The Perfect Christmas

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘She seems to be holding at the moment,’ Julia said thoughtfully. ‘Some of these elderly ladies are as tough as old boots. They seem indestructible.’

  ‘I know. Well, we can only hope she’s one of them. Her daughter’s on her way from the Midlands—she should be here any time. I’ll come and talk to her if you give me a call when she arrives.’

  ‘OK. Thanks.’

  Nick looked out of the door and grinned, then popped his head back inside. ‘Lover-boy’s here,’ he whispered teasingly, and ducked out of the way before she could summon a reply.

  She heard him talking to David outside, and her heart fluttered betrayingly. Seconds later David came into the room and smiled, and her heart flipped right over.

  Anatomically impossible, but that was what it felt like.

  ‘Hi,’ he said softly, and she found herself grinning inanely.

  ‘Hi, yourself. How was your paperwork?’

  ‘Boring. I’ve left my secretary to deal with it. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, pretty busy. I’m specialling Mrs Harrison here. She had a perforated bowel.’

  He nodded. ‘I heard. I rang my mother—she’s happy for us to drop Katie over there this evening.’

  ‘Oh—right. Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ he said with a lazy, sexy smile. ‘I have a vested interest in this evening.’

  ‘So you do,’ she said, her heart skittering again, and she wondered if he’d ever be able to smile at her without doing things to her insides.

  ‘I’ll see you later—I’m just going down to my clinic. If it’s nice and straightforward, I might even get away early, but don’t hold your breath.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she promised, but in the end she did, of course, haunting the front window from five thirty onwards.

  A watched kettle and all that, she thought at five past six, and went into the kitchen to feed the importuning cat again and make sure he had fresh water. ‘You’re getting fat, Arthur,’ she told him, and he mewed tragically at her until she put his dish down. He dived headlong into it and crunched up the food with great enthusiasm. ‘Perhaps you’ve got worms,’ she said drily. ‘Or maybe you’re just a pig.’

  Nevertheless, she got David to hold him when he arrived a few minutes later so she could stuff a worming tablet down his throat, just to be on the safe side. She was always very fussy because of Katie, even though she knew she was probably worrying unnecessarily. She wormed Arthur regularly every month after all, which according to the vet should be enough for even the most voracious hunter.

  ‘He’s just a big cat,’ David reassured her. ‘We’ve got one on the farm that looks like him.’

  ‘Leo,’ Katie said authoritatively. ‘I’ve met him. He’s even bigger.’

  ‘I think he might be. Right, are we ready?’

  Katie hopped excitedly from foot to foot. ‘I am, I am. Can we go?’

  Julia laughed and ruffled her hair. ‘All right, pumpkin. Come on.’

  She reached for her coat and found it taken out of her hands and held for her, David’s hands snuggling it round her neck before releasing it. Just another of the thoughtful little things he did instinctively, she thought, and stored it away in her mental filing cabinet.

  By the time she’d buttoned it he’d got Katie wrapped up in her coat, and he ushered them out to his car and whisked them through the traffic and out into the country on the back roads.

  They called in at the cottage so he could change into something less formal and, true to his word, he left them in the car for only two minutes, reappearing in casual cotton trousers and a rugby shirt with a thick sweater over the top.

  ‘That’s better. I hate ties,’ he said with a grin, and they set off again for the farm.

  ‘Oh, they’ve grown!’ Katie exclaimed as they entered the kitchen and saw the puppies.

  ‘They do. They grow really fast at this age,’ Mrs Armstrong said. ‘You’re just in time to help me feed them, and then you can have supper with us.’

  David’s father came out of his study to say hello, and Julia couldn’t help but notice the natural and friendly way he greeted both her and Katie.

  ‘So, young ’un, how was the nativity play? I gather you were a very wonderful lamb,’ he said, and Katie giggled.

  ‘Did David tell you?’ she asked, and he nodded.

  ‘Certainly did. I hope we get to see a photo.’

