All She Wants for Christmas

by Annie Claydon

  Beth hesitated. Of course she would like to visit Josh. The wisdom of doing so with Matt was questionable, but she was too tired to argue.

  ‘It’s a date, then.’ Matt gave her no time to answer and she couldn’t think of a suitable excuse anyway. ‘Sleep well.’

  He watched her walk up her front path, and flashed his headlights as she turned in the open doorway, waiting for her to switch on the light and close her front door before he drove away. Beth rested her forehead gently against the cool surface of the glazed front door, watching his taillights disappear up the lane, and then closed her eyes. So much for thinking that she had a bit more sense than Josh. Even he knew that if you played with fire, you were going to get burned.

  Matt’s car drew up outside her cottage at almost dead on twelve. Not irritatingly early, or fashionably late. It was as if he had been waiting around the corner for the hands of the clock to close at the top of the dial.

  Beth had been waiting for him. She’d put her coat on, then taken it off again, thinking that it would look just a bit eager if she met him at the door with it on. Then, in the spirit of compromise, she’d put on a warm jacket, leaving the buttons open, to indicate that she might have just pulled it on when the doorbell rang.

  In the end he didn’t seem to notice what she was wearing. He was standing halfway down the front path, looking intently up at the front of the cottage, and he hardly acknowledged her as she pulled the front door closed and locked it.

  ‘What’s so interesting?’

  ‘Up there, can you see?’ She turned and felt him close the gap between them, his chest against her back as he stood behind her, his arm extended over her shoulder so she could follow its line of sight to a point just above the guttering. ‘You have a couple of slates missing right there. I didn’t notice it when I was up in your loft the other week, because the hole is located so low down, but it may be why the pipes froze. If there are tiles missing and the wind is in the wrong direction then it could well have been catching the pipes.’

  Beth squinted upwards, shading her eyes against the low sun. ‘I see them. Thanks, I’ll get them looked at.’

  He turned abruptly and led the way to his car. ‘Did you sleep last night?’

  ‘Yes—and this morning. I woke up early, got up and then fell asleep again on the sofa while I ate my breakfast.’

  ‘Me, too. Only my breakfast was a cup of coffee in bed, so I just rolled over and went back to sleep.’

  That was too much information for a start. She could almost see Matt in his bed, hair tousled, eyes heavy with sleep. She wondered whether he slept naked or not and decided that it probably wasn’t a good thing to think about that right at the moment, with him so close at hand. ‘Well, let’s go see how Josh is doing.’

  Marcie seemed as bright as usual when Beth slipped through the curtains, half-drawn around Josh’s bed in the bright, spacious ward, but there was a brittle quality to her smile. Josh was propped up in bed, his hand on the covers, still attached to a line that ran to the IV drips. His eyes were open, though, and he made an attempt at a smile when he saw Beth.

  ‘Well, young man. How are you today?’ Matt was beside him, speaking softly and running a professional eye over him.

  ‘Okay, thanks.’ Josh didn’t seem much disposed to talk, and his eyelids began to droop. Matt grazed his fingers across Josh’s forehead, his eyes on the heart monitor by the bed, and gave a satisfied nod.

  ‘He’s much better.’ Marcie took Beth’s hand. ‘Thank you both. For everything.’ Since they had arrived in the ward last night, Marcie had developed the discomforting habit of not only thanking Beth in practically every other sentence but generally referring to Matt in the same breath as her.

  ‘Wait until you see the mess I left at your house before you start thanking me. I turned Josh’s room upside down.’

  Marcie gave a tired smile. ‘Didn’t Matt tell you? James said on the phone this morning that when they got back to the house, the place had been cleared up and was like a new pin. Apparently, after you left, everyone set to and did it before they went home.’

  ‘That’s nice. Only what you deserve.’

  ‘I don’t deserve anything…’ Marcie broke off and a tear rolled down her cheek.

  Matt’s attention was suddenly all on Marcie. ‘Have you eaten this morning?’

  Marcie shrugged. ‘Not really. Few cups of coffee and a biscuit. I’m okay, I don’t really want anything.’

