Home for Christmas

Chapter 12

After a night spent tossing and turning, I was still up early on Sunday morning and determined to make the most of the day. I had turned down Jude’s offer of a nightcap the evening before with the excuse of having loads to do, which was completely true, and I had plans to combine them all and make my currently hectic life a little easier. Multi-tasking that day, however, did not turn out to be as productive as I had hoped it would be.

‘No!’ I screeched, reaching first for the oven gloves and then a kitchen chair. ‘No, no, no, no, no!’

I was standing at full stretch on the chair and wafting the gloves under the smoke alarm when Jude came bursting through the apartment door, his momentum almost knocking me for six.

‘Is there a fire?’ he shouted, looking wildly around.

‘No,’ I quickly said back. ‘It’s just a bit of smoke.’

It took a few noisy seconds for the alarm to finally get the message, and when it did, Jude offered me his strong guiding hand to help me climb down.

‘Thank you,’ I said, moving to open the kitchen window as wide as it would go ahead of then opening the oven door, which was the source of the still-billowing smoke.

‘Oh crikey!’ Jude croakily coughed when I pulled out two extremely charred pie trays. ‘Oh, Bella, those do not look good.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ I tersely huffed.

He grabbed the tea towel and obligingly wafted the alarm again just to be on the safe side, while I dumped the trays, burnt contents and all, in the sink and further muttered something about his remark being the understatement of the century.

‘What happened?’ Jude frowned as Tink slunk back out from where she had been hiding in the bedroom. She’d dashed out of the room the second the alarm sounded, as I, in an unusual show of extreme athleticism, had leapt over the back of the sofa.

‘It’s all right, Tink,’ I said soothingly. ‘No harm done.’

‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ Jude commented, sounding almost amused as he nodded at the trays. ‘Those look unsalvageable to me. Trays and all.’

I had no choice but to agree. ‘Um, I think you might be right.’

Not even I could put a positive spin on how this particular situation had turned out, and since I was the queen of doing that, it was an indicator of just how bad it all looked. And how burnt it all smelled, too.

‘When I set off for my run, the house smelled amazing,’ said Jude, a definite smile starting to play around his lips now he knew there was no danger to him, me, Tink or the house. ‘I thought I was getting a waft of a fruitcake or something, but when I came back… well…’

He nodded at the sink.

‘It was good of you to come flying straight up here,’ I said, as I thought of how he’d barrelled through the door without a thought for what he might find on the other side of it.

‘I could hardly leave you up here alone on the off-chance that you were simply burning your baking as opposed to being overcome by the fumes of something you’d truly set alight, could I?’ he pointed out mildly.

‘I suppose not,’ I told him. ‘But even so, thank you.’

‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘I’ve got all those historical documents from the hall downstairs. I needed to find out if they were genuinely in peril.’

I decided to ignore that, preferring to believe instead that it was concern for my safety that had sent him racing up the stairs in record time.

‘Well, as you can see, I haven’t been overcome by anything and it was my baking that was burning,’ I said, looking again in the sink. ‘It’s Stir-up Sunday, and I was putting my own spin on the day and celebrating it, as I always do. Or at least, that was what I was supposed to be doing. It’s the traditional day in November when people start making their Christmas cake and pudding—’ I began to explain.

‘I know what Stir-up Sunday is,’ Jude cut in, running a hand through his hair.

‘Oh, right.’

Given his aversion to the season, that was a surprise.

‘But whatever was in that tray doesn’t look anything like cake or pudding,’ he said, with a laugh he could no longer suppress.

‘It’s not,’ I told him. ‘Living on my own, I don’t bother making either of those, but I am partial to a mince pie, so I mark the day by making a few batches. I keep a few out for immediate consumption and then freeze the rest.’

Nanna and I had always had a mammoth fruit-stirring and wish-making session on the last Sunday before Advent when I was growing up, filling her huge Mason Cash bowl to the brim, but I’d pared the day’s efforts right down now.

I entertained plenty of visitors throughout the holidays, but had discovered that practically everyone preferred mince pies to a slice of thickly iced cake. Though not the sort of pies currently welded to the tins in the sink, obviously.

‘So those were mince pies?’ Jude asked.

He was still smiling but sounded doubtful, which, under the circumstances, was fair.

‘They were supposed to be,’ I confessed. ‘Only an assembly job, though. Not made from scratch.’

‘A what?’

‘You know, using ready-rolled pastry out of the fridge and a jar of mincemeat.’

‘Oh, I see,’ he laughed. ‘Who would have thought something as simple as that could go so horribly wrong?’

‘All right,’ I huffed, wishing I had inherited even half of Nanna’s baking skills. ‘I’m not too proud to confess that I’m a pretty rubbish baker, but as with everything in life, I’m always willing to have a go.’

That ethos had served me well in the past. Talking to a group of strangers aside (until very recently, that is), I had always been brave enough to embrace trying new things and not getting too preoccupied about whether or not I was going to be any good at them. I mean, who was an expert at anything from the get-go? No one, I reckoned. We all had to start somewhere, didn’t we? My fairies were a case in point. The first ones I’d made and which I kept in my bedroom as a tribute to making a start were pretty scrappy, but I’d gone on to improve my design and technique with each of the ones that followed. It was how I learned. How anyone learned.

‘But that crumble you made last week was perfect,’ Jude said, frowning.

‘And my only real baking accomplishment,’ I sighed. ‘If you can categorize a crumble as baking, that is,’ I pondered. ‘Pastry and the like is completely beyond me.’

Nanna, bless her patient soul, had tried on many occasions to help me master making it, among other things, but to no avail.

‘As is remembering the time,’ Jude teased.

‘Hey!’ I pouted.

‘You need one of those kitchen timers,’ he suggested, as his thoughts drifted into his own childhood memories. ‘My nan had one shaped like a chicken. I always used to get in trouble for messing about with it and setting it to go off after I’d left. She was never really cross, though…’

His wistful words trailed off, and I noticed he looked a little misty-eyed.

‘Well,’ I said, coming to his rescue because it was obvious that what he had just shared had made him feel either nostalgic or exposed, possibly even both. ‘My mince pies wouldn’t usually be all that brilliant, even if I did get them out prior to burning them to a crisp, because I have a tendency to overfill them. That said,’ I added, biting my lip, ‘they wouldn’t usually end up anything like this.’

‘So what happened today?’ Jude asked. ‘What’s the cause of all this crispy carnage?’

I rolled my eyes at his alliterative, but entirely accurate, description.

‘I got distracted,’ I confessed, biting my lip again.

‘But how did you not smell them?’

‘No idea.’ I shrugged.

‘What was it that distracted you?’ he wanted to know.

He sounded genuinely interested, and I pointed over at the coffee table, where I had the makings of a few fairies set out. I hoped the fabrics didn’t now smell of smoke.

‘A customer at the switch-on yesterday asked if I had considered selling fairies in kit form with a list of accompanying instructions,’ I explained. ‘And I was trying to figure out if that might work.’

‘That sounds like something you needed to be able to properly focus on,’ Jude said, stating the obvious.

Even though in my heart I had known that, I’d let my head overrule it. Because I had so much to do, I had let my brain convince me that I could plan and bake simultaneously. Lesson learned. It wasn’t often that I ignored my heart, and the current state of the kitchen was proof that that was for a very good reason.

‘It certainly was,’ I sighed. ‘Now I’ve got no mince pies, a tonne of clearing up to do and a smelly apartment. And I’m no further forward with finding out if the fairy kits are a viable option, either.’

‘And as you were working yesterday,’ Jude pointed out, ‘which was a Saturday, you shouldn’t even be so occupied today, should you? Isn’t that your usual rule?’

