Alice Ross - A Winter's Wish

So Amelia dedicated her entire life to her career – a concept most men, thankfully, appeared to find a turn-off, and most women found intimidating. Over time, she grew to accept that state of affairs – became resigned to being alone. And that was the way she’d imagined things would continue, until ten months ago.

‘I’m delighted to say that we have, at last, appointed a new marketing director,’ the MD announced at a staff meeting. ‘His name is Doug Carver. You might know him actually, Amelia, he was at Cambridge the same time as you.’

Amelia’s jaw dropped. Her head began to swim. She had the strange sensation of looking down on herself, like she was present in body but not in mind. It was several seconds later before she realised the entire room was staring at her.

‘Oh, er, yes. Yes,’ she’d stammered. ‘I, er, do know him.’

She refrained from adding just how well. Over the years she’d resisted the constant urge to google him, to follow his career. But, on a particularly wet, miserable day in February a couple of years ago, she’d given in. Huddled up with her laptop, her heart pounding so hard she’d thought it might bring on a coronary, she’d typed his name into the search engine. And up he popped, working for a multinational retailer in their New York office. A photograph accompanied his profile. The moment she saw it, her stomach had flipped. He looked older, of course, and his hair, no longer floppy, was short and trendy. But he was still Doug. Her Doug. Or at least that had been her thought for a few seconds. Until she googled Imogen who, she discovered, was a freelance journalist, also working in New York. A series of pictures of the pair of them attending high-profile celebrity events had also been magnanimously provided. After that, Amelia hadn’t looked again. But now here he was – Providential’s new marketing director. How the hell was she going to handle that?

Not very easily, it transpired.

‘And of course you already know Amelia,’ the MD said, when Amelia entered the meeting room ten minutes after everyone else on Doug’s first day at Providential. She hadn’t intended being late but the nerves, which had steadily ballooned as the dreaded day approached, had got the better of her that morning. And despite – or perhaps because of – swallowing half a bottle of herbal calming pills, she’d thrown up in the work loos.

‘How are you, Amelia?’ Doug asked, rising to his feet and striding over to shake her hand.

Amelia had thought she might keel over as she’d placed her hand in his. Thankfully she’d managed to hold it together.

‘We’ve had to make a slight adjustment to Doug’s induction programme,’ the MD informed her, sparing her the need to cobble together something resembling a response. ‘He’ll be spending the next two days with you, Amelia. Sorry for the short notice, but you won’t have to make any adjustments to your diary. The idea is that he sees exactly how we operate here.’

Amelia didn’t have a clue how she was going to operate from now on. Just seeing Doug, hearing his voice, breathing in his scent, which still seemed so familiar despite all the intervening years, dredged up all the feelings she’d long since resigned to that faraway place known as the past.

‘Can you believe this?’ he asked, the following day when they were alone in her office. He grinned at her across the desk, hazel eyes twinkling with amusement. ‘You look great. How’ve you been?’

‘Oh, fine, you know,’ she replied, hoping her voice wasn’t shaking half as much as her legs. ‘You?’

‘Good. Really good. I spent a couple of years in New York and then moved to Sydney. But it’s great being back home. Great seeing you.’

At his obvious enthusiasm at their unexpected reunion, Amelia’s emotions executed a swift turnaround and, for the first time since being informed of his appointment, she found herself smiling. ‘It’s a bit weird though, isn’t it?’ she said hesitantly.

Doug laughed. ‘Weird but brilliant.’

The two days he spent with her were, much to Amelia’s amazement, a complete and utter pleasure. She’d forgotten just how easily he could make her laugh, how relaxed she felt in his presence. Rather than the exhausting charade of trying to be someone else, with Doug she could just be herself. And every time he looked at her with those twinkling hazel eyes, yet another part of the igloo she’d assiduously constructed around her heart melted away.

She hadn’t asked about Imogen and Doug hadn’t mentioned her. But finding out that he’d moved from New York to Sydney, she clung to a scrap of hope that perhaps they’d split up.

They hadn’t. But by the time Amelia found out, it was too late. Three weeks into Doug’s appointment had come the Providential Annual Conference. An event to which she usually dedicated every bit of her attention. With Doug there, though, not one speaker, however impressive and well researched their presentation, had held her interest for more than three minutes.

‘Let’s skip the talk this evening and go for a drink,’ he suggested, nudging her in the ribs like a naughty schoolboy.

Amelia had rolled her eyes. ‘You might be a big-shot director, Mr Carver, but you really haven’t changed a bit,’ she joked.

‘Would you want me to?’

Amelia had gazed into those sparkling hazel eyes and shaken her head. ‘No. I wouldn’t.’

Just to confirm what she’d already long since suspected, those few seconds had been enough for her to know that she was still hopelessly in love with this man. Every one of her feelings for him had returned – with several years of interest added. She loved Doug Carver – and she always would.

The drink had inevitably led to a meal, and then a kiss. A kiss that – outside the Italian restaurant in which they’d spent two of the best hours of Amelia’s life, giggling like a couple of schoolkids and spooning each other creamy desserts – had sent her head reeling. They’d ended up in her bed at the hotel, where several more best hours of her life had followed.

‘There’s something I really should tell you,’ Doug had said, gazing down at her afterwards.

With a lurch of her stomach, Amelia had known instinctively what it was.

‘It’s Imogen. We’re still together.’

‘Don’t you think you should have told me that before you got into my bed?’ she asked, blinking back the tears that had sprung to her eyes.

Doug grimaced. ‘I know. I meant to. It’s just that – well – I didn’t plan any of this. Seeing you again has brought back all those feelings I used to have – still have – for you. I loved you, Amelia. To distraction. And you’ll never know how much you hurt me when you dumped me.’

At that, the tears had begun to flow. ‘You know why I finished it. I couldn’t risk being thrown out of Cambridge. My parents – the scholarship – everything would have been ruined.’

‘ I was ruined. I was in bits.’

‘You didn’t look like you were in bits. When I saw you and Imogen snogging in the quad the first week back.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘I felt like I’d lost an arm that summer. So when she rang me up and invited me down to her place, I went. One thing just led to another.’

‘And have been continuing to lead to another for the last ten years. Things must be pretty good if you’ve lasted that long.’

‘Actually, they’re not. Up until now we’ve rarely lived in the same country. I guess it’s been easier just to let things drift than make any decisions. And it wouldn’t be easy to break off anything with Imogen. You know what she’s like.’

Amelia did know what she was like. Imogen’s mother, Imogen had informed her – and everyone else in the pub during the meet ’n’ greet at Cambridge – had been a famous model in the 1980s and had married a minor aristocrat. Brought up at some lavish mansion and sent to the best school in the country where she’d mingled with the offspring of the rich and famous, Imogen wasn’t particularly bright – in fact, Amelia suspected she’d only got into Cambridge because of her family connections. She’d scraped through with a third-class degree in English which, again, Amelia suspected was more down to nepotism – and possibly one or two large cheque towards the refurbishment of the college library – than intellect or ability. But none of that would matter to Imogen. She was used to getting whatever she wanted. And she’d obviously wanted Doug from that very first evening.