Nigel’s taxi had barely reached the outskirts of town before I realized that my running away from the party like Cinderella on a bad day (or in this case, night) hadn’t been the most mature or sensible response to the situation.
‘Jeanie,’ I breathed, when she answered my call.
‘Bella?’ she responded, her tone full of concern. ‘Where the hell are you? We were all set to send out a search party.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I had a killer headache come on all of a sudden, and there was a taxi on the distillery drive that could bring me home, so I took it.’
‘But why didn’t you say? Jude would have taken you back.’
I was tempted to tell her that I hadn’t wanted to disturb him, and why, but I knew that if I said what I’d seen playing out in the gazebo, then she’d do the mental gymnastics and come to the right conclusion: that I’d left because I had been upset.
‘The pain got so bad, I wasn’t thinking straight,’ I said instead. ‘But you know where I am now, so no search party necessary. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, yeah?’
‘Well,’ she said hesitantly, ‘as long as you’re sure you’re okay?’
‘I am,’ I told her. ‘I’m just going to get in, wash down some painkillers with a pint of water and go to bed. Will you thank Jack and Tilly for me? Apart from the headache, I had a great time at the party.’
‘And I’ll tell Jude you’re okay, too.’
‘Of course.’
‘He was worried.’
I was surprised he’d noticed my absence given how occupied he’d been in the gazebo.
‘I didn’t mean to worry anyone,’ I apologized.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m not worried now.’
‘Good.’
‘And you’re not the only person who’s disappeared,’ she started to say, then swore. ‘Shit, my stupid phone’s about to die. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Bella, and don’t forget—’
The call cut off, but I wasn’t worried. I’d told her what I needed to say and, with a headache genuinely starting to develop, I was relieved when Nigel dropped me off at home and, having made a fuss of Tink and let her out and back in again, I could go to bed.
The headache had gone by the time I woke up early the next morning, and as I stared up at the ceiling, I felt a jumble of mixed emotions. The first of December was never usually anything other than a day to celebrate, so I wasn’t sure how I felt about there being something other than unadulterated joy lingering about. There were so many lovely traditions that I was about to embrace, and I wanted to enjoy them all, whether I was feeling entirely upbeat or not.
Some of those traditions were of my own making, such as hanging up the Christmas Day countdown bauble I’d found in a discount store, along with firing up my full-on festive Spotify playlist. Others were the result of years spent enjoying Christmas with Nanna, Grandad and Mum in this very house.
The first of those was putting on display my three advent calendars. They were the old-fashioned sort made from layers of card, and a few of the little doors relied on clear tape to keep them in place now that they’d been opened and closed so many times. This year, I was going to prop them up in the apartment and save creating a tableau around them until I’d moved properly back downstairs.
The same went for my kitchen hot chocolate station. There wasn’t room for that in the apartment, what with all the bags of differently shaped marshmallows, the vast range of chocolate flavours and the variety of mugs, so, like the house decorations, its appearance would also be delayed.
Then there was the all-important and always pleasant task of deciding which copy of A Christmas Carol I would be reading. I had multiple copies and added to the collection every year. There was one I’d already had my eye on, so I would most likely curl up with that and a mug of simply made hot chocolate later in the day. The evening’s entertainment would also be Dickens-themed. No one could match the Muppets when it came to telling the story of Scrooge on screen, but I loved The Man Who Invented Christmas , starring Dan Stevens, too, so it might end up being a proper movie marathon.
If I wasn’t feeling sleepy after that (I usually would be as a result of the hours spent decking the halls, but this year was different because of Jude’s continued presence and my desire to clean once he’d gone and before I got around to the decorating), I supposed I could break out my beloved Dickensian DVDs. I always tried to watch one episode a day in the run-up to Christmas – as it had originally aired and as a kind of Victorian soap opera – but I never stuck to it because it was such compelling viewing.
When I had been planning this day during November, I had had the feeling that I was going to be keen to embrace anything to take the edge off knowing that Jude had properly gone. I had expected to feel a sharp pang when I thought about him packing up and leaving, but I didn’t now, and I was rather taken aback when the sensation didn’t land.
