The last thing I wanted to see when I was supposed to be escaping Christmas was an oversized tree, trussed with tinsel and baubles and an angel with a startled expression stuffed on top. It was almost identical to the one I’d left behind, which had been up since November when my mother had declared it was ‘legitimate to start Christmas’.
Also, why was it snowing, when it never snowed in this part of France? The Île de Ré proclaimed itself ‘a Mediterranean island lost in the Atlantic’ and when I’d visited my aunt, almost six years ago, the week had passed in an endless succession of cloudless blue skies – in March. I’d hardly expected tropical weather in December, but hadn’t predicted snow the second I arrived. Thanks a lot, global warming.
Still, as I stared at the enormous pine tree dominating the café window, almost blocking the words ‘Café Belle Vie’ in gold letters on the glass, I had to admit it would make a good photo for the travel blog I was planning to launch, once I had some decent pictures… and had done some travelling. I fished my phone from my pocket and took a couple of snaps, liking the slightly blurring effect of the gently falling snow.
Beyond the twinkling tree lights were customers in the café – lots of them, chatting and laughing. I imagined inserting myself among them and being sociable. It was ages since I’d mingled with that many people, much less chatted and laughed. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d laughed at all since Gran’s death, nearly eight months ago.
My gaze tracked a woman and child heading towards the entrance, the girl’s eyes aglow as if she’d had a glimpse of Narnia. If she’d lived here all her four (five, six?) years, she might never have seen snow before.
‘I want hot chocolate, Mummy, and a great big cake like this,’ she said, voice carrying on the chilly, afternoon air, demonstrating the size with a pair of small gloved hands. ‘Maybe two cakes.’
English.
‘You can have some hot chocolate, but no cake,’ said her mum with a smile in her voice. ‘We’ll be having dinner soon.’
‘Can we have a snowball fight?’
‘There’s not enough snow yet, Holly.’
Holly? It seemed the universe was determined to remind me of Christmas at every turn.
I huddled into my pale blue furry coat – the one my friend Anna said made me look like Sully from Monsters, Inc. – as if I’d landed in Antarctica instead of a fishing village on the west coast of France, and imagined Mum saying, ‘Go on,’ as if coaxing Tess, our ancient Collie, into the garden on a rainy morning.
I hitched up my holdall, treading gingerly across the cobbles as the snow settled around me, glad I’d worn my old Doc Martens and allowed Mum to wind her woolly scarf around my neck before leaving the house that morning.
Entering the café behind the woman and her daughter, I was hit with a blast of warmth and two of my favourite smells: ground coffee and freshly baked pastry (the others being lemons, pizza and cut grass after rain), and my appetite rebooted. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, when Mum insisted I demolish a bowl of porridge to ‘line my stomach’ as though I was planning to drink my body-weight in gin, rather than heading to the airport to catch a plane.
Watching her dart around the kitchen in her ancient jeans and roll-neck sweater, I’d felt a rush of affection and almost asked her to come with me, but she’d been to Chamillon a few months earlier to attend her sister’s wedding, and I knew she wouldn’t want to leave the farm again so soon. Plus, she was helping organise the Christmas play at the local village hall and preparing to host the Bailey family Christmas at the farmhouse – which wouldn’t be the same without Gran, and was the main reason I’d opted to give the whole thing a miss this year.
‘It won’t be the same without you, Nina, but your aunt will take good care of you,’ Mum had said, pausing to massage my shoulders, her arms and hands strong from years of sheep-shearing. ‘Just try to have a nice break.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I’d promised. I hadn’t mentioned I was going to use the time away to try and get my travel blog off the ground, preferring to present it when I’d got some posts to share.
When he dropped me at the airport, Dad had wrapped me in a bear hug, almost crushing my ribs, as though I was embarking on an expedition fraught with danger. ‘Sure you don’t want me to sort the bastard out?’ he’d said gruffly. ‘It’s not too late, you know.’