  He threw Beth a quick look and she nodded. Marcie needed to get away for a while. ‘Look, Beth will stay with Josh for half an hour. Come down to the canteen with me. I haven’t had anything and I’m starved. You can watch me eat if you don’t want anything yourself.’

  Marcie seemed unsure, but Matt was not taking no for an answer. He propelled her towards the end of the bed, and Beth slipped into the seat that she had been occupying beside Josh. Marcie gave in without too much of a fight, and let Matt lead her out of the ward, earning a swift nod of approval from the ever-watchful ward sister.

  It was forty-five minutes before Marcie returned, and Beth had spent the time talking quietly with Josh and watching him sleep. She still looked tired, but she smiled as she plumped herself down by the bed, and Beth saw a flash of the Marcie that she knew.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Matt made me eat one of the dreaded Danish pastries and told me a few home truths.’

  ‘Oh. Nasty.’

  ‘He doesn’t pull his punches, does he? I thought that people were meant to be nice to the mother of a sick child.’

  ‘And you would have listened to nice, of course. All this I don’t deserve anything, I’m such a bad person.’

  Marcie laughed. ‘Well, when I found that stabbing him with the plastic cutlery wasn’t going to work I gave in and listened to sense. Not that I don’t still feel as guilty as hell, but wanting to exact horrible vengeance on myself isn’t going to make things any better.’

  ‘No, it’s not. You love him, Marcie, and you and James have always done your best for Josh and Anna.’

  Marcie poked the tip of her tongue out. ‘Don’t you start. I’ve already had that from Matt. You two haven’t developed some kind of psychic link, have you?’

  It felt a bit like that. The way they seemed to be able to communicate with just an exchanged glance. ‘Well, if we had, I wouldn’t need to ask where he’s got to.’ Beth couldn’t see Matt in evidence anywhere around the ward. ‘I hope you haven’t left him slumped in a corner somewhere with critical head trauma.’

  ‘No, he escaped that one. James turned up with Anna and they’ve gone to the Christmas grotto. Matt wanted to check it out and take Jack.’ A thought seemed to strike Marcie and she switched her gaze from Josh for a moment. ‘And by the way, where were you last night when we couldn’t find you?’

  Beth felt her cheeks flush. ‘Sorry about that. We came as soon as we heard you calling.’

  ‘Oh, not again. Matt’s already been through all that as well, although he was shifty in the extreme when I asked where he actually was. What I want to know is whether I heard right when I thought someone said you were in the kitchen with the lights off.’

  ‘We were outside.’ Being outside in the dark seemed somehow more innocuous that being inside with the lights off. ‘Matt was taking a look at the garden.’

  ‘Right. The other one’s got bells on it. So you went out there in the freezing cold to help him look at a half-acre of mud and grass. Sure that the lovely Dr Matt wasn’t examining something a little closer to home?’

  Beth shrugged. It was just a kiss. At a party. If she ignored it for long enough, surely it would simply give up and go away. ‘Well, if he was it would have been the kind of mistake that I wouldn’t admit to. Matt’s a nice guy and a fantastic doctor. I don’t want to ruin what could be a great friendship by getting into anything else with him. It’s just too complicated, from his point of view as well as mine.’ Maybe if she said it enough times, she’d believe it herself.
/>   ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Yes, I do. It’s friends or nothing with Matt, I’ve made up my mind. I’ve got my life back on track now and I can’t go through what I did with Pete again.’

  Marcie sighed. ‘Okay. But for what it’s worth James agrees with me that the man’s preoccupied with something…’ She caught Beth’s look of alarm and grinned. ‘Don’t worry, James isn’t downstairs giving him the third degree. We confine our meddling to your life. Matt’s out of bounds.’

  It was another fifteen minutes before Matt appeared again at the entrance to the ward, his quick signal more than enough to tell Beth what was on his mind. There was a strict ‘two visitors per bed’ policy, and it was time to leave and let James and Marcie spend a little time together with Josh and Anna.

  Words, handshakes and hugs were exchanged, and Matt ushered Beth away from the couple.

