Then – Christmas Eve
Ella’s mother was waiting for her at Durham station, overdressed as usual, in a camel coat and leather gloves, her ash-blonde hair whipped up into a chignon simultaneously too old and too young for her. She was tapping out a message on her phone, probably checking Ella’s father was up to speed with the list of last-minute Christmas prep she would inevitably have given him.
The Riordan household began bracing itself for festivities the day after Bonfire Night, when her parents presided over a party attended by half of the village, with a fire that took a week to build and a guy fashioned after whoever her father deemed most worthy of burning. It had been Jeremy Corbyn this year, her father had gleefully informed her, sending half a dozen photos of their badly formed proxy perishing in the flames while the fat Rotarians and members of the golf club toasted him with mulled wine.
Christmas would, hopefully, be less political. All the friends and professional acquaintances should have been and gone already and Ella only had to survive her family.
The other passengers off the 10.30 from King’s Cross progressed slowly through the ticket barriers, struggling with bags and looking for tickets which should have already been in their hands. Ella’s mother finally placed her phone back inside her handbag and waved in her reserved fashion as Ella made her way through the crowds.
Ella swung her holdall off her shoulder and hugged her, smelling hairspray and vanilla perfume, underneath it a slight trace of the cigarettes her mother occasionally smoked with less stealth than she realised.
‘You look tired, Ellie darling. Late night?’
‘Early start,’ she said, ignoring what might have been a barb. ‘It’s so good to be home.’
‘It’s so good to have you home.’ They linked arms and walked out towards the car park, carol singers collecting for charity on the pavement, filling the air with bells and song and the rattle of coins. ‘I was down your way last week but I didn’t want to bother you. You’re always so busy.’
‘You should have told me you were coming,’ Ella said. ‘We could have gone for lunch.’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t want to put you out. It was all rather last minute. Christmas shopping.’ She thumbed her key fob and the lights flashed on a black Range Rover just ahead of them. ‘And I know you don’t enjoy shopping as much as I do.’
‘This is new,’ Ella said, as she placed her bag in the back.
‘Your father insisted.’ A little shrug of delighted resignation. ‘The other one was getting troublesome.’
On the drive home Ella let her mother do most of the talking and listened with half an ear to the updates on which neighbours were ill or downsizing or having affairs, which of her old school-friends had done very well since she was there last Christmas and who the less said about the better – a phrase that always heralded a far lengthier and more involved story than it suggested.
The countryside blurred by the window, her mother driving in the reckless way she always did on rural roads. There was something about being in a tank, Ella supposed: you didn’t have to respect any oncoming vehicle smaller than a combine harvester and those were long packed up in their sheds now. The familiar woods were greener than she thought they should have been at this time of year; she was sure she remembered them barren and skeletal in previous winters.
Now, as her mother slowed behind a man on a horse at the edge of the village, Ella noticed daffodils in bud around a blind-bend sign, could already see the tips turning yellow.
They passed the pub, thick with the lunchtime crowd, the car park crammed, smoke billowing out of the chimney. Nothing changed here. The same people would be inside, having the same conversations they’d been sharing for twenty years or more, and Ella found it didn’t oppress her like it once had. Now she didn’t have to be here she found it oddly comforting. In London you’d go down a street you hadn’t walked along for a couple of months and a building would be gone, razed to the ground and the site boarded ready for work to begin, and she would find she didn’t remember what had been there before. Here a front door being painted a new colour would be noticed by everyone, a side garden becoming a building plot could be blocked for years, fought to the highest level and then seethed about for evermore.
Her parents’ house stood separated from the village green by the narrowest of roads. A stone and thatch cottage five hundred years old, long and low and resolutely solid. It had been a bakehouse once, derelict when they bought it soon after their marriage, but carefully restored before she was born, her mother only a couple of years older than she was now. Ella struggled to imagine living a life that sensible and settled at such a young age. But she knew her mother couldn’t understand the choices she’d made either.
The gates were open and they pulled along the gravel driveway up to the open barn at the back of the house, where her father’s bashed-up Defender was parked, alongside the peppermint-green Alvis he’d started to restore when he retired. He didn’t seem to be making any progress on it and Ella wondered if he’d got bored, or distracted by other things. Her mother had let slip that he was doing consultancy work now, but wouldn’t go into details, insisting it was hellishly tedious and she never listened when he talked about it.
Ella was convinced her mother just didn’t trust her to know what he was working on or who for.
Ever since the last arrest Ella had noticed she didn’t ask what she was doing any more. Not when she phoned or emailed, not even during the half-hour car journey from the station. Ella decided she wouldn’t mention anything herself, see how her mother managed to avoid the subject for three days.