I’d breathed in his familiar scent of old barns and dried manure, overlaid with Mum’s jasmine-scented shower gel, and considered his offer for a moment, imagining Scott’s face as he turned to see Dad bearing down on him in his tractor… except, Scott had moved on and so had I, and I couldn’t condone murder. Not even by tractor.
‘Honestly, Dad, I had a lucky escape,’ I’d said, wondering whether it would be better or worse to admit that my ongoing grief was more about losing Gran than Scott. ‘It’s in the past and I’m over it.’
He’d held me at arm’s length, the soulful dark eyes my brother had inherited – mine were the same clear-grey on a good day as Mum’s – searching my face for clues. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ I’d reassured him, affectionately taking in his everyday look of blue-checked work shirt tucked into old Levi’s, worn with a leather belt and matching boots. He always looked out of place anywhere but the farm. ‘I just want to escape for a week or so, that’s all.’
‘Your gran loved you, you know.’ He’d always been able to see right through me. ‘She wouldn’t want you to be unhappy.’ His eyes had filled, and I’d reminded myself she was his mother and he was still mourning her too.
‘I know,’ I’d said, pulling him in for another hug, unable to admit how responsible I felt for hastening her death.
‘And you’ll be all right on the plane on your own?’
‘Dad, I’m thirty!’
‘I know, but…’ Blinking, he’d eyed a mop-haired man in a black coat and a red and gold scarf, scoping the area through little round glasses as he hoisted a rucksack out of a taxi. ‘I don’t want you sitting next to someone like that.’ He jerked his head at the man, who gave him a startled look.
‘Like a grown-up Harry Potter?’ Some would say – specifically my older brother Ben – that Dad was overprotective, but I knew it killed him that he hadn’t been able to prevent me from getting hurt; or do anything about it when I was. ‘I’ll probably just listen to a podcast, or some music on my phone.’
‘You don’t like flying.’
‘Dad, I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘The flight’s less than two hours.’
His face – leathery from years of farming in all weathers – had been mapped with worry as he squeezed my shoulders and said, ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing, love.’
Now, standing in the café, a babble of impenetrable voices competing with the whoosh of the coffee machine and clatter of crockery, I wondered whether I’d done the right thing, coming to stay at my aunt’s. I’d considered accepting my friend Anna’s offer to go with her to Spain and ‘pick up men’ (she hated Christmas), or take off on my own to a remote part of Ireland – both places would have been a good starting point for my blog – but worried being alone would give me too much time to think. To remember that this was the week I was supposed to get married, before I called off my wedding and effectively killed my gran.
‘Nina!’
At the sound of my name, I turned to see my cousin Charlie weaving between tables and felt my spirits rise at the sight of his smiling face.
‘Hey, Chuck!’ I raised a palm in greeting and let him grab me in a gentle headlock and ruffle my hair with his knuckles. Charlie had always been my favourite cousin – I had loads on Dad’s side; his three brothers had twelve children between them – but I was closer to Charlie as we had been more like brother and sister growing up.
‘Heartbreak haircut?’ he enquired, when I’d laughingly wriggled free and was attempting to smooth my short, tousled layers.
‘You should have seen it seven months ago.’ I grimaced, recalling the crop I’d replaced my shoulder-length waves with after cancelling the wedding. I’d thought it would make me look ‘edgy’ and I’d start wearing cute dresses with cowboy boots instead of my usual jumpers and jeans, or appear ‘elfin’ like Emma Watson had. Instead, I’d looked like a choirboy, and had to wear more make-up because I kept being asked for ID. ‘I tried to spike it up a bit on top,’ I said, fluffing my too-short tresses. ‘Dad said it looked like I’d brushed it with a Brillo pad. I cried more about that than anything,’ I added, which wasn’t remotely true. I’d cried floods after walking in on Scott at the art gallery, his hand on his latest protégée’s buttock (again) and hearing him say it was nothing (again), and had cried until I nearly made myself ill when Gran passed away shortly after.
Charlie’s laugh was as warm and encompassing as I remembered – as if he was laughing with me, not at me. ‘It’s natural to want to reinvent yourself,’ he said. ‘After my last break-up, I grew my hair to my waist and dyed it pink.’
