by T A Williams
‘They’re gone, Stirling.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her gloved hand. ‘I loved them both, you know.’ She dropped her eyes once more to the marker and resolved to get some fresh flowers as soon as the snow melted. ‘Happy Christmas, Dad.’
When Holly got back to the house, she got a surprise. A pleasant surprise. She found Jack squatting in front of the oven, playing with the controls. He looked across and smiled as she came in and closed the door behind her.
‘Hello, gorgeous. It’s your own fault for giving me a key.’ He stood up and turned towards her.
The dog charged over to greet him as Holly took off her jacket and hung it up, along with her hat. She turned back towards Jack and he whistled quietly. ‘Wow. That eye’s a beaut.’
She pulled off her gloves and stepped out of her yellow boots. ‘Typical man. Just because I’ve got a bit of a blemish on my face, you fixate on that.’ She padded over to him in her new woolly socks, reached up and encircled his neck with her arms and pulled his head down so she could plant a gentle kiss on his lips. He didn’t recoil this time. She smiled, a warm feeling of wellbeing spreading throughout her body, wiping away her melancholy from the graveyard. He smiled back, reaching out with his fingers and running them softly across the swelling around her eye.
‘I feel very guilty.’ His voice was low.
‘Why?’
‘My door, apart from anything else.’
‘And it was your path that broke my heel, too. I may sue.’
‘Sue and be damned. What’s mine is yours.’ He paused, his eyes only a few inches from hers, his arms around her, his whole body pressed against her. ‘Holly?’
‘Yes?’ She was whispering, the feel of him against her causing the little hairs on the nape of her neck to tingle.
‘There’s a big dog standing up on his hind legs with his cold, wet paws on my arse. Is that the sort of treatment I can come to expect in your home?’
She grinned, kissed him softly and stepped back. ‘Love me, love my dog.’
He grinned back at her. ‘It’s a deal. Now, would madam prefer coffee or tea this morning?’
‘Madam will make some tea.’ He released her and she went over to the sink. ‘You could give the dog a chunk of bread or a biscuit if you like. Then go and stick another log in the wood-burner. That should allow your arse time to dry out.’
She filled the kettle and switched it on while he sorted out food for the dog. She checked the time and affected a business-like air. ‘What’s the plan, chef?’
‘I was just going to turn the oven on to warm it up. Then I’m going back to my house to insert the stuffing into the turkey and then I’ll come back and stick the bird in the oven.’
‘Breakfast first?’ Holly wondered whether she should call and ask Julia if she wanted tea, but she decided to keep Jack all to herself for a little while longer.
‘A cup of tea and a slice of bread would be great.’ As she went over to the fridge and brought out the butter and jam, Jack removed a loaf of farmhouse bread from the big brown paper bag on the worktop and picked up the bread knife. ‘How many slices?’
‘Just one, please. And the dog gets the crust. That’s the deal round here and he knows it.’
Jack waited until they were sipping their tea and munching their bread and jam before he launched into his story. Holly was sitting opposite him with the dog at her feet. From time to time she glanced across at Jack, but she did her best to keep her eyes on her breakfast so as to let him talk freely.
‘I owe you a story.’ He paused, searching for the right words. ‘The first thing you need to know is that I’ve been totally hooked on you ever since that first glimpse of you in the Porsche.’
‘You managed to hide it pretty well.’ She gave him an encouraging smile.
‘I had my reasons.’ Another pause. ‘The story goes like this. Thirteen, fourteen years ago I got my big break – my enormous, life-changing fantastically lucky break. Like I told you, I went off to Hollywood and in the space of a few months, everything had changed. I was living the dream, being paid bucket loads of money and spending an awful lot of it on having a good time.’ He caught her eye. ‘I already told you about the Shelby Mustang et al.’
‘How could I forget?’
‘I met a girl.’ His tone changed now. ‘Well, to be honest, I met a lot of girls, but then there was this one special one. Her name was Tessa. We got on well from day one and it was really working between us. I took a lease on a beach house on the coast and she moved in with me. By then I’d already had major successes with two movies and there was a third in the pipeline. She and I were blissfully happy. Life just couldn’t get any better than that. We were going to be married.’ His voice tailed off and he dedicated himself to finishing his bread and jam, doing his best to keep his emotions under control. Holly sipped her tea and said nothing. This was his story and he would tell it in his own time. Finally he started again.
