Make A Christmas Wish: A heartwarming, witty and magical festive treat

Chapter One (#ulink_4bbe9b86-3813-586e-8688-44f7fcf2abde)

Adam

Suddenly all the lights in the house begin flickering on and off, as if someone is maniacally flipping switches. I have a vague sense of unease about it and go to check the circuit breaker, but none of the fuses have blown and all the light switches seem to be working.

‘Must be a power surge,’ jokes Emily. ‘Everyone’s probably turned their lights on at once.’

I’m not so convinced.

‘Maybe there’s a problem with the wiring,’ I say. ‘I’ll call an electrician in the morning. We must get it sorted before Christmas.’

The lights seem to settle down, and the wind too, so I dismiss my unease as the product of an overactive imagination. But later when I go into the kitchen to start dinner, the back door blows open. I go to shut it and stare out at the night. It’s stormy and cold, and the wind is howling in the trees. I shiver. It’s not a night to be out in, and yet I could swear there’s someone there, in the back garden, who is exuding menace and anger.

‘Is anyone there?’ I call, but no one answers; all I see is a mangy black cat which runs in front of my path.

It must be the stress, I think. What with stress and guilt, I’m losing it. With one last glance at the garden, I shut the door and go back inside. But my sense of unease lingers on.

Emily

‘OK, Joe, how do you think that looks?’ Emily smiled at Joe as they surveyed their – well mainly Joe’s – work decorating the Christmas tree. Over the past few months she and Adam had been spending more time together and slowly letting Joe get to know her, but she still fretted that they were taking it too fast. Joe was such an enigma, and Emily found it hard to know what he was thinking. Apparently Livvy was the only person who understood him intuitively. Whatever her faults, Joe had been very close to his mum. Adam was still finding little notes he’d written to her around the house.

‘Joe needs a routine,’ Adam kept telling Emily, ‘and at least he knows you from swimming. That helps a lot. Besides, he likes you.’

That was a huge relief. It was so hard to tell.

Funnily enough it was Joe who led Emily to Adam two Christmases ago. When Emily had lost her husband, Graham, to a girl in the marketing department, she had been devastated. At her friend Lucy’s insistence, she’d moved from North to South West London to start a new life, part of which had involved Emily taking up swimming, and it was at the Monday swimming club where she first spotted Joe.

Up and down. Up and down. He swam decisively with certain strokes, driven by some inner compulsion that Emily recognized. In her own way she swam just as obsessively as he did.

Adam came later. Emily was vaguely aware of a man who swam in her lane. Occasionally they’d bump into one another and mumble watery apologies. That moved to quick smiles as they lowered themselves into the water, and the occasional comment about how cold it was. They’d just moved to a shared joke of how much better it was when you got out when Emily ran into him in a café in town, having coffee with Joe. It had been late December two years ago and Emily had been mooching disconsolately around the shops, feeling her single status acutely. She was going to Lucy’s annual Christmas bash that night and knew she’d be one of the few unpartnered people there; while she was glad to be shot of Graham, she sometimes wished someone new would come into her life.

She had noticed Adam immediately because he looked as lost and bereft as she did. Although she didn’t recognize Joe straight away, there was something about the still way he sat which seemed familiar. And Emily’s eye was also caught by the fact that he was repeatedly arranging his cutlery in order.

‘Hi,’ Adam said, with a smile that lit up his face and dispelled the look of gloom that had settled over him.

‘Hi,’ Emily said a bit dubiously, wondering why a complete stranger was accosting her in a coffee shop.

‘It’s Adam,’ he said. ‘From swimming.’

‘Ah,’ Emily said, recognition dawning, ‘always better when we get out.’

‘That’s right,’ Adam said, with a disarming smile.

An unfamiliar warm tingle spread over her. Apart from her best friend Lucy, Emily didn’t know anyone locally, and it was lovely to have someone recognize her for a change. And Adam was far more handsome than she had so far noticed, with fair hair, just turning to grey, and bright blue eyes that sparkled when he smiled a crinkly smile. Emily took in his smart jeans and casual attire. She’d already clocked his lean body in the pool, but not the rest. Funny how you didn’t appreciate how good-looking someone is when they’re practically naked.

‘I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on,’ Emily blurted out, then blushed profusely. He’d think she was a complete idiot. But Adam laughed and invited her to join them.

