Christmas Is All Around

Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

Why, precisely, do we have to spend the evening freezing and damp just to see Christmas lights?” Charlotte asked for at least the third time the following day as they jostled their way onto a crowded Tube car and a harried-looking Ava handed a scowling Alice off to Kit.

“Because it’s festive , Charlotte, Jesus Christ,” Ava said, sticking a pacifier unceremoniously into Alice’s mouth before she could unleash hell on the innocent commuters on the train. “Are you a robot?”

“No,” Charlotte said patiently, taking a seat opposite Kit and his parents and giving Alice a wave. The baby stared unsmilingly back. “Merely someone who is being forced to engage in more Christmas merriment in a week than she has in her entire life.”

Charlotte truly didn’t think this was much of an exaggeration; so far this week, in addition to her outings with Graham, she had baked and decorated Christmas cookies, been forced to watch the Christmas episode of every season of Friends , and stage-managed a photo shoot in front of the Christmas tree in which Alice had been forced into a baby-sized Santa hat, which had ended with predictably disastrous results. (Namely: Alice had cried so hard she vomited; Ava, with nothing more useful to hand, had shown admirably quick reflexes and caught said vomit in the Santa hat.) After skipping the family outings on both Wednesday and Friday, Charlotte had felt that it might be nice to put in an appearance this evening, but she was already thinking longingly of the empty flat that she could have had to herself for a few hours.

“It’s going to be fun ,” Ava said through gritted teeth. “Also, there’s a bar.”

Charlotte’s ears perked up at this intriguing tidbit of information, and she spent the rest of the brief Tube ride to Kew scrolling through photos on her phone and trying not to laugh hysterically at the series she had featuring Ava cradling the vomit-filled Santa hat in her hand while a horrified Kit looked on, a screaming Alice in his arms. Kit and Ava had been wearing matching Christmas sweaters that John had knitted them. It was, honestly, spectacular. Charlotte was considering framing one of them.

By the time they had arrived at Kew Gardens station and walked the ten minutes to the gardens themselves, Charlotte’s good mood was fading once again; it was cold, her socks weren’t warm enough, and it was pitch-black at five p.m., which made her want to cry. Once they entered through the gates and scanned their tickets, however, she had to admit that this was not the worst Christmas activity she’d ever experienced—and, indeed, compared to the rest of the week, it was probably a high.

“What a ringing endorsement,” Ava said, when Charlotte made an observation to this effect. “I’m so glad we’ve salvaged at least a fraction of your week from complete torture.”

“Ava,” Charlotte said, startled; had she been complaining that often? She decided that she was going to stop bitching about Christmas so much. Ava knew perfectly well how she felt about it and had enough on her plate at the moment without a ceaseless litany of complaints from Charlotte. Besides, Charlotte had managed to escape a lot of it—she’d been returning to that same coffee shop where she’d run into Graham to work, and as a result spent all of the morning and much of the afternoon each day away from Ava’s flat.

Half an hour into their visit—they were progressing slowly along a trail that wound through the gardens, thousands of lights illuminating the plants, shrubbery, and trees surrounding them—they paused to visit one of the food and drink vendors that had been set up along the path. Charlotte volunteered to stand in line, and she was so busy scrutinizing the menu that it took ninety seconds before she realized that Eloise Calloway was directly ahead of her in the queue.

No sooner had she made this realization than Eloise glanced behind her, then did a double take. “Charlotte!” The woman standing next to her turned curiously as Charlotte waved hello, and Eloise added, “This is Jess, my girlfriend. Jess, this is Charlotte—the woman we gave a lift back from the switch-on.”

“Hello,” Jess said, eyeing Charlotte in an interested sort of way that made Charlotte vaguely nervous. Jess was as short and curvy as Eloise was lanky, with curly brown hair and glasses.

“Hi,” Charlotte said, a bit warily; she didn’t miss the glance that Eloise and Jess briefly exchanged, and the slight frown on Jess’s face as she looked at her girlfriend.

“I’m so pleased Graham was able to convince you to do the Christmas commission for our shop,” Eloise said. A delicate pause. “And it was awfully friendly of him to offer to show you the houses himself.” She didn’t even attempt to disguise the intrigued gleam in her eyes.

“I needed a ride to Berkshire,” Charlotte explained, which was true enough, at least as an excuse for Wednesday’s trip. Friday’s outing to Primrose Hill—and the one planned for next week—were a bit more difficult to explain, so she didn’t try.

