The Present

by Charlotte Phillips

  ‘Do you think she’s getting stronger? I was really hoping she might be home for Christmas.’

  A smile that was definitely sympathetic.

  ‘It can be difficult with someone Olive’s age. It can take a long time to recover from fall injuries like these.’

  If she recovers at all. Lucy squashed the thought right out of her mind.

  ‘It can really help if you talk to her, maybe play some music that meant a lot to her. Talk to her about things you’ve done. That kind of thing can make a difference, engaging with her. Just be careful not to overtire her. Short conversations, keep it upbeat, that kind of thing.’

  If she woke up again today, that was. Lucy had managed to miss that window of opportunity, thanks to her own rubbish prioritising. She smoothed Gran’s hair back from her brow. Was it really the right thing to be stressing about work promotions right now? Her mind returned over and over again to the photograph of Mr Whitbourn-Marsh of Ware. Surely the right thing to do was to put Gran’s recovery and happiness above everything else. There might not be much time left.

  House cleaned through. Check. Freezer full of Christmas goodies. Check. Boyfriend in a good mood. Check.

  Amy had provided enough treat food to make the Mini groan under the weight of it on the drive home. She’d even managed to buy a wodge of prickly holly and a massive poinsettia. No one could say she wasn’t channelling Christmas to Carmichael levels. Now she was stocking the fridge and cupboards under Rod’s approving gaze. And in response, at least he was back to his normal easy-going self.

  Of course he was; he was like her.

  He took pleasure in organisation and steadiness. And so did she. That was why when everything felt as if it was out of kilter or somehow offline, the tried and tested way to solve that was to channel her inner control freak.

  She grabbed a pen and ticked off half a dozen items on the dog-eared to-do list that was now stuck to the fridge under a magnet so that she couldn’t so much as make a cup of tea without getting a reminder of how little she’d managed to get done.

  ‘So the word is that the promotion is mine,’ Rod said, in the middle of emptying the dishwasher.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘As good as. On good authority.’ He tapped the side of his nose with one finger, which clearly meant one of the senior partners must have given him the nod. ‘So everything’s working out perfectly. I can’t wait to tell the family. And the food all looks amazing, you’re doing a great job.’ The words at last hung unspoken at the end of that sentence. ‘It must be easier now you’ve handed some of the workload over to your mother.’

  She shook her head in despair at the idea of her mother doing anything other than adding to a workload.

  ‘Glass of Prosecco?’ He opened the groaningly-full fridge and removed a bottle from the door. ‘Let’s get in the Christmas spirit a bit, shall we?’

  Well, she didn’t know about the Christmas spirit, but she certainly wasn’t about to turn down a glass of wine. She took hers through to the sitting room and began to unpack the decorations from their cardboard box. The artificial pre-lit Nordic spruce that she and Rod had bought three Christmases ago at a garden centre stood in its usual seasonal spot in the corner of the sitting room. She started to hang it with baubles. Carefully co-ordinated turquoise and silver, with the odd dash of dark blue. They’d shopped together for all this stuff the first year they’d moved in together, and out they came every year. Maybe one day there might be a few of the tasteless homemade variety when she and Rod started a family, just like the threadbare angel she’d made at primary school and which Gran still insisted on trundling out every year.

  That was what this tree was missing. A bit of soul. She put her Prosecco glass down on the table and went to the kitchen to get Gran’s wooden box of decorations. She opened it and took the glass pear gently out, unwrapped it. These were delicately beautiful, they made her glitter-encrusted collection look like tat. She took out one of the love notes and unfolded it.

  This kind of love comes once in a lifetime. Hold on to it with everything you have. Do not let it go.

  Who was this man, who had felt this way about a woman over half a century ago? Why had it ended there, something that strong? Had he been killed? Had it not worked out for some reason? She sat down on the arm of the nearest chair and turned the glass pear in her fingers, watching it catch the light. Was this what the whole lovely story was going to be reduced to? After all the magical thoughts and dreaming she’d lavished on it? Christmas bloody tree decorations that she would trawl out every year without ever knowing the full story behind them?

