. The infuriating woman mustn’t be local. Her accent had been somewhat indefinable — not that she’d actually said that many words to her. She had been too busy rummaging around on the floor, trying to ruin her life.

  Any peace she had gained from a slow reading of Goldilocks evaporated in an instant. Damn, she was getting emotional. This was not the time of year to be messing her around. Without that charity, she would have been out of her depth from the moment she realised that Emily had somehow lived and was now her responsibility. Over the years, the volunteers had done wonders with Emily, but in those first six months, they had supported her just as much, if not more. There was a debt of thanks to a handful of the women she would never be able to repay. Instead, the yearly donation and push for visibility was the best she could do to show them her gratitude. There was no way this Jo Pearmain woman was going to take that away from her.

  Resolution settled in her stomach and she grabbed her laptop. She checked the times of the local hardware store and made the decision to go straight there after dropping Emily off at school the next morning.

  That was the easy part done. Finding an electrician who could do a — she checked the wording on the form — partial rewire at short notice was going to be hard enough. Finding one who wouldn’t cost her an arm and a leg, no pun intended, would be virtually impossible.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Despite being next to a window, Jo felt like her work desk never had enough light. She was sure that by the summer, she would be complaining about the glare of the sun on her screen, but for now it felt like she never really escaped the night.

  At least she didn’t have to go outside into the damp, grey mist. The alternative to site visits was all day sat at a desk, but she was happy to do the trade. Besides, the other woman who she shared an office with was having a day off to do her Christmas shopping, so for once she was able to sit in peace. The woman muttered to herself constantly while she jabbed the keyboard with two fingers, peering over her glasses after each completed word. At first it was fascinating to watch, but now it was just irritating as hell.

  It was ostensibly a paperwork day. So far, she had drunk four cups of coffee to try to get warm and searched for Kayleigh Johnson on Facebook. She’d found a surprising number, but none of them had a profile picture that resembled the woman who had stuck in her head and refused to get out. The one she suspected was the actual Kayleigh Johnson she was crushing on had no profile picture uploaded, and the account was locked down. Who even did that these days? It was far too frustrating.

  She tapped her chin, trying to come up with alternative solutions. It wasn’t stalking, as such. It was part of the job. She was simply trying to make sure that Kayleigh wasn’t a serial breaker of health and safety statutes. Or some other kind of criminal she need to be wary of.

  God, it didn’t sound in the least bit plausible.

  With Facebook being a bust, she had no choice but to check out the plain old internet. She was about to type in the name again when she had a revelation. If Kayleigh was one of those people who protected their private life, she couldn’t take the approach to her business. Business didn’t thrive unless people knew about it. That much she remembered from her very basic economics classes at sixth form. She hit backspace until the search bar cleared, then typed ‘Johnson’s Bookstore Cotswolds’.

  The ageing council internet seemed to take forever to return the search results. Coming back to this place really was like stepping back in time. Eventually, it loaded, with a variety of links. She scanned them quickly. Most of them were town level websites, designed to allow tourists to see what was on in the village so they could plan their day trip. Boring. Useless.

  Jo took a sip of her coffee and went to page two, hoping it would contain something more interesting than the dates of the village summer fair four years ago. Didn’t people think to update these things? A newspaper article link caught her eye and she reflexively clicked it. The headline took a moment to sink in. The picture, however, wasn’t Kayleigh.

  The mild jealousy she had felt the previous day when she had discovered that Kayleigh was the sole owner of a pretty little village bookstore evaporated as she read the words on the screen. She and her sister had run it together after their parents had died. They had been determined, according to the article, to keep the family business running as it always had done. Kayleigh looked at the picture again. Debra looked vaguely familiar. She hunted around in her ancient memories until she came up with the answer. Her first year of secondary school. Debra was the prefect who had kicked her out of the dinner hall once. It had seemed scary at the time, being shouted at by one of the big kids. Looking at the smiling face staring out of the picture, it seemed she hadn’t been a dragon after all.

  The picture was a family photo, but it didn’t contain Kayleigh. Instead, a toddler was sandwiched between Debra and the man identified as Jack, her also dead husband.

  Jo swallowed, uncertain about whether or not she wanted to continue. The little girl in the picture looked so happy. No outcome would be a good one.

  She scanned back down the screen, finding the last sentence she had read, determined to continue despite the growing lump in her throat. A few weeks before Christmas, Debra and Jack had been killed in a car crash at a notorious danger point, known locally as Dead Man’s Curve. Jo could picture it well. Many evenings before she had left for university, she and her friends had driven that stretch of road a little too quickly, drunk on the freedom that your first car and no sense of your own mortality can bring.

  In winter, it lived up to its nickname at least once each year.

  Heart in mouth, she read on, curious but dreading to know what had happened to the smiling little girl. The initial relief that she had survived became muted by the details. With no surviving relatives other than Kayleigh, she had been crushed in the crash, the car seat failing to protect limbs that fell outside its protective body. Doctors were working hard to save her arms but had already been forced to amputate one of her legs.

