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She found the bread, but there wasn’t a toaster and he wasn’t around. She was still standing there with the bread in her hand and contemplating going to find him when Sebastian came back into the room.
She waved the bread at him. ‘I can’t find the toaster.’
‘Ah. There’s a mesh gadget for that in the slot on the left of the Aga. Just stick the bread in it and put it under the cover, and then flip it. It only takes a few seconds each side so keep an eye on it.’
He pulled the thing out and handed it to her, then headed into the boot room.
‘I’m just going to check the lane,’ he said. ‘See how bad it is.’
‘Really? It’s almost dark still.’
Except it wasn’t, of course, because of the eerie light from the snow and the fact that she’d dallied around for so long getting ready.
Even though she’d resisted putting make-up on...
The door shut behind him, and she put the bread between the two hinged flaps of mesh, laid it on the hotplate and put the cover down. Delicious smells wafted out in moments, and she flipped it and gave it another moment and then buttered the toast while the kettle boiled again.
It smelt so good she made a pile of it, unable to resist sinking her teeth into a bit while she worked, and all the time she wondered how he was getting on and what he’d found at the end of the drive.
* * *
Sheesh.
He stood inside the gates—well inside, as he couldn’t actually get near them without a shovel and a few hours of solid graft—and stared in shock at the lane beyond.
He was already up to his knees in snow and it was getting deeper with every step. Beyond the gates, the snow reached to head height at either side of the entrance. It only dipped opposite the gates because the snow had had somewhere to go.
Straight across the entrance, through the bars of the gates and right up the drive.
There was at least a foot everywhere, but it wasn’t smooth and level. It was sculpted, like sand in the Sahara, swirls and peaks and troughs in shades of brilliant white and cold bluey-purple in the light of dawn.
Beautiful, fascinating—and deadly. If he hadn’t been here they could have been trapped inside the car, buried alive in the snow, slowly and gradually suffocating in the freezing temperatures—
He shut off that line of thought and concentrated on the here and now. It wasn’t good.
In a freewheeling part of his brain that he hadn’t even consulted he realised Georgie wouldn’t even be able to get away if they landed a helicopter in the field opposite, despite the fact that it was virtually bare of snow now, because the snow in the lane was so deep they’d never cross it. Not that he’d really contemplated hiring a helicopter on Christmas Eve to take her and Josh away and bring his family back, but even if he had...
And the snow wasn’t going anywhere soon. Although the wind had finally died away, it was cold. Bitterly, desperately cold, the change from the previous few days sudden and shocking, and he shrugged down inside his coat with a humourless laugh.
He hadn’t needed a cold shower. He should have just come out here. Naked. That might have done the trick. The shower certainly hadn’t.
He gave the lane one last disparaging look and waded back to the house, walking in to the smell of toast and the sound of laughter, and for a moment he felt his heart lift.
Crazy. Stupid. She left you.
But even so, he’d still have her there for another twenty-four hours at least. More, probably, and nobody was going to worry about this tiny little lane given that it was as bad elsewhere in the county as it was here. He’d already known it, he’d seen it on the news, and only wild optimism had sent him down the drive to check...
He swept the snow which had fallen in through the doorway back out into the courtyard, shut the door, stamped the snow off his boots and put them on the rack, hung up his coat and went back into the kitchen.
She’d made a pot of tea and was sitting at the table with Josh and a pile of hot buttered toast, playing peeka-bo behind a slice of toast. Josh, his face smeared with butter and crumbs, was giggling deliciously and Sebastian felt his heart squeeze.
‘Smells good,’ he said, rubbing his hands together to warm them, and Georgie looked up and searched his face.
‘And the answer is?’ she asked, the laughter fading in her eyes, and he shook his head.
‘We’re going nowhere. The lane’s full to head height.’
‘Head height?’ she gasped, and her eyes looked shocked. As if she was imagining being out there with Josh, trapped in the car, seeing what he’d seen in his mind’s eye?