‘Yes,’ I said, now wishing I hadn’t previously mentioned that, ‘it is, but like I told you last night, I’ve got loads to do. You might not go in for Christmas, Jude, but it’s my busiest time of the year workwise, and I still want to enjoy everything else that comes along with it.’

‘Like Stir-up Sunday?’

‘Exactly,’ I sighed again. ‘Just like Stir-up Sunday.’

‘And how’s that working out for you?’ he asked, one eyebrow quirked.

He clearly didn’t feel affronted that I’d flagged up his aversion to the season.

‘Teasing is not helping,’ I said, suppressing a smile as I looked at the welded-on pies and wondered if trying to clean the trays was going to be worth the effort.

It really was time to abandon the multi-tasking. Just for that day, anyway.

‘Sorry,’ he laughingly apologized. ‘Too soon to joke about it?’

‘Definitely too soon,’ I said, grinning. ‘Do you fancy a coffee?’

‘I need to get showered, but I’ll have one after that, if it’s still on offer. In fact,’ he said, clicking his fingers, ‘why don’t I make the coffee after I’ve freshened up, while you head to town for some supplies?’

‘Supplies?’ I frowned.

‘Yes,’ he said, helping himself to a pen and notepad from the worktop. ‘I’ll write a list of everything you need, and then I’ll help you make some proper mince pies from scratch. Apart from using homemade mincemeat, of course. I’ll teach you how to make the pastry, just like how my nan showed me.’

‘You can bake?’ I swallowed, thinking that this was an unexpected tick in Jude’s favour. Though I didn’t reckon much for his chances of successfully tutoring me. If Nanna hadn’t succeeded during all her years of trying, I didn’t think Jude would be able to manage it in one brief session.

‘I can,’ he said, as he began to write down a list of ingredients off the top of his head. ‘What do you think I was learning to do when I was messing about with that kitchen timer?’

By the time I was back from town, Jude had showered, changed and made a cafetière of coffee. I’d left Tink with him, and she was completely relaxed. In fact, when I joined them in the house kitchen, it felt just like it had when the three of us had hung out before. Before I’d known Jude censored Christmas, that is.

I couldn’t help wondering how differently the last few days might have turned out had he loved December as much as I did. Would I have pretended that my feelings for him only ran dalliance deep, thrown caution to the wind and kissed him on the porch after the volunteer meeting in the pub, or would I still be avoiding him and ring-fencing my heart from potential hurt?

Being with him again now, I couldn’t be sure what I was doing, but it was still a relief that I hadn’t kissed him and then found out about the festive boycott.

‘So,’ I said, as I pulled my thoughts back to the task literally in hand as we finished the first part of the pastry-making process, ‘tell me why the pastry has to go in the fridge for a while? Why can’t we just get straight on and use it?’

I’m sure Nanna would have explained and gone through everything just as patiently as Jude already had, but I was extra eager to throw myself into learning it all over again in the hope that this time around something might actually stick.

‘So it can chill out and relax,’ Jude told me in terms Nanna would never have used. However, given his tone, I didn’t think he was joking. ‘It’ll be easier to work with in a couple of hours because it will have firmed up, and it won’t shrink as much or crack, either.’

‘Right,’ I said, as I wrapped the ball of pastry that I’d somehow miraculously made with only minimal assistance in cling film, having watched Jude do the same with his.

‘And it was your nan who taught you all this?’ I further probed, liking the thought of us both having had similar childhood experiences in the kitchen, even if his had been more successful in certain areas.

He had already told me how he’d spent a lot of time with his grandparents when he was growing up and that he had always felt closer to them than to his mum and dad, who had travelled a lot. In turn, I’d told him a bit about my nanna and grandad, too. How they’d gifted me the house and I’d initially struggled to find a way to be able to keep it, until I eventually opted to convert it and rent it out, which then provided me with the freedom to set up my business.

‘It was,’ he said, nodding in confirmation. ‘She was an amazing cook and a very accomplished baker, too.’

