Once Upon a Winter: A totally perfect festive romantic comedy

by Tilly Tennant

  ‘You’ve got a better chance than I have,’ Gina said softly, reaching for her arm.

  Hannah blinked as she looked back at her. ‘Do you think? I’m not so sure. It’s all passion now, but what about when that’s gone? I’m not like Martine. I’m not strong and capable and independent.’

  ‘Yes you are! Besides, he doesn’t want another Martine. He wants you. Martine is a total bitch from hell.’

  ‘Maybe he won’t want me when he knows me better.’

  ‘He’ll want you more when he knows you better. You’re a gorgeous human being and he’d be mad not to.’

  Hannah turned back to the window. If only she could be as certain of that.

  It didn’t take long for Hannah’s mood to lighten. It was impossible to spend time in Gina’s company and not be affected by her quick humour. After lunch, they set about fitting as many shops as they could into their schedule before, finally, with aching feet and tired eyes, Hannah had to admit defeat and head back to the station for her train home.

  Gina pulled her into a warm hug as they waited on the platform, the smell of diesel in their nostrils. ‘I’ve had a wonderful day. Thank you so much for coming over.’

  ‘I should be thanking you! It’s always you who comes to Holly Way and I don’t make this trip nearly as often as I should. I always have a brilliant time when I do.’

  ‘Soon we’ll be making the journey up from Millrise together for our shopping fix,’ Gina said. ‘Just think about that.’

  ‘I can’t wait…’ Hannah began, but mentioning it brought Chris back to her mind.

  Gina smiled. ‘I can tell by the look on your face that you’re worrying about your friend.’

  ‘Chris? I would hardly call him my friend.’

  ‘But I know you feel bad about him, and I was wrong to ask you to keep him in the dark. It’s okay. Tell him about Mitchell and if he withdraws the offer of the house, then so be it. There’ll be other houses.’

  Hannah drew her back into another hug. ‘You know you’re brilliant, don’t you? You always know what I’m thinking and you always say the right thing.’

  ‘Not always, but I try. I don’t want to see you worrying; you have enough to worry about already.’

  The arrival of Hannah’s train drowned out any more conversation, and Hannah turned to watch it pull into the station.

  ‘Have a good trip home,’ Gina said as it slowed to a halt.

  Hannah hugged her again, and she put every ounce of her love into it. They may not always have seen eye to eye over the years, but these days Gina was her rock. Men might come and go, but her sister would always be there for her.

  As usual, she’d made far too much stew. Sometimes, Hannah wondered if she was hardwired for family cooking. Nice as the stew had been, however, she didn’t really fancy eating it for the rest of the week, and as the freezer was chock full of all the other dinners she’d made too much of, the only alternative to throwing it in the bin was giving it away. Her first thought was that George might appreciate a pot of something warm and wholesome.

  Cutting a crusty loaf in half and wrapping it in cling film, Hannah scooped a large serving into an ovenproof dish and placed the whole lot in a rattan basket with a bottle of beer. George often joked that at his age it didn’t matter to his liver if he drank too much or not.

  Half an hour later she knocked at George’s front door, watching her breath curl into the air as she stamped her feet to keep warm, wishing she’d worn her big duffle coat rather than throwing the nearest fleece on. Trixie’s hoarse yap could be heard from within the house, so the chances were that George was definitely in – he rarely went out without taking her.

  Finally, she heard the key rattle in the lock and George looked around the door, regarding her carefully through age-washed eyes before he realised who it was.

  ‘Hannah!’ he smiled. ‘Have you been out here long?’

  ‘Not too long,’ she lied.

  ‘Only you can’t be too careful these days, can you?’

  ‘Quite right. I’ve brought you some stew. I hope you haven’t already had your tea.’

  ‘Oh, that’s grand!’ George’s face lit up as he spotted the basket on Hannah’s arm. ‘Just the ticket! That last one you brought round was delicious.’ Hannah held the basket out and he uncovered it to peer inside. ‘And beer too! You do look after me, young Hannah.’