  ‘How is he?’ Josh had looked better to Beth, but Matt was more qualified to tell than she was and she had noticed that James and Matt had stopped at the main desk to exchange a few words with one of the doctors there.

  ‘They’ll keep watching him carefully for a little while longer, do some more tests to make sure that the poison hasn’t affected any of his major organs, but he’s looking good. The first twenty-four hours is always the critical time in these cases.’

  ‘I hear that you managed to get through to Marcie.’

  ‘I hope so. Nice lady. I’ll bet she has a hell of a right hook, though.’

  ‘She didn’t…’ Beth had thought that the talk of stabbing Matt with the cutlery had just been Marcie’s joke.

  ‘No. She looked as if she was about to at one point but we worked it out.’ Matt flipped the fob of his car keys and the lights flashed. ‘Do you mind a bit of a detour on the way home? Jack’s with my parents today, and I said that I’d drop in and see whether he wanted to stay on for tonight. And I want to see whether my father has any roofing slates to match yours in his shed.’

  Panic flared, making Beth’s heart thump uncomfortably. Matt turning up at his parents’ house with her in tow. On the other hand, they were just friends, so where was the harm in it? ‘No, I don’t mind. That’d be good, thanks.’

  Matt’s look of astonishment mirrored Beth’s own surprise at her words. ‘Right, then.’ He opened the car door, waiting while she got in. ‘Let’s get going.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MATT’S parents’ home was a comfortable, spacious bungalow in a pretty village that lay only a few minutes’ drive from Matt’s house. The location was perfect, not so close that Matt was living in their pockets but not so far that Jack would not be able to walk or cycle it when he was a bit older. In their early sixties, the couple seemed youthful and active and were obviously extremely fond of their grandson.

  She hung back a little, not catching the babble of conversation in the hall, and Matt turned to her. ‘Beth, this is my mother.’ He grabbed hold of her hand, pulling her forward, and Beth wriggled her fingers away from his grip. It was one thing to agree to come here on a whim, but now that she was actually facing Matt’s mother nerves clawed at her stomach.

  Jack was jumping up and down next to his grandmother, pulling at her sleeve, and she batted him away fondly. She looked at Beth, beaming.

  ‘My grandson is teaching me how to suck eggs. He tells me that modern technology, which is of course quite beyond my understanding, allows you to hear me perfectly well. I’m instructed that I don’t need to shout.’ She poked Jack’s shoulder playfully, her blue eyes dancing with mischief. ‘That all right, then, Jack?’

  Jack appeared to approve his grandmother’s efforts and she held her hand out to Beth. ‘Kate Sutherland. Pleased to meet you.’ She grasped Beth’s hand with a no-nonsense grip and didn’t let go, leading her through to the sitting room, waving her into a chair and sitting herself down. The woman didn’t just look like Matt, she had the same kindness and forthright humour and Beth found herself warming to her.

  ‘Matt and his father are off to the shed.’ Kate waved her hand towards the large picture windows at the back of the house, and Beth saw the two men, with Jack in tow, heading towards a large, brick-built workshop, situated at the end of the garden.

  She peered at the structure. ‘That’s some shed. It’s got bow windows!’

  ‘Matt and his father built it the first summer that he was home from medical school. George salvaged all the materials and they spent a couple of months down there arguing about brickwork and roofing materials and goodness knows what else. Matt was at that age when they know everything.’ Kate’s eyes twinkled. ‘I keep wondering when he’s going to grow out of that.’

  Beth grinned, afraid to either agree or disagree.

  ‘They may be a while. Men and sheds, you know. So we’ve got time for a cup of tea.’ Kate gestured towards a door that obviously led to the kitchen. ‘Come and talk with me while I make it.’

  Matt followed his father into the shed, noticing with some satisfaction that the pointing on the brickwork was still holding up against the weather.

  ‘Nice-looking girl.’ In Matt’s opinion, his father always had been given to understatement. ‘Got a good honest job as well.’

  ‘Dad.’ His father was taking a poke at Mariska now. Matt threw him a warning glance and looked over his shoulder to find that Jack had found something of interest at the far end of the garden and was well out of earshot.