‘Idiot!’ I punched his arm, already feeling better than I had in ages. ‘I was a bit of a cliché for a while,’ I admitted. ‘I didn’t think I was the sort to react like that after a break-up.’
‘You’re only human, or so I’ve heard.’ Charlie paused as I unwound my scarf, perspiring a little in the coffee-scented heat. ‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ he said.
‘I expect my mum gave your mum all the gruesome details.’
‘You know what they’re like, especially when they get together.’ He gave a comical wince. ‘I’m sorry about your gran, too. I know you were really close.’
For a second, my eyes went swimmy and I had to keep them fixed on Charlie’s nose. He pulled out a chair at the only free table and said, ‘Sit down and I’ll bring you a drink.’
‘Where’s Dolly?’ Blinking, I unbuttoned my coat and looked around for my aunt. The last time I’d visited her presence had been obvious right away – she’d been on her hands and knees, her bottom in the air, attempting to coax a cat out from under one of the tables.
‘Upstairs.’ Charlie tilted his eyes to the ceiling, indicating the apartment above, where he and Dolly lived – or at least, where Charlie still lived. Dolly had moved into Frank’s cottage on the opposite side of the harbour after their wedding. ‘She’s hunting for a Christmas CD to play for the customers.’
I eyed the heavily-decorated tree and array of holly garlands, the pine-studded wreaths on the walls, and a row of red Christmas stockings with furry white tops hanging from the wooden counter. ‘What’s with all the decorations?’ I said. ‘I was expecting… not this.’
Charlie grinned. ‘Mum usually goes for a typically French theme – a tree with ribbons and candles and a star on top – but this year, she wanted to show the locals how the Brits do Christmas.’ His gaze trailed mine. ‘Looks like our living room in the nineties, but with a coffee machine, and customers and better flooring.’ He cast an admiring gaze at the solid, maple boards beneath our feet.
‘Looks like ours does now.’ As I glanced at the little girl I’d followed into the café, standing behind her mum and staring in awe at some reindeer-shaped cookies, I felt a pang for my own childhood, when I’d believed in Father Christmas long after my brother revealed the man who delivered our presents on Christmas Eve was Uncle Hank – Dad’s oldest brother, chosen for the task because he (literally) had the stomach for it. ‘I thought I was escaping all this.’
‘You always loved Christmas.’ Charlie looked as though he was remembering too, when our families got together and everything normal was suspended in a magical bubble for a week. ‘We thought you’d like it.’
‘Oh, I do,’ I said, feeling bad that I’d sounded less than enthusiastic. ‘I mean… I would normally love it, it’s just…’
‘I know, I know.’ Charlie rubbed a hand over his wavy, blondish hair. It had grown since I’d last seen him in person – Mum had lots of photos of him on her phone from Dolly’s wedding – and he was sporting a close-cut beard, like most men in their early thirties seemed to do. He looked more mature and I supposed I did too, with the new lines I was certain I’d developed over the past few months. Catching sight of my reflection these days wasn’t a pleasant experience. Mum had taken to carolling, ‘Turn that frown upside down, Nina!’ stretching her mouth into a grin with her hands until I couldn’t help smiling back.
‘We might have got a bit carried away,’ Charlie admitted, pointing to a clump of mistletoe by the door. ‘Mum didn’t want your memories of Christmas to be tainted by that… by whatsisface letting you down.’
‘That’s kind of her.’ I sloughed my coat off. ‘But letting me down sounds a bit mild. Like air from a balloon.’
‘Yes, after it’s been popped by a little prick.’
My snort of laughter caught me by surprise. ‘Good one, Chuck.’
‘Happy to oblige.’ His friendly brown eyes twinkled with good humour. ‘Now, coffee or hot chocolate?’
‘I’ll have coffee and pastry, please. Lots of pastry. Can I help?’
‘Absolutely not. Pain au chocolat?’
‘Thanks, at least seven.’