‘Hey, it’s all right, I was here,’ he said softly, reading her mind, and she looked up at him again and their eyes locked.
‘But what if...?’
‘No what ifs. Don’t go there, George.’ He certainly wasn’t going there again. Once was enough. He took a mug out of the cupboard. ‘Any more tea in the pot?’
‘Mmm. And I made you more toast. I wasn’t sure if you’d want it but I made it anyway because we interrupted your breakfast.’
He dropped into the chair opposite her and reached for a slice. ‘That’s fine, I could do with more,’ he said, and sank his teeth into it, suddenly hungry.
Hungry for all sorts of things.
Her warmth. Her laughter.
Her little boy, so like her, so mischievous and delightful, a part of her. What did that feel like? To have someone to love, someone who was part of you?
He looked quickly away and turned on the television to give himself something to do.
So much for his defences. They were in tatters, strewn around him like an old timber barn after a hurricane, and she and her child had walked straight through them as if they’d never even existed.
Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d just never been tested before, but they were being tested now, with bells on.
Jingle bells.
She was watching the screen, looking at the pictures of snow sent in by viewers of the local breakfast news programme. Not just them, then—not by a long way. And tomorrow was Christmas Day.
‘There’s no chance we’ll be out of here by tomorrow, is there?’ she said flatly.
Had she read his mind? Probably, as easily as he’d read hers. They’d always been good at it. Except at the end—
‘I think it’s very unlikely. I’m sorry. Your parents will be disappointed.’ She nodded. Josh was playing on the floor now, driving a piece of toast around like a car, and she met Sebastian’s eyes, worrying her lip again in that way of hers.
‘They will be disappointed,’ she said softly, lowering her voice. ‘So will yours. Was it just them coming?’
‘No. My brothers were coming up from London—well, Surrey. I expect they’ll spend it together now. They live pretty close to each other. What about your family? Was it just your parents, or was Jack going to be there?’
‘No, just them. Jack’s got his own family now.’ She sighed. ‘I really wanted this Christmas to be special. Josh was too small to understand his first Christmas, and last year—well, it just didn’t happen really, without David. It seemed wrong, and he was still too young to understand it, so we just spent it very quietly with my parents. But this year...’
‘This year he’s old enough, and you’ve moved on,’ he murmured.
She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I have, and he is, and it was going to be so lovely—’
She broke off and swallowed her disappointment, and he couldn’t leave her like that. Her, or a little boy who’d lost his father. He had no idea how his own first Christmases had been spent. He didn’t even know the religion of his real parents, their nationality, their age. Nothing. Just a void. And he couldn’t bear the thought that Josh would have a void where Christmas should have been. He’d make sure that didn’t happen if it killed him.
He took a deep breath, buried his misgivings and smiled at her.
‘Well, we’ll just have to make sure it is lovely,’ he said. ‘Heaven knows we’ve got enough food, and I’ve got all the decorations and there’s a tree outside waiting to come in, if I can find it under the snow. And we can’t do anything else. My family aren’t going to be able to get here, and you can’t get away, so why don’t we just go for it? Give Josh a Christmas to remember.’
She stared at him, taking in his words, registering just what it must be costing him to make the offer—although she might have known he would. The old Sebastian, the one she loved, wouldn’t have hesitated. The new one—well, she was beginning to realise she didn’t know him at all, but he might not be as bad as she’d feared.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said softly, her eyes welling. ‘Thank you. I know you don’t—’
He lifted his hand, silencing her. ‘Let it go, George. Let’s just take it at face value, have a bit of fun and give Josh his Christmas—no strings, no harking on the past, no recriminations. And no repeats of last night. Can we do that?’
Could they? She wasn’t sure, but she wanted to try.
She felt the tears welling faster now, and pressed her lips together as she smiled at him. ‘Yes. Yes, we can do that. Thank you.’
He returned her smile a little wryly, and got to his feet.
‘So—want to help me decorate the house?’