I kicked off the duvet and sat up.
It hit me then that even though I had been upset to see Jude kissing someone else in the gazebo, the spectacle had actually done me a favour. It had shifted my thoughts about the sort of guy I had thought he was from one category to another and helped to quell my surprisingly deep feelings for him as a result.
In spite of the fact that he was leaving town today and had previously said he felt something for me, he’d still hooked up with someone else last night. Before I’d seen him going for it in the gazebo, I hadn’t seriously had him down as that sort of guy. I had briefly wondered if what had happened with Tabitha and his best friend had meant he could only commit to brief liaisons now but, I hadn’t really thought that he might be someone who viewed relationships like… me. How ironic was that?
If he was the player I now had him pinned as, and if it hadn’t been for the unexpected deep feelings I’d developed for him and which had made me back off in an effort to save my heart, then we really could have had some fun…
I heard the front door slam and resisted the urge to look out of the window to see if the noise heralded the departure of the woman Jude had been with last night. I supposed it wasn’t impossible that he might have invited her back, but I hoped he hadn’t. That would have really upset me, and knowing how differently I was already viewing him, I wasn’t going to risk pushing the change in my opinion of him even further. I still wanted to like him, even if he was getting ready to head off.
‘There’s no way he would have asked her back, is there, Tink?’ I asked my canine confidante.
She cocked her head and barked.
‘No,’ I said, nodding. ‘Of course he wouldn’t have done that.’
My phone buzzed with an incoming message, and I picked it up, assuming it would be Jeanie telling me the rest of what she’d started to say before her battery gave out. However, it wasn’t Jeanie, it was Jude. And he was asking if I was alone.
‘Yes, I’m alone,’ I said aloud as I typed out the words and pressed send.
I then immediately sent another saying that Tink was with me, so I wasn’t entirely on my tod. Jude then asked if he could come up, and I told him he could.
‘Shall I ask him if he wants to watch the Muppets with us?’ I asked Tink as I heard Jude running up the stairs. ‘I suppose I could put it on earlier than usual, couldn’t I? I could use it as a sort of feelings litmus test.’
That time, she didn’t offer an opinion, and I opened the door.
‘Hey,’ I said.
‘Hey,’ said Jude.
It could have been my imagination, but he looked different. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was or even if I would have thought that had I not seen him kissing someone else, but I felt it nonetheless.
‘Come in,’ I said, when he lingered on the threshold. ‘I was just about to put the kettle on. Would you like tea? Or a coffee?’
‘No,’ he declined. ‘I’m good. Thanks, though.’
‘Did you enjoy the party?’
‘Yeah,’ he said with a nod. ‘Yeah. It was good. Thank you for taking me as your plus-one.’
Last night, on the taxi journey home, I had been regretting that, but now I was pleased I’d done it. It was already feeling easier to be around him and for me not to feel the same way about him as I had before. And he hadn’t even left yet.
‘So why did you ask me if I was on my own up here in your message?’ I questioned, when he didn’t say anything further, but just stood there with his hands in his pockets.
Jeanie must have told him that I’d said I’d left the party with a headache.
‘Oh,’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘that guy you were kissing—’
‘Which one?’
I had meant it as a joke, but Jude didn’t look amused.
‘Owen, I think Jeanie said his name was,’ he said croakily, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.
‘Owen,’ I said and nodded. ‘He actually kissed me. I didn’t kiss him.’
‘Well, whatever,’ Jude said more loudly. He sounded completely hacked off, but given that he’d kissed someone else, too, I didn’t think that was entirely fair.
‘Owen disappeared at the same time as you, and we wondered…’
‘What did you wonder?’ I frowned.
‘If you’d left with him.’
‘I told Jeanie I had a headache,’ I said, a little more waspishly than I meant to.
I was annoyed that any of them thought I’d not been telling the truth, but especially Jude. How dare he – or anyone else, for that matter – make that assumption about me and Owen. I was about to say as much, but then I remembered that I’d told Jude that the only sorts of relationships I went in for were brief dalliances, so of course the fact that Owen and I had disappeared at the same time after he’d kissed me made the prospect of us being together entirely plausible.