Still smiling, he returned to the counter and I dropped onto the padded chair seat, some of the tension seeping out of my body, despite being surrounded by at least half of all the Christmas decorations in the world. Was that an inflatable Santa in the corner, with a bulging sack slung over one shoulder? It was, an adorable little black dog in a knitted Nordic sweater sleeping beside it, the owner – an elderly man with ruddy cheeks under a white beard – engrossed in what looked like a newspaper crossword. I thought about taking another photo, then decided to text Mum that I’d arrived safely instead. I’d just pressed send when I heard a blast of ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ followed by another familiar voice, calling my (extremely full) name.
‘Nina Katrina Augustine Bailey!’
‘Hi, Dolly!’ I stood to receive my aunt’s hug, which was as heartfelt and strong as ever and squashed the breath from my lungs. ‘It’s really good to see you,’ I said, recognising her favourite Elizabeth Arden perfume beneath the vanilla-and-spice baking scents clinging to her clothes.
She pulled back and squinted as though bringing me into focus. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ she observed, which couldn’t be true with the amount of comfort eating I’d been doing, which meant hardly any of my old clothes – the clothes I’d worn when I was with Scott – fitted me any more. ‘I like your hair,’ she said. ‘You look like your mum when she was younger and it was still that nice chestnut colour.’
‘Not like the member of a terrible boy band?’
‘Silly.’ Her brown eyes were shiny with tears and she yanked me close again, rocking from side to side. ‘It’s been too long, lovely girl.’
‘Dolly, I’m sorry I didn’t make it to your wedding,’ I said, reluctantly breaking free. ‘I just… I couldn’t…’
‘No need to apologise.’ Gripping my hands, she tipped her head to one side, her apple-cheeked face wreathed in sympathy. ‘Your mum told me everything that happened. Someone else’s wedding was the last thing you needed, what with losing your gran on top.’
‘It was selfish,’ I said, pierced with guilt, not sure I deserved her forgiveness. ‘Frank looks lovely, though. Mum showed me the pictures.’
Dolly waggled her hand to show off a narrow gold band nestled on her wedding finger. ‘Never thought I’d wear one of these again,’ she said. ‘Did your mum tell you that Elle took the official photos?’ Her face – softer and rounder than Mum’s, but with the same crinkly-eyed smile and spiky lashes – melted into a smile. ‘Charlie’s girlfriend,’ she added, in a way that suggested she’d never tire of saying those two words – at least until she could start saying Charlie’s wife.
‘She might have mentioned it once or twice.’
‘Mum, I don’t think Nina needs to hear about my love life.’ As Charlie returned with two steaming mugs on a tray, and a plate of assorted pastries, I realised he had a shine about him I hadn’t noticed at first. He was in love.
‘I’m pleased for you,’ I said. Charlie deserved to be happy. He’d avoided serious relationships, ever since his long-term girlfriend fell for my brother, eight years ago, causing a family rift that had lasted until they broke up, eighteen months later. I could still recall the heart-wrenching sound of Charlie’s stifled sobs in the bathroom the night he’d caught Emma kissing Ben in the barn, drunk on champagne at Mum’s fiftieth birthday party. ‘Do I get to meet this amazing woman?’
He gave an endearingly bashful smile. ‘She’s in England at the moment, selling her house, but will be back for Christmas.’
‘She came to Chamillon to look for her birth mother and found she had an aunt. Then she and Charlie fell in love so she’s coming to live with him here.’ Dolly seemed ecstatic to have someone new to impart this information to, and I couldn’t help smiling at the look of mortified delight on Charlie’s face.
‘Mum,’ he said, shaking his head as he placed the tray on the table, laughing when I picked up a pain au chocolat and took a giant bite. Bing Crosby was singing ‘Let it Snow’ and although several customers looked baffled, most were jigging their shoulders, getting into the spirit, and my toes itched to join in.
‘They’re adorable together,’ Dolly continued, catching Charlie around the waist to give him a squeeze, her head only reaching his chest. Her hair was dark-blonde like his, but with a heavy fringe she’d had for as long as I could remember.
