What Happens At Christmas... Read online

  ‘Bloody hell, Justin, what a spread!’ She immediately rather regretted not saying ‘gadzooks’ or ‘upon my word’, rather than ‘bloody hell’. It was that sort of place.

  ‘We’ll let the champagne sit for a moment, shall we?’ Holly nodded. She couldn’t help thinking that he looked completely at home in these fine surroundings. He gave her a smile. ‘I’m sorry for the interruption. I was asking you about your mother.’

  Holly had been doing a lot of thinking about her mother over the past couple of weeks. As she heard more and more about her lovely, generous father who had apparently been adored by all around him, the suspicion had started to form in her mind that maybe her mother had lied to her about him – all her life. It was a difficult concept to handle. Her mum had been there for her all through her life and she owed her so much. She had certainly been an inflexible character and they hadn’t always got on, but there had never been any doubt as to the love they bore for each other. The idea that Holly had been deliberately tricked into hating her own father by her mother stuck in the throat. She looked at Justin across the monumental pile of food on the table and did her best to be objective.

  ‘I loved my mum, you know. She brought me up single-handed and it can’t have been easy.’ She caught his eye. ‘And I was a real pain all the way through school. It was easy for me to blame it all on my not having a dad, but other girls were in the same boat and they didn’t rebel half as much as I did.’ She saw the disbelief on his face. ‘It’s true; I may sound like Alice in Wonderland now, but I was Attila the Hun for a good few years.’

  ‘I see you more as Sleeping Beauty.’ He was smiling, doing his best to put her at her ease after inadvertently opening a potential can of worms with his question.

  ‘Are you trying to imply that I look dozy?’ She managed a smile in return. ‘If my dad did try to contact me, and my mum didn’t tell me about it, I know it must have been because she wanted to protect me. Rightly or wrongly, she was convinced he was a bad lot and a bad influence, so she did her best to shut him out of both our lives. It seems harsh when you look at it from his point of view, but she must have had her reasons.’

  He was looking more serious now. ‘Break-ups are tough, especially when there are children involved. I’m only glad my wife and I didn’t have kids.’

  Her eyes inadvertently slid down to his wedding ring. ‘You were married?’

  ‘For ten years. Still am, just. I suppose it’ll have to go to the lawyers any day now.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He shrugged, but she could see the effort it cost him to look nonchalant. ‘I think I’ve got over the worst of it, but it came as a real shock at the time.’ He pulled himself together and pointed towards the food. ‘Hungry?’

  Holly filed away the information that the separation had, by the sound of it, been caused by his wife, rather than by him. Somehow, she had rather assumed that a handsome man like him might have been the guilty party. And there was no doubt at all that he was a handsome man; handsome, sophisticated and urbane. She looked back across the table, liking what she saw, and that wasn’t just the food. At the same time she found herself wondering, not for the first time, just what this was. Was it a date? Was he trying to get over his wife’s departure and move on with another woman? Or was he simply taking her out for tea because she was the daughter of one of his father’s best friends? Or was it neither of those things? She decided the best thing to do was to concentrate on the feast laid out in front of her. She gave him a smile.

  ‘I don’t really know where to start. I’m afraid I’m a high tea virgin. Is there an etiquette to this sort of thing? You know, scones first, éclairs afterwards or something like that?’

  He was smiling again. ‘Just dig in, I think. Of course, there is a bit of debate over whether you put the cream on your scone before the jam or vice versa, but I’m not a purist. Eat what you want, how you want, and in the order you want. Now, let’s have some champagne.’ As he reached for the bottle, the wine waiter materialised from behind a nearby Christmas decoration, filled both glasses and then disappeared as silently as he had come. Holly nodded appreciatively, reflecting to herself that rural Devon was surprisingly sophisticated, as was her companion.

  Holly raised her glass towards Justin. ‘Thank you for a very special afternoon out, Justin. Cheers.’ She leant forward and clinked her glass against his over the top of the chocolate éclairs.

