Once Upon A Christmas Night...

‘I think you look rather fetching. Red suits you.’ Greg’s smile would have made her feel fabulous, even if she’d been wearing rags. ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t want to make me feel underdressed, would you?’

The idea was faintly ludicrous. His jeans were a shade of something between indigo and black, which you generally didn’t find on the high street. His sweater wasn’t new, but it was soft, thick cashmere, like the one he’d lent her. Coupled with those dark good looks, he was quality from head to toe and would have fitted in anywhere.

He caught his car keys up from the hall table. ‘I’ll get your coat from the car.’

They tramped across the fields, keeping up a brisk pace against the cold. Jess was glad of the woollen scarf and gloves that Greg had produced from the cloakroom, which was beginning to take on the nature of a magician’s cubby hole, from which it was possible to conjure up all manner of useful things that appeared to belong to no one in particular.

‘That’s where we’re headed.’ He pointed towards a house, standing on the outskirts of the village.

‘It looks lovely.’ Jess didn’t have to search for something nice to say this time. The yellow-brick, rambling farmhouse was everything that Greg’s father’s house wasn’t. Blending in with the trees and evergreen bushes that surrounded it, as if it had just grown there instead of having been brutally hewn from the countryside. ‘This was your real home, then.’

‘Yeah.’ His pace seemed to quicken, the nearer they got. As if he was leaving some burden behind. ‘Where did you grow up?’

Jess smiled. ‘Nowhere so grand.’

He twisted the corners of his mouth down. ‘This isn’t so very grand, is it?’

‘It is quite grand. We didn’t have our own medieval tower at home.’

‘It’s only mock-medieval—’ He broke off, grinning. ‘Yeah, I suppose the tower’s not your average home extension. But stop changing the subject. I’ve already spilled the beans.’

Maybe he had. Maybe he’d just told her what he wanted her to know and kept the rest back. ‘Not much to know. Just me and my mum. We had a little house in South London.’

He nodded. ‘No brothers or sisters?’

‘No. My father left before I was born.’ Jess shrugged. ‘I don’t miss him. I can’t, I didn’t know him.’

‘Can’t you miss things that you didn’t have?’

‘I’m not sure there were any.’ She answered too quickly. Maybe even a bit defensively.

He laughed. ‘May I have your autograph?’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve never met anyone who’s had everything they ever wanted before.’

Jess nudged her shoulder against his arm. ‘Don’t be dense, Greg. There’s not much point in wanting things you’re never going to have.’

‘No. But sometimes you have to acknowledge them.’

‘Because?’

‘Because you can’t start to work on what you need, unless you acknowledge what’s missing.’

Maybe. She’d need to think about that. ‘I guess I miss knowing about him. Silly things, like whether my eyes are the same colour as his. Whether there’s anything in his medical history that I should be watching out for.’

He chuckled. ‘Always good to know. Have you any idea where he is now?’

‘In a manner of speaking. He was killed in a car accident fifteen years ago. Someone came to tell Mum.’ Jess remembered that day well enough. The stranger who’d knocked on their door, and who her mother had taken into the kitchen to talk with privately. The silence in the house, and then the sudden resumption of normal life, as if her mother had made a conscious decision to put all of that behind her and never speak of it again.

Greg’s pace slowed and he found her hand, tucking it under his arm. They fell into step together almost automatically. ‘Did anyone ever say they were sorry? For that loss?’

‘No. No one ever thought it was one.’ It was what Jess had told herself, too.

‘I’m sorry. For your loss.’

‘Thank you.’ She smiled up at him. He must have repeated that phrase any number of times in his career, but he always seemed to mean it. It came as a surprise to find how much it meant to her, too.

‘Can I ask you a question, Greg?’

‘Since when did you need permission for that?’

‘How did you feel when your mother remarried? I mean… did you mind?’

‘Mind? Well, Ted was practically living with us anyway. And we all went to Italy and had an enormous party, and I got to stay with my aunt, while they went off on honeymoon. I kissed a girl, broke my arm coming off my cousin’s motorbike and generally had a whale of a time. My mother was horrified when she got back.’

‘I bet she was. How old did you say you were?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Hmm. My mother married when I was twenty.’

‘And?’

‘And her husband’s a really nice man. He gives her the life she’s always deserved and she’s happy with him.’

‘That’s nice. And?’

He waited. Laid his gloved hand over hers, tucking it more firmly into the crook of his arm.

‘I don’t know if I should even say it. It sounds so stupid… ’

‘Oh, go on.’ He chuckled. ‘You can’t leave me hanging now.’

Why not? He’d done the same to her. But if Jess gave a little, maybe he would. ‘It was just a bit confusing. All my life she’d been telling me that we could manage on our own, that I didn’t need a father and she didn’t need a husband. Then all of a sudden she upped and got married.’

He chuckled. ‘Must have been love.’

‘Yeah. Suppose it must have been.’ Jess wrinkled her nose.

‘Did you look that disapproving when she broke the news?’

‘No! Of course I didn’t. I’m happy for her, of course I am. I just… When I was little I used to think that it would be me who would get a great job, find somewhere nice for us to live. That I’d be the one to make sure she was comfortable.’ Jess forced a smile. ‘I’m just being silly.’

He shrugged. ‘Sounds reasonable enough to me. You know the trouble with people—families in particular, I’ve noticed—is that you have these great plans for them, how you’re going to make everything right and so on, and then they just go out and do it all on their own. It’s frustrating.’

Jess couldn’t help laughing now. ‘Is that a touch of megalomania I hear?’