A Country Village Christmas

by Suzanne Snow

  She’d have to tell Gina at some point; she would be bound to find out and Olivia knew it should come from her. She wouldn’t mention the kiss or the pub, though. Not unless it was unavoidable.

  Her coffee finished, it was time to go. She had another explore through the studios, taking a picture of the Pilates one with its dates and times, hoping she might make classes whilst she was here. She would miss her gym sessions but running was something she enjoyed, and she would try to keep that up, shuddering at the thought of being outdoors in a Dales winter instead of on the usual treadmill.

  She collected a couple of meals for one from the cookshop, feeling a quick stab of guilt, shopping for just herself, as she remembered Tom. What had her dad meant, she wondered, when he’d said that Tom’s life had not always been easy?

  The house was quiet when she returned and she glanced in at the dining room on the way to the kitchen. It had always been a bleak sort of a room, chilly, lit by a window that allowed in a cool westerly draft. A dresser filled with china stood against one wall, and there was an old-fashioned dining table to seat six, which could be extended to fit ten. Photographs hung on the pale blue walls alongside some good art, and of course there was another overfull bookcase.

  A hoodie was slung on the back of one chair facing the window, a notepad, empty glass and a laptop on the table, a small stack of books and no Tom. It was going to take a couple of days’ work to pack and clear just this room and the thought was enough to make Olivia’s head ache. She dropped a reminder into her calendar to call someone next week about the furniture. They’d already filled her dad’s new home with bits and pieces from here, most of it oversized and unsuitable for a modern flat.

  She carried on to the kitchen and left her meals in the fridge, glancing at the other provisions she saw there. The usual stuff and lots of vegetables, plus a couple of foil-covered dishes that looked as though they could be leftovers.

  Still no sign of Tom and she thought he must be out unless he was in his bedroom. Next to hers, and that was a reality she still hadn’t got her head around yet. She’d heard him in there this morning as she’d dressed, feeling almost as though she could sense his movements around the room. Did he sense hers too, she wondered? Did he think about her, as she thought about him?

  Work was beckoning and she was at the sink beneath the window, filling the kettle to make a peppermint tea, when she saw two unfamiliar men leaving the annexe. One of them was holding a bag and they were chatting, in no hurry as they strolled across her dad’s garden to the drive and disappeared from sight. Olivia realised she had overfilled the kettle and quickly turned the tap off.

  She looked at the annexe. The lights were on and that was another surprise. She put the kettle down, opened the back door and darted through the freezing air without a coat, rushing into the building and halting the moment her feet were over the threshold.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Tom was standing behind the desk that passed for a counter, holding a book, and his lips twisted wryly. ‘I’m guessing your dad hasn’t told you about the shop either?’

  ‘What do you think?’ she countered. She took in the cheerful fire burning, a man sitting in an armchair beside it with a book in his hand, someone else browsing along a shelf of hardbacks. ‘I assumed it was shut.’

  She hadn’t been in here for months, not since they’d emptied her dad’s old shop in town, and he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of letting someone else clear away his books as a job lot. They’d brought them here instead, despite her protestations, and she realised now with fresh horror the size of the task ahead. There were mountains of stuff to move and it was going to take months, probably, not a few short weeks before Christmas to sort this place out.

  Tom put the book down. ‘Your dad suggested I might want to open the shop now and again, and I liked the idea.’ He gestured to the teetering piles of stock. ‘I thought it might help to sell more books. Reduce the load.’

  ‘Like that’s going to make a difference. You’ll need a decade of “now and again” to shift this lot,’ Olivia retorted. She remembered the comment Annie had made last night about the bookshop being open again. It had been niggling her and now she understood what Annie had meant. Olivia pointed helplessly at the shelves. ‘Look at it all! I must’ve been mad, letting him fetch everything here.’

  The man on his chair had finished his comfortable read and got up, leaving the shop without a word or the book, irritating Olivia even further. What were they running here, Tom and her dad? Some kind of free reading room? They’d be offering coffee and cake next, and a regular book club if she didn’t watch out.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be writing?’ There was still a sharp note in her voice that Tom couldn’t miss, and his eyes narrowed.

  ‘Not that it’s anything to do with you when I work, but I write all morning and then open up here on Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoons. The rest of the time I write all day and sometimes into the evenings as well. Is that hours enough, do you think?’ He was glaring now. ‘Are you hoping the quicker I finish the book, the sooner I can be on my way?’

  He crossed the room, no mean feat among the clutter, and replaced the book the previous chap had left on the armchair back on its shelf.

  ‘Sorry. I just didn’t realise you would have time for this.’

  She stared around the annexe again. It had seen all sorts of uses in its time and after her mum had died it had somehow filled up with everything her dad didn’t want in the house but couldn’t quite bring himself to part with. There was a tiny kitchen next door and another large room off that, and she assumed Tom must have been doing some tidying of his own.

  Olivia saw now that he had made it resemble more of a sitting room than a bookshop and she had to admit, at least privately, that it did look a lot better. He had brought in two armchairs and placed them either side of the fireplace, and lit the wall lamps, chasing away the reality of the dull winter afternoon outdoors. The mantelpiece had books all along it, held in place by a sturdy brass candlestick at either end.