  His father shut the shed door behind him. ‘It’s all right, the boy’s not going to hear. It might not be such a bad thing if he knew the truth about his mother, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah. Right, Dad. I’ll just tell him that when his mother died she was with her lover, shall I? I went along with the production company when they hushed it all up, perpetuated the lie because I didn’t want him to know the truth about her. I still don’t.’

  His words had spilled out in a whispered rush. Even though the facts were unpalatable, it was good to be able to say even this much out loud.

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’ His father was pottering around, picking up odd tiles and putting them back down again. ‘He notices things, you know. Even if you think he doesn’t.’

  Panic flared in Matt’s chest. ‘Why? What’s he said, Dad?’

  ‘Nothing. But he will do. He showed me the toy that slip of a girl made for him and said it was better than anything his mother had bought for him. I thought it was, too, even if she did buy up half of Knightsbridge every Christmas. Had a play with it myself after he went to bed. Beat your mother at it fair and square.’

  Matt grinned, despite himself. ‘You’re such a pair of big kids. Anyway, it’s just a toy. Beth’s good at that kind of thing, makes them for her friend’s children, too. Mariska didn’t have the time.’ The comparison had been staring Matt in the face for a while now and he was acutely aware that Mariska didn’t come out of it particularly well.

  ‘Don’t make excuses for her. She had the time for anything where there was a camera involved.’ His father wet his thumb and cleaned a little patch in one corner of a slate tile, holding it up to the light so he could see its colour properly.

  ‘What do you expect me to do, Dad? She was my wife.’

  ‘She didn’t act like it. And I’m not just talking about the affair you found out about when she died. Even when she was alive, you and Jack were never first on her list of priorities and the boy knows that. Beth shows more interest in him than his mother ever did. He talks about her all the time, you know.’

  Cold fear clutched at Matt’s chest. ‘Look, Dad. Beth’s been great with Jack and I’m really grateful to her. But I don’t want him to start thinking that she’s going to be like a mother to him, it’s too much to ask of her. And he’s lost enough already to be disappointed again.’

  His father grimaced. ‘There’s nothing you can do to save him from being hurt. I learned that with you and your sister.’ He glared at Matt. ‘Particularly you.’

  ‘Yeah. I never did quite realise how much you and Mu
m worried for us until I had a child of my own. I want everything for him, Dad.’

  ‘I know. And for what it’s worth I think you’re doing a great job with the boy. But if you think that building your own world, where everything is the way you want it to be and you’re in control is going to ensure his happiness, then you’re wrong. You can only keep it up for so long before you start struggling with it and the boy sees that.’

  Matt was stunned to silence. His father didn’t often voice his opinions, but when he did he took no prisoners. He slumped down onto an old cast-iron safe that stood by the doorway and stared hard at some wood shavings on the floor.

  He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s not your fault, you know.’

  ‘It was my marriage. I let it fail. I didn’t give her what she needed.’

  ‘She needed attention. Not just from you, from everyone. You treated her like a queen and she still wanted more. Even her own son wasn’t enough for her.’

  Matt shook his head. There was more to it than that, but even his father didn’t know the whole truth. Only he and Mariska. And she was dead now and that left just him.

  Or did it? He’d reckoned that Jack had been too young. The thought that his son might be carrying even a portion of the burden that weighed him down, drowning him in deep waters, was too much to bear. ‘How do I make it up to him, Dad?’

  His father sat down next to him on the corner of the safe, and Matt slid to one side to make room for him. ‘Let it go, lad. What’s done is done. If you leave it where it ought to be, in the past, then you and the boy can both move on.’

  Dad hadn’t called him lad since he was a teenager. A lump rose in Matt’s throat and he swallowed it back down again. ‘I wish I could. I’m just not sure that I know how to change.’

  His father barked out a laugh. ‘Well, I’m not the one to ask about that. Try your mother and let me know what she says. Now, go and fetch that girl of yours.’

  ‘What do you want Beth for?’ Dad was in an unusually loquacious mood this afternoon and goodness only knew what he might say to Beth. ‘And she’s not my girl.’