Charlotte Phillips - The Present - The must-read Christmas romance of the year!

‘Then there should be twelve, shouldn’t there?’ she said, looking at the empty slot in the middle of the box. There’s one missing.’ She ran her gaze quickly over the collection, holding her phone screen next to her, ticking lines from the song off in her head. ‘ Five gold rings . That’s the missing one. What a shame. I wonder if it’s up in the attic somewhere in that mess of stuff. I’ll have to keep looking.’

‘Not right now you won’t, not until I’ve made sure the floor is safe,’ he said immediately.

‘And I’ll have to try and ask Gran about them when I visit,’ she said. ‘If she’s awake this time, that is.’ She hadn’t been conscious much at all yet. In many ways it had been the hardest thing to cope with, seeing Gran robbed of all her vivacity, so impossibly frail and unresponsive. ‘They’re obviously hers, her name is Olive. But she’s never mentioned them to me. I’ve definitely never seen them before: I would have remembered. And you saw them, they were just shoved in a corner up in the attic, covered in dust. No one’s opened this box in years. They were obviously just forgotten about.’

She looked down at the collection of beautiful love notes. How could anyone forget them?

Jack shrugged.

‘It’s been over seventy years, to be fair,’ he said. ‘Do you think they are from your grandad? Maybe they were a present from him to your gran.’

She looked down at the collection on the table and frowned. She simply could not imagine the openness of feeling in those notes coming from her stoic and straight-down-the-line grandfather.

‘I do know Gran and Grandad met before the war, even though they didn’t marry until much later. Gran was quite old by the standards of the time when she had my mum. But even so, I’m just not sure he was that kind of man,’ she said. ‘He didn’t do romantic gestures, not that I know of. He was a very ordered kind of person, very straightforward, play by the rules. Never late, always thought decisions through before making them, not impulsive. It’s one of things I liked best about him. You always know where you are with someone like that.’

He might not have been given to shows of affection, but if you wanted steadiness and absolute reliability, he was your man. He had been the perfect foil for a child whose mother was given to disappearing at the drop of a hat.

‘I want to ask Gran about them,’ she said, ‘but she’s only awake for moments at a time. She’s really not well. I don’t want to push a shedload of questions on her.’

‘It’s okay, you can ask her when she’s better,’ Jack said. ‘I’m sure she’ll pull round, just give it a bit of time.’

She toyed with the tiny drum decoration. It was perfectly detailed, beautiful. This set must have cost a fortune, and where could anyone buy things like this with a war on? Questions upon questions. She made herself wrap the drum back up, being careful to add the correct note before she placed it gently back in its place in the box. It seemed important to keep the set intact, the sentiments in the right order.

‘You have a point,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It’s been over seventy years, right? What’s the rush?’

Except there was a rush. Deep inside her. The urge to get to the bottom of the mystery nagged at her mind, and she had to force herself back to thinking about her present-day situation, which featured a Christmas to-do list that would require a team of full-time elves to pull off. The best she could hope for was flying through the holiday by the seat of her Christmas pants without any major disasters.

‘I really ought to get on,’ Jack said. He stood up, and she suddenly remembered that he was paid to do a job, and she was commandeering his time to piss about with antiques and family history from half a century ago. He was probably bored as hell and too polite to say so.

She shook her head, vaguely exasperated with herself. She stood up too. Her leg throbbed, but she ignored it.

‘Of course. I’m really sorry, I’ve probably cost you loads of time. The last thing you need is a shedload of someone else’s sentimental family history.’

‘Yeah, because fixing that window frame’s got a real pull that’s hard to resist,’ he said.

He smiled at her. Despite the fact it was the middle of winter, he had the kind of tan that spoke of an outdoor lifestyle, and his dark grey eyes creased a little at the corners. As if his strong physique wasn’t enough, he had the aftershave model looks to back it up. In that moment she could completely see where Gran’s gossip about his turbulent new-girl-every-five-minutes love life was rooted.

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Really. Like I said, I’m around for a day or two if you need any help, or if you get trapped under something heavy.’

She told herself firmly that the appeal of having him on hand to help was entirely to do with his ability to heave a box into a skip, and definitely not how he might look while he did it.

‘What the hell happened to you?’

Rod walked into the kitchen on the dot of seven, put his keys in the dish on the dresser, and stopped in the act of kissing Lucy’s cheek when he caught sight of her leg. She glanced down at the supersized sticking plaster she’d used to re-dress the graze on her shin. She’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt after a monumental shower to get rid of all the plaster dust.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I just scraped it getting some stuff out of Gran’s loft. No biggie.’

Probably best not to mention the gaping hole in Gran’s bedroom ceiling; she’d had quite enough of making a knob of herself in front of people today. Jack had assured her he would fix it in the next couple of days, and Rod could stay none the wiser.

She gave the schedule attached by a magnet to the fridge door an unnecessary check as she opened it, because knowing it was Wednesday was enough to know it was stir-fry night. In the same way that Monday was meat-free, and Friday was a takeaway.

Life ran better when it was organised. If Rod had a personal credo, this would be it. And it was one she wholeheartedly agreed with. There was something extremely reassuring, she had found, about knowing what was happening day to day, and especially longer term. She had known when she met Rod that they were on the same page in that respect. She’d contacted him to see if he would give an interview following the Budget five years ago: his accountancy firm’s take on the effects for local people, that kind of thing. He’d provided her with a projected schedule of costings, a comprehensive overview, and a list of tips for savers that would have got the nod from Martin Lewis. And an offer of dinner that turned into a series of dates that turned into a relationship. His private life was as ordered and planned as his work had been. And she always knew where she was with him. With Rod she had a future that she could count on. He would never disappear on impulse because he fancied a change of scenery.

‘Coming along well at the house, then?’ he said, leaning past her to turn on the extractor hood above the cooker. All mod cons in their new-build rental, nothing like Gran’s inefficient rambling dinosaur of a place. Steam began to curl up from the wok as she added chicken and vegetables to the pan. ‘Good to hear. I called the agent, and if we can get it shipshape we can have the valuation done and it can go on the market as soon as Christmas is out of the way.’

Her stomach gave an involuntary lurch at the thought. What would it feel like to know she was never going to see the old place again? What would it feel like for Gran? She couldn’t expect Rod to feel sentimental. He hadn’t lived there. He hadn’t built dens out of blankets and sticks in the garden in summer. He hadn’t learned to make fairy cakes in the kitchen, which was always warm, no matter what time of the year because of the range cooker. The thought must have shown on her face because Rod put an arm around her shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze.