Fiona Harper: Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses

He was dismissed.

He took a step towards her and opened his mouth. Probably not a great idea, since during his last attempt at small talk he’d found a great muddy boot in it, but he couldn’t leave things like this-taut with tension, unresolved. Messy.

Her hands were spread wide as she rested them on the low wall and looked out over the river, just as he’d imagined. The hair hung halfway down her back, shining, untouchable. The wind didn’t dare tease even a strand out of place. He saw her back rise and fall as she let out a sigh.

‘I thought I’d asked you to get off my property.’ There was no anger in her tone now, just soul-deep weariness.

He turned and walked out of the boathouse and down the stairs to the jetty with even steps. She didn’t need him. She’d made that abundantly clear. But, as he climbed back into the dinghy, he couldn’t help feeling that part of his promise was still unfulfilled.

This time there were no interruptions as he untied the painter and started the motor. He turned the small boat round and set off in the direction of Lower Hadwell, a few minutes’ journey upstream and across the river.

When he passed the Anchor Stone that rose, proud and unmoving, out of the murky green waters, he risked a look back. She was still standing there on the balcony, her hands wide and her chin tilted up, refusing to acknowledge his existence.

Louise had been staring so long at the field of sheep on the other side of the river that the little white dots had blurred and melted together. She refused to unlock her gaze until the dark smudge in her peripheral vision motored out of sight.

Eventually, when it didn’t seem like defeat, she sighed and turned to rest her bottom on the railing of the balcony and stared back into the boathouse.

He couldn’t have known who he’d looked like standing there below her on the steps as he’d offered her the long black key. It had been one of her favourite scenes in A Summer Affair -when Jonathan came to see Charity in her boathouse sanctuary, the place where she hid from the horrors of her life. Not that anything really happened between them. It was the undercurrents, the unspoken passion, that made it one of the most romantic scenes in any film she’d ever seen.

He had looked at her with his warm brown eyes and, somehow, had offered her more than a key as he’d stood there. For the first time in years, she’d blushed, then hurried to hide the evidence with her hair.

And then he’d had to go and spoil that delicious feeling-the feeling that, maybe, not all men were utter rats-by reminding her of who she was.

Louise stood up, brushed the dirt off her bottom and walked back into the little sitting room. Of course, she wasn’t interested in hooking up with anyone just now, so she didn’t know why she’d got so upset with the gardener. Slowly, she closed and fastened the balcony doors, then exited the boathouse, locking the door and returning the key to its hiding place.

The light was starting to fade and she hurried back up the steep hill, careful to retrace her steps and not get lost, mulling things over as she went. No, it wasn’t that she was developing a fancy for slightly scruffy men in waxed overcoats; it was just that, for a moment, she’d believed there was a possibility of something more in her future. Something she’d always yearned for, and now believed was only real between the covers of a novel or in the darkness of a cinema.

She shook her hair out of her face to shoo away the sense of disappointment. The gardener had done her a favour. He’d reminded her that her life wasn’t a fairy tale-she snorted out loud at the very thought, scaring a small bird out of a bush. She was probably just feeling emotional because she wouldn’t see Jack for two weeks. Toby had kicked up a stink, but had finally agreed that, once she was settled at Whitehaven, their son could live with her and go to the local school. She and Jack would be together again at last.

Toby had been difficult every step of the way about the divorce. Surprising that he would lavish so much time and energy on her, really. If he’d only thought to pay her that much attention in the last five years, they might not be in this mess at the moment.

She pulled her coat more tightly around her as she reached the clearing just in front of the house. The river seemed grey and troubled at the foot of the hill and dark woolly clouds were lying in ambush to the west. She ignored the dark speck travelling upstream, even though the noise of an outboard motor hummed on the fringes of her consciousness.

Not one stick of furniture occupied the pale, grand entrance hall to Whitehaven but, as Louise crossed the threshold, she smiled. Only two rooms on the ground floor, two bedrooms and one bathroom had been in a liveable state when she’d bought the house. All they needed was a lick of paint and a good scrub so she could move into them. The furniture would arrive on Wednesday but, until then, she had an inflatable mattress and a sleeping bag in the bedroom, a squashy, slightly threadbare floral sofa she’d found in a local junk shop for the living room, and a couple of suitcases to keep her going.

She’d let Toby keep all the furniture, disappointing him completely. He’d been itching for a fight about something, but she just wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Let him be the one waiting for an emotional response of some kind for a change. She didn’t want his furniture, anyway. Nothing that was a link to her old life. Nothing but Jack.

None of that ultra-modern, minimalist designer stuff would fit here, anyway. She smiled again. She fitted here. Whitehaven wasn’t the first property she’d owned, but it was the first place she’d felt comfortable in since she’d left the shabby maisonette she’d shared with her father and siblings. She knew-just as surely as the first time she’d slid her foot into an exquisitely crafted designer shoe-that this was a perfect fit. She and this house understood each other.

The kitchen clock showed it was twenty past eight. Ben sat at the old oak table, a lukewarm cup of instant coffee between his palms, and attempted to concentrate on the sports section of the paper instead of the second hand of the clock.

Megan had never been like this when they’d been married. Yes, she’d been a little self-absorbed at times, but she’d never shown this flagrant disregard for other people’s schedules, or boundaries, or…feelings. He wasn’t sure he liked the version of Megan that she’d ‘found’. Or this new boyfriend of hers that he wasn’t supposed to know about.

Twenty minutes later, just as his fingers were really itching to pick up the phone and yell at someone, he heard a car door slam. Jas bounced in through the back door and, before he could ask if her mother was going to make an appearance-and an apology-tyres squealed in the lane and an engine revved then faded.

‘Nice dinner?’ he asked, flicking a page of the paper over and trying not to think about the gallon of beef casserole still sitting in the oven, slowly going cold. Eating a portion on his own hadn’t had the comfort factor that a casserole, by rights, ought to have.

Jas shrugged her shoulders as he looked up.

‘Just dinner, you know…’ she said. And, since she was eleven-going-on-seventeen, he supposed that was as verbose as she was going to get.

‘Have you done your homework?’

‘Mostly.’

This was quality conversation, this was. But he was better off sticking to neutral subjects while he was feeling like this. In the last couple of years as a single dad, he’d learned that transitions-picking up and dropping off times-were difficult, and it was his job to smooth the ripples, create stability. Being steady, normal, was what was required.