They had reached the front of the line, and after placing their orders, Eloise and Jess lingered nearby, offering Charlotte a hand with her unruly collection of cups.

“Thanks,” Charlotte said gratefully as they made their way back to where her family awaited. She quickly rattled off names as cups of wine were handed around, and then said, “This is Eloise and Jess.” She paused for a longer-than-socially-acceptable amount of time before adding reluctantly, “Eloise is Graham’s brother.”

“ Is she?” Ava asked, gleeful.

“I am ,” Eloise agreed.

“I’m Eloise’s girlfriend ,” Jess said, then shrugged when multiple brows were furrowed in her general direction. “I thought we were all talking in italics now. It seemed fun.”

“This is fascinating,” Ava said. “Is your brother here?”

“He is,” Eloise said, and Charlotte, who was about to take a sip of mulled wine, stilled for a moment, hoping no one noticed. “With his best friend, Leo. I’m sure they’re around here somewhere…” She turned, surveying the surrounding crowds—not a terribly easy task, given the darkness, as well as the fact that everyone was bundled up against the chilly night air, giving them a sort of uniform, lumpy appearance.

“I think we were just about to get going, actually,” Charlotte said hastily, but Simone—curse the inconveniently polite woman—frowned.

“Charlotte, dear, we wouldn’t want to leave without saying hello to your young man.”

“Oh my god,” Charlotte said, wishing that quicksand was as omnipresent as the media of her youth had led her to believe. She would pay someone to cause a sinkhole to spontaneously appear beneath her right this second. “He’s not my young man .”

“Not all that young, really,” Eloise said cheerfully. “Just turned thirty-three, in fact. One foot in the grave.”

Ava gave her a scathing look. “ I just turned thirty-three.”

“You wear it much better than my brother,” Eloise assured her.

This seemed to mollify Ava. “It’s the Botox.”

This, at least, was sufficient to distract Charlotte from her current woes. “Since when do you get Botox?” she asked her sister.

Ava sniffed. “Since I spent my twenties acting with my eyebrows.” She paused, considering. “And since I had a baby. I may have gray hairs and spit-up on every single sweater, but at least my forehead is smooth.”

Before Charlotte could respond, Ava brightened, and waved at someone over Charlotte’s shoulder. “Graham! Hello!”

Charlotte turned slowly to find that Graham was, indeed, standing a few feet behind her, holding a paper cup of his own and watching her with an entirely inscrutable expression. “Hello,” she said, pleased to note that she sounded cool and collected, despite the presence of her insane family, which felt like a victory.

“Lane,” he said, nodding at her. He tilted his head sideways toward the lanky redhead standing directly next to him, who was wearing possibly the most well-tailored coat Charlotte had ever seen on a man. “This is Leo.”

“Charlotte,” she said, extending a hand toward him. He shook it firmly with a smile, eyeing her with frank curiosity. His eyes shot over her shoulder, however, and all his interest in Charlotte immediately faded. “Ava Lane?”

Ava blinked. “Yes?”

“Holy shit. I saw you as Lady Macbeth three years ago, and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life,” he said, reaching over to shake her hand reverently. “You were incredible .”

Ava, who loved nothing more than meeting a fan—something that happened a surprising amount, considering she acted exclusively on the stage, and had never once appeared on television or in a film— beamed at him. “Thank you,” she said, tossing her hair. “It was one of my favorite roles.”

Graham snapped his fingers. “I knew you looked familiar!” He shook his head. “Leo dragged me to that show.”

Leo regarded his friend with disgust. “You mean to say you’ve met Ava Lane multiple times and not recognized her? You are useless.”

Graham shrugged, unrepentant. “It’s hard to see their faces onstage, you know? We were sitting quite far back.”

“I told you that we needed to book tickets early to get good seats—”

“Yes, yes,” Graham said wearily; this was clearly an argument they’d had a number of times—it had the worn, slightly affectionate quality of well-trod conversational territory.

“Shall we keep walking?” Kit asked now, stamping his feet. “Bit cold out, and all.”

There was a general murmur of agreement, and the group split into pairs and groups of three, introductions being made and chitchat being commenced as they continued their progress down the trail. Charlotte, somehow—through circumstances that she very much doubted were coincidental—ended up walking alongside Graham, slightly behind the rest of the group. She drained her mulled wine, and Graham neatly plucked her empty cup from her hand, stacking his inside it.

