Kitabı oku: «One Christmas Morning: A perfect Christmas treat!»

CHAPTER ONE

‘All right, Michael, let’s try it again, shall we? And this time maybe without the finger up your nose.’

Laura Tiverton gave what she hoped was an encouraging smile to the six-year-old boy on stage. The child glared back at her sullenly. For a Christmas angel in the Fittlescombe village Nativity play, Michael O’Brien was sadly lacking in festive spirit. Not that Laura blamed him for that. At this point she wanted nothing more than to go home, lock the door, pour herself an enormous Laphroaig and eat an entire bowl of Cadbury’s chocolate buttons in front of Downton Abbey.

‘“We Three Kings of Orient Are”, from the top.’ She forced the jollity into her voice as Mrs Bramdean launched into the familiar chords on St Hilda’s Primary School’s famously out-of-tune piano. What on earth possessed me to agree to direct this fiasco? Laura thought despairingly. I’m a screenwriter, not a schoolteacher. I don’t even like children. Then she thought about the baby she’d miscarried in the summer – John’s baby – and for the hundredth time that week found herself fighting back tears.

Twenty-eight years old, with a mane of curly hair the same blue-black as a crow’s feathers, pale skin and soulful, dark eyes like two wells of oil, Laura Tiverton was both attractive and successful. After three years spent working as a writer on two BBC dramas, last year she’d finally produced a pilot of her own, a show about a newly qualified teacher from the shires left to sink or swim in a failing inner-city comprehensive school. Although the series wasn’t ultimately commissioned, Laura was already winning praise for herself as an innovative and talented young TV writer. Her love affair with the BBC’s very handsome, very married Head of Drama, John Bingham, had only served to raise her profile further as one of the corporation’s brilliantly rising stars.

And then last spring, in one fell swoop, it had all gone horribly wrong. Laura fell unexpectedly pregnant. Although the baby wasn’t planned, she’d been delighted, believing John Bingham’s assurances that he loved her, that his marriage had been over for years, and that he only stayed with Felicia because of their children, now all in their late teens.

‘You’ve done the right thing for so long, darling,’ Laura told him over dinner, the night she did the test. ‘But now we’ll have a child of our own to think of. Don’t you think it’s time you made the split with Felicia official?’

John looked so noble and concerned across the table, his chiselled features somehow even handsomer at fifty than they had been in his youth. There was a wisdom about him, a maturity and solidity that Laura found sexy and reassuring at the same time. He mumbled something about timings and ‘being sensitive to everyone involved’, and Laura thought, He’ll make a wonderful father. I’m so lucky.

The next morning Laura was fired. Her show was cancelled, the producer citing ‘creative issues’. When Laura tried to call John to remonstrate, she discovered he’d changed his mobile number. His embarrassed PA, Caroline, refused even to give Laura an appointment to see him.

‘I’m so sorry. His schedule’s er … well it’s terribly full. Maybe in a month or two. When things have settled down.’

Reeling with shock, Laura had committed the cardinal sin of calling her lover at home. She would never forget the strained, tearful voice on the other end of the line.

‘If you’re that girl, the one trying to blackmail my husband, you can jolly well go away! You won’t get a penny out of him. And you won’t destroy this family either.’

John had always described his wife as distant and ‘completely uninterested’ in their marriage. This poor woman sounded utterly distraught. Hanging up, shaking, Laura could still hear John’s voice, mellow and reassuring: ‘Truly, Laura, my darling, it’s a business arrangement, nothing more. Felicia knows we’re both free agents. It’s you I love.’

Heartbroken and embarrassed, Laura determined to keep the baby anyway. But a miscarriage at eleven weeks put an end to those dreams too.

‘You’re young,’ the doctor said kindly. ‘You can try again.’

Laura went home and cried for a week. Then, unable to stand one more hour in the Battersea flat that had been her and John’s love-nest, she’d picked up the phone, found a six-month rental in Fittlescombe, the idyllic South Downs village where her granny used to live and where Laura had spent so many happy summers as a child, and left. Left London, left John, left her entire mess of a life.

