A Winter's Wish

by Alice Ross

  Well, she couldn’t sit out here forever, she concluded, looking despairingly about the chocolate-bar-wrapper strewn interior of her ten-year-old Fiat Punto. Perhaps if she just breezed in and acted normally, no one would suspect a thing. After all, only the twins would be home, plugged into some electronic device, cocooned in their own little worlds. She could strip down to her undies, paint herself lime-green and stick a traffic cone on her head, and the chances of them awarding her anything more than a cursory glance would remain minimal. And even if she did fess up to having just bumped into an ex-boyfriend in the middle of the cereal aisle, it would elicit no more than a disbelieving snort or, more likely, a bout of hysterical laugher at the notion of Julia ever having had a Life Before Twins.

  But, as distant as it now seemed, Julia had had a Life Before Twins. Granted, it was a bit short on the ex-boyfriend front. In-between the carrot-topped Nigel Clark when she was six years old – whose attempt to impress her by skewering worms had brought about an abrupt end to that relationship – and her husband Paul there had been only one significant other. One man who had swept her off her feet, made her laugh until she cried, made her feel like the most special, most desirable female on earth. And that man was Max Burrell.

  It was almost twenty years since Julia had last seen Max but, as she’d trundled her trolley into the cereal aisle and spotted his profile, studying the line-up of healthy bran options, she’d recognised him immediately. She’d come to a juddering halt, stomach flipping over, legs turning to jelly as her eyes had carried out an involuntary physical inspection. He’d looked amazing, his lean frame clad in faded blue jeans and a grey V-necked sweater, the sleeves of which had been pushed up to reveal muscular, tanned arms. His dark-blond hair was shorter than she remembered, cut in a trendy, dishevelled style that displayed his killer bone structure. He really hadn’t changed at all. Unlike Julia. Her previously athletic form now languished under two stones of excess fat. And her once silky mane of flowing chestnut hair had somehow transfigured into an uninspiring mousy bob through which several strands of silver now lurked. Add baggy leggings, a washed-out oversized pink shirt, and not a scrap of make-up to the equation, and panic had blasted to smithereens the raft of other emotions that had skittered through her.

  She’d been on the verge of orchestrating a nippy about-turn, when Max dropped the packet of healthy-something-or-other into his trolley and started up the aisle towards her. Rooted to the spot, Julia’s heart commenced a furious bout of hammering. Then he’d spotted her. His gaze snagging on hers. His mouth stretching into a devastating smile. And Julia’s head began to whirr as a barrage of memories assaulted her.

  ‘My God. Julia.’ Max’s grey-green eyes twinkled in the way that could always – and apparently still did – turn Julia’s insides to mush. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  Before Julia could say a word, he abandoned his trolley and wrapped his arms around her.

  Her nose pressed against his broad chest, Julia closed her eyes and drank in his male scent which, despite the subtle aftershave – and the twenty-year interval – was still as familiar as his profile.

  He stepped back, his hands still clasping her upper arms. ‘How are you?’

  About to pass out, Julia wanted to reply. Instead, she contorted her lips into some semblance of a smile. ‘Great. Fine. Never better,’ she spluttered.

  ‘Well, you certainly look it,’ he said, his gaze roaming over her in a way that made her resolve to dig out her Pilates DVD. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘I wish,’ she replied, with a self-deprecating laugh that she suspected made her sound slightly maniacal.

  ‘You look fantastic,’ he continued, the familiar lopsided grin causing a long forgotten sensation to slither down Julia’s spine. ‘So what have you been up to, in the last … what … nearly two decades?’

  Julia stared at him blankly. What had she been up to over the last twenty years? And why did that sound like such a ridiculously long time, when in reality it had zipped by?

  ‘Oh, this and that, you know,’ she mumbled, raking a hand through her hair and wishing she hadn’t put off washing it that morning. ‘Bringing up children mostly.’

  Max nodded understandingly. ‘Right. Of course. I heard you had twins.’

  ‘Er, yes,’ she croaked, her throat feeling like someone had emptied a hoover bag down it. ‘A boy and a girl.’

  ‘Sounds like fun.’

  ‘A laugh a minute,’ she retorted, thinking nothing could be further from the truth. ‘What about you?’ she asked, in an attempt to divert the attention away from herself. ‘What have you been up to?’

  Max screwed up his perfect nose and lifted his broad shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. ‘Working mostly. Management consultancy. I’ve been based in New York the last couple of years but have decided it’s now time to put down some roots.’

  Julia’s heart skipped a beat. It would have been strange enough having this conversation in their home town of Bristol. Surely he didn’t mean roots … ‘Here? In Yorkshire?’

  Max’s eyes twinkled mischievously. ‘Possibly. I’ve just started a contract with a company in Leeds so we’ll see how it goes.’

  Julia gulped and her pulse increased its already worrying pace. Whether from horror or delight, she wasn’t sure.

  ‘I take it you live around here,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘We haven’t been here long. We moved up with, Paul – that’s my husband … with his, um, job.’ Heavens, had that sounded as awkward as it felt? And since when had it become weird talking about her husband?

  Max didn’t say anything but continued to look at her in a way that made her paradoxically want to flee from him, and snog him – at the same time.

  ‘It’s really great to see you,’ he reiterated.

  ‘And you,’ muttered Julia, panicking as she looked into those divine eyes and suspected the snogging urge might just win out. ‘Well, I, um, must be getting on. Family to feed and all that.’

  Max nodded. ‘Of course. And … who knows … we might bump into each other again. In the cereal aisle.’

  ‘Stranger things have happened,’ muttered Julia, shoving another hand through her hair and failing to recall any situation that had made her feel quite so strange in the last thirty-nine years.

  ‘Indeed they have,’ Max agreed, looking at her so intently that Julia thought she might internally combust.

  Then, with another devastating smile, and a look oozing with meaning, he took his leave of her and continued up the aisle.

  A good three minutes were required before Julia could coordinate her brain and legs into moving. The rest of her shopping had been carried out in an anxious fug, half of her hoping not to bump into Max again, half of her hoping she would. She didn’t. Probably just as well given that, even now, almost an hour later, her heart still thundered. But she really couldn’t spend the rest of the day in her car. Like it or not, she would have to go inside the house and face the fruit of her loins … the twins.

  A bulging carrier bag in each hand, Julia entered the house via the side door that led directly into the kitchen. Her daughter, Faye, sat at the pine table, long, poker-straight, jet-black hair curtaining either side of her face as she flicked through a celebrity magazine.

  ‘Did you get my low-fat yogurt?’ she asked, not bothering to look up.

  Resentment stabbed at Julia. Not that she expect anything else of Faye, but her lack of interest in her – and complete absorption in herself – seemed particularly poignant today.

  ‘Hello to you, too,’ she said acerbically. ‘And my day was fine, thank you. How was yours?’

  From under her razor-sharp fringe, Faye’s heavily lined eyes flicked a look that suggested her mother may need certifying, before returning to the magazine.

  ‘I tell you what,’ suggested Julia in a too-bright tone. ‘How about you give me a hand to bring in the shopping and then you can see exactly what I’ve bought.’

  By way of explanation,
and without the effort of raising her head again, Faye held up her hands and wiggled her fingers, displaying freshly painted metallic green nails.

  ‘I’ll help in a minute, Mum,’ shouted through Leo. ‘But I’m at a critical stage here. If I stop now, I could be stuck on the same level forever.’