  The shelves on one side of the fireplace were history, military, railways and politics; the other fiction, from Penguin Classics to a few children’s books at the bottom. A coffee table held books on gardening and some on cookery, two more had been pressed into temporary service as homes for travel writing and sports respectively. Local interest was stacked on the desk where Tom was once more engrossed in the book back in his hand. There was even a little Christmas tree glittering merrily on the floor opposite the door.

  ‘Sorry if I was a bit snappy,’ he said, looking up to give her a smile Olivia found distracting. She wondered if he was doing that sexy little thing the two women from the restaurant had mentioned earlier. She wasn’t sure, but it made her blink, twice.

  ‘That’s okay. Me too.’ She was doing her best to ignore how handsome he looked in that chunky navy sweater and tried to think about the shop instead. ‘So let me get this straight. Three afternoons a week, is that it?’

  ‘Usually. I am thinking of opening maybe another afternoon as it’s getting close to Christmas and some of these books are just waiting for the right home.’

  ‘You sound like my dad.’ Olivia’s phone flashed with a notification and she realised how quickly the day had moved on. ‘I’ve got to go, I need to make a call and I can’t be late. We can talk about this later.’

  She hurried back to the house and grabbed her laptop, shutting herself away in her dad’s library. It was another two and a half hours, not the one she had scheduled, before she re-emerged, feeling suddenly exhausted. Her client was moving from the States to Yorkshire to take over as the CEO of a manufacturing company and they were starting to become a real nuisance, calling her at all hours of the night as it was still day for them and leaving urgent messages if she didn’t pick up. Checking in again about the private school she had found and was it really up to scratch for twin boys aged eight who loved sport and drama respectively. Was she absolutely
certain that they’d get planning permission to knock down a barn and build a gym?

  No had been the answer to that one and she was beginning to think that she would prefer them to pull out. The farmhouse they were supposed to be buying was exquisite and she knew she would find another buyer in a heartbeat, long before it ever reached the open market.

  Olivia wandered into the kitchen, ready for a glass of wine. Tom was already there and he gave her a nod, returning his attention to the meal he was preparing. She found a bottle of Malbec from her dad’s collection, remembering that Tom had liked red wine when they had shared a bottle before. ‘Would you like a glass?’

  ‘You don’t mind? I don’t want to presume or drink your dad’s supply dry.’

  She was smiling as she uncorked the bottle and found glasses. ‘Are you trying to tell me that my dad hasn’t already invited you to help yourself to anything you want?’

  Tom’s silence told her that she was right and she passed a glass to him. He thanked her, chopping herbs as she watched from the table, strangely soothed by the process, her phone nearby. ‘What are you making?’

  ‘Just a vegetarian rice dish.’

  ‘Right.’ It looked amazing as he sliced peppers, chilli, onions and garlic with a practised hand. ‘So you like cooking?’

  ‘I do, I find it relaxing.’ He paused to try the wine. ‘Would you like to join me? I can make it stretch.’

  Olivia was already refusing his offer in the tilt of her glass. He couldn’t have missed her two little microwave meals for one in the fridge when he’d fetched his own ingredients. ‘Thanks, but I wouldn’t expect you to share.’

  ‘Why not?’ Tom was heating a pan on the range, adding oil and letting it get up to temperature as it sizzled noisily. ‘You’re sharing the wine.’ He gave her a quick grin. ‘But I can see you’ve got supper sorted. You don’t need my made-from-scratch, spicy Mexican rice dish served with fresh coriander and lime.’

  ‘Oh stop it,’ she wailed. ‘How do you expect my ready-made spaghetti carbonara to compete with that?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Have you ever done adverts,’ she muttered to his back as he slid the vegetables into the pan, her stomach rumbling unhelpfully as the smell drifted across. ‘I bet you could sell anything.’ She’d nearly said ‘with that voice’ but stopped herself just in time.

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘Yes. Please.’

  She set the table for them; it was useful to have something to do as he cooked, adding chopped tomatoes and stock to the pan once the rice had joined the vegetables. It smelled wonderful and Olivia found she didn’t mind the lack of conversation until they were facing one another across the table.

  ‘This is incredible, thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  She was finding it impossible to forget the last time they had shared an evening meal and how that night had ended. Maintaining eye contact and generating simple chat seemed beyond her as she refilled their glasses, and she settled on practicalities instead.

  ‘We should probably decide about shopping seeing as we’re both here now.’ She thought again of those two sad little ready meals in the fridge, trying not to love Tom’s cooking too much. ‘It’s very kind of you to have made enough for me tonight but I certainly don’t expect it.’ She hoped that comment would make it clear she wouldn’t be doing the same for him. ‘I’ll wash up. I was always telling my dad he should have got a dishwasher with all those people he had to stay for the festival.’

  ‘But that was half the fun.’ Tom reached for his wine, holding the glass with a hand Olivia remembered had touched her face just as gently that night in the pub, making her skin feel warm.