‘Then one afternoon, I got a call on set. It was an officer of the California Highway Patrol. There had been an accident. Tessa had been badly injured and was being taken to hospital.’ Holly’s eyes widened, but she managed to stifle a gasp. ‘By the time I got to the hospital, she was wired up to all manner of machines. Her face was a bit bruised, sort of like yours today, but, apart from that, she didn’t look too bad. She was just sleeping, looking quite peaceful. They told me she’d got all kinds of horrible internal injuries and she was in a very bad way. I sat with her all night, but she never regained consciousness. Next morning they pronounced her dead.’ His face was deadpan, his voice studiously even, but his grief was palpable. Even the dog felt it. Holly heard him get up and wander around to Jack’s side of the table to lend support. Jack cleared his throat and finished his story.
‘You didn’t know, you couldn’t know, that your dad and I had that one very big thing in common. You see, we’d both loved and lost and we both knew it would never happen again.’ He was staring out through the back window into the garden.
Holly picked up the teapot and refilled the mugs, more for something to do than from a real desire for more tea. She got up and went over to the fridge to get the milk. After splashing a drop into each mug, she set the bottle down and stood by his side, one hand resting on his shoulder. He lifted his hand and rested it on top of hers, his eyes still directed out into the snowy garden. ‘That’s the way it was for your dad. He died without ever finding anybody to replace his beloved Lynda. It’s taken me time and it hasn’t been easy, but over the past few days I’ve realised I’ve been lucky after all.’ Now, for the first time, he turned and looked up at her. ‘I’ve found you, Holly.’
‘And I’ve found you, Jack.’
Christmas lunch was a great success. Howard arrived with two bottles of the 1985 Dom Perignon and insisted upon opening them. When Justin and Amanda came along, they were looking happier than Holly had ever seen them. Julia, after being told that she wasn’t needed in the kitchen, had taken Stirling into the back garden and made an enormous snowman, complete with carrot nose and lumps of coal for eyes. Holly’s Dr Who scarf ended up wrapped round the snowman’s neck and Stirling immediately peed on the snowman’s feet, but Holly didn’t care. She and Jack, fuelled by the amazing champagne, were happy together, working to get everything ready.
They sat down to lunch just after two o’clock, pulled crackers and put on silly paper hats. They drank Gevrey-Chambertin and Sancerre and watched the Queen’s speech on television. The dog got a huge chunk of turkey along with his biscuits and everybody had to eat at least a mouthful of the Christmas pudding and custard, liberally dowsed in cognac and flambéed. There were nuts, tangerines and those little chocolates wrapped in foil containing liqueurs with strange exotic names. Finally, around four o’clock, everybody – even the dog – had had enough. Holly made tea and coffee and Jack distributed the cups around the table.
When everybody was served, Holly sat down and told them all about the boxes of presents fro
m her father. With the encouragement of everybody around the table, she started to open them, one by one.
By the time she had finished, her part of the table was piled high with dolls, books, necklaces, bracelets and, most poignant of all, the final present, destined for this very Christmas by when he knew he would be dead. It was a little locket on a chain, made of white gold. Inside, the jeweller had engraved six simple words. To Holly with love from Dad.
Determined not to let her emotions get the better of her, she got up and gave Howard his cufflinks, Justin his sailor’s knife and, finally, handed the biggest present of all to Jack. He was delighted with it. It was a waterproof cover for the front seats of a Series 3 Land Rover. He was overwhelmed.
‘I don’t know what to say, Holly. The old girl will be transformed when I stick this on.’
‘I’m interested to see if it fits. I might need to buy one of my own some time soon.’
Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘Now why on earth would you need a seat cover for a Series 3 Land Rover, unless…?’
Holly smiled at him. ‘Greta’s a bit cramped for Stirling and, if we get more snow down here in the future, it’ll be a handy vehicle to have around.’
