A Winter’s Tale by Carrie Elks (23)

Somehow Kitty managed to make it into her attic bedroom without being spotted. She’d been certain the sound of the stairs creaking, along with her noisy breathing, would have roused the whole house. Yet here she was, pulling off her coat and lying back on her bed, trying to regain her equilibrium after the long walk through the forest.

According to her watch she had around half an hour before Jonas was up. He’d taken to setting an alarm clock, afraid he was going to miss the day’s festivities. Not that Kitty could blame him; she remembered as a child the run-up to Christmas was almost better than the real thing. The anticipation, the bonhomie, the endless hours of playing Go Fish and Beggar my Neighbour. She used to love everything about the final few days, from the last-minute dashes to buy a forgotten present to the aroma of turkey gravy wafting through the house.

Now, though, her mind was too full of Adam to think of much else. That was why it took her so long to notice her mobile flashing on the bedside table. Buried deep inside her memories, the green light barely made an impression until its incessant pulses finally made it through her fugue.

She reached out to grab it, the delicious ache of her muscles reminding her once again of the night before. Swiping the screen she saw she’d somehow managed to miss two calls and a message – all from her sister Juliet.

Frowning, Kitty pressed the message icon. There were a few brief lines, reminding Kitty how busy her sister always seemed to be. The result of being the wife of a prominent businessman, as well as a doting mother and starting up her own business. Out of the four sisters, Juliet was certainly the most outwardly successful. Kitty knew from her sister’s confidences that appearances weren’t always as they seemed.

It was still early but Kitty knew her sister would be up. Even during school vacations her niece, Poppy, was awake with the larks, dragging her mum out of bed to keep her company.

‘Hey, sweetie, I had the strangest feeling about you. Are you OK?’ Juliet said, as soon as she picked up. It wasn’t unusual for the sisters to react that way. Cesca had told Lucy and Kitty that Juliet was in labour hours before she called to say she’d given birth to a child. Maybe that’s what came from growing up in such close proximity to each other. They felt everything.

‘I’m fine,’ Kitty said, two lines forming between her brows. ‘What sort of strange feeling?’

‘I don’t know, it’s stupid. I just felt you needed us. Maybe it’s having you so far away at Christmas.’

‘I’m closer to you than I have been for years,’ Kitty pointed out. ‘We’re only a few hundred miles apart for once.’

‘But it’s your first Christmas away from London. I worry about you.’ Juliet let out a soft sigh. ‘Are you sure nothing’s happened?’

Everything had changed, but how to explain that to Juliet?

‘I’m fine, honestly. I’m going to miss being home for the big day, but it’s OK. Maybe we’ll all be able to be together next year.’ Kitty tried to keep her voice light.

‘Maybe…’

‘Are you OK?’ Kitty asked. ‘You sound a little weird.’

Another sigh from Juliet, this one longer and deeper than the first. Kitty found herself starting to worry about her older sister. ‘Thomas and I have been having some… problems.’

Kitty knew how hard it was for her sister to admit that. In her perfect world Juliet didn’t allow problems to get in the way. To acknowledge them was a defeat in itself. If she was actually saying the words out loud, then things really were bad.

‘What kind of problems?’

Juliet sighed. ‘He’s not happy with me,’ she told her. ‘Thinks I’m neglecting things at home because of setting up the flower shop. It seems like he spends more time at his parents’ place than he does with us. As you can imagine, they’re delighted. Their house must be full of I-told-you-sos and talk of my unsuitability. They never liked me.’

That was an understatement. Kitty recalled the wedding – a hastily planned occasion, as Juliet was almost six months pregnant by that point. Joan Marshall – Thomas’s mother – had looked as though she was sucking a lemon throughout the whole church service.

‘That sounds horrible,’ Kitty commiserated. ‘Especially so close to Christmas. How’s Poppy holding out?’

‘She’s confused, she’s sad, but then she’s all excited about Christmas. I wish I could make it all better for her, you know. I wanted her to have the perfect childhood, and I can’t make it happen.’

They all wanted that for Poppy. Strange how you hoped to give the younger generation a better life than you had.