  Stuck on the same level forever. The words slammed into Julia’s brain with such force that she dropped both the carrier bags. Leo’s packet of mini Mars bars slumped onto the floor, followed by a tin of tomatoes which rolled over the granite tiles. Those six words summed her up perfectly. While everyone around her got on with their lives, Julia remained well and truly stuck. Like a needle on an old record player, trapped in the same old groove, going round and round. Going nowhere. And it had taken the chance meeting with Max for her to realise it. While he had been jetting all over the world with his high-flying career, Julia’s life had drifted by in an uninteresting, unremarkable blur. In a few months’ time she would be forty. Practically middle-aged. The best years of her life behind her. And what had she done with them? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. Tears pooled in her eyes. How had she been so dense as to not even notice? How could she have been such a passive spectator, merely along for the ride, making no effort at all to direct …

  ‘Mum? Are you all right?’

  Her daughter’s voice jolted Julia back to reality. ‘Of … of course,’ she blustered, deciding it wouldn’t be appropriate to share any of this with her offspring.

  Faye looked unconvinced. ‘You seem a bit … weird. Has something happened?’

  Julia pulled herself together with an overexaggerated, dismissive tut. ‘Don’t be silly. I’ve only been to the boring old supermarket. What could possibly happen to me there?’

  *****

  Watching her mother scuttle out of the kitchen, Faye Blakelaw heaved a despairing sigh. Honestly. Sometimes she found it hard to believe that anyone could be so spectacularly uncool. The woman really was verging on the embarrassing. And why did she have to make such a fuss about the stupid shopping? Josie’s mother wouldn’t make a big deal of anything so mind-numbingly mundane. But that’s because Josie’s mother was the coolest mum on the planet …

  When her parents had announced they were all moving to Yorkshire, Faye had been gutted. She loved her life in Bristol, had an extensive circle of friends, a buzzing social life, and a boyfriend of sorts – in a kind of laid-back, who-can-play-it-most-disinterested sort of way. Even school was tolerable. Which was just as well given the exorbitant fees. Faye did experience a slight pang of guilt when she totted up exactly how much her parents had spent on school fees over the years. But while the world of academia might be one in which her brother thrived, it most certainly was not for her. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried. She had. Very hard in fact. But her GCSE results last year proved what the whole family had known for some time: that while Leo was a budding genius, striding confidently towards his goal of becoming a vet, Faye would never hover above anything other than average.

  ‘Oh, we’re so proud of Leo,’ Faye recalled her mother gushing to a friend, when the family had gone out for pizza to ‘celebrate’ the twins’ results. ‘He got the highest grades in the school, you know.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ replied the friend. ‘And what about you, Faye? How did you do?’

  ‘Faye did her best,’ cut in her mother, before Faye had a chance to open her mouth. And the tone in which it was imparted left Faye in no doubt that ‘her best’ was simply not good enough.

  Having once harboured dreams of becoming a vet herself – not that she’d divulged those dreams to another living soul – her lack of academic prowess now meant a serious reassessment of her future. But the reassessment was taking longer than she’d anticipated. She still had no idea what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, but she desperately hoped that something would turn up – something glamorous and exciting with her name written all over it. Something that might even make her a household name. So, for once, everyone – including her parents – would take notice of her – and not just her brother. That, at least, had been her vision in Bristol – a large bustling city buzzing with opportunity. So, naturally, when the Yorkshire announcement had been made, Faye had freaked. Yorkshire consisted of nothing but sheep and the smelly stuff produced by their back-ends. Glamour and excitement would be as alien to Yorkshire as ducks were to the Sahara. Or so she’d thought …

  Sick to the back teeth of constantly being compared to her high-achieving brother, Faye had steadfastly refused to join the local grammar school Leo had been welcomed into with open arms. Instead, she’d eventually worn down her parents into allowing her to do her A-levels at the further education college in Harrogate – a soulless, modern building languishing at the opposite end of the architectural scale to the Victorian red brick of her alma mater. But Faye soon discovered that a pleasant façade and lush grounds weren’t the only things missing. Used to a rigid timetable, with every minute of the day scheduled, she found the college’s lack of structure daunting: the emphasis being placed on the individual to organise and motivate themselves. Unfortunately, Faye was neither organised nor motivated. After the first week, she’d been seriously considering packing it in, when, on the way to catch the bus home one day, a girl about her own age appeared by her side.

