Mistletoe Marriage

She nodded. ‘I don’t like it there, and I’m desperately homesick, but if I came home I’d have to see Nick all the time, and I don’t know how I’d bear that. Melissa feels terrible about it all. She rings me sometimes and begs me to come up and see them, but I can’t face it, and then I feel awful for upsetting her.

‘It might be different if I had a boyfriend, someone to make Melissa—and Nick, I suppose—think that I was over it and had moved on, but I can’t produce a man out of nowhere! My mother thinks it’s all my fault. She’s dying to get me married.’

‘Why?’ asked Bram, baffled.

‘Oh, because she loved Melissa’s wedding and can’t wait to organise another one. She was very put out when Susan Jackson got married last summer. You know what rivals she is with Maggie Jackson! Mum was really cross that Maggie had managed to marry off no less than three daughters, and all with what Mum calls “proper weddings”, in a church, with long white dresses and a marquee in the garden!’

Sophie shook her head ruefully. ‘I get the definite feeling that I’m letting the side down. Mum’s got this idea that if I’d only make the effort to lose some weight and smarten myself up a bit I’d be able to snaffle up a husband in no time! She’s always asking me if I’ve met anyone nice.’

‘What do you say?’

‘I suppose I play along with it a bit, just for a quiet life,’ said Sophie a little uncomfortably. ‘If I’m seeing someone I let Mum think that it’s more serious than it is. I went out with a guy called Rob for a while, and she got very excited about him. He’s a teacher, and she thought he sounded very suitable, but I had to tell her today that I’m not seeing him any more. That didn’t go down very well.’

She pushed the hair out of her eyes and managed a smile. ‘Mum thinks I’m “just not trying”!’

Bram could practically hear Harriet Beckwith saying it.

‘The thing is, Rob’s a nice guy, but…’

‘But he’s not Nick?’

‘No,’ she acknowledged with a sigh. ‘No, he isn’t. The trouble is that nobody is ever going to be Nick, but I can’t tell Mum that. She got all upset because she was hoping I’d bring Rob home for Christmas, and of course now she wants to know why it’s all over.’

‘What did you tell her?’

Sophie grimaced, remembering. ‘Well, I didn’t know what to say, so I said I’d fallen in love with someone else but it was all very new and I didn’t really want to talk about it yet. It was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment,’ she added defensively, as if Bram had poured scorn on her idea.

‘But of course now Mum’s in full interrogation mode. She keeps accusing me of being secretive and difficult. Why can’t I be sweet and nice like Melissa, who keeps in touch and goes to see them all the time? We ended up having a full-scale row, and I stormed out. It was just like being a teenager again.’ She sighed.

And, just like then, she had sought refuge at Haw Gill Farm. Straightening from the comfort of his warm bulk, Sophie looked at Bram and wondered if he had any idea how much he meant to her. He was such a dear friend, so level-headed, so down to earth, so reassuringly solid. The mere sight of him was enough to make her feel safer and steadier.

‘All I could think of was coming to see you,’ she said simply.

CHAPTER TWO

BRAM’S side felt cold where Sophie had been leaning against him, and part of him wished that she would come back, instead of turning up her collar against the cold and thrusting her hands into her pockets like that. The other part of him was glad that she had moved away. For some reason her nearness was making him feel strange today.

So strange that when Bess, snuffling along the hedgerow, put up a pheasant, he actually jumped as it exploded out of its hiding place, squawking with indignation.

It made Sophie start, too, and she looked guiltily at the bales still waiting to be unloaded in the fading light of the winter afternoon.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve held you up. You’ve got better things to do than listen to me moaning on.’

‘You know I always enjoy listening to you moan,’ said Bram lightly, ‘but I should finish moving those bales.’ He glanced down at Sophie. ‘It won’t take long. Why don’t you go and put the kettle on? You know what Mum used to say…’

‘It’ll all feel better after a nice cup of tea!’ she chanted obediently.