‘And she put oats in her crumble topping,’ I said, remembering what he’d told me the week before.

‘Yep,’ he said. ‘And her steak and ale pie was to die for.’

‘Do you have the recipe for that?’ I asked keenly.

‘Somewhere,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The filling was cooked in the slow cooker all day, so it became melt-in-the-mouth delicious.’

‘That sounds sublime,’ I said, and my own mouth watered just at the thought of it.

‘And she added a handful of cheese right at the end to thicken the gravy even more, before encasing it all in buttery puff pastry and finishing it off in the oven.’

‘You need to stop,’ I told him. ‘My tummy is rumbling, and it’s a while away from lunch yet.’

‘Tell me some more about your family, then,’ he said, popping the pastry in the fridge. ‘Are you close to your parents? You’ve told me about your lovely grandparents, but nothing about your mum and dad.’

‘Well,’ I said, filling our mugs with the last of the coffee and knowing that it was better just to say it straight out. Like ripping a plaster off and hoping the scab had healed underneath, though in this instance I was self-aware enough to know that that wasn’t completely the case. ‘Dad disappeared when I was just a baby and has never been heard of since, and my stepdad buggered off a few years later and he’s never been in touch again, either.’

Jude looked floored.

‘In the past, it was hard not to take it personally,’ I said, trying to sound blasé even though I didn’t feel it. ‘I’ve often wondered if their leaving was because of me.’ Jude went to interject, but I quickly carried on. ‘Mum, Nanna and Grandad have all insisted that it wasn’t, of course, but it still made for some pretty turbulent and tempestuous teenage angst.’

‘And what about your mum?’ Jude asked quietly. ‘How did she cope?’

‘All things considered, extremely admirably,’ I said proudly. ‘She completely shut the door on romantic relationships and threw herself into her work instead, which is why I spent so much time when I was growing up with Nanna and Grandad. Mum forged herself a hugely successful career and, as a result, is now living in happy retirement in France.’

‘Wow.’ Jude whistled under his breath.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘She’s amazing. I admire her so much.’

‘But does that mean that she’s had no serious relationships since your stepdad left all those years ago?’ Jude asked, then grimaced. ‘Sorry, that’s a really personal question. You don’t have to answer that.’

‘It’s fine,’ I told him. ‘Until Mum retired, she didn’t have any relationships at all. Nothing serious and nothing fun, either, because she was completely and not surprisingly totally off men. Work and family were what she focused on, but that’s changed now. She’s having some fun in France and has got to know a few guys since she moved there.’

‘But no one special guy?’

‘I’m not sure those exist in real life,’ I laughed, and Jude frowned. ‘And Mum doesn’t think they do, either. She and I are very similar in our attitudes towards relationships.’

‘What exactly is your attitude?’

‘We don’t get attached,’ I told him, forcefully blocking out the thought that my feelings for him had been in an entirely different stratosphere to any I had ever experienced before. ‘We don’t put our hearts on the line. Just like Mum, I prefer short-term associations.’ I swallowed. ‘It saves the heartache when the fun stops.’

Jude looked surprised.

‘Does the fun always have to stop?’ he asked.

‘In my experience,’ I said pointedly, reminding him of what I had shared before, ‘yes. Men have a tendency to leave.’

Jude opened and closed his mouth.

‘But,’ he said, ‘just because the father figures in your life—’

‘Completely abandoned me,’ I said challengingly. Then, because I wanted to turn the emphasis away from me, I added, ‘Even you’ll be gone in a week.’

‘That’s hardly relevant,’ Jude tutted, ‘because we’re not in a relationship, but if we were—’

‘You’d still be leaving next week,’ I cut in.

He looked at me and seemed to be mentally reassessing everything he thought he’d worked out about me.

‘I’m not sure how I feel about us not getting together now, Bella,’ he said finally, taking me completely by surprise.