Julia looked up with a broad smile on her face. ‘So, you’ve made your mind up, Hol?’
Holly smiled back. ‘I’m staying.’ She looked around at them all. ‘I’ll draft an email to my boss tonight and see what he comes back with but, either way, I’m staying in Brookford.’ There was a cheer all round the table. Holly caught Julia’s eye. ‘And I’ll buy a double bed for the spare room. You can have as many dirty weekends down here as you like.’
Jack was beaming at her across the table. ‘That’s the best Christmas present I could have asked for.’ Then his face fell. ‘There’s just one thing, Holly. I had what I thought was a brilliant idea for a Christmas present for you. I saw the guys yesterday morning and they promised to prepare a gift token so I’d have something to present to you today. But then, what with the accident and all the faffing about at the hospital and then the snow, the place was closed by the time I got back to Croyde. So, if you would like to accept it, my Christmas present to you, Holly, is this – I’ve bought you a course of tuition at the Croyde Bay Surf School. It’s all right, you can wait until the summer when it’s a hell of a lot warmer. And, if you don’t fancy that, just name it, whatever you want, and I’ll go into Exeter as soon as the shops reopen and get it for you.’
Holly walked over and reached down, taking his hand and pulling him to his feet. ‘Thank you for the surfing lessons. That sounds like a lot of fun. But, in the meantime, I know what I really want, Jack, and you won’t need to go anywhere to get it. Can you guess?’ He tugged her gently into the middle of the room, moving towards the mistletoe. He looked down into her eyes.
‘Am I getting warm?’
‘Very warm.’
‘We never finished our dance, did we?’
By this time, they were right in the middle of the room, with the big bunch of mistletoe right above their heads. She wrapped her arms around his waist and felt his hands on her cheeks. He raised her mouth towards him. As she closed her eyes, she heard him whisper.
‘Can you hear the music?’
If you loved What Happens at Christmas… turn the page for an exclusive extract from What Happens in Tuscany…, another sparklingly funny romance from T A Williams!
Chapter One
‘How about this one, Katie? It sounds weird enough to be right up your street.’
‘Am I that weird?’
Katie looked up from the Situations Vacant pages of the newspaper where she had been hunting for, well, just about any job that was going. She had even briefly considered one advert looking for volunteers to join the crew of a raft on a transatlantic crossing. It would have been a really good way of making the big change she was seeking after the events of the past few months, but finally, she had given up on that one for two good reasons. First, she had no experience of sailing and second, she thought people who wanted to do something like that must be stark, raving mad.
‘Anybody looking at the small ads in The Lady at your age has got to be pretty strange.’ It was clear from her tone that Jenny didn’t approve. Or at least that she didn’t understand just how desperately Katie wanted out; out of the job that had been driving her mad and away from the shattered remains of a relationship that had gone sour. It had been with a sigh of relief and high, high hopes for the future that Katie had bidden farewell to her job at what she had come to refer to as the Awful Bloody School for Girls. These high hopes had lasted less than a week before a severe attack of reality had set in. If she didn’t find something soon, she knew that, degree or no degree, she might be reduced to working in a bar or a fast food restaurant, most likely serving burgers to her former pupils. When you’ve been a teacher for almost ten years, employers can’t seem to think of you as anything but a teacher, however badly you want to make the change. The idea of buying The Lady had been an act of desperation, but if that was what it would take…
Katie glanced around the lounge bar of the Crown and Sceptre. At this time of the evening it was almost empty. Her eyes alighted upon the bored-looking girl behind the bar. She shook her head, near to despair. That could be her in a few weeks’ time if she didn’t find something soon.
‘So, do you want to hear this advert?’ Jenny’s voice brought her back to the present.
Katie pulled herself together and looked across at her friend. ‘Yes, go on then. Read it out.’
Jenny’s support over the past months since the break-up with Dean had been invaluable. They had known each other since school, but Jenny’s career choice had been much more successful than hers. After a degree in business studies, she had opened a kitchen design studio, and business was booming. This evening she was taking time out to help Katie in her search for employment. It wasn’t easy.
