Chapter 11
‘I got the drinks,’ I said, ‘so you go first.’
‘That’s a bit sneaky,’ Jamie frowned, taking the glass I held out. ‘If I’d known that’s how it was going to be, I would have got the drinks this time too.’
‘Too late now,’ I shrugged with a sly grin. ‘So come on, tell me, why exactly did you leave home and what is this gargantuan decision you had to make?’
Jamie sat back and shook his head. Whatever it was, he still didn’t look very happy about it.
‘OK,’ he began. ‘You know I have two brothers, right?’
‘Yes,’ I said, surreptitiously easing my feet out of my shoes and tucking them under my chair. ‘Christopher is the eldest, then there’s Archie, then you.’
‘Exactly,’ he said.
He stared into the fire, the flames eating up his thoughts.
‘And,’ I encouraged, ‘you do know the landlord is going to be calling time in a bit, don’t you?’
‘All right, Miss Bossy Boots,’ he smiled, his eyes slowly moving from the flames to look back at me. ‘I’m getting there.’
‘Well get there faster,’ I nudged.
‘OK,’ he said, sitting up straighter. ‘A while ago Mum decided, quite out of the blue we all felt, that she wanted to sort out, officially, the future of the hall. You do know it belongs to her, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she did mention it the day I took her for a check-up at the hospital in Norwich.’
I didn’t add that she had sounded worried and weighed down by the responsibilities surrounding it or that she had been concerned Angus had been pestering Jamie to make the decision I was now poised to discover.
‘Well, we all kind of assumed that it would be going to Christopher,’ Jamie continued.
I myself had assumed the very same thing.
‘Because he’s the eldest, isn’t he?’ I asked, just to make sure I really did have it all clear in my head.
‘Yes, and that’s how it’s worked in our family for generations. Irrespective of whether the eldest is a girl or a boy, they are always first in line to inherit the hall and the estate.’
‘So what happened?’ I asked. ‘I’m guessing it wasn’t all as straightforward as it should have been.’
‘Nowhere near,’ Jamie sighed, ‘because Christopher didn’t want it.’
‘He didn’t want it!’ I wanted to laugh out loud. ‘Who on earth wouldn’t want to inherit Wynthorpe Hall?’
Jamie looked at me as if I was mad and I have to admit I had for a moment forgotten the look of concern Catherine had worn when she told me that she was the current owner of the hall.
Jamie ignored my outburst and carried on with his explanation.
‘Chris, his wife Cass and the boys have a wonderful life in Shropshire, close to Cass’s family. They love it there and even though Cass said she would move if Christopher really wanted to, he simply refused.’
‘Whatever did your parents say?’
‘They were shocked. Nothing had ever been mentioned before because it was just sort of assumed that he would step up and take it all on.’
I took a moment to digest the implications of Christopher’s unanticipated refusal.
‘So then,’ I said, ‘I’m guessing it fell to Archie to step into the breach.’
Jamie nodded.
‘Didn’t he want it either?’
‘Oh, he wanted it all right,’ spat Jamie, his tone loaded with a loathing I found unnerving. ‘He couldn’t wait to get his hands on the place.’
I had assumed the motive behind Angus’s desire to gather the family to the hall at Christmas was because they were all fond of one another but didn’t have the opportunity to get together very often. Jamie’s mention of Archie, however, didn’t sound friendly at all.
‘So what was so wrong about that?’
‘Let’s just say he seemed a little too eager to get the ball rolling,’ Jamie went on. ‘And after some digging I finally discovered exactly why he was so keen.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, as you know he convinced Mum and Dad to stop the public coming and using the hall. He said it was because of public liability issues and goodness knows what else, but it wasn’t that at all.’
‘What was it then?’
‘To put it bluntly,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘he wanted the place shut down so that, when he’d taken charge, he and his other half could rock up and play lord and lady of the manor with the least possible inconvenience.’
I tried to imagine the middle brother in the photograph arriving and barking out orders to the staff. Based on what he looked like I couldn’t imagine him doing it, but if he had it wouldn’t have gone down very well, especially with Hayley. I was pretty certain she would have found somewhere interesting to stick her Hoover pipe if anyone attempted to lord it over her.
‘Not that that little piece of theatre would have lasted long given the dwindling money, but from what I can make out he had plans to play the role until . . .’
‘Until what?’ I quizzed when he stopped talking again.
‘Until,’ he said, sounding even more appalled than before, ‘he gave the nod to the person he’d lined up to buy it.’