It would be nice to ignore it herself for a while, too. She’d hoped her release without charge would be an end to the speculation, but it hadn’t slowed down the gossip or convinced people who thought she was involved that she hadn’t been. Never mind that she had an alibi and absolutely no reason to get tangled up in something so senselessly destructive as arson.
Regardless of how hard she protested, it fitted certain people’s idea of who Ella Riordan was, added a layer of ‘dangerous allure’. Someone had said that, right to her face. A man, naturally.
So, if her mother wanted to talk about other things, that was fine.
In the house Ella dropped her bag and went straight to the postbox-red range, more from habit than a need for warmth. The kitchen was fully decked for Christmas, garlands of pine cones hanging from the beams, smelling of cinnamon and the orange peel her mother would have dried herself at the beginning of the month. In the far corner a short but dense tree was strung with the same old red and white decorations, lights twinkling in the foliage.
Ella gasped, remembering how thoughtlessly she’d thrown her bag down, and rushed over to find the package she’d brought, pulling out clothes and books and the other presents she’d carefully wrapped back in her flat. She stopped when she found the small purple box and handed it to her mother.
‘I hope it’s not broken.’
‘Ooh, Liberty.’ She opened the box and lifted out the mercifully intact bauble, a warm smile spreading across her face. ‘It’s perfect, Ellie. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Do you want to put it on the tree?’
Ella took the delicate red-and-white candy-striped decoration and found a space for it at the front of the tree, between a gingerbread man and a felt stag.
‘Coffee?’ her mother asked, as she hung up her overcoat in the boot room. ‘Or would you like one of my special hot chocolates?’
‘Have you got marshmallows?’
‘I’m insulted you need to ask.’ She started on their drinks while Ella sat down at the long oak table and they talked about the charity work her mother had been doing, making up hampers to give out at a food bank in Newcastle. ‘Nobody should have to have a sad Christmas.’
That jolted Ella back to Castle Rise, the nine families still remaining, who would be enduring rather than enjoying their break, knowing that the trees they’d put up would not see another year in the same place, that the orders to quit might arrive before Twelfth Night.
Ella had bought them each gifts, only small things, but it seemed important to do so; biscuits in pretty tins and coffee liqueur, hot-water bottles with knitted covers and Lego kits for the kids. She stopped off there yesterday evening, late, so they wouldn’t feel pressured into reciprocating.
Molly had already bought her something. Or, rather, not bought, Ella realised when she opened the package to find a signed first edition of Nights at the Circus, well-thumbed and a little battered around the edges, but worth a stupid amount, Ella suspected. Not that she’d ever sell it.
‘I can’t accept this,’ she’d said. ‘It’s too much.’
Molly had waved away her half-hearted protest. ‘Please, who else am I going to leave it to?’
It wasn’t until she was on the Tube home that the strangeness of Molly’s words struck her. Was there something wrong with her? It would explain the expression on Molly’s face when Ella told her she was going home for the holidays, a look of piercing disappointment. Molly had told her before that she was welcome to come over for a couple of days if she was on her own in London, tossed it out casually even though it clearly wasn’t. Christmas was tough when you had no one, Ella thought, but Molly didn’t seem the type to be bothered by that ordinarily and she would have Callum with her; two lost souls, improbably clinging to one another.
But what if he was going to his family?
The idea of Molly alone in the flat was heartbreaking. The absolute, crushing sadness of it. Ella prayed that Callum wasn’t going away. She wanted him to surprise Molly with an extravagant breakfast on the day or turn up with a tree on Christmas Eve and coax her into decorating it with him. That they’d do something to alleviate the recent grim monotony of life at Castle Rise.
Ella finished the last of her hot chocolate, realising how heavily her mother had spiked it with amaretto. Her face felt flushed and she smiled.
‘That was extra special, wasn’t it, Mum?’
She shrugged, innocent-looking. ‘Well, it is Christmas.’
‘I think I need a lie-down after that.’
‘Go on, I’ll wake you for supper.’
Ella started towards her bag, its contents strewn on the flagstones around it.
‘I’ll take care of your things,’ her mother said. ‘You go up, darling.’
Opening the door to her childhood bedroom provoked a moment of sharp dislocation. Only now did she remember the conversation about redecorating. Everything would be carefully put away in the attic, her mother had reassured her, and Ella didn’t doubt it was all up there, but this gilt and mahogany boutique-hotel interior was going to take a little getting used to.
The bed was more comfortable than her old one, though, and she fell asleep within a few minutes, lulled by the familiar sound of the back boiler heating the house.