  ‘It’s what neighbours do,’ Hannah smiled, handing it over.

  ‘Let me just unload and I’ll give you the basket back…’ George began, but Hannah interrupted.

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll call round for it on the way past tomorrow if that’s alright.’

  ‘That’s no problem at all. Wouldn’t you like to come in for a cup of tea, seeing as you’ve come all this way to feed me?’

  ‘I’ve only bobbed down the road.’ Hannah smiled. She was still weary from her packed schedule in Birmingham the day before but it was easier to make a different excuse. ‘Thank you, but I’ve got a ton of work to do at home, so I won’t, if that’s okay. Another time, perhaps?’

  ‘Oh aye, another time.’ He patted the basket. ‘I’ll enjoy my tea tonight. I’d only got fish fingers and a little pan of chips planned, but this will be much nicer.’

  ‘I expect Trixie will get a little bowl of it too…’ Hannah asked, knowing full well that Trixie often got a plate of what George was eating, whether it was good for her or not.

  ‘Oooh, she will. She loves a bit of braised beef.’

  ‘I thought so,’ Hannah said. ‘Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, George.’ She turned to head back to her car.

  ‘Mind how you go, won’t you?’ George called after her as she strode down the path.

  ‘I will!’ she shouted back. ‘I always do.’

  ‘Only with all this trouble around here lately, you can’t be too careful… I mean, that car hanging around your house and that terrible business with young Ross –’

  Hannah spun around. ‘What’s happened to Ross?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard? I thought you were thick with the Hunters.’

  ‘No…’ Hannah replied, cold dread creeping over her. ‘I’ve been at home for most of the day. What’s happened to Ross?’ she repeated.

  ‘Beaten to a pulp by all accounts. Not that I’ve spoken to anyone from Holly Farm myself. But I heard it from Brian up at the garage and he said the poor lad was in a right mess.’

  ‘When did this happen? Where is he now? Is he alright? Are the police involved?’ The questions tumbled out.

  George held up a hand. ‘I don’t know all that. I can tell you that Brian says it was the early hours of this morning. He must have been on his way down to see his lambs. Paul found him on the lane in a ditch by the lower field. He was out cold from what I heard. Someone gave him a proper pasting.’

  Hannah stared at him. She could see George speaking, and she could hear the words, but they weren’t making any sense. ‘Why would someone do that?’ she murmured, almost to herself. Ross was the sweetest, friendliest man you could meet and everyone around Holly Lane loved him. Was this a random attack – wrong place, wrong time? It had to be. ‘Was he mugged?’

  ‘That I don’t know. I expect so. Some druggie from a Millrise estate taking their chances as they passed through.’

  Hannah considered this, but it didn’t really add up. It was too far out of town for your average drug addict to bother with just for a bit of smack money, but Hannah simply nodded. She didn’t want to alarm George with theories that might upset him even more than the one that he had seized on as the most obvious, the one that he could understand.

  ‘So, you don’t know where he is now?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘I don’t. You could try at Holly Farm.’

  Hannah paused. Then she pulled her phone from her coat pocket and phoned Ross. She stared at George as he watched her. She wasn’t really sure what she expected to happen, but she didn’t know what else to do. Her brain wouldn’t compute the information it wa
s being given. Nobody picked up, and Hannah frowned as she put her phone away. Perhaps he was okay, though. Ross wasn’t surgically attached to his phone, unlike a lot of people she knew, so he wasn’t likely to reply straight away, even if he was recovering at home.

  ‘Thanks, George,’ she said finally. ‘Take care, eh? Get inside and lock the door so you’re nice and safe when the sun goes down.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me. Trixie will scare them off if anyone tries to cause trouble.’

  Hannah doubted that very much, but she nodded.