  ‘Oh, they take lots of photos,’ Julia assured him. ‘No doubt I’ll have to buy them all.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mrs Armstrong said with a laugh. ‘We’ve got hundreds of such photos—some of them of David. Remind me to show you the baby photos one day.’

  ‘I think not,’ David said, colouring slightly, and he ushered Julia towards the door. ‘If you two are quite happy for us to go, I think we’ll make a move. I feel a steak calling me.’

  ‘Bye, darling,’ Julia said, but Katie was in the playpen with the puppies already and hardly spared her a glance.

  ‘So, where are we going?’ she asked to break the silence in the car.

  ‘The village pub. It’s excellent, and they have a log fire. At this time of night we’ll probably be able to get a seat near it in the corner—unless you want to eat in the restaurant?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Well, I don’t mind, but I’m not really dressed for formal dining.’

  ‘Nor am I, not now,’ he said with what sounded like relief. ‘We’ll eat in the bar.’

  He was right, it was a lovely pub, and the food was wonderful. They tucked themselves away in the corner by the fire, and they talked. David told her about himself —about his training in London, his various jobs around the country, his yearning to be back in his native Suffolk—and he asked Julia about herself.

  ‘You’ve hardly told me anything about yourself,’ he said with gentle reproach. ‘You’ve told me about Andrew, and Katie, but almost nothing about you.’

  She shrugged diffidently. ‘I’m not that interesting.’

  ‘You are to me.’

  He seemed to mean it, so she told him about her childhood in Hampshire, and her parents’ move to Lancashire when she was sixteen, a social disaster for her and very unsettling.

  ‘I had to leave all my friends, and it really was very hard, breaking into a new group in the sixth form. I didn’t do as well in my A-levels as I’d been expected to and, instead of doing physiotherapy, I ended up on a nursing course, which actually in the end has probably suited me better.’

  ‘So how did you meet Andrew?’ he asked quietly, and she sighed.

  ‘Oh, after I’d qualified and got a job nearer home. He was on a fast track to the top, and he’d been posted to Blackburn to run a new branch of the company he worked for. I met him at a friend’s house, at a party, and he was funny and charming and he made me feel special.’

  Julia fell silent, remembering how easy it had been for him to seduce the almost innocent girl she’d been, and she sighed.

  ‘I take it that didn’t last.’

  ‘Only until I had Katie. He changed. Well, no, maybe he didn’t, but I did. I was a mother. I was tired, and my priorities shifted. He didn’t like that.’

  ‘Men often don’t. They feel neglected.’

  ‘So I found out.’ She stopped, not wanting to go on. There were things she didn’t want to talk about—the demands he’d made on her, the way he’d expected her to welcome his advances so soon after the birth, the impatience with which he’d greeted her slow recovery.

  Andrew had been insatiable, jealous and ever more critical of her figure and performance, both in bed and out of it, and then he’d left her, her confidence in rags, her self-image devastated.

  Julia shook her head, remembering, and David squeezed her knee. She glanced up at him and he smiled gently. ‘Tell me about you,’ he coaxed. ‘What’s your favourite colour?’

  ‘Silver,’ she said, thinking of his eyes, and he smiled again.

  ‘So you like my car, then.’

  ‘Amo
ngst other things. Moonlight. Water. Your eyes.’

  ‘My eyes?’

  ‘They’re silver,’ she said, and his mouth quirked fleetingly.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘I always thought they were grey.’

  ‘No,’ she corrected. ‘Mine are grey. Yours are silver.’

  ‘OK. What’s your favourite sort of music?’

  ‘Oh, easy. I like cheesy pop music.’

  ‘Good grief,’ he said, looking shocked.

  ‘Don’t tell me, you’re a classical fan,’ she teased, and he nodded.

  ‘Absolutely. I like quiet, pure music, like plainsong and church music. Choristers, piano, the flute—simple sounds. Nothing brash.’

  She nodded. ‘I could probably tolerate that.’

  ‘Big of you.’

  She chuckled. ‘So, what about you. What’s your favourite colour?’

  ‘Green. Soft, willow green, shivering in the breeze. The brilliant acid green of opening leaves in the spring, and rich long grass, and glossy holly leaves—’

  ‘That’s about four different greens.’