‘She’s a good kid, she’ll be OK. Maybe there’s more to it than that. Is everything OK at Thomas’s work?’

‘The amount of time he spends there, I’d hope so. Do you know he told me I should always be a stay-at-home mom for the sake of his career? As you can imagine I told him where to shove his career.’

Kitty burst out laughing. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, she couldn’t help but feel proud of her sister.

‘Honestly, Kitty, never fall in love. It ruins everything.’

It was a little too late for that. ‘I’ll take that into consideration,’ she said lightly, knowing she wouldn’t listen at all.

‘Talking of annoying men, how’s it going with that shit who pissed in your cornflakes?’ Juliet asked, reminding Kitty that the last time they spoke she’d been at loggerheads with Adam.

‘Oh that? It was all a bit of a misunderstanding. We sorted it out, and everything’s just fine now.’

‘He sounded like a real piece of work,’ Juliet said. ‘What is it with guys thinking they know everything? Seriously, you should tell that wanker where to get off.’

‘He’s not like that,’ Kitty protested. ‘I got it all wrong.’

Juliet paused for a moment. Kitty could hear her soft breathing on the other end of the phone line. ‘He isn’t? So what is he like?’

Beautiful, wonderful, charming? They didn’t seem the right words to sum him up. She wondered if there were any words that could perform that job. If the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow, Kitty could have a thousand and she still couldn’t describe Adam.

‘He’s everything.’

‘Kitty! What’s going on? Oh my God…’ Juliet trailed off, no doubt shaking her head at Kitty’s sudden confession. ‘You need to fill me in right now.’

For the next ten minutes, Kitty filled her sister in on everything that had happened between her and the stubborn, funny, beautiful man who lived in a cabin by the lake. And even then, the words didn’t do him justice.

 

‘Are you certain?’ Jonas screwed up his nose. ‘Uncle Adam definitely told me they were washing their socks.’

The mention of Adam’s name was enough to make her heart skip a beat. Stop it, she chastised herself. When she was being a nanny, Adam was the one person who shouldn’t be on her mind. She was here to look after Jonas, and she was determined to do just that. Starting with practising Christmas carols with him so he’d be ready to sing them to his grandmother on Christmas Eve.

‘No, they definitely weren’t washing their socks. They were watching their flocks. As in flocks of sheep. They were shepherds, you see.’

Jonas gave her a look that screamed ‘duh’.

‘I know that. It’s in the first line. But even shepherds need to wash their socks, otherwise they’d get cheesy feet. Uncle Adam said a person’s feet are the most important part of their body. If you don’t look after them you’re in trouble.’

‘Sometimes your uncle makes things up for fun,’ she pointed out patiently. ‘You’re singing about shepherds. And they were watching their sheep as the angel of the Lord came down.’

He screwed his face up in confusion. ‘I don’t want to get it wrong. What if everybody laughs at me? I want to make Oma proud.’

‘You will.’ She pulled him to her, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. ‘Remember what Annie said? Your Oma used to love going to midnight mass, but this year she can’t make it to church. So we’ll bring the songs to her instead.’

‘Will you sing with me?’ Jonas gave her a beseeching smile.

Kitty made a wide-eyed face. ‘Oh no, not unless we want to burst her eardrums. I may have many qualities, but a good singing voice isn’t one of them. Honestly, she’s going to love it. So will everybody else. You have a beautiful voice.’

His singing was pure and true, enough to bring a tear to her eye. Kitty started the music again, mouthing the words as he came in at the right time, remembering to sing about flocks instead of socks.

It was typical that the one afternoon she was trying to do anything but think about his uncle, Jonas would bring him up in every other sentence. For the past hour the room had been full of ‘Adam said this’ and ‘Adam said that’ until Kitty’s mind was full of nothing but him.

Because he was all she wanted to talk about, too.

‘How was that?’ Jonas interrupted her thoughts. ‘Did I get the words right?’

‘You were perfect.’ She flashed him a smile. ‘Why don’t we take a break? We could reward your throat with some milk and cookies.’

‘The chocolate chip ones with the icing?’ His eyes were as round as saucers. ‘Oh boy, those are to die for.’