‘Who are you?’ Joe looked suspicious.

‘You know this lady,’ said Adam. ‘She goes swimming. This is … actually, I don’t know your name.’

‘It’s Emily.’

‘Adam,’ he said, and again that lovely smile, which made Emily melt a little at the edges. He seemed kind and friendly, and it was nice to interact with someone other than the girlfriends she saw occasionally.

‘Hello Emily from swimming,’ said Joe, rearranging his cutlery once more.

‘You’re a good swimmer,’ Emily said cautiously.

‘I swim a hundred lengths,’ said Joe proudly.

‘That’s amazing,’ Emily said. ‘I can usually swim sixty.’

‘I swim a hundred lengths,’ said Joe again. ‘Every week.’ Then he retreated into folding and refolding his napkin.

‘Joe’s got Asperger’s,’ whispered Adam.

‘Oh,’ Emily didn’t quite know how to respond to that; she’d never met anyone with Asperger’s, but Joe seemed very sweet if a little insular, so she smiled encouragingly at him, and hoped she’d got it right.

They sat in the café for ages, drinking coffee after coffee and chatting away as if they’d always known each other. Joe sometimes joined in, sometimes not. It was a magical couple of hours and Emily felt the warm glow deepen as the minutes ticked past. Here she was, spending time with a lovely man who seemed genuinely kind, friendly and interested in her. It was Christmas – maybe things were looking up.

All too soon for Emily, Joe started tugging at Adam’s sleeve.

‘Eleven forty-eight, Dad,’ he said. ‘We have to meet Mum at twelve thirty. And have lunch. Lunch is at one p.m.’

Oh. Mum. Stupidly, the fact that Adam and Joe were always alone had prompted Emily to begin to hope Mum might be out of the picture.

‘Yes,’ said Adam. ‘We’d better go.’ And a little of the sparkle went out of him. ‘Lovely chatting to you, Emily. See you next week.’

They left and Emily felt bereft, firmly back in the land of singledom. Just her luck the nicest man she’d met since the Graham debacle would be married; they usually were. After what Emily had been through, she had no intention of destroying a marriage.

But as it turned out that was exactly what she’d done. Emily never set out to seduce Adam, nor he her. It had been a gradual process: of chats in the changing room before or after swimming; of the occasional drink with the swimming club and making sure she always sought him out; and then eventually of running into him one night when she came home from work. He was frantic. Joe had gone walkabout and Adam had no idea where. Emily automatically offered to help, and they tracked him down to a school friend’s house, where Joe was sitting rocking back and forth, saying, ‘Mum wouldn’t talk to me.’ That was Emily’s first glimpse of the hell Adam and Livvy were living in.

‘It’s as much my fault as hers,’ Adam had explained to Emily later. ‘I’ve always tried to support Livvy and Joe, but she seemed to cope so well with Joe when he was little, sometimes I felt she didn’t need me. Joe came first, which was natural, but it seemed that he was all she wanted. Somewhere along the line we stopped communicating, and I don’t think I quite appreciated the toll looking after Joe took on her.’

It wasn’t long after that they had kissed for the first time and from that point onwards, Emily’s relationship with Adam had changed and deepened, and then they were in too deep to get out without hurting people. It wasn’t what either of them had intended.

And then, a year ago, Livvy had died and everything had changed. Adam had been in a state of profound shock and Emily couldn’t help him. She had had to sit on the sidelines wondering whether she’d ever see him again. For a while she’d wondered if that was going to be it; whether the love affair which had made her heart sing would be snuffed out just as surely as Livvy’s life had been.

But a few weeks after Christmas, Adam had started to call her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m going mad here. I have to talk to someone. And you’re the only person who understands.’

At first Emily was wary, not sure if Adam even knew what he wanted; not sure if the love she felt for him was reciprocated. She had deliberately avoided going to swimming, because seeing him there was just too painful, but one blustery February day she’d taken herself off for a walk down by the river, and suddenly there was Adam, standing before her. The weeks of frustration and anguish melted away and they were in each other’s arms before they knew it.

‘I’m so sorry for not seeing you,’ Adam had said when they went to a bar to sit and chat. ‘I made a mess of everything with Livvy, and I really don’t want to make a mess of it with you. I have to think about Joe. You do understand that, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Emily. ‘What happened has happened, and we have to deal with that. Let’s just see where this goes.’