  ‘If your dad wasn’t cooking then someone else would be and we’d all pile in here, take turns at whatever needed doing. The only strict rule he imposed was that the clearing up had to be done the night before and the table laid for breakfast. He hated coming down to a tip, he wanted to find guests already tucking into something and ready to chat.’

  Ready to chat. She had used to chat with him too, something she seemed to have done less and less of as the years had moved on. Her phone was blinking at her and she ignored the notifications. After her mum had died, Olivia remembered how she used to go the bookshop in town after school and do her homework there. Her dad would have a hot chocolate waiting and something nice from the bakery across the street.

  They’d found a simple peace in creating that new routine, finding a way into the future. She’d wait for him to finish work for the day, and they’d go home together to the house silenced by sadness. She’d moved on, college, university, a brief marriage, a daughter, a career, whereas her dad’s life had remained on the path he had chosen over forty years previously. Had seemed to shrink as hers had expanded, or so she’d thought.

  Now she realised that it hadn’t shrunk at all, he’d simply surrounded himself with people he loved to talk to, shared their world, been at the centre of it with them for a time, supported their careers and championed their work. How had she got so busy, so focused on work that this man opposite her now knew more about her dad’s routine than she did?

  ‘How lovely.’ Olivia was sorry now she’d missed it, even though she’d never really been a part of the literary community he’d created here. She tried to push the guilt away, bring her mind back to practical matters again. ‘So, the shopping? I’m planning a weekly delivery and it seems silly to have two lots of everything open at the same time.’

  A thought occurred to her, and she tried to find a way to frame it, hoping to make Tom realise that she wasn’t trying to make him cough up half of what she decided to spend. She had no idea what the state of his finances were and didn’t want to add any extra pressure.

  ‘I’m happy to cover the delivery and obviously I’ll replace any of my dad’s wine we drink. We’ve got at least three weeks here and we’re going to need something to get us through.’

  At once she was aware she’d got it wrong as Tom’s lips tightened and he glared across the table as she rushed on. ‘I’ve already booked the first delivery so I thought it would make sense if you agree. Unless you think it’s better that we just divide everything in half or work out exactly what we’ve each used and pay accordingly?’

  She’d always hated doing that, adding up item by item in restaurants rather than just splitting the cost and sharing more than a meal. She’d offended Tom now, that much was clear as he shoved his empty plate away.

  ‘I might be homeless right now, Olivia, but I’m not destitute yet. I’ll pay my own way. Half of everything we share.’

  He stood up and left the kitchen, banging the door behind him, and she dropped her head into her hands, mortified. That hadn’t gone as well as she’d hoped.

  Chapter Six

  Olivia saw the moment she opened her curtains she had been wrong to ignore the weather notification yesterday, and she let out a frustrated groan. Snow was piled up in wavy drifts, disguising the usual view of the small garden from her bedroom. She did have to admit it was beautiful, draping everything in a thick, white blanket and adding another layer of seasonality to the day and the village.

  But it was still falling steadily and would play serious havoc with her plans. She checked the landing for signs of Tom before rushing into the bathroom and singing loudly to make sure he would know she was in there. She didn’t much care if he liked her rendition of ‘Proud Mary’ or not, she’d always had a nice singing voice and that was something else that had gone by the wayside these past years.

  Breakfast was excruciating as she waited for him to make an appearance. Every time she tried to find a way to apologise about the shopping the words got muddled in her head. She truly hadn’t meant to offend, only help. She’d cleared up alone last night and set the table, a tiny homage to her dad, which she hoped Tom would realise if he came down first. She could hear him moving around upstairs and she was washing her single plate and coffee cup by the time he came into t
he kitchen.

  ‘Morning.’ Olivia made herself sound friendly, busy with emptying the water from the washing-up bowl. She could feel his presence in the room, all through the house, as though it were an invisible cloak draped over her. ‘There’s coffee if you’d like some.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She found a tea towel and began to dry the plate. She would be finished in a minute and could leave him to his own breakfast in peace. She needed to work, to rearrange her week, given the weather conditions.

  ‘Olivia?’ Tom was beside her now and she set the plate down, picked up the cup. ‘I’m sorry. I know you were trying to be kind. Generous.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ She still wouldn’t offer him her eyes, afraid of what she might give away. Her feelings for him seemed to be altering hour by hour. Attraction, desire, laughter one moment; embarrassment, sympathy, disappointment, anger the next. ‘I’m sorry if I offended you.’

  ‘You didn’t, truly. It was my fault.’ He cleared his throat, touched a hand to her shoulder then let it fall away. ‘I don’t find it easy to accept help, I never have. And especially not now, here, like this. With you.’

  Olivia’s fingers had stilled on the cup, hoping he might share, help her understand how and why he was here. His attention was fixed on the garden, the shop at the end, everything covered in snow as the seconds drifted by, and her reply was quiet. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you ever think about the night we met?’

  Tom turned, pushing his hands into his pockets. His words were sharper, quick, and she knew she had given him her reply in the surprise racing across her face as he stared at her. She didn’t need her training and years in human resources to recognise the misery clouding his eyes, the dark circles around them, most unusually finding herself wanting to reach out to him again.