When she woke up again the curtains had been drawn and a woollen throw placed over her and she could hear voices downstairs she recognised as her brother and his wife. Ella groaned into the lavender-scented pillow. She’d hoped to avoid them until lunch tomorrow but of course they were here now, ready for the short walk across the green to midnight mass. Another Riordan family tradition she could have done without.
She delayed the inevitable for a little longer, took a shower and washed her hair, seeing under the en suite’s brilliant lighting how tired she looked. That was more than one night’s bad sleep and an early morning, it was everything – her PhD and her campaigning, all the worry and responsibility, the clutching fear that kept her awake into the early hours – all of that piling up on her. Ella swept tinted moisturiser on to her damp skin, added a quick flick of liquid liner, and she looked almost ready to face her family.
As she was getting dressed she heard a mobile phone ring in the next room, her father answering – ‘It’s Christmas Eve, can this not wait?’ And apparently it could because by the time she was in the hallway, he’d fallen silent again.
The door to his study was half open and she saw him sitting at his old captain’s desk under the window, a brass lamp casting the only light in the oxblood room, throwing his shadow across the wall where his photo gallery hung. She had stood here a thousand times, waiting to go in, and the scene hadn’t changed since she was small; her dad, straight-backed and broad-shouldered, although she’d swear his steel-grey hair had thinned a little more at the crown since the last time she saw him. He’d come to Edinburgh during the festival and taken her to lunch at a restaurant near the station, which he’d seen favourably reviewed in the Telegraph. She’d called him from her hotel room in a panic that morning and he’d caught the next train, calmed her down, talked the sense she needed to hear even though she didn’t want him to be right.
‘Don’t stand on ceremony, Ellie love.’
He spun away from his desk and Ella walked into an enveloping hug. He smelled of woodsmoke and old wool, reassuringly unchanged, as he kissed the top of her head. When she stepped back he looked her over and nodded.
‘Yes, there’s my little firebrand.’
‘Dad, please. . .’
He chuckled and went over to the space on his crowded bookshelf where he kept a few bottles of Scotch, poured two measures, while she curled up in his leather wing chair. There was a book splayed on the arm, a dry-looking exploration of Middle Eastern geopolitics. He picked it up when he handed over her drink and went to close the study door before returning to his seat at the desk. She’d hoped this might wait until Boxing Day but her father wasn’t the kind of man to put things off. And, she supposed, he was worried too.
Ella sipped the Scotch, knew it was a good one but not why; they all tasted the same to her.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, before he could ask. ‘It all got sorted.’
‘And that’s an end to it?’
‘I hope so.’
‘You don’t sound very certain,’ he said. ‘And you don’t look confident. I’m your father: you can’t hide from me.’
She looked away from him, towards the photographs on his wall where he posed with local politicians and councillors in his dress uniform, all smiles and friendly handshakes. In this light you couldn’t see how strained some of the expressions were – sometimes his, sometimes theirs, depending on what had happened in the run-up to the photo opportunity. The only one where he looked like her dad rather than ACC Alec Riordan was taken with some old Newcastle United player at a charity golf match.
‘You’re treading a dangerous line, Ellie.’
She glared at him. ‘I know what I’m doing. I’m not a child.’
‘You’re my child, no matter how old you are and how clever you are. And I’m fully entitled to worry about what you’re doing with your life.’
There it was.
‘I’m not going to stop just because you disapprove,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Dad, I know this isn’t what you wanted me to do with my life but it’s important work. And,’ – she threw her hands up – ‘most people don’t care. They wouldn’t want to do it, but somebody has to.’
‘It doesn’t have to be you.’
‘I’m good at this.’ She hated the desperation in her voice right then; a little girl wanting Daddy’s approval. ‘Dad, I’m making so much progress.’
‘At what cost?’ he asked quietly, looking down into his drink. ‘Would you have gone to prison for this?’
‘It didn’t come to that.’
‘Because you were lucky.’ He nodded at her. ‘This time, you got lucky. But what about next time?’
‘I’m not going to do anything stupid,’ Ella told him, deflated by the conversation, wishing he could have just told her how proud he was, that even if he didn’t agree he could appreciate how hard she was working.
He drained his drink. ‘You know we’ll always be here for you, don’t you? If things start to go too far, you only have to call me.’
And then where would she be? Reputation shot, friends scattered, she’d be exactly what her detractors always thought she was: a copper’s daughter playing at rebellion to make a point.
No, she’d worked too hard for that. Nothing would ever induce her to use his connections.
But it was Christmas and he’d had his say and there was no reason to argue with him.
‘I appreciate that, Dad,’ she said, reaching to squeeze his hand. ‘Thank you.’