‘What?’ I squeaked, feeling like a rug had been pulled out from under me, leaving me floundering. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, perhaps it’s just been me,’ Jude said self-consciously, ‘but I’ve thought a couple of times – since I apologized for being a prat when I first arrived – that there’d been a spark between us, some moments of mutual attraction that could have led somewhere. But I must have misread the signals.’

‘What makes you say that?’ I asked breathlessly. ‘The misread signals bit, I mean.’

I wasn’t about to dispute the spark, because I couldn’t in all honesty deny it.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if there really had been some connection between us, given that I now know you’re in favour of short-term relationships, I would have thought that would make me the ideal person to… get together with.’

‘I see,’ I said slowly.

‘So either you don’t fancy me at all,’ he said, ‘and there’s no spark. Or you did, but then you had a change of heart when you found out that I hate Christmas. That’s it, isn’t it?’

He sounded relieved to have hit upon something to justify my not pouncing on him. Clearly the not fancying him bit couldn’t possibly be right.

‘I suppose it would make you feel better if I said it was the Christmas thing, wouldn’t it?’ I said coolly while my internal temperature raced up and down the thermostat.

‘It would please my ego immensely,’ he laughed.

‘Well, in that case, we’ll go with that,’ I said, nodding, thinking that my fibbing might strike me off Santa’s nice list, but at least it kept my heart intact and my true feelings for Jude under wraps. ‘You’re right, I did fancy you, but the whole Christmas embargo buggered it.’

Jude laughed at that, and I wished he wouldn’t. My heart couldn’t take it.

‘I knew you liked me,’ he said, reaching for the roll of kitchen towel and anti-bac spray to clean the flour off the table. ‘I knew you did.’

‘I wouldn’t actually have acted on my feelings, though,’ I continued, to really hammer the point home and keep things sparklingly clear between us, ‘even without the whole Christmas thing.’

‘Oh,’ he said, looking less happy. ‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re a Connelly employee and a guest here at their behest,’ I said seriously. ‘It would have been completely inappropriate, wouldn’t it?’

Jude wrinkled his nose and gave the table a squirt of cleaner as he processed that.

‘When you put it like that,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’re right. It wouldn’t really have been the decent way to behave, would it?’

‘Not at all,’ I said, mentally patting myself on the back for finding a way to properly draw a line under the sparky situation once and for all.

‘It was probably just as well I didn’t kiss you that night we went to the pub together, then, wasn’t it?’ he sighed. ‘I came so close—’

‘Definitely better that you didn’t,’ I cut in, not wanting to imagine how that might have felt or how I would have reacted. ‘And given that your Grinchy attitude has now completely extinguished the spark, I’m hoping you’re going to tell me why you hate Christmas so much.’

‘I’m going to have to work up to that,’ he said, and swallowed. ‘Let’s bake first.’

A while later, once the perfect, almost professional-looking mince pies had been transferred to the cooling racks, and I had cooed over them in genuine amazement and then let Tink out into the garden, Jude and I sat together at the kitchen table. I was sorry to see that his previously buoyant mood had entirely ebbed away.

‘You don’t really have to tell me about why you loathe Christmas,’ I said, feeling bad as I watched him nurse his mug of coffee and stare worriedly into its depths. ‘I was just being nosy.’

‘No,’ he said, looking up. ‘It’s okay.’

‘It doesn’t look like it’s okay,’ I said softly.

‘It’s fine,’ he said, shrugging, and I waited. As much as I didn’t want to further upset him, there was a part of me that was desperate to know. ‘You said earlier, Bella, that men have a tendency to leave,’ he eventually began.

‘I did,’ I acknowledged. ‘And they do.’

‘Well,’ he said heavily, ‘in my experience, women leave, too.’

I took a moment to consider the implications of that in relation to Jude loathing Christmas.

‘You had your heart broken at Christmas, didn’t you?’ I whispered. ‘You’ve experienced your own fun stopping right at the pinnacle of the year.’