‘Can’t wait to see it for myself.’ I picked up my mug to take a long drink of sweet, milky coffee, feeling the warmth spread down inside my chest.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if wedding bells…’ Dolly tactfully caught her bottom lip between her teeth while Charlie sucked in a breath.
‘Don’t worry, we’re allowed to talk about weddings,’ I said briskly, but my appetite had dwindled. I put down the half-eaten pastry and almost-empty mug and pinned on a smile. ‘Would you mind if I went upstairs, Dolly? I’m pretty tired.’
‘Of course I don’t mind, love.’ She and Charlie exchanged a look. ‘I’ve put you in my old room, if that’s OK.’
‘Thank you.’ I gave her a grateful smile. ‘I’ll see myself up, shall I?’
‘Erm, hang on a minute.’ Charlie touched my elbow as I bent to scoop up my things.
‘What is it?’ Straightening, I caught a glimpse of panic in his eyes. ‘Chuck?’
‘It’s nothing, really.’ He scratched his ear, then ruffled his hair – a sure sign it was something. ‘Listen, Nina, I know you’re here to get away from everything, and that you probably don’t want to have to speak to anyone, apart from me and Mum.’
‘Spit it out,’ I said, unease swilling in my stomach. ‘What’s going on?’
Charlie swallowed hard and flicked a glance around the café, as if hoping for a distraction, but the staff appeared to have everything under control. ‘It’s just…’ He pressed his lips together, a plea in his eyes.
‘What?’
Dolly let out an exasperated huff. ‘He’s got a friend staying.’
I flipped my eyebrows up. ‘What sort of friend?’
‘Mum,’ growled Charlie, signalling her with his eyes.
Dolly ignored him. ‘A male one,’ she said, smoothing the little black apron fastened around her waist. ‘His name’s Ryan.’ She held my gaze, adding, in case I’d failed to understand, ‘He’s a man.’
‘So, this man… he’s here?’ I said, as though Dolly had announced that a serial killer was hiding out upstairs. ‘In your apartment?’
Charlie nodded, moving aside to let the young waiter deliver mugs of hot chocolate to a table of women, fighting to be heard over the music. ‘He’s an old mate from home,’ he said, and I instantly remembered him mentioning his best friend Ryan, who’d lived on the same street in Buckinghamshire when they were growing up. They used to be in and out of each other’s houses all the time and I’d been vaguely jealous that I didn’t have a best friend like that, because our home in Somerset was quite remote and none of the girls at my school were keen to hang out on a farm. ‘He was supposed to get married this year too—’
‘And you thought we’d have something in common?’
‘Maybe a bit,’ Charlie said, scrunching his nose. ‘He called off the wedding at his stag do—’
‘His stag do?’ I cut in. ‘Wasn’t that a bit late to be having second thoughts?’
‘It was… complicated.’ He tugged his earlobe, clearly not comfortable giving away any details. ‘He wanted to do what was best for the children, and—’
‘Children?’
Dolly rested a placatory hand on my arm. ‘Things have been difficult for Ryan and so Charlie invited him over on the spur of the moment.’
‘Well, that’s… nice,’ I said, wishing I’d known. I hadn’t envisioned a stranger staying here too, and the last thing I wanted was to make small talk with anyone.
‘Ryan wanted some time away too,’ said Charlie, as though reading my thoughts, which were probably plastered all over my face. ‘He’s got a writing deadline to meet, so he’ll be busy with that.’
‘I’ll be busy too.’ I thought of my blog, waiting patiently for me to post something on it. ‘We probably won’t even see each other.’
Dolly, distracted by the young girl Holly asking the man who owned the little black dog if he was older than Father Christmas, discreetly backed away.
‘If you do, just don’t ask him any personal questions, will you?’ Charlie sounded anxious. ‘He doesn’t like talking about what happened.’
‘You have my word.’ I wouldn’t have any trouble keeping that promise. ‘Obviously, I’ll be polite though,’ I said. . . .
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