‘I tell you this, Katie, I’ve never picked up a copy of The Lady before. It’s like reading something from a bygone age. I imagine the good folk at Downton Abbey recruited their staff through its pages. And this advert sounds like it was written by Lord Whatsisname himself. Here you go: “Wanted female companion and guide for English lady of good family. Residential position based in Devon and Tuscany. Would suit cordial and acquiescent person without ties. Excellent remuneration.”’ She snorted. ‘Who in the hell wrote that? “Of good family?” Who says that these days? And, “cordial and acquiescent?” I’m not even sure I can remember what acquiescent means. Unbelievable!’
‘Acquiescent means willing to do what you’re told. Sounds like they’re looking for a servant by another name. Probably to look after some old bat.’ Katie paused for a moment. She couldn’t afford to be too choosy after all. ‘Mind you, “Excellent remuneration” sounds good and it does say Tuscany. Maybe I’ll apply anyway. You never know.’
‘You’re crazy.’ There was no doubt in Jenny’s voice. ‘Just don’t come to me for sympathy when you find yourself emptying bedpans and pushing some old trout around in a bath chair.’ Nevertheless, she drew a red ring around the advert in the Personal column and handed it across. Then she eyed the empty glasses on the table in front of them. ‘Same again?’
‘Oh, yes, please. Thanks, Jen.’ Katie nodded vacantly and busied herself collecting the newspapers and magazines and sorting the few vaguely hopeful adverts they had found. Apart from the Tuscany one, there were only two others, neither ideal. While Jenny got the drinks, Katie checked back through them. One was a travel firm looking for a guide who spoke Italian to accompany groups of cycle tourists around Italy. Although she qualified as far as Italian was concerned, she hadn’t touched a bike for ten years. The other was for a private tutor to teach Italian and German to a pair of ten-year-old twins. Italian and French had been her subjects, not German. Still, she could always try.
‘Hi Katie. I thought I saw you over here. What can I get you?’
She looked up at the sound of his voice, surprised to see
him. ‘Oh, hi, Martin, shouldn’t you be out on the practice field?’
He grinned and shook his head. ‘Nope. The season’s just about over. I’ve got a couple more friendlies and then two months off.’ He nodded towards the pile of papers. ‘Job hunting?’
‘Without much success, I’m afraid.’ She couldn’t help smiling at him. In spite of his recently broken nose, and the remains of bruising around his left eye, he really was a good-looking man. She had known him from her Pilates class for about six months, since the beginning of the year, but had only spoken to him for the first time a few days previously at a party she had been bullied into going to by Jenny. It was there she had discovered he was a solicitor and that he played rugby in his spare time.
‘Drink?’ He repeated his offer. Just at that moment Jenny appeared with two glasses of white wine.
‘Hi, Martin. If I’d known you were here, I’d have got you a pint.’
‘No worries.’ He gave her a wave and headed off to the bar. He was wearing shorts and trainers. Both girls eyed his broad shoulders and strong brown legs as he disappeared. Katie also found herself looking at his firm behind. Taking advantage of his momentary absence, Jenny lowered her voice and broached the subject they had been discussing only a few hours earlier. ‘Fancy Martin coming to this pub! I’ve never seen him in here before. I reckon he’s come looking for you, Katie. This is your chance. Ask him out. He’s obviously into you.’
Katie shook her head. ‘Don’t be so silly.’
Jenny gave her an expression of disbelief. ‘Listen to me, girl. I know what I’m talking about. He latched onto you at the party and anybody could see he was keen.’
Katie took a deep breath. ‘I’m not so sure, but, anyway, enough’s enough. The last thing I want is to leap back into another relationship. What I need to do now is to concentrate on getting myself a job and, hopefully, a career. I need to know that I can make a success of my life without having to rely on anybody else.’ She looked across at Jenny. ‘The thing is, Jen, I can’t just sit here waiting for Mr Right to appear. Besides which, there aren’t many of them around these days. No, I’m afraid men are off the agenda for now.’ She paused for a moment before admitting, ‘Even men with a body like Martin’s.’