  Poor kid. Losing your parents must be tough, but with that on top of it? She knew how much the loss of her own mother still stung and that had been as an adult six years earlier. Another reason she hadn’t wanted to come back to this part of the world. Another reason why when her father had his fall, she felt she must. Life, in all its shapes and sizes, was a cruel thing to go through sometimes.

  She hit the back button on the browser and continued skimming through the list of articles, feeling demoralised. Not only had she incurred the wrath of the most attractive woman she had seen since coming back from civilisation, that woman was turning out to be a saint. Given that Jo herself had effectively shut half of it down, she had clearly found the strength to keep going with the family business. Speaking of which…

  Jo clicked the link of a more recent article from the same local newspaper, a sinking feeling in her stomach. This one had the same smiling toddler, albeit slightly bigger now, in the centre of the picture, but this time it was most definitely Kayleigh with her, rather than her mother. Kayleigh was smiling too, but there was an indefinable sadness in her eyes. Those eyes were so expressive. The moment she had walked through the door, they had been her undoing.

  She smacked herself on the forehead. She was a grown adult. This was not adult behaviour.

  As her finger slowly scrolled the click wheel in the centre of her mouse, each rolling paragraph gave her a new level of self-loathing to sink to. The final part to the story had become clear. The child had managed to keep both her arms and now was bounding back to health in the loving care of her aunt. Th
at, at least, was something to feel grateful for.

  However, gratitude was not Jo’s predominant feeling in that moment. Coffee going cold, she ran the full piece from headline (local woman raises £10,000 for children’s charity) through the context (fun and amazing evening, with old-fashioned Christmas theme at its heart), to the final paragraph (so rewarding, she intended to set up the Christmas display in the store every year to raise money for this worthwhile cause).

  Jo pushed the keyboard to the back of the desk then gently, repeatedly, banged her forehead against it.

  Blowing her chances with women wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t exactly a new experience for her either. Being the Grinch who stole Christmas was. No wonder Kayleigh had been so furious with her. Jo had thought the woman was overreacting a bit, especially when she had done her best to keep the main bit of the business open. Jo had assumed that would be more important to her than some crappy Christmas sales technique.

  Talk about being focused on the wrong thing. Why hadn’t she said anything? Perhaps she had tried to. Jo had a vague feeling she’d cut her off more than once while her brain and mouth had been disconnected. She reached out and picked up her phone. Who cared if it was work time? She needed help. Selecting the number from her favourites, she pressed the button to dial and put the phone to her ear, before resuming her head on desk position.

  ‘Hi you, everything okay?’ The voice in her ear was as upbeat as ever.

  ‘I’m an arse.’

  ‘I can’t hear you very well. You sound like your head is stuck inside a pair of boobs.’ Jo sat up and looked at her phone. The woman on the other end was borderline crazy.

  ‘A pair of boobs? Seriously Maddy, where do you come up with this stuff?’

  ‘Ah, that’s better. I can hear you now. So, no boobs?’

  ‘Definitely no boobs.’

  ‘So why are you an arse?’

  ‘I thought you couldn’t hear me?’

  ‘I could hear you, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t stuck in some bizarre situation where you felt you had to call me from inside someone’s boobs with your dying breath.’

  ‘I’m not dying and there are definitely no boobs.’ The conversation with Maddy always turned to boobs at some point, but not usually this early. Jo, to this day, had no idea why they had ever tried dating. It had been a rocky and unsuccessful six weeks before they had decided to call it quits and just be friends. Of course, everyone says that when they’re trying not to break someone else’s heart. But life had continued to throw them into each other’s path until, over time, they simply became the best of friends. It was much easier to forgive someone’s maddening habits when you didn’t have the sinking feeling of having to live with them for the rest of your life. ‘But I’ve definitely been an arse.’

  ‘This is about a woman though, right?’ A five second deep whirring sound followed the question. Jo was used to the noise. Calling Maddy during the day usually meant she could talk, but there would always be power tools interrupting here and there.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you said there were no women back in your childhood home? What happened to the barren wilderness?’

  ‘I meant a lesbian barren wilderness. I’m not actually in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Then come back here for a weekend. Don’t go chasing straight girls Jo. You know where that always gets you.’

  ‘I know, I know. Into trouble. But I’ve not even chased this one. I’ve just ruined her Christmas with my very existence.’

  ‘Ruined her Christmas. I’d say that counts as more than being an arse. I’d say you’ve been a total—’

  ‘Okay, okay, thanks for that. You don’t even know what I’ve done.’

  ‘Jo, I love Christmas. You know that more than anyone. If you’ve ruined her Christmas, then you’re a terrible person, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘I rang you up so you would tell me I wasn’t a terrible person.’