  ‘Hi. You’ve just moved into Primrose Cottage in Buttersley, haven’t you?’

  Faye, weary with the whole worrying-about-her-future thing, didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she shot the girl a withering look and continued marching towards the bus stop, willing the day she passed her driving test and got her own car. Then she wouldn’t have to put up with losers who …

  ‘I live there too. At the other end of the village. In Buttersley Hall.’

  Buttersley Hall? Faye almost stopped in her tracks. After the manor house, owned by the ridiculously posh Pinkington-Smythe family, Buttersley Hall was the largest, most stunning house in the village. Her interest piqued, Faye slowed to a more sedate pace and turned to look at her would-be companion. She wasn’t the usual type Faye would make friends with. For a start, she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up – not even mascara, which Faye wouldn’t be seen dead without. And her clothes were more BHS than Boho. But she was pretty in a kind of fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked, jolly-hockey-sticks kind of way. And, with her long blonde hair – which Faye suspected would look better with a few highlights – in two loose plaits, reminded her of a milkmaid.

  ‘I’m Josie,’ she said, her lips stretching into a grin. ‘Josie Cutler.’

  ‘Faye,’ said Faye, managing a fleeting smile. ‘Faye Blakelaw.’

  ‘Are you going for the bus?’

  ‘Ah ha.’

  ‘I’ll come with you. If that’s okay?’

  Faye shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Why not,’ she said, deciding she had nothing to lose. Unlike Leo, who’d immediately become ‘Mr Popular’ at the grammar school, Faye didn’t have a queue of people battering down the door wanting to be her friend at the moment. And if Josie turned out to be a nerd, she could easily dump her. Besides, it was worth a few hours of listening to anyone wittering on, if the end result was a look around the gorgeous Buttersley Hall.

  Fortunately, Faye didn’t have long to wait.

  ‘Would you like to come over tonight?’ Josie asked a few days later. ‘We could have a swim, then order in pizza or something.’

  Faye’s eyes grew wide. ‘Have a swim? As in a swim at your house?’

  Josie looked embarrassed. ‘I know it’s a bit flash having a pool, but as it’s there, it seems daft not to use it.’

  ‘Of course it would be daft,’ Faye agreed. ‘And I’d love to come over. What time?’

  ‘My tennis lesson finishes at six, so come over any time after that.’

  ‘Great,’ said Faye, scarcely able to believe her luck. ‘See you then.’

  Floating up Buttersley Hall’s long gravelled drive a few hours later, Faye almost had to pinch herself. The house resembled somethi
ng off the telly: one of those Georgian piles on Sunday night period dramas. She didn’t understand what Josie’s dad did – something to do with a drinks company, Josie had attempted to explain. But whatever it was, he obviously made a mint. Josie had attended a school with fees three times those of Faye’s, but had left to do her A-levels at college so she’d have more time to play tennis – the great love of Josie’s life, much to Faye’s bewilderment. Voluntary engagement in any kind of physical exercise remained an alien concept to Faye. She’d concocted all kinds of excuses – some of them particularly inventive – over the years to avoid PE, but Josie, for some inexplicable reason, seemed nuts about tennis. She hoped to take some exams and qualify as a coach, which Faye couldn’t get her head around at all. Just as she couldn’t get her head around the fact that Josie had zero interest in make-up and hadn’t even heard of the Kardashians. Still, though, despite all of the above, Faye was beginning to think Josie was all right.

  She marched up to the front door, three times the size of the door at Primrose Cottage, and rang the brass bell, excitement fizzing in her stomach.

  A minute later, the door was whipped open by a woman. A very beautiful woman. With waves of lustrous, long, jet-black hair. Swathed in a multi-coloured sarong, she put Faye in mind of an Amazonian Miss World contestant. Looking slightly on edge, she regarded Faye with dark, perfectly made-up eyes and glossy red lips that showed no hint of a smile.