‘I come bearing gifts. And I thought there was this thing called open house.’
‘There was. There is. I mean what are you doing here? In the country. Where Christmas is going on at full pelt. Weren’t you meant to be holed up in a log cabin somewhere like Grizzly Adams?’
He’d kind of been hoping for a bit more of an enthusiastic welcome.
‘I changed my mind at the last minute,’ he said. ‘The cabin thing lost its appeal.’
‘And you’ve got nothing at your place, and the shops are shut?’
‘That is absolutely NOT why I am here. But yes.’
She rolled her eyes and smiled.
‘Come on in then.’ She headed down the hallway and into the dining room and put the wine on the sideboard. The table was set with candles and crackers and a couple of placemats.
‘Just the two of you?’ he said, nodding at it. ‘What happened to your mum?’
She pulled a face.
‘Long story. Let’s just say she got a better offer that included sunshine.’
‘She left?’
‘The day you helped me with Gran, she did. Again.’
The rueful smile didn’t fool him.
‘I’m sorry. I know how you must feel.’
‘Yeah, well,’ she shrugged. ‘Maybe I just needed to quit expecting too much of her, trying to make her be something she isn’t. I think I ended up with such a stereotype of what she should be like that she had no chance of even living up to a fraction of it. Like she’d be no help with dinner, all she really does is drift around stirring things and pouring wine. But …’
She smiled a little.
‘… but it still would have been cool having her around,’ he finished her sentence for her.
‘It really was quite cool having her around. Once you accept what she’s like.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So yes, anyway, just two of us for lunch. You want to stay? As mates, obviously.’
His pulse kicked into action. Had to add the caveat, didn’t she?
‘Not sure I want to do the mates thing,’ he said, biting the bullet.
She looked up at him. He almost grabbed her right then. Pulled her into a kiss.
‘Jack, we went over this. We are poles apart.’
‘We are not that bad. Look at you winging your Christmas dinner without a list. And ripping up the long-term retirement plans and stuff.’
‘I still have plans. Not rigid ones like I had before, but I still have Gran, and I can’t just wing it with her. I need some level of game plan, or the whole thing will fall apart. Whereas you are always going to be one short step away from getting on an aeroplane and buggering off out of it when it all gets too much. Your girlfriends are pastimes, not serious relationships. I might have realised that planning the next fifty years is a step too far, but I’m still never going to be someone’s pastime. Living like there’s no tomorrow is just too extreme for me, Jack. My family already has its life-is-a-cabaret member. I’m not saying you need to draw up a life spreadsheet, but I’d need to know that you’re going to be around three weeks from now instead of walking in the Hindu Kush.’
He dug in his back pocket and pulled out the dog-eared sheet of paper that he’d carried around for over a year now. He handed it to her and nodded at her questioning expression.
‘Have a look,’ he said.
She unfolded it slowly and smoothed it out with her fingers.
‘Dive the Great Barrier Reef,’ she read aloud. ‘Run the New York Marathon. Hike the Appalachian Trail.’ She glanced up at him, frowning. ‘These are all crossed out.’
He nodded.
‘That’s Sean’s bucket list. From years back when we were kids. I found it in his flat when I cleared it out after he’d died. He’d done a few things on it, a couple of them we’d done together.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t in a great place. I took the list with me without even thinking about it, and then the idea just grew on me that it could be one way that I could still do something for him, even though he was gone. Something that might mean his influence was still around at least.’ Just saying those words still had an unreality about it. ‘I just really saw an appeal in doing something in this life that he had planned and wanted to do but never got the chance to, if that makes sense.’
She smiled at him.
‘It does make sense. I think it’s a really great way to honour his memory. And you’ve finished it, that’s so great. You must have a real sense of achievement from that.’
‘I finished it over six months ago,’ he said.
She looked at him, puzzled.
‘I thought you were still working your way through it, like wasn’t this the whole thing that’s been driving your trips away? This trip you were meant to be on now, snowboarding in the Alps or whatever it was?’ He watched as she quickly scanned the sheet of paper. ‘Hang on, that’s not on here, is it?’