‘No way,’ I gasped. ‘He wouldn’t do that, surely? Your mum told me the hall has been in her family for ever. Why on earth would he want to sell it?’
‘For the money, of course,’ seethed Jamie. ‘Archie has no idea that I know any of this but I’ve discovered he has one of those health spa chains lined up to step in as soon as he’s had enough of the place and has bled the coffers dry.’
‘Well, if that doesn’t make Christopher change his mind, I don’t know what will.’
I couldn’t imagine for one second that he would let his family home fall into the hands of the sauna-and-swim, yummy mummy brigade.
‘He knows what I’ve found out,’ said Jamie dully. ‘And it hasn’t made him change his mind at all. He’s still adamant he doesn’t want the responsibility.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
I felt as if the wind had been knocked out of my sails.
‘I told him everything as soon as I’d had it all confirmed by the person I’d employed to look into Archie’s affairs and when he said it made no difference I had to go and tell Mum.’
‘She must have been devastated.’
‘She was. And that was when she turned to me.’
‘You?’
‘Yes,’ he said, putting his glass on the table and running his hands through his hair. ‘Me. She asked me to step up and take the place on.’
‘And what do your brothers have to say about that? Are you going to do it?’
My mind was buzzing with even more questions now.
‘The others don’t know yet,’ he said. ‘Archie still thinks he’s next in line but I daresay Christopher has worked it out. I asked Mum not to say anything until I’d properly made up my mind and I think Dad’s got it in his head that if an announcement is made at Christmas everyone, and by everyone I mean Archie, will just accept it because they won’t want to upset the applecart.’
‘I see.’
‘And yes,’ he said, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulling out the pen his father had hidden in the Advent calendar. ‘Apparently I am going to do it, even though I don’t want to.’
‘Your dad gave you the pen to sign the paperwork,’ I nodded, the penny dropping.
‘Exactly.’
‘But why are you so reluctant to take it on?’ I asked. ‘Listening to you talking about the importance of the insurance policy, it sounded to me as if you want to protect the place just as much as everyone else.’
‘Oh I do,’ he said. ‘I really do, but believe me, Anna, there’s a vast difference between feeling protective towards somewhere like Wynthorpe Hall and then finding yourself completely responsible for it. When I was growing up it was my home, a huge part of my life, but I had absolutely no reason to dream up a future for myself that included it and now all that has changed. If I want to keep the hall in the Connelly family I have to let go of the future I crave.’
I hadn’t really had a chance yet to think it through from his point of view. To my mind he was just a lucky rich sod who had been handed something absolutely incredible on a plate.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said, ‘I love Wynthorpe Hall, but I’m just not sure I’m ready to stagnate in a tiny corner of the East Anglian Fens.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ I asked. ‘Have you really made up your mind that you’re going to do it?’
‘I have no choice,’ he shrugged. ‘We can’t lose it and if Archie gets his hands on it then that’s exactly what will happen.’
His eyes roamed back to the fire and I sat back in my chair and wondered, not for the first time since I arrived in Wynbridge, where the quiet few weeks I had been longing for had disappeared to.
‘So what about you?’ he said eventually. ‘I’ve told you my side of the saga, now it’s your turn. What are you really doing here and why does planning the Connelly family Christmas turn your stomach?’
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and focused on my glass.
‘Hey, come on,’ he said. ‘Spill, because you’re not getting out of here until you do.’
I opened my mouth to say something, I don’t know what, but was saved by the bell. Literally.
‘Time, folks, please,’ bellowed the landlady as she pulled lustily on the big brass bell behind the bar. ‘Don’t you all have homes to go to?’
‘My goodness,’ I laughed. ‘Exactly how long have we been sitting here?’
Outside, in the market square, it was bitterly cold. The clear, inky sky was studded with thousands of jewel-like stars and the pavements were glistening with frost. As we set off back to the hall I felt my shoulders relax a little as the Land Rover cab gradually began to thaw and relief that I hadn’t had to keep my side of the bargain washed over me. However, the snug and slightly smug feeling was short-lived.
‘Why are we stopping?’ I asked. ‘Is there something wrong?’
A few miles out of town Jamie swung off the road, into a field and up onto a concrete pad put there by a farmer.
‘No,’ he said, pulling on the handbrake and taking the vehicle out of gear. ‘Nothing’s wrong. I just thought everyone would already be in bed at home and I didn’t want to give you the opportunity to wriggle out of sharing on the pretence that you were worried about waking them up.’