  ‘You know me, ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.’ Another whirr of a screw being drilled home. ‘Ask me a question though and you’d better be prepared for the truth. So what did you do anyway?’

  ‘There’s this woman in town. She runs the local bookstore.’

  ‘Chain or independent?’ Maddy interrupted. ‘I need the facts to picture this.’

  ‘Independent.’

  ‘Oh nice. This has all the makings of a Christmas Hollywood blockbuster. Have you had snow down there yet? You’ve got to have snow.’

  ‘Shut up and listen. She owns this bookstore and I walk through the door and wham! She’s gorgeous.’

  ‘But straight? You made a move on her so terrible she won’t recover before Christmas?’

  ‘I don’t know if she’s straight. And my moves aren’t that terrible.’

  ‘If you say so honey. So you walk into the gorgeous woman’s bookstore and what did you do? Set fire to the books?’

  ‘I love the fact that I have a genuinely horrible scenario and yet you somehow seem able to come up with even worse. No, I didn’t set fire to the books. I was there because of work.’

  ‘Books are a health and safety risk now? I thought you’d be spending this time of year doing extensive cataloguing of uneven pavements.’

  ‘This is the Cotswolds. There are so many cobbled streets that the council gave up on that long ago.’

  ‘Why her store then?’

  ‘Complaint from an anonymous member of the public about a Christmas tree she’s got up in there.’

  ‘People are so mean spirited.’

  ‘I know. But once the complaint has been made, we have to look into it. Or rather, I had to look into it. I had no choice but to tell her she was violating a heap of things. I tried to do my best, but I’ve pretty much forced her to shut down half her store just before Christmas.’

  ‘Wow, you are a Scrooge.’

  ‘That’s not even the worst part of it.’

  ‘You took away her livelihood and then asked her out on a date? That does sound like your terrible technique.’ The expletive filled reply got lost in another screw going firmly into place. ‘But I’m sure it’s not as bad as you say. It’s not like you had a choice. Rules are rules.’

  ‘I know. But I was looking online and—’

  ‘Jo, we’ve had this conversation about Facebook stalking before. You can’t try to track down every pretty woman you come across.’

  ‘Shut up. It was research. For work.’

  ‘Suuuuuuuure.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Jo ploughed on regardless even though her cheeks were beginning to glow. Maddy knew her far too well. ‘I couldn’t find her on Facebook, so you’re wrong about that. But I did find some articles online from the local newspaper.’

  ‘Wow. Okay. Congratulations, you’ve sunk to a new stalker low.’

  ‘Shut. Up. I need to get my confessions off my chest so you can make me feel better. I knew she was the sole owner of the bookstore and I admit to being a teeny, tiny bit jealous. But then I find out why. She’d inherited it with her sister and then her sister died in a car crash.’

  ‘Damn that sucks.’

  ‘I know. Leaving behind a kid. Kayleigh has been looking after her ever since.’

  ‘Kayleigh? You’re on first name terms with her already? That’s not so bad.’

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘So she’s a nice person. Please tell me you didn’t hurt the kid?’

  ‘Does that rank higher or lower than burning books in your scale of travesties I might have committed?’

  ‘Tough call. Probably depends on the kid. Whiney or not?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve never met her.’

  ‘Then why are we even talking about her? Come on Jo, if I was a priest I’d have kicked you out of the confessional by now. Get on with it.’

  ‘The kid lost her leg in the crash.’

  ‘Man, that sucks even more. Okay, hurting her would definitely be worse than burning books on the scale.’

  �
��Good to know. Anyway, Kayleigh apparently raises money every year for a local disability charity.’

  ‘She sounds like a nice lady. Far too good for you anyway. Cut your losses.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know how she raises the money?’

  ‘Do I need to know?’

  ‘With the Christmas display.’

  ‘Makes sense. People are always more generous at the time of year. Spirit of giving and all that. Not to mention…oh. Wait. Didn’t you say you had told her she had to get rid of that?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘You are a horrible person. You’ve ruined this woman’s Christmas. And taken money away from lots of tiny disabled children. You should hate yourself.’

  ‘And you are the worst friend ever. I told you that right at the start. You were meant to tell me it wasn’t the case.’

  ‘Jo, that’s a pretty crappy thing to do to someone. But it’s not like you had a choice.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I get it, I really do. Health and safety rules have nearly got me shut down on site more times than I can remember. But it’s better than someone losing an arm or dying. I know you feel like an arse now, but what would you feel like if you’d ignored it and then someone got hurt? You’d feel pretty shitty. Not to mention losing your job. Or even ending up in jail. So yes, I’m sure this hot, probably straight, and out of your league anyway woman thinks you’re an arse, but you probably did her a favour in the long run.’

  ‘I think I liked it better when you were being mean to me. Not that I can really tell the difference.’

  ‘If you want dating and sex advice, you come to me. For everything else, you’re probably better off going to someone else. Seriously, don’t beat yourself up over this. There was nothing else that you could do.’