Molly Thoresby had been a great believer in the power of tea. How many times had Sophie heard her say that? She smiled at the memory as she walked back to the farmhouse. She could see Molly now, lifting the lid on the old kitchen range, setting the kettle firmly on the stove, while Sophie sat at the table and poured out her problems.

Sophie loved her own mother, of course she did, but she had loved Bram’s almost as much. Harriet Beckwith was smart and well-groomed, while Molly had been warm and comfortable and wise. Molly had never pushed or criticised or complained the way Harriet did. She’d just listened and made tea, and funnily enough things almost always had felt better afterwards. When Molly had died suddenly, a couple of months ago, Sophie had felt nearly as bereft as Bram.

The big farmhouse kitchen looked exactly the same as it had always done, with its sturdy pine table set in the window, its cluttered dresser and the two shabby armchairs drawn up in front of a wood-burning stove, but it was empty without Molly.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked into the silence. Sophie filled the kettle and set it to boil on the range, just the way Molly had used to do. She had always loved this shabby, comfortable kitchen. Her mother’s was immaculate, full of modern appliances and spacious work surfaces, but it wasn’t a place you wanted to linger.

Outside, the sky was streaked with pink over the moors, and it was getting darker by the minute. Sophie liked the short winter afternoons, and the way switching on a lamp could make the darkness beyond the windows intensify. She put on the lights in the kitchen so that Bram could see their inviting yellow glow as he came home. It must be awful for him coming back to a dark house each evening now that Molly had gone.

She stood in the big bay window and watched the light fade over the moors. Her mind drifted to thoughts of Nick, the way it always did at quiet times like this. She thought about his heart-shaking smile, about the shiver of pleasure that went through her at the merest brush of his fingers, about the thrill of being near him.

Being with Nick had never felt safe—not in the way being with Bram did, for instance. There had always been an element of risk in their relationship. Sophie could see that now. She had never been able to relax completely with Nick for fear that she would lose him. Even when she had been at her happiest it had felt as if she were on point of exploding with the sheer intensity of it all. It had been a dangerous feeling, but a wonderful one too. Loving Nick had made her feel electric, alive.

Would she ever feel that way again? Sophie wondered. It didn’t seem possible. There was only one Nick, and he belonged to her sister now.

The sound of the back door opening jerked Sophie out of her thoughts.

‘In your kennel, Bess,’ she heard Bram say. ‘Stay!’

Poor old Bess was a softie amongst sheepdogs. Sophie was sure that she secretly yearned to be a pet, so that she could come inside and sit by the fire. Every day she sat hopefully at the door while Bram took his boots off, before being ordered off to her warm, clean kennel.

‘You’re a working dog,’ Bram would tell her sternly. ‘You can come in when you retire.’

‘That dog is hopeless,’ he said as he came into the kitchen wearing thick grey socks on his feet. His brown hair was ruffled by the wind, and his eyes looked so blue in his square, brown face that for a startled moment Sophie felt as if she were looking at a stranger.

‘She’s not that bad,’ said Sophie as she warmed the teapot.

‘She is. She’s useless. I’m never going have a starring role on One Man and His Dog with Bess.’ Bram pretended to complain. ‘Sometimes I think it would be easier to run around after the sheep myself and let Bess have the whistle!’

Sophie laughed. ‘At least she tries. And she adores you.’

‘I wish she’d adore me by doing what I told her,’ sighed Bram.

‘I’m afraid that’s not how adoring works,’ said Sophie sadly, and he glanced at her, compassion in his blue eyes.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I know.’

Sophie kept swirling the hot water around in the teapot.

‘Does it ever get any better, Bram?’ she asked.

He didn’t pretend not to understand her. ‘Yes, it does,’ he said. ‘Eventually.’

‘It doesn’t seem to have got better with you,’ she pointed out. ‘How long is it since you were engaged to Melissa?’

‘More than ten years,’ he admitted.

‘And you’re still not totally over her, are you?’

Bram didn’t answer immediately. He warmed his hands by the wood-burning stove and thought about Melissa, with her hair like spun gold and her violet eyes and that smile that made the sun come out.