Home for Christmas

Chapter 7

‘So tell me, Bella, how are you finding life with that handsome young man you’ve got shacked up with you?’

It was just as well I’d put the teapot down before Gladys – a resident in the care home, The Laurels, where I had a meeting that Sunday morning – asked me that, otherwise we could have had a major scalding incident on our hands.

‘How do you know about him?’ I asked her, noting the twinkle in her eyes. ‘And we’re not shacked up ,’ I hastily corrected her. ‘He’s a regular guest. He’s staying downstairs, and I’m still upstairs in the apartment.’ I didn’t add that he was a total pain and that practically every conversation I’d so far had with him had put me in a bad mood.

Gladys sucked in a breath.

‘I can’t imagine you like that arrangement much,’ she said astutely, hopefully referring to the time of year I was living in the apartment as opposed to how I felt about Jude and I living apart rather than being ‘shacked up’ together. ‘You’re normally well settled back into the house by now, aren’t you, my love?’

‘Yes,’ I said as I carefully set down a cup and saucer on the table next to her and gently lifted Tink off her lap. ‘And I almost was settled again, but then…’

‘Catherine Connelly asked you to do the family a favour, and of course you obliged.’

‘I did,’ I said, nodding, confirming what she’d said. ‘And after everything she and the family have done for me over the years, it was the least I could do.’

Gladys smiled at that.

‘Are there really no secrets in Wynbridge?’ I sighed, as I realized she already knew the whole of it.

‘Not a single one!’ said Stanley, winking. He was in the seat next to Gladys, patiently waiting for his turn to fuss my obliging canine companion.

‘I suppose I should know that by now, shouldn’t I?’ I said with a wry smile as I lowered Tink onto his blanket-covered lap. ‘Is she too heavy for you, Stanley?’

‘Not for a few minutes,’ he said, kissing the top of her beautifully dome-shaped head. ‘I’ll tell you when she gets too much.’

This was always the way at The Laurels. I invariably popped in to do one thing, like coming in today for the meeting about the Christmas fair that was happening the following Saturday, and ended up doing something completely different.

Today it was tea duty and biscuit monitoring. The one thing that never changed, though, was Tink’s role. She always accompanied me, and everyone loved to make a fuss of her. She was such a placid little thing. I was still struggling to imagine her yapping for an entire afternoon…

‘Penny for them,’ said Gladys, looking eagerly at me.

‘Hmm?’

‘You’re frowning, Bella. What is it, love? Are you wondering how I found out your lodger is a handsome young man?’

‘No,’ I told her, neatly changing the subject, ‘I’m wondering who swiped the last of the custard creams.’

At the Christmas Fair, I usually helped sell tickets for the raffle and topped up the stallholders’ drinks, but as I was going to be a stallholder myself this time, I needed to know about the set-up details and where my table would be. It was going to be my first foray into selling directly to the public, and I had expected to feel nervous about it, but given how well the workshops had been received, I was now rather looking forward to it.

‘Would it be an issue if I ended up having to bring Tink with me?’ I asked Mandy, the care home manager. Tink’s tail swished across my feet in response to hearing her name. ‘I probably won’t, but I wanted to check, just in case.’

Any other year, I would have left her behind, because as a volunteer helper I wouldn’t have been away all day, but this time around I was going to be out of the apartment for far longer – and on top of that, there was the more pressing concern that she might bark again and further disturb Jude if I left her behind.

‘No issue at all,’ Mandy told me. ‘You could put her basket behind your stall.’

‘Not that she’ll stay in it,’ added Helen, her deputy. ‘She’ll doubtless be barely over the threshold before someone smuggles her into their room.’

‘Hmm,’ Mandy said thoughtfully. ‘Given that it’s going to be so busy, perhaps she’d be better off in my office and you can pop in and out to check on her, Bella. At least that way you’ll know exactly where she is.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure Tink would be keen to stay put once she realized her octogenarian friends were in the vicinity.

Neither leaving her at the apartment nor bringing her with me felt like the right option, but I’d have to make a decision about what would be best for her soon.

‘Right,’ said Helen, checking her clipboard once we’d worked through the lengthy itinerary, ‘I think that’s it. Unless anyone has any further questions?’

There were a few, but it wasn’t much longer before I headed off. It was a chilly walk home, and I was just about to turn into the top of my road when I heard heavy footfalls behind me. I turned around and was astonished to see Jude jogging along the pavement. Tink wagged her tail and pulled at her lead to reach him.

‘You wouldn’t be so keen to see him if you knew what he’d said about you yesterday,’ I told her before he came within earshot.