  ‘Very likely. It’s the one colour that was lacking in London, except in the parks, and I didn’t have very much time to go and sit in them when I was training. And I hate hospital green with a passion.’

  ‘Ditto,’ she said, laughing, and he leant over and kissed her cheek.

  ‘There, we agree on something,’ he said, and their eyes meshed and held.

  ‘So, what about films?’ he asked.

  ‘The Horse Whisperer—and Elizabeth.’

  ‘Not Armageddon?’

  ‘No. I hate sad films.’

  ‘The Horse Whisperer is sad.’

  ‘Well, yes, but it’s sort of right.’

  ‘So is Armageddon.’

  Julia laughed. ‘We’ll have to agree to differ again.’

  Their conversation moved on, touching on medical things and ending with a deep and fundamental disagreement on embryo research. In the end she fell silent, and David cocked his head on one side and looked at her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  She shrugged. ‘Nothing.’ But it wasn’t nothing. They seemed to be differing on a lot of things, she thought, her earlier cheerfulness dwindling. Oh, dear.

  She looked up at him and shook her head, dredging up a smile again. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said again, but he seemed to understand.

  ‘It is nothing. Don’t worry about it,’ he murmured, reading her mind. ‘We’re allowed to be different. That’s what makes the world go round.’

  ‘Thought that was love.’

  ‘Well, that, too,’ he said with a grin. ‘But I was trying to steer clear of the subject—like sex and politics. Always dangerous.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We ought to be going. It’s nearly nine, and Katie’s got school tomorrow, hasn’t she?’

  Guilt swamped her. ‘Yes—oh, lord, I had no idea it was so late.’

  ‘She’ll live. They won’t do anything very much at school tomorrow anyway. You never do at the end of term, and particularly not when you’re five.’

  ‘Nearly six,’ she reminded him. ‘She’s six in January.’

  ‘I’d better start saving,’ he murmured, helping her into her coat. ‘No doubt it will cost a fortune to distract her from the idea of a puppy.’

  Julia rolled her eyes. ‘Well, I’ll let you deal with that one,’ she said, ‘since it’s your fault, but I’d be grateful if you didn’t spend a fortune on her, as I can’t afford to match it.’

  David paused in the act of shrugging on his coat, and frowned slightly. ‘I was joking,’ he said mildly. ‘I don’t believe in spoiling children—well, not like that, anyway.’

  She let out a little sigh. ‘Another thing we agree on, then,’ she said lightly. ‘Come on, let’s go while we’re winning.’

  But it didn’t feel like they were winning, and when he dropped her off at the house with a chaste peck on the cheek in deference to Katie’s presence, she was if anything more confused than ever…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FORTUNATELY for Julia, Mrs Harrison was still very poorly the following day and so she was able to tuck herself away with the frail patient and watch her closely.

  She was still on quarter-hourly observations, and Julia felt she should really have been in ICU, but it wasn’t possible because as usual they were full. Besides, she was quite happy to have the opportunity to do a little intensive nursing for a change instead of admin, which seemed to be the way her job was going these days.

  Mrs Harrison’s daughter was with her, and they talked through her operation and the expected programme of her recovery in between Julia’s checking and noting. She didn’t really have a minute to herself, which suited her. She had too much time to think these days, and she just wanted some time out. Being closeted with Mrs H. and her daughter was a good way of doing it.

  And, she thought, it had the added advantage of taking her out of circulation, so she could avoid cosy little chats with David.

  Or so she hoped, at least. At lunchtime, Sally stuck her head round the door and told her to go for lunch.

  ‘I’ll take over. You can’t have all the fun—and Mr Armstrong wants you to join him. Said something about a patient conference.’

  Julia muttered something disbelieving under her breath and went out to find David lounging against the wall looking expectant.

  ‘Ready? Get your coat.’

  ‘Where are we going and why?’ she asked, but he just smiled.

  ‘Secret. Come on.’