  What was the point of keeping something out of sentimental value when you hadn’t a clue what the actual value was at all? Could she really just let this go? Should she?

  She put the pear back in its place in the box and crossed over to the sofa. Rod was hanging a string of fairy lights around the window with fastidious attention to symmetry. No longer would they be the ones letting the festive side down in this street.

  ‘Rod?’

  ‘Hmmm? Do you think this is level?’

  He stood back appraisingly.

  ‘It’s perfectly fine,’ she said, not remotely caring. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’

  Five minutes later and the fairy-light impression they were giving the street was no longer a concern. She really couldn’t blame him. She kept moving the goalposts after all, and he was someone who liked a goalpost to damn well stay where it was put.

  ‘No, I absolutely do not condone you driving back across country to find another random old person. This ridiculous quest was over with as far as I’m concerned with that ludicrous night you spent stuck in the snow.’

  ‘I have to do this. I’m going through the motions here, hanging up decorations, filling the fridge with last-minute food that I just picked at random because I knew I’d pissed you off beyond all reason by not getting things done. But I have to be honest with you: I can’t be totally invested in our Christmas, because my mind is stuck on Christmas 1944.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Lucy,’ he said eventually, ‘you’re not thinking straight. You’re obviously stressed about your gran. Let’s have another glass of Prosecco, and maybe go out for dinner tonight, take your mind off things.’ He made as if to head for the fridge to get the bottle, and she put her hand on his arm to stop him.

  ‘That’s just it. I’ve been trying to take my mind off it. I’ve tried to throw myself into all our celebrations. I wanted to deliver the perfect Christmas for you, but I can’t focus, I just can’t let this go, this story, this whatever-it-was that happened to Gran all those years ago. I need to know; I want to be able to talk to her about it before I lose her. Something special happened to her. I feel it. In here.’ She pressed her hand over her heart. His incredulous expression didn’t change.

  ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘I’ve got the initial and surname of an RAF pilot. I think he was the man Gran met when she was a Land Girl, the one who sent her the tree decorations as gifts, one a day in the run-up to Christmas 1944. Beyond that I have no clue what happened between them or what happened to him, except that he must have loved her and wanted to be with her very much. And from her reaction in the hospital when I showed her the decorations, I think she felt the same. I need to follow this up until I can’t follow it up any more. I need to find out who he was, what happened to him. I think he might even still be alive.’

  ‘This is just work spilling over into your private life. You’ve always been the same when you’ve picked up a human interest story for the paper, following up leads all over the place until you find out what you want. You’ve just got a new lead, and you’re impatient to follow it up. I get that. I understand it, and I can respect it in a work context. It’s an admirable trait as a journalist, but, newsflash: you are on holiday. And you are putting a seventy-year-old, long-dead romance between a couple of geria
trics ahead of you and me.’

  She saw that not only was he frustrated by her behaviour, but that it was incomprehensible to him. He really didn’t understand how she felt about this at all, and why on earth would he? She couldn’t really comprehend it herself. The Lucy he knew didn’t act on impulse. She didn’t disappear at the drop of a hat when she had responsibilities. She’d spent a lifetime being the opposite of that very thing, and being happy.

  She still couldn’t put this on the back burner.

  ‘It’s just something I have to do. I know it’s going to be disruptive, but hopefully only for a day or two. And I absolutely promise you, I will keep it to a minimum. I—’

  ‘I’m not going to stop you doing whatever it is you feel you so desperately need to do that you can’t put our future plans or even our Christmas holiday in front of it. But if you really feel this is that big a priority for you, then my priorities might change too. Go and do whatever you need to in the new year with my blessing. I’ll even bloody drive you there myself, wherever it is you need to go. But if you push this now, with everything else we’ve got going on, you and me, I might not be here when you get back.’