‘Hey,’ Jude puffed, coming to a stop when he reached us and fiddling about with a device on his wrist.

‘Don’t stop on our account,’ I said. ‘You carry on.’

‘It’s fine,’ he said, quickly catching his breath and falling into step with us. ‘I’m done for today.’

‘I didn’t have you down as a runner.’

He must have been pretty fit, though, given how quickly he’d recovered from the exertion. That said, for all I knew he might have only run around the corner.

‘I’m not keen on it,’ he confessed, wrinkling his nose. ‘In fact, I hate it.’

‘So why do you do it, then?’

‘Heart health,’ he said, grimacing, then taking a deep breath and huffing it out again as he wiped his hand across his forehead. ‘Looking after my bones. Building muscle.’

Perhaps a bit further than around the corner, then.

‘Couldn’t you find something you love that will achieve all that?’ I asked.

‘Maybe.’ He shrugged.

‘Surely life’s too short to spend time doing things you don’t enjoy, isn’t it?’

‘What do you do, then?’ he asked. ‘To keep yourself fit, I mean.’

‘Pilates, meditation, dog walking,’ I reeled off.

‘Do any of those kick your heart rate up a gear, though?’ he asked.

‘The dog walking does,’ I laughed. ‘You should see Tink when she hits her stride.’ I immediately regretted drawing attention to her given that he wasn’t a fan. ‘Are you suggesting I could be in better shape?’

I instantly regretted asking that, too. Who knew how someone with Jude’s penchant for plain talking was likely to respond.

‘Absolutely not,’ he gulped. ‘Your shape looks great to me.’

‘Oh!’ I gasped.

‘I mean, you look fit,’ he stammered, and I bit my lip. ‘Fit and healthy.’ He took another breath. ‘You look fine,’ he said more seriously.

Having so easily caught his breath before, he sounded quite out of puff again.

‘Here we are, then,’ I said, turning into the drive and feeling grateful that the glacial temperature could account for the colour of my face.

I stole a quick glance at Jude, and he looked rather rosy, too. But then he had been running before he made such a hash of what he’d just said, hadn’t he?

He gathered his wits enough to ask, ‘Had you been out anywhere nice?’ while he fumbled for his key.

‘Just to The Laurels,’ I told him. ‘It’s a care home up the road. I’m having a stall at their Christmas fair next weekend, and it was the meeting this morning to go through all the details.’

He shot a glance down at Tink.

‘Did you have to take your dog—’

‘Tink,’ I interrupted, eager to remind him of her name, even though I was sure he hadn’t really forgotten it.

‘Did you have to take Tink because of what I said about her barking yesterday?’ he asked. ‘You didn’t have to leave her tied up outside, did you?’

I was too appalled that he would even consider I might have done to notice that he had sounded concerned when he asked the question.

‘Of course I didn’t leave her outside,’ I snapped. ‘She’s welcome at The Laurels,’ I added rather sniffily. ‘In fact, I always take her along when I volunteer there, so the residents can spend some time with her. It’s good for their wellbeing, and she’s so well behaved, she’s never any bother.’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘I’ll see you around, Jude,’ I said, then strode off with Tink at my heels.

It wasn’t until I’d slammed the door behind me and had stomped up the stairs that I realized that I’d just behaved in exactly the same way that I was always so cross with Jude about. He’d broken off his run to talk to me and sounded genuinely concerned that Tink had had to come with me to the care home because of what he’d said. If that had been an olive branch, I’d as good as wrenched it out of his grasp and broken it over my knee.

Being mostly holed up in the apartment for the rest of that week creating multiple fairies to sell over Christmas and making great progress with the two that Molly had commissioned, I neither saw nor heard Jude. I heard from Holly and Jeanie, though, and promised I would join them at Cuckoo Cottage on Friday for a catch-up and a dog walk.

I could easily have spent the time I would be with them carrying on with my work and getting a lot more finished as a result, but I’d already missed our last brunch of the year and didn’t want to make a habit out of ducking out.

I knew life was all about striking the right balance; when you worked alone and from home, it was even more important to get out, meet friends and go places. Being self-employed meant I could set my own schedule, and I reminded myself that it was vital to my mental health and wellbeing that I didn’t become so absorbed in my work, as much as I loved it, that I forgot to ring-fence time for anything else.

And I hadn’t forgotten that Holly had gone out of her way to attend one of my workshops and that both she and Jeanie had helped out with looking after Tink, too. Friendships required give and take, and I had no intention of being a taker.