  ‘I thought this was a patient conference?’ she said mildly, allowing him to engineer her down to the car park entrance.

  ‘Just a ruse to get you into my clutches,’ he said with an unrepentant grin. Feeling highly dubious but intrigued for all that, she let him put her into his car, and they drove out into the countryside just minutes away.

  There he parked, on a rise looking over a pretty river valley, and with a flourish like a magician he produced a cardboard box from the back seat and put it on the space between their seats.

  ‘Voilà!’ he said, and she laughed softly.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked.

  ‘Lunch. I hate canteen food, and I wanted to talk to you after last night. You looked worried.’

  She felt her smile slip. ‘We disagreed on so many things.’

  ‘Not that many—and, anyway, we’re allowed to disagree. It makes life more interesting.’ He opened the carton and peered in. ‘Here—prawn salad sandwiches, chicken legs, cherry tomatoes—what’s in this little pot? Pasta salad—and plastic forks. We’ll have to share. Think we can manage that?’

  ‘I expect so,’ she said, peering into the box and suddenly realising how hungry she was.

  David picked up a chicken leg and gestured at the box with it as she hesitated. ‘Come on, it’s not a spectator sport,’ he teased, and she helped herself to a sandwich bursting with fat, juicy prawns and crisp shreds of salad.

  ‘So where did this lot come from?’ she mumbled with her mouth full.

  ‘A sandwich firm in town. I got them to deliver it.’

  That shocked her a little, even though she knew he earned good money and only had himself to spend it on. ‘How extravagant,’ she scolded mildly, but he shook his head.

  ‘Not really. We have to eat, and they deliver to the hospital anyway. Besides, you aren’t supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth and all that. Now eat.’

  Julia did, and it was wonderful. She didn’t buy his story that it wasn’t extravagant, but she was too hungry to care and it was nice to be alone with him, although she’d been trying to forget about him all morning.

  Unsuccessfully, she realised.

  ‘You’ve been hiding from me,’ he said, reading her mind again.

  ‘I know. I just wanted some thinking time.’

  ‘And?’

  She smiled ruefully. ‘I’m still thinking.’

  ‘Want to think ou
t loud?’

  She shook her head. ‘You won’t want to hear it.’

  ‘Andrew again?’

  ‘We had nothing in common,’ she told him heavily. ‘We differed in so many respects, and I was never allowed an opinion. If I disagreed with him, I was an idiot.’

  ‘Arrogant bastard.’

  ‘You and I disagreed,’ she reminded him. ‘Last night, about embryo research. We disagreed really quite fundamentally.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed your opinion,’ he pointed out, and put a chicken leg in her hand. ‘Eat.’

  She ate, wondering if he really meant it or if, given time, he’d start to erode her personality as Andrew had done. It was so insidious, that was the trouble. It had taken ages before she’d realised what had been happening to her.

  They shared the pasta salad, David feeding them alternate forkfuls, and he opened the bottle of spring water and poured her some into a plastic cup before sitting back with a sigh and looking out over the gently rolling landscape.

  ‘I love this part of Suffolk,’ he said softly. ‘I really missed it.’

  ‘I missed Hampshire when we moved—the downs near Winchester, the New Forest. It seemed very wet and cold and forbidding in Lancashire after that.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He tilted his head and looked at her searchingly. ‘Do you want to go back to Hampshire?’

  She shook her head. ‘Only to visit. This is my home now, and Katie’s home. We’ve got roots here, even if they are a little damaged from being transplanted so many times.’

  ‘Is that gardening talk?’ he teased laughingly, and she smiled.

  ‘You know, I’d love to learn a bit about gardening,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘I’ll teach you. You can help me at the cottage, if you like, and we can sort your garden out and make it pretty for you.’

  She snorted. ‘That won’t take long, it’s only tiny.’

  ‘It could still be lovely, I’m sure. I’ll have a look next time I’m there—if you like.’

  Yet another thread that would weave them together, she thought, but she found herself agreeing anyway. It was only the garden, after all.

  ‘We ought to get back,’ she said, looking at her watch, and David nodded.