“You’re here under duress, I assume?” he said conversationally.

“There are only so many family outings I can skip without seeming like an asshole,” she agreed gloomily. “What about you?” she added, curious. “Did your sister bully you into coming?”

“No.” Was it her imagination, or had his cheeks gone slightly pinker? “I genuinely love Christmas at Kew. We used to come every year as a family.”

“That’s…” “Adorable” was the first word that sprang to mind, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell him that .

“Nice,” she finished weakly, and he shot her a sideways glance, as if he thought she was being sarcastic. “I mean it!” she protested, raising her hands. “Not everything I say to you is an insult!”

“What a charming change,” he murmured, pausing momentarily to toss their cups in a trash can. He turned back to her. “Anyway, my sisters and I still come every year—Lizzie’s ill tonight, or she’d be here, too—and Leo tags along because we’ve been friends since we were at school and he’s practically a member of the family at this point. For better or for worse,” he added dryly.

“He could probably tell me absolutely fascinating stories about you,” she mused. “And your sordid past.”

“Hardly sordid.”

“Oh, I bet there’s some romantic history there that you’d rather he didn’t shout in the village square.”

“You do realize that we live in the twenty-first century and not the village in Beauty and the Beast , don’t you?”

“Of all the references you could come up with, that’s the one you choose?”

“I may have watched it a few times. Lizzie was obsessed with it when she was about four, and she was going through a phase at the time where she wanted me to sit with her whenever I was home.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“And how many times would you say you and Lizzie watched Beauty and the Beast ?” she asked, already highly amused.

“Er. A few,” he hedged.

“Give me a ballpark figure. Five?”

“More.”

“Fifty?”

He looked a bit harried. “Possibly.”

“Oh my god.” She couldn’t help it: the mental image of an adolescent Graham sitting next to his preschool-aged sister, patiently watching Beauty and the Beast for the thirtieth time, was one of the most adorable things she’d ever contemplated. “You are nice.”

Now he looked a bit indignant. “I told you.”

She shrugged, unrepentant. “I think it’s good for you, that I didn’t immediately fall under your spell. Keeps you humble.”

“Believe me, I’m feeling plenty humble these days,” he said, and there was a wry, almost unhappy note to his voice as he said it.

“Does this have to do with your roof woes?” she asked, which was definitely a sentence she had never uttered in her life.

“Among other things,” he said, sounding tired. There was a pause then, and they walked in silence for a few moments. “We need an injection of cash—just enough to ensure that every time the roof leaks it’s not some mad scramble to figure out how to pay for it,” he said at last. “My dad inherited some family money, made quite a large salary, but we’ve nearly spent through it, and we need to work out something else. I had a meeting this week with a potential investor—someone I worked with several years ago. His idea is to convert the house into some sort of Christmas, Truly –themed holiday let—allow people to come stay at the holidays, plan a whole itinerary around the film for them. My mum and sisters want to consider it, since it would only be for a few weeks a year, but I just… can’t.” His voice was heavy as he spoke, the distaste evident in each word. “I spent my entire career, up until now, helping people make calculated, logical business decisions, but it turns out it’s much harder to be cool and logical when it’s your family business you’re trying to save. And with my mum and sisters and I not seeing eye to eye on things, it’s… difficult.”

“I can imagine,” she said, and this was true; she considered herself something of an expert on not seeing eye to eye with one’s family. Him speaking of his family, however, made her realize a conspicuous absence this evening. “Does your mom not come with you guys to this anymore?” She gestured around at the lit-up topiaries all around them to encompass the “this” that she meant.

He hesitated—only slightly, but just long enough that she noticed. “No. It makes her sad, I think, since… since my dad died.” She noticed how soft his voice went, whenever he mentioned his dad’s death. Wondered how often he spoke about it—and, if it was as rare as she suspected, why he’d spoken of it to her , of all people. “The holidays are difficult for her these days.”

“Of course,” she said softly, thinking about her own parents—imperfect, frustrating, not at all the sort of parents she would have designed for herself, had she been given the choice… and yet, still, two people who would leave an absolutely gaping hole in her life, if they were suddenly gone.

“That’s why I quit my job,” he said abruptly, and she glanced at him in surprise; she’d thought he’d clear his throat, change the subject, perhaps try to catch up to Leo or Eloise or someone else in their group, something that would allow him to change the subject. He didn’t seem the sort to bare his soul to a virtual stranger—which, ultimately, was what Charlotte was. Even if, increasingly, it didn’t feel that way.