  ‘And thank you, Holly, for being such a charming guest.’ All terribly formal, but then so was he and here, in these surroundings, it seemed appropriate.

  The meal, for that was what it was, rather than a mid-afternoon snack, lasted almost an hour. During that time they talked a lot and she learnt more about her father. She also heard Justin refer repeatedly to his wife and the fact that she had gone off. He also told Holly about his hobby of sailing and his love of the islands of the Aegean and, after her third glass of champagne, Holly found herself imagining him on the deck of a fine yacht, clad only in a pair of shorts, with her lying in the sun beside him in her skimpiest bikini. It was an alluring picture.

  It was pitch dark by the time they left. As they got into the car, she reached across and touched his arm. ‘Thank you, Justin. That was amazing.’

  ‘Thank you, Holly. We always used to love coming here.’ She noted his use of the first person plural and knew he must still be thinking of his wife. And, from his tone, he clearly still had feelings for her, in spite of her deciding to leave him. The image of the yacht and the bikini dissolved as she realised she would do well to treat this afternoon as tea with a friend, rather than anything with any romantic involvement. Handsome and charming he most certainly was, but you didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to see that he was still missing his wife.

  When they got back to her house, he jumped out of the car and came round to open the car door for her. She swung her legs out and slid down to the ground.

  ‘Thank you again, Justin. That was a real treat.’

  ‘You’re very welcome. Bye, Holly.’

  She kissed him on both cheeks and waited as he turned the big vehicle and set off up the road again until the tail lights finally disappeared round the corner after the green. Her mind was working overtime. She had enjoyed being with him immensely. The plush surroundings of the Castle had reminded her of similar episodes she had enjoyed with previous boyfriends in wildly expensive London clubs and restaurants. She had always enjoyed dressing up in her smartest clothes – particularly, she admitted to herself, her best shoes – and she had loved the glitter and opulence of that sort of place. Now, standing outside a granite cottage in a little Devon village with a faint, but unmistakable smell of cow shit in the air, she started to question her previous life. Were places like the Castle or men like Justin what she really wanted? Was all that maybe a bit phoney? And anyway, she thought to herself, it was looking pretty clear that Justin still hadn’t got over his wife so, even if she had wanted to take things further with him, that wasn’t likely to happen.

  A strangled half howl, half whine from the other side of the front door interrupted her train of thought. She found herself smiling as she reached for her keys.

  ‘Sorry, Stirling. I forgot you were there. I’m coming.’

  That evening she didn’t have any dinner. She was so full from the high tea that, after a short walk with Stirling, who had behaved himself impeccably in her absence, she went upstairs and carried on with the task of clearing her father’s stuff. She started at the end of the corridor in the room he had been using as a study.

  She began over to one side and gradually cleared the worst of the clutter. The floor was littered with boxes, books, piles of paper and files. There were even pieces of metal and models that she, as an engineer, recognised as pumps. It was when she had just about reached the far side of the room, her hands dusty and her fingernails black, that she made an amazing discovery.

  It was an ordinary-looking cardboard box. She picked it up, wondering whether th
e contents should be binned or kept. Setting it on the desk, she sat down and started sifting through it. Within a very short space of time she realised she had stumbled across something incredible.

  The box was full of letters, each meticulously folded and sealed into an individual envelope. There must have been hundreds of letters in there. And all of them had been written by her father to her.

  It didn’t take long to work out that there was one letter every month, from the time he and her mother had separated, until just before his death. Most poignant of all was the fact that the first hundred or so were all in stamped envelopes that had been sent all the way from Australia to her mother’s home address; the same house where Holly had grown up. Each envelope was unopened and still sealed, and Holly recognised the firm handwriting of her mother across the front of each one: Return to Sender.