‘The headache was a real thumper,’ I said less harshly. ‘And I definitely wasn’t with Owen.’
Jude put up his hands.
‘I’m not bothered if you were or you weren’t, Bella,’ he said, which stung a bit, even though it shouldn’t have. ‘And I wasn’t judging you either way. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t interrupting anything before I came up here.’
‘Well, as you can see, you’re not,’ I said. ‘So, what can I do for you?’
I busied myself making calming chamomile tea and wondered how I could get us back on a friendlier footing before I asked if he wanted to watch the Muppets, while he gave Tink, who had plodded over, a fuss. I almost berated myself out loud when it suddenly dawned on me that watching the film was the last thing he’d want to do.
Jude was a man who’d had his heart smashed at Christmas and as a result put as much distance between himself and all things festive as possible. Granted, he’d helped me make mince pies and attended the party last night, but neither of those things were anywhere near as seasonal as Kermit crooning ‘One More Sleep’. I decided I wouldn’t ask him, after all.
‘I’ve only actually come up to ask you what you want me to do with the house key,’ Jude said, as he took it out of his pocket. ‘But I suppose I might as well give it to you now, mightn’t I?’
‘Now?’ I echoed.
I looked at the key but didn’t take it, and he set it down on the worktop.
‘I’ve stripped the bed, emptied the bin and piled the towels with the rest of what needs washing, per the instructions in the house handbook,’ he added gruffly.
I hadn’t been expecting him to leave so early. For some reason, I’d got it in my head that he’d still be here for the best part of the day.
‘I know the place will need a clean, but it’s not too bad,’ he went on. ‘Nothing worse than a regular housework day, I wouldn’t have thought.’
‘So you’re leaving now?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘Well, leaving here, anyway. I’m going to have one last day at Wynthorpe with Catherine and Angus. I want to show them what I’ve written so far, along with my planning notes for the rest of it, and then I’ll be properly off.’
‘Right.’ I swallowed. ‘I see.’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I almost forgot this.’ He held out a small jute bag I hadn’t noticed he’d carried in, with the Brambles logo printed on the side. ‘Jack said you wanted two bottles.’
‘One was for you,’ I dumbly said, as he began to take the bottles out. ‘A memento to take with you. And you can keep the bag, too. I already have one.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, almost smiling, then returning one of the bottles to the bag. ‘I’ll look forward to trying it.’
‘Maybe you could save it for Christmas Day,’ I said quietly. ‘Have a small glass and see if it brings back thoughts of me. And Tink,’ I added hastily.
I tried to smile, too, but like him, I couldn’t quite manage it.
‘I might just do that,’ he said. ‘Though I won’t need it to remember you, Bella. I’m not going to forget you in a hurry.’
‘Are you not?’ I asked, hating the wobble in my voice.
‘Of course not,’ he said.
He held my gaze for a second, and I willed myself not to cry. Why was I even thinking about crying when my feelings for him had already allegedly shifted away from what they had formerly been? It was a ridiculous reaction and hugely inconvenient, too.
‘And I won’t forget you, either, Tink,’ he said more loudly, making her tail thump.
I took a calming breath while he focused on her, rather than me.
‘Right,’ he said, as he straightened back up again, ‘I better get to the hall. If I get a move on, I might be in time for Dorothy’s legendary breakfast.’
‘Yes,’ I said with a nod, ‘I daresay you will be.’
‘Thank you for saving my sanity these last few weeks,’ he said, as he went to turn away.
‘It’s been my pleasure,’ I told him.
‘I know it was a genuine sacrifice for you not to be able to move back into the house when you usually would, and especially when you have so much work to do. But I really do appreciate it.’
‘It will be reflected in my bill,’ I quipped.
‘Make sure it is.’ He nodded. ‘You take care.’
‘You, too,’ I said, picking up my cup. ‘It’s been lovely getting to know you, Jude.’
‘Especially after I stopped being such a prat,’ he laughed.
I couldn’t believe that was going to be the last thing he would say to me, but it was. Because when I looked up again, he’d gone.