“My dad didn’t like to let any of the kids help out with the business side of things at Eden Priory—he always told me that he could handle it, whenever I offered to help, once I left uni and started working in financial accounting,” he continued. Frustration laced his voice, faint but noticeable. “But when my dad died, I got a proper look at the books at Eden Priory and realized that the finances were a mess—my parents had been taking on debt for years, not enormous amounts, but enough each year that it was starting to accrue. I have some savings, so I left my job six months ago, and I’ve been trying to figure out what needs to be done—and of course, the damn roof is just another thing to add to the list.”

Charlotte, who had watched every season of Downton Abbey with Padma, vaguely understood that owning a house as large and historic as Eden Priory was not quite as glamorous as it might seem these days. “Old houses like Eden Priory are expensive to maintain, right?”

His nod was grim. “Right. The heating costs alone are… exorbitant. When we’re not hosting an event, we keep a lot of the public rooms closed off so we don’t have to heat the entire house.”

“This is like something out of a movie.”

“Considerably less romantic, I promise.” She glanced at him in time to see the wry twist of his mouth. “We generate income for the property by giving tours of the house a couple of days a week, and renting it out for events sometimes, but I think we could lean into the Christmas thing to earn more. We could do more events—give candlelit tours, get historical reenactors to illustrate how Calloway and his family would have celebrated the season, that sort of thing. We’re not that far from London, so I think we could draw in people from the city, tourists… we’ve been doing the lights switch-on for years, but it’s just one day, and if we could keep visitors coming all season long, we could eventually make enough money in December to provide a cushion for the rest of the year.”

“And your family doesn’t agree?” she asked curiously.

“Not entirely—they like the Christmas programming, but Eloise and Lizzie both think that we should try to market ourselves for Christmas, Truly tourism—center all the decorations, all the exhibits at the house, around the film. Ignore the fact that a world-famous artist once lived there, that that’s what the house, our family , is known for, and just focus all our attention on a mediocre Christmas film, try to attract people who would be interested in that .” He sighed heavily, a frustrated sound, and Charlotte, who was looking at the path ahead and the lights surrounding them, sneaked a glance at him, noted the lines at the corners of his eyes, the grim set of his mouth.

“At the end of the day, it’s still our family home, and it has been for generations, and I don’t want that to change. My dad had very specific ideas about how the house should be run, and I don’t think that we should ignore those just because—” Here he broke off abruptly, and took a long, slow breath. “Just because he’s gone,” he finished quietly, and Charlotte turned away again, giving him a moment to collect himself. She didn’t think she’d imagined the emphasis on the word “I,” and guessed that this was where the disagreement with his family came in.

Much as she despised discussing her cinematic history, there seemed like an obvious solution to this problem. “Being used as a set for Christmas, Truly —that must have paid well?”

“I’ve not looked at the books that far back, but I believe so, yes.” There was something almost expectant in his tone. He clearly knew where she was going with this. “But my father hated that film, and swore he’d never let the house be used as a filming location ever again.”

Charlotte blinked. “I mean, I hate that movie, too, but that seems extreme.”

He shrugged, tension radiating off his body, subtle but completely noticeable to Charlotte. “He thought it was embarrassing—that we were betraying his great-grandfather’s legacy by allowing the house to be used for a Christmas film. I think money was particularly tight when he agreed to it, but he regretted it, later.” He hesitated, then added, “Forever.”

Charlotte glanced at him—at the careful way he looked directly ahead, not meeting her eyes; at the tightness of his jaw, the stiffness of his posture—and, despite the warning signs that were present, advising her otherwise, she said, reckless, “But your father isn’t here anymore.”

“No,” he said sharply, not breaking his stride. “He’s not. And the least I can do is ensure that we don’t turn Eden Priory into something he would have hated, all in the name of saving it.”

He increased his pace then, subtly but enough that Charlotte noticed, hurrying to keep up, and within a few moments they had rejoined Leo and Eloise, who seemed to be flirting cheerfully—merely to annoy Graham, Charlotte suspected, since Jess was walking nearby and looked entirely unconcerned. Graham made an effort to join the conversation, punching Leo in the shoulder when he made a particularly suggestive remark, and if anyone else noticed that his laughter had a slightly forced quality to it, they didn’t mention it.

Neither did Charlotte. But she walked next to him, quiet, listening.

And thinking.