‘Indeed,’ he said, nodding, then shook his head. ‘I did. It’s the ultimate cliché, right?’

‘It’s not an entirely unheard-of situation,’ I acknowledged.

My stepfather had made his exit from our lives right at the end of November, but my grandparents had made a gargantuan effort to not let his departure overshadow Christmas that year. As a result, I hadn’t lost my love of the season either then or indeed during any year that came after it. I would be forever grateful to them for that.

‘It’s a classic,’ Jude said gruffly. ‘The guy running all over town for the right engagement ring.’

My heart fluttered as I processed that he had once loved someone enough to want to marry them. That was a huge deal and way beyond what I thought I was emotionally capable of.

‘The house dressed to perfection because he loves Christmas and wants his proposal to be picture perfect—’

‘You once loved Christmas,’ I breathed, interrupting his flow of words as a flame of hope ignited in my heart.

Jude gave me a withering look.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and swallowed, turning the burner down and picking up my mug.

‘He’s checking and double-checking every last detail, right up until the moment he has to head out the door to the airport to pick up the woman he hasn’t seen for the last four months because she’s been working in Hong Kong.’

I began to feel bilious rather than hopeful that Jude could come back to embracing the season then, because there was no doubting that this particular Christmas story was going to have the most horrible ending.

‘And then a call comes in. A Zoom call from the woman he’s supposed to be rushing off to meet, but how can that be possible when she’s supposed to be on the flight and he knows from previous experience that the signal isn’t the best for making in-flight video calls?’

‘She wasn’t on the plane, was she?’ I whispered.

‘No,’ said Jude, sitting back in his chair and drumming his fingers on the table. ‘She wasn’t on the plane. She was still in Hong Kong, and she was calling to tell me that she was staying there.’

‘Oh, Jude, I’m so sorry.’

‘Wait, wait,’ he said, putting a hand up, ‘it gets better. She was staying there with our best friend from uni, who also happened to work for the same bank that she did, who’d joined the Hong Kong office at the same time as her and who my-steriously hadn’t been in touch with me for a few weeks prior to her little bombshell.’

‘Oh, crap.’

‘And they were expecting a baby the following year.’

‘Double crap.’

‘And getting married in the New Year, so they would have tied the knot before the birth.’

I didn’t say anything further but sat quietly waiting to see if there were any more shoes to drop. Jude stared at the table, then looked up at me.

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I’m done.’

‘Just as well,’ I said, puffing out my cheeks. ‘Cos I’m pretty much all out of crap over here.’

He gave a wry smile.

‘But,’ he said, ‘there was also the huge bonfire I had in the garden with all the new Christmas decorations I’d paid a fortune for, as well as the ones we’d previously picked out together.’

‘You burned the Christmas decorations?’ I gasped.

‘How can you sound as horrified about that as you did about me telling you that my heart had been trampled on and smashed?’ he demanded, sounding astonished.

‘I’m not,’ I said, instantly contrite. ‘I just didn’t have you down as someone who would react like that. I can’t see you as someone who would have such an explosive response to anything.’

‘Well,’ he said, shrugging, ‘it wasn’t the sort of hot-headed reaction I’d experienced before or since, and it certainly wasn’t a response I was proud of, especially when I realized how badly I’d scorched the lawn.’

I jiffled in my seat, willing the question I desperately wanted to ask to stay in my head.

‘What?’ Jude frowned, sensing that I wanted to say something further.

‘Nothing.’ I shrugged.

‘No, go on, what?’ he insisted. ‘I can tell there’s something.’

‘Was there an angel or fairy on top of the tree?’ I blurted out.

‘No,’ he laughed, which, under the circumstances, was a miracle, ‘it was a star.’

‘Okay,’ I said, nodding and feeling relieved. ‘Good. That’s good.’

‘You’re incorrigible,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘I know,’ I acknowledged. ‘I’m sorry, but you know how I feel about Christmas. And angels and fairies especially.’