Unfortunately, however, my heart sank as I opened the apartment door, ready to lug down a few boxes and then head out to see my friends, because I could hear Jude moving about in the hall below. I supposed I could have waited it out, but really, given that I was the one who had ended our last conversation so abruptly, it was down to me to try to make amends.

‘Hey,’ I said, when I turned the corner and he came into sight.

He was manhandling a couple of boxes of his own, and the space I’d left for him to move in did suddenly seem ridiculously tight.

‘Hey,’ he said back, sounding rather less friendly than me. ‘We have to do something about all of this, Bella. It’s getting out of control. I’m sure there are more here now than there were before.’

‘Well, of course there are,’ I said, dumping the boxes I’d carried down at my feet. ‘These extra boxes are full of stock for me to sell over Christmas.’

‘And you’re really sure there’s nowhere else you can put them?’ he asked, also putting his boxes down.

I gritted my teeth.

‘Completely sure,’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘Unless you’re willing for me to put them in the house.’

‘But then they’d be even more in my way,’ he remarked. ‘And you’d have to keep coming in and out to get them.’

That was it. I didn’t care how beguiling his blue eyes were or how long his lashes. He was sounding like a whiny brat, and I’d had enough of it.

‘In that case,’ I vented, ‘they’ll have to stay where they are, and I’d really appreciate it if you could bear in mind that ordinarily at this time of year, I wouldn’t be letting the house out to guests. I’d be living in it myself and I’d have the run of the entire place, and therefore space, or the lack of it, wouldn’t be an issue for anyone.’

I stopped to draw breath and wondered how he was going to respond to that. Had it been me, I would have bent over backwards to make sure my presence wasn’t an inconvenience to the person who’d so kindly put themselves so far out.

‘You know,’ he said, looking thoughtful, ‘I met a fella earlier this year with the right idea. He lived in a horsebox, and his entire worldly goods were contained within it. Can you imagine reducing your possessions to fit into a space of that size, Bella?’

‘Given my line of work,’ I snapped, ‘definitely not.’

‘And your love of cushions, throws and trinkets,’ he carried on doggedly, not picking up on my upset at all.

I didn’t think I’d ever come across someone so insensitive.

‘I like my house to be a home,’ I said with dignity. ‘Not an empty, soulless box.’

‘Or an empty, soulless horsebox,’ he said, looking around again and sounding pleased with his wordplay. ‘I suppose we’ll just have to manage, won’t we?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose we will.’

I was still seething when I picked Jeanie up from the pub and set off for Holly’s place.

‘Hormone alert!’ Jeanie quipped to Holly as she climbed out of my car and scooped Jasper up. ‘Bella’s on a mad one.’

‘Oh, you poor love,’ Holly sympathized. ‘I’ve got one of those huge slabs of Galaxy hidden away for exactly this sort of emergency. Let’s all have a few squares with our coffee.’

‘It’s not hormones,’ I tutted, releasing Tink from her harness and reaching behind my seat for my welly bag. ‘Though I won’t say no to the chocolate.’

‘What is it, then?’ Jeanie asked, putting a squirming Jasper back down so he and Tink could caper about.

‘Nothing,’ I said, shrugging.

‘Oh my god, it’s Jude,’ she laughed. ‘That man’s getting to you, isn’t he?’

‘About as much as Tim’s getting to you, Jeanie,’ Holly said, coming to my rescue and making me wonder if I’d missed something. ‘And Bear’s getting to me, too.’

‘I thought Bear was perfect.’ Jeanie frowned.

‘Oh, he is, for the most part,’ Holly said, shaking her head, ‘but a wheel is literally about to fall off his wagon, so he’s got to get it fixed before he drives up. And with a stop to see his mum on the way, he reckons he won’t be back until late on Saturday now.’

‘But at least when he does get here, you’ll have him until spring,’ I reminded her.

That wouldn’t have suited me, but I knew it did her.

‘Exactly.’ Jeanie grinned. ‘Whereas Jude will be gone in…’

‘Another seventeen days,’ I said, checking each one off by counting them up on my fingers.

‘I bet she’s got a countdown on her phone,’ Jeanie said as she and Holly both laughed about the fact that I could so quickly work out exactly the number of days Jude had left under my roof.

‘And on my kitchen calendar,’ I added, making them laugh all the harder.

‘Come on,’ said Holly, opening the railway carriage door, ‘let’s forget the walk and focus on the chocolate.’

‘Let’s have both,’ said Jeanie. ‘I need the exercise. My thighs aren’t what they once were.’

‘And I could do with getting my blood pumping a bit,’ I agreed.

‘I’m sure Jude has already done that,’ Jeanie giggled, pulling me up the steps and into the warm and cosy inside.