  ‘I could say the same to you,’ George added. ‘You’ll be careful getting home, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course!’ Hannah called, already hurrying down the path towards her car. First, she would call in at Holly Farm and see what she could find out there. George might have been muddled up, or the story could have been embellished, like so many other Chinese whispers. She would need to contact Gina too, because nobody else would if Ross himself was incapable. But it was pointless telling Gina anything until Hannah knew the facts.

  When Hannah pulled up at Holly Farm, she found the main gates to their huge driveway closed. She couldn’t remember ever seeing them closed before – Briony kept them open as an invitation to anyone passing because she loved the company. The house was in darkness too; at least, what she could see of it was. She got out of her car and rattled at the gates, but they were locked.

  Hannah paced up and down in the gathering gloom. The temperature was dipping sharply now and she felt the early evening frost bite through her fleece. What should she do? Should she call Gina anyway and tell her what she knew? Which was what, exactly? She didn’t really know anything except what George had told her and it wasn’t the most reliable or complete information. Gina would dash over, or she would worry herself into a state, and she wouldn’t be able to do a thing in either scenario that wouldn’t involve coming clean to Briony and Paul about her relationship with Ross – probably not the best time to do that.

  Pulling her phone from her coat pocket again, Hannah scrolled down the list of contacts as she mulled it over. Who could she call? Who might know what had happened? She didn’t have a number for Briony or Paul – she had never needed one before. In fact, she wasn’t even sure they had mobile phones. Poring over the contact list once more, Hannah’s attention was drawn to a recent entry. She had simply labelled it PARAMEDIC. The man who had come to help Mitchell at Christmas, and whose watch Ross had found. Hannah wasn’t big on calling favours, but on this occasion she felt justified. He might know something – he might even have attended the scene himself. She had a strong feeling that he wasn’t allowed to give out the sort of information that she was going to ask him for, but maybe he would bend the rules for her this once, and it wasn’t like she would tell anyone.

  Without further thought, Hannah dialled the number. It rang for what seemed like a lifetime, and Hannah was about to give up when he answered.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, sounding out of breath and slightly irritated.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Hannah said, already regretting the call, ‘you sound busy so… it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I disturbed you…’

  ‘Who is this?’ His voice was softer now. ‘It’s alright; you don’t need to hang up.’

  Hannah hesitated. ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Hannah Meadows. You came to my house on Christmas Day for a man who’d had a bump on his head. You lost your watch and I found it – or rather, my friend did –’

  ‘Hannah!’ he cut in. ‘How the devil are you? Of course I remember you! I’m sorry if I was abrupt but I’m on shift right now.’

  ‘Oh God, I am so sorry, I didn’t think…’ Hannah had a terrible vision of him trying to perform CPR on some desperate case and here she was, bothering him for information she really ought to be finding elsewhere.

  ‘It’s alright,’ he chuckled, ‘I’m just waiting around at the moment. You’re lucky; it’s an unusually slow day for the time of year.’

  ‘How long have you been on shift?’

  ‘Didn’t start until lunchtime today so I’ve got a long stretch to look forward to before I can fall into my bed.’

  ‘So you weren’t on this morning?’

  ‘No, not me. Is there something bothering you?’

  ‘It’s just… you might not be able to help, of course, but…’

  ‘Come on, you might as well ask me now.’

  Hannah smiled despite herself. ‘I’ve been told by one of my neighbours that Ross – the man who actually found your watch – was beaten up in the early hours of this morning. My neighbour says it’s bad but he heard the news second-hand. That’s all I know, and I’ve come over to his place to find it all locked up and in darkness. I’m guessing they’re at the hospital but I’ve no idea.’

  The paramedic was silent for a moment and Hannah was beginning to wonder if she’d managed to cut him off. ‘Early hours?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I don’t know what time exactly, but I know he’s out most mornings by five am. I don’t know what time his dad found him but I imagine it would be before most people were up and about. He’d been left unconscious on Holly Way, apparently.’

  ‘I could ask around, see if I can find out who brought him in – if they did bring him in. His dad could have driven him to A&E, of course.’

  ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘A lot of people do; they think they’ll be quicker. They have no idea how much damage they can do by moving a patient like that… and then you get the other end of the spectrum who phone us out for a tummy ache, it drives you mad –’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Hannah cut in, sensing a rant that she really didn’t have time for. ‘His name’s Ross Hunter, from Holly Farm.’

  ‘Give me a few minutes to make some calls and I’ll let you know if I find anything.’

  ‘Thank you!’ Hannah’s gratitude wasn’t empty words; she felt it with every fibre of her being. Ross had become a good friend and, more than that, Gina would be devastated if any serious harm had come to him.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet, I may not be able to tell you much.’

  ‘Anything is better than nothing. I’ll wait to hear from you.’ Hannah ended the call. The cold was really getting into her bones now, and as there didn’t seem much point hanging around the locked gates of Holly Farm, she climbed back into her car and started the engine to get the heaters going while she watched her phone and waited for news. Her thoughts turned to Gina again; what was she going to tell her? What if Ross really wasn’t okay? She wasn’t sure Gina could take any more heartache in her life, especially now when she was just pulling it together again. It seemed so cruel that the happy future she could see on the horizon might be snatched away from her.

  She’d just made the decision to start driving home and wait for her call there when the phone rang. She’d been staring out at the dusky sky, where the first stars winked like points of ice, so wrapped up in her thoughts that the sound of it made her leap up, knocking her mobile to the floor of the car. Scrabbling desperately as it continued to ring, she finally managed to retrieve it from beneath the accelerator pedal.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ the paramedic began. ‘The good news is that I know he was brought into Millrise Gen by ambulance, which, when you think about it, is also your bad news. They’re keeping him in and, by all accounts, it’s not pretty.’

  ‘Do you know how bad the injuries are?’

  ‘I’ve only got the triage info so I don’t know the full extent. Almost certainly a fractured cheekbone, a couple of broken ribs and concussion. Anything they’ve found since he was admitted I’m afraid I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Do you know which ward I can find him on?’

  ‘Surgical Assessment Unit as far as I know, which means they’re planning to operate and you’re probably not welcome to visit. I’d say the oral and max fax team –’

  ‘The what team?!’

  ‘Oral and ma
xillofacial. They deal with bone injuries on faces. I forget that not everyone understands the hospital lingo. Anyway, they’ll probably be working to fix his cheekbone but that’s only an educated guess. If it is that then he might be on an orthopaedic ward tomorrow at some point where you’d be more welcome.’

  Hannah sat in the gloom of her car and shook her head slowly. Why Ross? No matter how many times she asked herself the question, it didn’t make sense. ‘I won’t get you into trouble for all this, will I?’

  ‘Not if you don’t tell anyone it was me who gave you the heads up.’

  ‘I won’t, I promise. You’re an absolute star for helping me.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘So, no real point in going there now?’

  ‘Well if his parents are there you could sit with them. But if you want to see your friend it’s a waste of time tonight.’

  ‘That’s okay; I just wanted to know…’ Hannah stopped. The thing she had really wanted to know, but not dared to ask was whether Ross was in any mortal danger. ‘I’ll go down tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Thanks again.’

  ‘No problem. Goodnight, Hannah.’

  The screen went dark. Hannah locked it and slipped it back into her pocket. She stared into the darkness of the lane, gripping the steering wheel. Now she would have to deal with Gina. God, if only she didn’t live so far away – this wasn’t the sort of news you wanted to deliver by phone and Hannah wanted to be with her to provide the emotional support she knew Gina would need. She had no idea what she was going to say to her. There was a little information, but not nearly enough, and most of it only led to more questions. Perhaps it would be more sensible to wait until the morning and see for herself the full extent of Ross’s situation before she called her sister. Even if she couldn’t actually see him at hospital, Briony or Paul might come home and Hannah could find out from them. Maybe Ross would even be well enough to come home himself by then, and there would be nothing for Gina to be upset about. Punch ups outside any pub on any Saturday night in Millrise resulted in worse injuries than that, and people seemed to recover from them.