  Chapter 9

  The doorbell was unexpected, and Jack went to answer it, still flipping idly through a small stack of travel documents. He grabbed his passport from the hall drawer on the way past. It would be Christmas day in four days’ time. In three days’ time he would be out of here and away from all things festive, and frankly, if he could have got an earlier flight, he would have. But it seemed the world and his wife was heading home or away for the holidays, and he’d missed his chance by throwing his hat into the ring for Olive last week on the drive out to Hertfordshire.

  It was easier to think of it as being a favour he’d done for Olive.

  The reality was that he’d put himself out so he could spend time with Lucy, not to mention the further fact that despite the disastrous snow situation, he’d still had a better time with her stuck in a car in the middle of nowhere than he’d had for an extremely long time before or since. An amazing time, in fact. With Lucy, who was living with someone else in a committed relationship that had been planned a lifetime in advance, and who was so far from his type, with her lists and her overthinking and her organising, that she really should be driving him mad in an annoying way and not an alluring one. Her lack of enthusiasm about the follow-up information she’d found had made it even worse. Clearly the Hertfordshire blizzard experience was not one she was in any rush to repeat. What he needed was a time out, somewhere completely different.

  ‘I’m going to Ware in Hertfordshire to find the missing airman,’ Lucy said the second he opened the door, half-full coffee cup in one hand. She wafted a clear folder of papers under his nose. He caught sight of the envelope she had shown him with the name and address on the back.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  She didn’t wait for an answer, just walked past him into the house. He closed the door and followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘You didn’t seem keen when I dropped in yesterday,’ he said, putting his travel papers down on the table. ‘I thought you said you’d think about it.’

  ‘I did. I have. This is me coming out the other side of thinking about it.’ She pulled out her phone and brought up a photograph, held it out to him. He was apparently looking at a smiling pensioner in a vegetable competition.

  ‘Look at the caption. Mr Whitbourn-Marsh. It has to be him. It’s the last piece in the puzzle. If I follow this as far as it goes, then I will know one way or the other what happened. I’ll be able to talk to Gran about it. You want to come with me and find him? I’m not even asking you to drive me, I just would really like to go with someone who gives me the impression that I’m not having some kind of breakdown for refusing to give this thing up.’ She pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘Although, to be fair, the Mini is a bit of a gamble at this time of year …’

  ‘Look, I don’t know if it would be a good idea,’ he began, as if his heart really hadn’t leaped into action at the prospect of another day spent with her, even if it meant sharing her with yet another geriatric. Just what was going on with him?

  Her voice trailed off as her gaze fell on the stack of travel documents on the table; his passport on the top. His flight bag stood open at the side of the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, I get it.’ She closed her eyes for a moment and pasted on a smile that was a size too small. ‘Of course you’ve got something better to do than cross-country outing take two. I’m such an idiot. I don’t know what I was thinking, actually, since the last time we did this track-a-pensioner-down thing it was such a laugh a minute. Not. I guess I just thought that since I found out this new lead, and you’ve really been along for the ride with this from day one, that …’ She trailed off again awkwardly. ‘Forget it.’

  She did a U-turn in the middle of his kitchen.

  ‘Actually, it was a laugh a minute,’ he said to her back.

  She stopped by the door.

  ‘And I really would like to know how this thing pans out. It’s not about that.’

  ‘What is it about then?’ she said.

  How to tell her that it was about the fact that he was already thinking about her far too much after the last one-to-one road trip? As if he didn’t have enough problems with his headspace already. He would be much better off just exiting stage left and leaving her to get on with Christmas while it passed him gloriously by in the oblivion of a far-off hotel room.

  She clearly had her own ideas about what his lack of reply meant.

  ‘This is you ducking out on family stuff for Christmas, isn’t it? Just like you talked about. You know, you really should try and move forward. Try and put an end to this avoidance if you can. There’s still a whole future out there for you. You’re living in the past with this thing, don’t you get that?’