Evidently I hadn’t wriggled anywhere close to off the hook at all. I bit my lip, knowing I was really in no position to argue as he had already come clean and kept his side of the bargain, and I wondered just how little I could get away with sharing.
‘So, Miss Woodruff,’ Jamie smiled, unfastening his seat belt and twisting round to face me, ‘tell me exactly the reason behind your desire to work your way through Christmas and why you’re the world’s most reluctant party planner.’
I took a deep breath and cracked open my window a little. The air was fresh and sharp and I drank it in, feeling its keen sting in my nostrils.
‘I accepted the job at the hall, working as a companion to your mum,’ I quickly began, ‘on the understanding that Christmas wasn’t going to be a big deal for your family this year.’
I stole a quick glance as he shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. I guessed he already knew that much from Catherine and he was beginning to look a little impatient now; as well he might in the rapidly freezing temperature.
‘Obviously I had no idea that within just days of my arrival your father was going to turn that understanding on its head.’
‘Good old Dad,’ Jamie smiled. ‘You can always rely on him to throw a spanner or two in the works, but what I want to know is why it matters, Anna. What difference does his new plan make to you?’
‘All the difference in the world actually,’ I sighed. ‘Every year I go out of my way to find a position where Christmas, for whatever reason, won’t be celebrated in any great way, or if it is, I’ll be kept too busy to notice it.’
‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘I’d kind of begun to figure that out for myself, but why? What do you have against jolly old Santa? Has he wronged you so badly? Did he deny you the perfect present? Give you the wrong Barbie?’
I turned to face him properly before he said anything else and ended up feeling guilty when he heard the true reason for my loathing of the season.
‘My mum died on Christmas Day when I was eight years old.’ I said it bluntly because it was the only way I knew I could get the words out. ‘I haven’t celebrated Christmas since.’
There was a whole lot more to my childhood than that, but losing Mum was the biggest horror, even though the trauma of what followed wasn’t lagging all that far behind.
‘Oh, Anna,’ Jamie croaked, the colour draining from his handsome, tanned face.
I looked back out of the window and up at the stars and blinked a few times.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ I shrugged.
‘Of course it isn’t all right,’ he said straight back as he reached across and held my hand. ‘How could it possibly be all right?’
Enjoying the comfortable feeling, ignoring the increasing thump of my heart and without really thinking about what I was doing, I laced my fingers through his, absorbed his soothing warmth and willed myself not to cry.
‘I never would have made a joke if I’d known,’ he said, sounding mortified. ‘But what about the rest of your family? Did your father not reclaim Christmas as you got older?’
I thought of the Decembers that followed and the never-ending catalogue of pain that accompanied them.
‘Oh yes,’ I sniffed, ‘he reclaimed it all right.’
I stopped myself again before it all came tumbling out. For years Dad had celebrated not just Christmas but practically every holiday from the bottom of a very big bottle or three.
‘But he’s not particularly the loving kind,’ I said dismissively, trying not to remember how he had driven away the one woman who could have helped him clean up his act and not necessarily replace my mum, but make a mighty fine substitute, ‘not towards me anyway, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters.’
I had no desire to say anything further. In the last few days I’d shared more about myself than I had in the last twenty years and I had no intention of tearing the gaping fissure open any wider.
‘So you see,’ I said, taking back my hand and reaching up my sleeve for a tissue, ‘we’re both as reluctant as each other to meet this Christmas head on, but for very different reasons.’
‘You’re right,’ Jamie nodded.
‘You,’ I said, after I had blown my nose, ‘have everything I’ve always craved deep down but never dared hope to have: a home to come back to, a loving family and security.’
‘And you,’ said Jamie, ‘have the freedom, independence and opportunity to completely live your own life. The kind of life that I want to hang on to, but am now going to have to give up.’
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ I smiled.
‘Just a bit,’ he smiled back, twisting round to reach between the seats for a fleecy blanket. ‘Come on,’ he said, dumping it on my lap. ‘Wrap this around your shoulders.’
‘Why? What are we doing?’
‘Stargazing,’ he said with a nod towards the great outdoors. ‘This is as little light pollution as you’re likely to get around here.’
‘Are you mad?’ I gaped. ‘It’s freezing.’
‘Well, hurry up then,’ he said, turning off the engine and jumping out of the door. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
The last thing I wanted was to be standing outside, wearing inappropriate footwear in sub-zero temperatures with nothing more than a fleecy blanket between myself and frostbite, but Jamie was having none of it.
‘Come on, Woodruff,’ he said gruffly, rushing round to open my door. ‘Those doe eyes don’t fool me. You’re tougher than you look.’