I’ll write a masterpiece. I’ll recuperate. I’ll learn to cook and buy a dog and give up alcohol and go for long runs in the fresh air.

She managed the dog part, and now shared her home and so-called life with a fat, chronically lazy but endearing pug named Peggy. And she had done a bit of writing, in between fixing Briar Cottage’s leaky roof, dodgy electrics and jerry-rigged plumbing, as installed in 1932 and not ‘fiddled with’ since. But her latest play was certainly no masterpiece. Truth be told, after five months it was still little more than notes and a few character sketches. As for the healthy country lifestyle, Laura’s only runs so far had been to and from the larder, with Peggy waddling eagerly in her wake. If God had intended Laura Tiverton to bake, he would not have invented Mr Kipling. And, if he’d intended her to be sober, he wouldn’t have broken her heart.

‘Miss Tiverton. Miss Tiverton!’

Michael O’Brien’s howls brought Laura back to the present with an unpleasant bump.

‘I need the toilet.’

‘All right, Michael, off you go.’

‘I need to do a poo.’

‘All right, Michael. Thank you.’

‘Right now! It’s starting to come out …’

‘Oh, Jesus.’

Thankfully, Eileen Carter, Michael’s class teacher, rushed onto the stage and whisked the star soloist off to the loo before disaster struck.

Harry Hotham, St Hilda’s headmaster for the last fifteen years and the biggest flirt in Fittlescombe, saw his chance, sidling up to Laura and slipping a lecherous arm around her waist.

‘You know what they say, my dear. Never work with animals or children. I’m afraid with a village Nativity play, you’re rather saddled with both, ha ha!’

It was less of a laugh, more of a bray. Despite being drenched in Penhaligon’s aftershave, Harry Hotham still managed to smell of sweat and arousal, the familiar scent of the older Lothario at work. It reminded Laura of John so acutely, she gagged.

‘Yes, well, the children’s rehearsals are over now for the day,’ she said, wriggling free from the headmaster’s vicelike grip. ‘Mary, Joseph and the shepherds should be here at any moment for a read-through.’

‘Indeed, indeed. Well, I won’t keep you,’ said Harry Hotham, staring unashamedly at Laura’s breasts beneath her tight-fitting cashmere sweater. ‘I must buy you dinner some time though, my dear, to thank you properly for stepping in as our director.’

‘There’s really no need, Harry.’

‘No need? Nonsense. There’s every need. We’re expecting great things this year, you know, Laura. Great things.’

I was expecting great things, thought Laura, as St Hilda’s headmaster shuffled out with the remaining children and teachers. A baby. Marriage. But here I am in a draughty old church hall, trying to wrangle defecating six-year-olds while men old enough to be my father invite my tits to dinner.

‘Oh. You’re here.’

Laura spun around, her heart already sinking. Gabriel Baxter, a.k.a. Joseph, a.k.-also-a. the bane of Laura Tiverton’s existence since rehearsals began two weeks ago, looked at her as if she were something unpleasant he’d forgotten to wipe off his shoe.

‘Of course I’m here. I’m the director. Where else would I be?’

Gabe shrugged and grabbed himself a chair. ‘A man can hope.’

Laura remembered Gabe from summers spent in Fittlescombe as a little girl. He was an arrogant, irritating little shit back then, and he clearly hadn’t changed, improbably claiming not to remember Laura at all, despite their frequent childhood run-ins.

‘I can’t be expected to remember every tourist who ever came to the village,’ he remarked dismissively at the Parish Council meeting, when Harry Hotham introduced Laura as this year’s Nativity play director.

Like many Fittlescombe locals, Gabe Baxter resented the fact that his village had become a Mecca for second-homers and wealthy London media types. Two of the prettiest local manor houses had been bought by famous actresses, and a third belonged to a Russian industrialist whose supermodel wife had attracted unwanted paparazzi to Fittlescombe’s peaceful high street.

‘I wasn’t a tourist,’ Laura retorted crossly. ‘I came here every summer. Granny lived at Mill House for over twenty years.’