His words made her want to laugh. Kitty wondered if he’d heard his mother using the expression. It sounded so grown up for a seven-year-old boy. ‘Well let’s go and see if there’s any left. I’ll let you have two if you promise not to keel over afterwards.’

Jonas frowned. ‘Keel over?’

‘You said the cookies were to die for. I don’t want you going that far.’

He laughed. ‘OK, if I promise not to die for them, can I still eat ’em?’

‘Sure.’ Kitty hugged him, smiling.

Together they walked into the kitchen where Annie already had a pot of coffee brewing, and a saucepan of milk warming on the stove. If there was one thing Kitty was going to miss when she went back to LA it would be this kitchen. Stepping into it was like stepping onto the set of a TV programme, the visual equivalent of a warm, cosy hug.

Annie passed Jonas a mug of sweet chocolate and slid a plate with two cookies in front of him. Returning to the stove she poured out two mugs of coffee, turning to Kitty with a sheepish look on her face.

‘Could you take these through to the library? Mr Everett asked for them.’

Kitty shook her head. ‘No way, not after last time. He told me never to darken the library door again.’

Annie gave her a placatory smile. ‘But he asked for these ones. I’d go myself but my knees are playing up. It’s a long walk to the library.’

Kitty narrowed her eyes. Annie hadn’t shown any sign of pain when they’d walked into the kitchen. Plus the library wasn’t exactly miles away. If Kitty didn’t know any better, Annie was as scared of walking into Everett Klein’s operations hub as she was.

‘Maybe Jonas could…’ Kitty looked around to see Jonas sitting at the table, his legs swinging as he took a mouthful of hot chocolate. He shot her a grin, his lips framed by a brown moustache, and Kitty didn’t have the heart to send him into the fray.

‘OK,’ she said, sighing. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘God bless you. The black mug is for Everett; he likes his coffee dark and sweet. The white mug’s for Mr Montgomery.’

‘Got it.’ Kitty picked up the mugs and carried them the short distance out of the kitchen and into the hallway. As usual the library door was closed, and she had to bang on the dark mahogany wood with her elbow, both her hands occupied with the mugs. A moment later Drake pulled the door open, his face erupting into a smile when he saw her standing there. He ushered her in, and Kitty took her first step into the forbidden room.

‘I’ve got your coffee.’

‘Put it on the table in the corner, please.’ Everett was sat at his desk, staring intently at one of the three screens there. ‘Hey, Drake, take a look at this.’

Ignoring them both, Kitty walked across the room to the large oak table, stepping over leads and avoiding boxes. Lying spread out on the table was a script, the first page opened for her to see.

Her eyes widened when she looked at it. She glanced back at Drake and Everett, who were still distracted by the computer in front of them.

One little read wouldn’t hurt. Right?

 

She stared at the black print for a moment, blinking to let the words sink in. Was his brother making a movie about Adam? It couldn’t just be a coincidence that he was using that name. She reached out, wanting to turn to the next page, desperate to see what happened. Her hand hovered for a moment, unsure.

‘What are you looking at?’ Everett asked. Kitty glanced up to find him glaring at her, his muscles drawn into a frown.

She put the mugs on the table, feeling guilty. ‘Nothing.’

‘Everything in here is confidential, remember?’

She nodded. ‘I remember.’

Drake stood up, ushering her out yet again. If he wasn’t so into himself, she might describe him as a knight in shining Armani. ‘And as we said before, she’s signed an NDA. She can’t tell anybody about the things she’s seen in here, otherwise she’ll be in breach of that. You’re just interested in the way we make movies, right, Kitty?’

‘Right,’ she replied, still not quite clear in her mind about what she saw. ‘What’s your project about?’

‘Please, Kitty.’ Everett sighed, rubbing his face with the heel of his hand. ‘Stop asking so many questions.’

He sounded almost defeated, as though he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. She nodded quickly and hurried out, but not before taking one last glance at the script lying on the table across the room.

It was about Adam, that much was clear. What she didn’t know was why, and whether Adam had any idea his brother was making a movie about him.