He shook his head.
‘Nope. The last few things I’ve done have been add-ons. I thought I’d get to the end of the list and it would be done with, but somewhere along the way it became more than just about finishing something Sean started. I picked something else, just something we’d once talked about doing, this shark diving trip in South Africa. I felt okay again for a while once I’d done that. I researched the trip, I planned the finance, I booked the travel. I had something to focus on instead of absorbing the fact that Sean is gone from everyday life as I knew it. It’s like my whole life has been revolving around the next chance to escape reality.’
‘You’re saying you can’t stop.’
He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, thinking that she’d actually just got closer to the root of it than he had managed to.
‘Pretty much.’
She pulled out a couple of chairs next to the dining table and sat down, nodding at him to do the same. He sat down. Her gaze was understanding, sympathetic. He found himself avoiding her eyes because this all sounded so lame spoken out loud.
‘So what happened when you got to the end of the list?’
‘I got to the last thing back in the summer. It was actually to tandem skydive. I’d put it off until the end because it was one of those ones that we’d talked about doing together now and then over the years, and neither of us had ever gotten around to pinning the other one down to it. For some reason it felt like a big deal because of that. I set it all up back in the summer. Went through the training and everything, went through with the jump, and it was awesome.’
‘Okay.’
He stopped and thought back down the last the few months. How to articulate the utter dead-end despondency that he had felt driving home after the skydive.
‘I thought there’d be this sense of relief. Or at least maybe some sense of achievement. Instead, it just hit me that it was over. It felt like I had no sense of purpose any more. I’d become so engrossed in distracting myself with this stuff that I’d let the business dwindle, really; I just maintained the contracts I had, didn’t really have any interest in building up any new ones. It certainly wasn’t challenging me, I just went from one trip to the next. I didn’t have the time or inclination for relationships, so I didn’t bother beyond the odd date.’
‘You thought this was a way you could deal with your grief, but what you’ve ended up doing is delaying it and stopping yourself from moving on. You’ve never given yourself long enough to experience real life without Sean in it, so the moment you stop with the escapism it hits you all over again.’
‘I didn’t realise I was stuck in this loop until these last few weeks, when I met you. That’s what I’m really trying to say by telling you this. This is the first time in eighteen months that I’ve actually absorbed what is going on around me for once. And I’d really like that feeling to stay on. So when you say you need to know I’m going to be around three weeks from now. Or three months. Or whatever. You would know that. I promise you. I might not have a to-do list stuck to the fridge, but if we give it a go, I promise you I would never le
ave you hanging. I would never disappear at a moment’s notice unless I happened to be taking you with me. And in return I would not moan if you wanted to keep the odd list, although I have absolutely got to draw the line at synching calendars.’
She was smiling now. When she smiled it was the best bloody thing ever. Hope surged in his chest, and he took a deep breath.
‘I brought you something,’ he said, standing up and feeling in his jacket pocket.
Lucy looked up at him. Her heart ached for what he’d put himself through. Stuck in a rut that looked outwardly functioning and fine, but was actually frozen in time. From his pocket he pulled a small box. It was made of wood, not cardboard, and there was a metal clasp on the front and a hinge at the back. She felt that delicious moment of wonder at what could possibly be inside it. He held it out.
‘But I haven’t got you anything,’ she found herself apologising as she took it from him.
‘Of course you haven’t. Just open it. Sorry about the lack of Christmas wrapping paper.’
‘I can’t imagine you have anything remotely Christmassy lying around at your house, it’s absolutely fine.’
She took a breath and opened the box. The hinge gave a tiny squeak.
Inside was something small, wrapped in soft tissue paper, and a folded note. She eased them both out with her fingertips, put the box aside on the table, and carefully pulled away the wrapping.
In the palm of her hand lay a tiny carved pear, so similar to the one she had broken, but carved from smooth polished wood. The leaves on the top, the stalk, every detail was perfect. It was smooth against her skin, and it had a warm and mellow scent of the wood oil she remembered smelling on Jack’s clothes that first day when he’d rescued her from the attic floor. Had that really been only a few weeks ago?