  She counted them up. In all, there were a hundred and twenty-two sealed, stamped envelopes. He had written a letter to her every month from the day he left until her eighteenth birthday. From then on, the monthly letters continued all through her life, but in plain envelopes, unstamped and unsent, marked only with her name, Miss Holly Brice. There were tears in her eyes as she picked up the box and carried it down the stairs. She set it on the coffee table in the lounge and made herself a cup of tea. Then she sat down and started on the first one, dated 1st June 1989.

  Every one began with the same words: My dearest Holly. As she read her way into the letters, she began to get a real insight into the true nature of her father. At first the letters were simplistic and entertaining. After all, she reminded herself, her father had been writing to a seven-year-old girl. But one phrase cropped up time and time again. After I had to leave you. It made it sound as if he had been forced to leave, rather than choosing to go off with another woman, as Holly had always been led to believe by her mother. There was no attempt at an explanation but, of course, how could he explain such things to a little girl? She read for several hours, but she was no nearer to discovering exactly what had transpired to cause the separation. But she now knew, if she hadn’t known it before, just how much her father had loved her.

  By the time she was too drained to continue reading, his letters had almost reached her eighteenth birthday. He had left Britain almost immediately after leaving her mother and had been living in Australia all that time. She folded the last letter and slipped it back into its stamped envelope, as ever scrawled on by her mother. She glanced at the next ones in the box. There were a couple more with stamps, but from then on, the letters had not been posted. Presumably he had accepted the fact that a distance between them of ten thousand miles, and an implacable ex-wife, now meant he no longer stood any chance of ever contacting the girl he still addressed as his Dearest Holly.

  Holly felt emotionally drained. She did a quick calculation. She was thirty-three, so, at a rate of one a month, there had to be well in excess of a hundred and fifty letters still to be read. She closed the box and slumped back on the sofa. Now, as she relaxed, the tears began to flow for the father she had never really known. She pulled out a tissue and wiped her eyes, but to no avail. She found herself sobbing her heart out. There was a movement at her feet and she felt the sofa sway. Next thing she knew, the Labrador had climbed up and sprawled himself across her, his nose against her chest, his big, brown eyes staring up at hers with grave concern.

  She looked down at him, knowing she should throw him off the sofa, but in the end settling for taking the big hairy head in her arms and hugging him tightly. They stayed like that for some minutes before the weight of the dog on her lap made her decide to make a move.

  ‘Right, Stirling, you know you should be on the floor, don’t you?’

  Clearly he didn’t. In the end she had to manhandle him off her lap and slide him onto the floor. He sat there and surveyed her solemnly. She caught his eye.

  ‘I know, Stirling. You’re a very good dog and I love you dearly, but your job’s done now. I’m all right.’ She stood up, blew her nose and headed for the kitchen once more.

  Day Four

  Monday

  The drive up to north Devon in Jack’s old Land Rover was seriously different from Holly’s ride in Justin’s Range Rover the previous day. The word utilitarian didn’t fully describe the spartan conditions in the car. Gone was the luxurious white leather, gone was the burr walnut fascia, and gone was the purring engine and the air conditioning. Instead, there was a battered bench seat with some rips, mends and sinister stains in the vinyl, windows that didn’t close properly and a deafening combination of engine noise and assorted squeaks, clunks and crashes every time Jack changed gear, but, even so, Holly loved every bit of it.

  By the time they got to Croyde Bay, she had compiled a mental list of mechanical items that needed checking and, most probably, replacing. Nevertheless, the old girl got them there in just over an hour, with Stirling dozing in the back and Jack’s surfboard strapped to the roof. They chatted a bit on the way up, but conversation was difficult at anything over forty miles an hour as the mechanical noise, along with a plaintive howl from the wind running over the surfboard on the roof bars, blotted out most normal chat.

  It was a stunning day – crisp, clear and with just a light offshore breeze. The sea first came into view in the distance beyond the broad expanse of sand dunes and beach that constituted Saunton Sands. The road then curled gently round the coast, offering magnificent views across the open cliff tops to the rocks and waves below. Visibility was so good, Jack was able to point out Lundy Island, lying twelve miles out in the Bristol Channel. Beyond that there was nothing until you reached southern Ireland and, from then on just the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the USA.