* * *
He gave them a guided tour of the ground floor.
Josh loved it. There were so many places to hide, so much to explore. And Georgie—well, she loved it in a different way, a bitter-sweet, this-could-have-been-ours way that made her heart ache.
No what ifs.
His words echoed in her head, and she put the thoughts out of her mind and concentrated on what he’d done to the house.
A lot.
‘Oh, wow!’ she said, laughing in surprise when they went into the dining room. ‘That’s a pretty big table.’
‘It extends, too,’ he said, his mouth twitching, and she felt her eyes widen.
‘Really?’ She went to the far end and sat down. ‘Can you hear me?’
His smile was wry with old memories. ‘Just about. Probably not with the extra leaves in.’
Their eyes held for just a beat too long, and she felt a whole whirlpool of emotions swirling in her chest. She got up and came towards him, running her fingers slowly over the gleaming wood, avoiding his eyes while she got herself back under control. ‘Did you get the grand piano for the music room?’ she asked lightly, and looked up in time to catch a flicker of something strange in his eyes.
He shook his head. ‘No. It seemed pointless. I don’t play the piano, but I do listen to music in there sometimes. It’s my study now. I prefer it to the library, the view’s better. Come and see the sitting room—the old one, in the Tudor part. I think it’s probably where I’ll put the tree.’
‘Not in the hall?’
He shrugged. ‘What’s the point? I’m never in the hall, I just walk through it. And I thought, over Christmas, we might want to sit somewhere warm and cosy and less like a barn than the drawing room. It’s huge, if you remember, and a bit unfriendly. It’ll be better in the summer.’
She nodded. It was huge, but it was stunningly elegant and ornate in a restrained way, and it had a long sash window that slid up inside the wall so you could walk out through it onto the terrace. She’d loved it, but she could see his point.
In winter, the little sitting room—which was still twice the size of her main reception room—would be much more appropriate. Next to the kitchen in the same area of the house, it was beamed and somehow much less formal than its Georgian counterpart, and it had a ginormous inglenook fireplace big enough to stand inside.
He pushed open the door, and she went in and sighed longingly.
‘Oh, this looks really cosy.’ Huge, squashy sofas bracketed the inglenook, and there were logs in the old iron dog grate waiting to be lit. She could just imagine curling up there in the corner of a sofa with a book, with a dog leaning on her knees and Josh driving his toy cars around on the floor.
Dreaming again.
‘Where are you going to put the tree?’
‘In this corner. There’s a power socket for the lights, and it’s out of the way.’
‘How big is it?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Eight foot?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Will it fit under the beams?’
He grinned and shrugged again. ‘Probably. I can always trim it. Only one way to find out.’
‘Finding out’ turned out to be a bit of a mission. It was in the courtyard, close to the coach house, but the snow was deep except by the back door where it had all fallen in earlier.
‘A shovel would make this a lot easier,’ he said, standing at the door in his boots and eyeing the snow with disgust.
‘I thought you had a shovel in the car?’
‘I do. Look at the coach-house.’
‘Ah.’ Snow was banked up in front of the doors, and digging it out without a shovel wasn’t really practical.
‘I should have thought of that last night,’ he said, but of course he hadn’t, and nor had she, because they’d had quite enough to think about already.
She didn’t want to think about last night.
She picked Josh up and stood in the kitchen watching through the window as Sebastian ploughed his way through the snow to a huge, shapeless lump in the corner by the coach-house door. He plunged his arm into the snow, grabbed something and shook, and a conical shape gradually appeared.
‘Mummy, what ’Bastian doing?’
‘He’s finding the Christmas tree. It’s buried under the snow—look, there it is!’
‘Oh..!’ He watched, spellbound, as the tree emerged from its snowy shroud and Sebastian hauled it out of the corner and hoisted it into the air.
She went to the boot room door.
‘Can I help you get it in?’
‘I doubt it. I should stand back, this is going to be wet and messy.’