‘Oh! “Granny lived at Mill House”, did she? Over twenty ye-ahs?’ Gabe mocked Laura’s upper-class accent perfectly, and she remembered instantly why she’d always loathed him. ‘Well, one must excuse the likes of us poor servants for not remembering everything about Granny’s domestic arrangements.’

What grated most was that Gabriel Baxter was hardly a ‘poor servant’, for all his class-war rhetoric. A working farmer, Gabe owned a valuable property on the outskirts of the village and drove a Land Rover Defender. Whereas Laura rented a cottage on the brink of being condemned, was officially unemployed and drove a Fiat Punto so old and knackered that the passenger door had been welded shut.

‘Please don’t tell me it’s just us. I’ve had a long enough day as it is.’ Reaching up, Gabe rubbed his neck wearily. Even in November, he still sported a farmer’s tan, his face bronzed as much from windburn as from the sun. Blond and broad, with a stocky frame and the powerful shoulders of a shire horse, there was something mischievous about him that people generally, and women especially, found irresistible. That irked Laura too. The fact that Gabe was so popular in the village, so eminently capable of warmth and humour and kindness – just not towards her. Well, he could stick his reverse snobbery up his arse, along with the giant chip on his shoulder. She wasn’t about to let him rile her. Not today.

‘Thankfully, Lisa and the others will be here in a moment,’ she said, smiling through gritted teeth. ‘Perhaps, if my instructions are a bit too tricky for you to follow, they’ll be able to translate. I’ll ask one of the shepherds to draw you a picture.’

Gabe was about to say something when Lisa James, this year’s Mary, walked in. Wearing a cut-off Metallica T-shirt and skintight jeans that enveloped her perfectly round bottom like clingfilm round a pair of peaches, the barmaid from Fittlescombe’s famous Fox Inn looked anything but virginal. Turning away from Laura, Gabe flashed his co-star a hundred-megawatt smile.

‘Hello, darling.’ He winked. ‘Come and sit with your husband while Her Royal Highness over there gets organized. She’ll be putting us through our paces in a minute, won’t you, Miss Tiverton?’

Laura sighed. She felt deeply tired all of a sudden. She’d had enough of petulant children for one day.

* * *

By the time her mechanically challenged Fiat Punto spluttered to a halt outside Briar Cottage, darkness had long since fallen. It was November, and the nights were already bitterly cold. Behind Laura, the winding lanes of the village were slick with rain that by morning would have turned to sheet ice. In front of her, behind Briar Cottage, the South Downs rose like dark, shadowy giants. In the daytime the chalk hills looked benevolent, a bed of lush green pillows protecting the house from harm, cushioning Laura from the slings and arrows of modern life. She felt wonderfully safe here, enveloped not just by the peaceful rural setting of Fittlescombe, but by her own childhood, by happier times. This village, set deep in the Swell Valley, had always been her sanctuary, a magical, intoxicating place.

But now, in the darkness, and with Gabriel Baxter’s snide remarks still ringing in her ears, the Downs seemed to jump out at her, looming threateningly like an uncertain future. Holding the Nativity play script over her head as a makeshift umbrella, Laura dashed up the garden path and ran inside, slamming the front door closed behind her.

Peggy the pug heaved her fat form out of the basket by the Aga and waddled over to greet her mistress, wiggling her stump of a tail.

‘Hello, Peg.’ Pulling a McVitie’s chocolate digestive out of the jar on the counter, Laura ate half and gave half to the dog. ‘At least you’re pleased to see me.’

It was the kitchen at Briar Cottage that had sold Laura on the place. That and the overgrown garden that had looked riotously beautiful in spring, with dog roses everywhere and hollyhocks reaching almost to the chimneys, but now, in winter, untended by Laura, was a sodden mess of brambles and weeds. The kitchen maintained its charm, however, with its uneven flagstones worn smooth from centuries of use, its cheery red Aga and the cushioned window seat looking out over the rooftops of Fittlescombe with St Hilda’s Church steeple just visible in the distance. It was impossible not to feel cheered walking into Briar Cottage’s kitchen, even with the November rain peeing down outside, and your script hopelessly unfinished, and the village Nativity play you had stupidly, stupidly agreed to direct shaping up to be the biggest fiasco in Fittlescombe since the Black Death.