  Having had an unusually heavy dose of guilt dropped on his head already by way of a follow-up open invitation for any day at all over the whole season, which his mother had left on his answering machine that morning, further nagging on this particular point was not what he wanted to hear right now.

  ‘That’s really rich coming from someone with a World War Two obsession,’ he said, before he could stop himself. ‘I mean, you’re lecturing me about living in the past, and you’re the one standing there with a folder full of wartime memorabilia.’

  She stared at him in silence.

  In that moment he realised how defensive and unfair that sounded, but what did it matter when what he really needed to do was just get packed up and get out of here?

  ‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘Forget I even mentioned it. Have a great trip, and snowboard it ALL away, or whatever insane death-courting activity it is you’ve picked this time.’

  Before he knew it she was down the hallway and out of the house.

  He stared at the closed door, then back at the travel documents on the kitchen table. This was for the best, problem solved. He just needed to jet off out of here and be done with it. By the time it dawned on him that not to go after her was simply not an option unless he wanted the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach to stay, she’d driven off. Probably to some other nursing home somewhere else this time, but he counted on the slim possibility that she might have stopped off at Olive’s first on the way there.

  Lucy slammed the back door of the Mini hard, and got into the driving seat. Not as comfortable a drive as she’d had last time in Jack’s 4x4, but the way she felt now, she would have headed off to Hertfordshire via public transport if that had been the only option open to her. The Mini didn’t have anything as luxurious as satnav, and she was just Sellotaping a scribbled list of directions to the dashboard when Jack screeched up the drive behind her in a spray of icy gravel.

  She didn’t bother to get out. In fact, she turned the ignition. If only the Mini didn’t take at least three tries, thereby ruining the kudos of the intended speedy getaway. Jack got out of his car, knocked on her window, and nodded
at the box of records on the back seat. She wound the window down and looked up at him as if he were a minion on the street asking directions.

  ‘Yeees?’ she said.

  ‘You may as well just get that box out of there and put it in my car,’ he said. ‘Who knows what ditch you’ll end up in if I leave you to run amok in the countryside by yourself.’

  She gazed down at the steering wheel. What exactly was she meant to make of this, him turning up? Was he taking pity because she really was now going it alone?

  ‘Jack, go and do your snowboarding thing,’ she said. ‘It’s fine, it really is. I can do this on my own. I can actually drive myself, you know.’ She turned the ignition again, and it still refused to catch, as if the bloody car wasn’t on her side at all.

  ‘My flight isn’t for another couple of days,’ he said.

  ‘So it’s about filling in time, then,’ she said. ‘You’ve got nothing better to do.’

  There was a long pause, and then he crouched down by the car door so his eyes were level with hers. Her pulse jumped at the sudden closeness and the drop in his tone.

  ‘It has never been about filling in time,’ he said. ‘Not the World War Two stuff, and not travelling around with you. And to be honest, even if I was heading to Austria today, it would still be the case that escaping from the hell that is Christmas is, for some reason that I really do not get, much less appealing than a car journey with you to find a pumpkin-growing geriatric.’

  ‘It’s my ability to tell it like it is,’ she said, because the thought of it being anything else was clearly not on the cards. She’d seen the glossy, skinny, arm-candy girls he went for, and he’d openly said she wasn’t his type. ‘That’s what it is.’

  ‘If you want to feel intellectually superior, you go right ahead,’ he said. ‘Only if you wouldn’t mind, could you do it in my car, which has a working heater, not to mention an engine that actually kicks in when you want it to?’

  Hertfordshire. Again. Same county, different town. This time Ware. Another trip, same company, same hacked-off boyfriend back at home, this time plumbing new depths of hacked off. She found she really couldn’t let her mind go in that direction. Not now. She’d put everything on the line so she could follow this through.