‘I do,’ he said, standing up. ‘And if there had been an angel or fairy on top of the tree, I wouldn’t have burned them.’

‘Good,’ I breathed.

Perhaps he wasn’t an entirely lost cause, after all.

‘That is, assuming I would have realized before the tree went up in flames,’ he continued ponderously, making me yelp. ‘I reckon these are cool enough to try now.’

He plated up a couple of the mince pies while I fetched a pot of thick cream I’d spotted in the fridge. The Christmas pudding gin was in there, too.

‘I think we need at least one shot of this after what you’ve just told me,’ I said, grabbing glasses and sitting back down again. ‘Had you and the woman you were going to propose to been together long?’

I wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk more about it, but it didn’t feel like the sort of explanation you could give and then instantly move on from without adding a bit more context.

‘A few years,’ Jude said. ‘We met, ironically through our mutual chum, during our first year at uni. It had been long enough for me to believe that marriage was the next step.’

I gave him a look.

‘What?’ he said, frowning.

‘Nothing,’ I said, pouring us both generous measures of the gin and thinking that describing the intended proposal as a next step was hardly romantic. ‘I mean, that just sounds a bit… traditional, you know.’

‘Oh, it was,’ he agreed. ‘And it was exactly what was expected by both sets of parents, too. My mum and dad loved Tabitha.’

‘That’s a cat’s name,’ I said, trying to make him laugh again.

He didn’t.

‘They’re still blaming me for not making a success of the relationship. They reckon it was my fault she went off with Barny.’

Jude’s parents sounded like a hoot, but that wasn’t for me to say.

‘And that’s a dog’s name,’ I said instead as I poured the cream. ‘With names like that, I don’t reckon much for their chances.’

‘Funny you should say that,’ said Jude, handing me a spoon. ‘They split up this summer.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, I’m not sorry for them, but it’s a shame for the kid.’

‘Atticus.’

‘I’m even more sorry for him now.’

‘Don’t,’ said Jude, shaking his head.

‘What did you do with the perfect engagement ring?’ I asked, wondering what it had looked like. ‘Please don’t tell me that went on the fire, too.’

‘No,’ he said, with a wry smile, ‘that funded my first year while I made the switch from just blogging about my love of historical properties to writing about them professionally. It kept me fed, with a roof over my head, while I was getting some work under my belt.’

‘That must have been quite some rock.’ I whistled under my breath.

‘It was,’ he said, nodding.

‘So before the writing properly took off, you were a historical buildings surveyor, weren’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ he confirmed. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Catherine and Angus told me.’

‘Of course they did.’ Jude nodded. ‘They’re such wonderful people. You know, they’re actually happier for me than my own parents are.’

‘I take it your mum and dad aren’t impressed with your change of professional direction, then?’ I guessed. Given the little Jude had already told me about them, that had to be the case.

‘Correct,’ he confirmed. ‘They think it’s a risky switch from the stable role I had before, but I’m not letting their naysaying put me off. I own my tiny flat outright now, so really I’m as secure as I can be for someone my age. Possibly more secure.’

‘Good for you,’ I said, knowing it wasn’t easy to muster the courage to do something that others felt was unconventional, even if you hankered for it with the whole of your heart. ‘But does that make you a complete family outcast or just the odd sheep in the flock?’

‘The jury is still out on that one,’ Jude laughed. ‘I daresay if I’m a huge success, I’ll be properly welcomed back into the fold. Either way, I’m not bothered. I’m following my heart whatever the outcome.’

‘Shame about Christmas, though,’ I said, as my own heart thumped at the thought of Jude’s. ‘Are you sure you can’t come back to it? It was hardly the season’s fault that you fell out of love with it.’

‘No way,’ he said, draining his gin in one. ‘That festive ship has definitely sailed.’

‘There’s a Christmas carol about ships—’ I started to say.

‘Never mind about that,’ he said, firmly cutting me off. ‘What do you think of this pastry?’