  The sea looked like a sheet of corrugated iron as it neared the shore, with row after row of waves rolling in. They came into the village of Croyde itself and Holly started seeing signs for surf schools, surf shops and even a campsite called Surfers’ Paradise. Malibu it might not be, but Croyde was clearly a British surfing Mecca, even on a day like today when the outside temperature was in single figures. As they drove down the narrow access road to the car park, they could both see majestic waves rolling into the bay between the rocky outcrops either side. Jack parked at the far side of the car park among a vast collection of old VW campers, clearly the vehicle of choice for the surfing community, and turned off the engine. The engine noise was immediately replaced by the raucous cries of seagulls and the regular crunch of waves hitting the beach a hundred yards below them. From where they were parked, they were able to look down between sand dunes and a café directly onto the beach.

  ‘Look at those waves! Magic Seaweed said it would be a five star day and, boy, were they right!’ He sounded like a little boy on his birthday.

  ‘Magic Seaweed?’ She smiled at him, happy to see his obvious excitement.

  ‘The fount of all wisdom for surf dudes.’

  ‘So you’re a surf dude?’

  ‘I suppose I should really have a VW camper for true street cred, but the old Land Rover’s pretty close. And, of course, that’s an Al Merrick custom board tied to my roof. That’s worth loads of bonus points.’ He grinned at her. ‘Yeah, I’m a dude, or at least I like to think I am.’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve been with a dude. In fact, I’m not totally sure I know what a dude is, but so far so good.’ She gave him a smile. ‘So, if you’re a dude, what does that make me?’

  He had no hesitation. ‘That makes you a babe.’ He grinned at her. ‘No question. Very definitely a babe.’

  Holly rather liked the sound of that, but she didn’t comment. Scruffy Land Rovers and outdoor pursuits hadn’t featured too highly on her list of essentials for possible boyfriends so far. Anyway, she thought to herself, one pretty normal prerequisite was that the man in question should at least appear to demonstrate some sort of romantic interest towards her. Jack Nelson, nice and friendly as he was, appeared to show as much affection towards her as he did to Stirling the dog. She dismissed
the thought and glanced back down to the beach, absently reaching back over her shoulder to scratch Stirling’s ears as he stood behind them, nostrils flared. ‘So, what’s the plan?’

  Jack looked at his watch. ‘Eleven-thirty. Low tide was a few minutes ago, so this is perfect for the surf. Do you see how regular and clean the waves are? No nasty chop and, as long as I stay out of the rip currents, it should be awesome. Why don’t you take Stirling for a run on the beach while I go for a surf? I’ll be back here in an hour. I’ll leave the car open. Key’s under the driver’s seat if you want to turn the engine on to warm up and there’s a Thermos of hot chocolate on the back seat. Help yourself. And there’s a bone and some water for Stirling in there too. Sound okay?’

  Holly and the dog went for a long walk on the beach as far as the rocks in both directions. It was easy to see why Croyde was so good for surfing. The cliffs rose up on either side of the beach, effectively funnelling the Atlantic breakers into the bay where they built in height as the sea floor shelved upwards. It was also a great place for dogs. Stirling had a great time chasing and being chased by all the other dogs they met. In spite of the sunshine, it was very cold, with a bitter edge to the wind. Holly was warm and cosy, but only because she was wearing gloves, a heavy fleece, woolly hat, duck down jacket, tights, and her new woolly socks and trainers.

  As she watched the surfers, she couldn’t imagine anybody wanting to spend an hour in the sea in this temperature, but she was surprised at the number of figures out there in the waves. Presumably word had spread about the perfect conditions. As far as she could see, they were all dressed the same – dark wetsuit and dark hood. She only finally managed to pick Jack out when he stepped off his board right in front of her. Stirling, initially unsure, charged forward into the waves when he recognised the figure in the wetsuit and hood. Jack walked into the shallows so he could reach out to pat him.