‘You made this?’ she said. ‘And the box too?’
‘I am a carpenter, remember?’ he said. ‘I just do superhero stuff in my spare time.’
‘It’s perfect,’ she said, turning it in her fingers.
She put it gently back in the box, and unfolded the note.
This one is unbreakable. Because you are possibly the most accident-prone person I ever met. You are also the funniest, kindest, strongest, and most beautiful. If you give this a chance, I promise to never let you down.
She put her hand to her chest, because it felt as if her heart might pound its way out. She read the note over and over.
Was this how Gran had felt all those years ago? A gift out of the blue that was full of sentiment and meaning. Had anyone ever given her anything so personal or heartfelt? Had anyone ever given her a gift that they’d actually thought about in terms of what it would truly mean to her?
Her heart was skipping so quickly in her chest that she felt dizzy with it. He looked like Tom Hardy, and he was good with his hands, and now it turned out he could do sentimental too. Bloody hell, could he even be any more attractive?
How not to just melt and fall at his feet. There must be something.
‘There is one other thing,’ she said, clutching at straws. ‘What about the fact that you don’t do Christmas? Popping around to scrounge dinner because you’ve got nothing in the house does not equate to doing Christmas. You’ve got to buy into it, Jack. Because in this house, we do Christmas. Big time.’
He held her gaze in his. She couldn’t take her eyes away.
‘For you I’ll do party hats,’ he said.
He took a step towards her. ‘I’ve fallen for you. I’ll do crackers. I’ll do turkey. I’ll do that bloody eggnog drink that everyone thinks is so bloody Christmassy but that tastes like puke.’
She couldn’t help but smile at that, and then he brought out the big guns, and she was completely lost.
‘For you, Lucy Jackson, I will do Christmas,’ he said.
He unzipped his jacket and pulled it off. Underneath, he was wearing a Christmas jumper that demanded the highest level of respect, with a giant lurex Christmas pudding knitted onto the front of it, and light-up holly berries on the top.
‘Now that’s a Christmas jumper,’ she said in awe. ‘Respect.’
‘It is. So in actual fact you are wrong. I DO Christmas now.’ He waved a hand up and down the garish jumper. ‘Just like I will do organised. Just like you could do laid back. If we tried.’
She thought of Gran, her fleeting glimpse half a century ago of something that sparked her soul, of something that couldn’t be manufactured, but was simply there or wasn’t. The years since, when she had settled for something that was perfectly fine, all the while knowing how she could feel. Gran’s chance at this had been taken away, but Lucy’s was still here for the taking. All she had to do was try.
‘We could try,’ she ventured.
‘We really could. I’m talking spontaneous, but with a safety net thrown in.’
She pulled a face.
‘What is that? Is that even a thing? It’s like a contradiction in terms.’
He stepped forward and put his arms around her. Even that felt right, as if the universe was in perfect alignment, as if everything had slotted into place.
‘That,’ he said, pulling her in tightly against him and putting his forehead against hers, ‘is us.’
Acknowledgements
I have loved writing this story but it has been challenging at times and I have a few thank yous to people without whom I would still be crashing my head on the desk in despair. There have been mega early starts, neglected housework and too much Roblox going on here while my back was turned. I want to thank everyone who has made me laugh, ignored my grouching and is still there for me at the end.
Special thanks to my lovely mum for letting me bounce ideas off her, and to Josie Marsh, my very own Land Girl, who let me ask her all the questions I wanted about her time in the Land Army and World War Two.
And finally, thank you to my amazing editor and friend, Charlotte Ledger, for this opportunity and for continuing to bail me out and tell me I can do it when I’m convinced I can’t.
About the Author
Charlotte Phillips writes funny, sexy, could-happen-to-you romance, fuelled by lots of coffee and years of daydreaming during her past life working a string of office jobs. She is also mum to three kids and a dachshund with an attitude problem. She lives in Wiltshire, England.
@CharPhillips_
You’ve had a Christmas to remember… now here’s one you’ll want to forget
12 deadly gifts, one killer on a Christmas countdown…
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