Rolling my eyes and gathering the blanket tight around me I gingerly joined him on the slippery concrete.
‘If you end up having to give me sick pay because I’ve caught pneumonia,’ I warned him, ‘then you’ve no one to blame but yourself.’
‘In that case,’ he said, taking a step closer and slipping his arm around my shoulders, ‘let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.’
‘Get what over with?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘as you just pointed out, each of us seems to have exactly what the other wants. I have the family and the stability,’
‘And the crumbling but cosy colossal pile,’ I added cheekily. ‘And I have the freedom and independence.’
‘And the crippling fear of Christmas.’
‘Where exactly are you going with this?’ I frowned, not liking that he was so relaxed when it came to highlighting my problems, even though I had been so blasé about his.
We both had problems, that was true enough, and we both now knew what those problems were, so I could see little point in turning into an icicle just to trawl through them again under the stars.
‘Well,’ he said, looking down at me and pinning me with his emerald gaze, ‘I think I’ve just come up with a way to potentially solve our problems and help give each other what we want in the process.’
‘Oh, you have, have you?’ I frowned, feeling deeply suspicious but more than a little seduced by his close proximity.
‘I have.’
‘And you couldn’t have explained this in there?’ I asked, nodding towards the rapidly cooling interior of the Land Rover.
‘Absolutely not,’ Jamie insisted, ‘because sitting in there, we couldn’t see this.’
He pointed to the heavens, his finger stopping when it reached what looked like the brightest star in the sky.
‘That’s the Christmas Star,’ he said, his voice tantalisingly close to my ear.
‘No it isn’t,’ I tutted, stamping my feet to ward off frostbite and following his gaze. ‘Is it?’
‘Well, it is in my head,’ he said a little impatiently. ‘And if you wish on that star, then whatever you want most will come true, providing you’re prepared to put in the effort to help make it happen, of course.’
I looked from the star to him and quickly back again. At least he hadn’t dragged me through the woods in my Manolos to find the Wishing Tree.
‘What do you wish for, Anna?’ he whispered.
‘I wish I could find a way to fall in love with Christmas again,’ I said wistfully.
‘And I wish I could fall in love with the hall again,’ said Jamie.
We stood in silence for a few seconds, just staring up at the star.
‘Is that it then?’ I asked when the cold had reached further than I thought possible.
‘Not quite,’ he sniffed, ‘you’re forgetting about the effort I said that had to be put in to make it happen.’
‘Of course,’ I shivered, ‘feel free to enlighten me any time before my toes drop off, won’t you?’
I loved my shoes with a passion, but they were hardly ideal footwear for standing out in the frosty Fens. Tomorrow I would go back to wearing layers.
‘Well, this is how I see it,’ he said, rocking back on his heels. ‘I happen to love Christmas and I reckon I’m more than capable of making you love it too.’
‘OK,’ I said warily.
‘And you obviously love Wynthorpe, even though you’ve only been there five minutes.’
‘Right.’
‘And with your fresh outlook and enthusiasm I’m kind of hoping that you can help me rekindle my spark for the place and make my future running it more bearable.’
‘So in short,’ I cut in, ‘you think we can each solve the other’s problems.’
‘That’s the gist of it.’
‘I see,’ I said thoughtfully.
It didn’t actually sound like a bad idea at all.
‘I think we should make a deal,’ said Jamie.
‘A deal?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘You have to do whatever I tell you to.’ I looked at him and raised my eyebrows.
‘Only with regards to Christmas planning and activities,’ he hastily added, looking a little rosy in the cheek department. ‘Whether that’s decorating the tree or wrapping presents, you just have to go along with it and I have to—’
‘And you,’ I interrupted, ‘have to work with your parents to reopen the hall, tackle your brothers and follow my instructions for creating a life for yourself that will mean you can have the hall and the freedom you crave.’
‘Exactly,’ said Jamie, holding out his hand. ‘That isn’t too much of an ask, is it?’
‘Absolutely not,’ I laughed. ‘I mean, we have almost a month to do this, but to be honest,’ I added, my smile suddenly faltering, ‘I don’t reckon much for your chances with me.’
I might have acknowledged that Mum had been sending me signs to tell me now was the time to embrace the season but there was a long road to travel between finally accepting Christmas still existed and actually enjoying it.
‘Now, don’t be so defeatist, Woodruff,’ Jamie insisted as I placed my hand in his and we shook on the deal. ‘There’s nothing I like more than a challenge.’