Propped up next to the biscuit jar was the stiff, embossed invitation that had arrived this morning. Picking it up, Laura read it again, as surprised now as she had been when she’d first opened it:

Rory Flint-Hamilton, Esq., requests the pleasure of the company of

Miss Laura Tiverton

At Furlings Christmas Hunt Ball

Friday 23 December, 8 p.m.

Black Tie

RSVP Furlings, Fittlescombe

Rory Flint-Hamilton was what an earlier generation would have described as the lord of the manor. Owners of the magnificent Furlings Estate, unquestionably the most beautiful house in the entire Swell Valley, Rory Flint-Hamilton’s ancestors had once owned the entire village of Fittlescombe. Nine generations of Flint-Hamiltons lay buried in St Hilda’s churchyard. Unlike those of most grand old country families, the Flint-Hamiltons’ fortunes and influence had risen, rather than fallen, in modern times, thanks to canny investments by Rory’s father Hugo in a number of African mines. Now an old man himself, and never a go-getter like his father, Rory Flint-Hamilton was content with the quiet life of a country squire. Every year, however, he bridged the divide between Fittlescombe’s old guard and its newer, more glamorous part-time residents by hosting the Furlings Hunt Ball, an event so grand that prime ministers and even the occasional Hollywood film star had been known to attend.

How on earth Laura had scored an invitation she had no idea. Her grandmother had known the Flint-Hamiltons, of course, but the two families had never been close. Laura herself had only ever seen Rory Flint-Hamilton at church, and was pretty certain she had never spoken to him. Perhaps Harry Hotham had said something. Or the vicar, dear old Reverend Slaughter. This morning, excited to receive the card, Laura had impetuously posted the news of her invitation on Facebook. But, as the day wore on, the horrible thought occurred to her that perhaps local people felt sorry for her. She could picture St Hilda’s headmaster now, cornering Rory Flint-Hamilton in the village stores:

‘Pretty girl, but terribly lonely. Do ask her, old man. She needs to get out.’

Putting down the card with a shudder, Laura tried to think about supper. Deciding she was too tired to cook or even set a place for herself, she kicked off her shoes, grabbed four more chocolate biscuits out of the jar and trudged upstairs to run a bath. In London she’d always kept her flat scrupulously clean, just in case John decided to pop in unannounced. Here she thought nothing of dropping her clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor and leaving a trail of biscuit crumbs on the stairs. No one was going to see the mess, any more than anyone was going to see her unshaven legs and woefully unpedicured toes, or the small but definitely there roll of fat that had formed around her middle like a flotation device. Saving me from drowning in heartbreak, thought Laura. Then she thought how much fatter she’d be if she were still pregnant – she’d be almost ready to pop by now – and had to splash water on her face to stop herself from crying.

Five minutes later the bath was ready. Sinking her aching limbs into the hot, lavender-scented bathwater, Laura exhaled deeply, relaxed for the first time all day. Dangling her hand over the side of the bath, so Peggy could lick the chocolate from her fingers, she thought idly about Gabriel Baxter and Lisa James – Joseph and Mary. They were probably back at Gabe’s farm, having wild sex right this minute. For a split second Laura felt a pang of envy. Not because she had the slightest desire to sleep with Gabe, but because, since John and losing the baby, she hadn’t the slightest desire, full stop. She was only twenty-eight. But there were days when she couldn’t imagine ever being sexual again.

‘I’m turning into an old woman, Peggy.’

The pug snuffled dismissively. Or perhaps it was supportively. Peggy did a lot of snuffling. Lying back, Laura immersed her whole head in the water, allowing her dark curls to spread out around her like a mermaid’s locks, luxuriating in the warmth and peace. When she sat up again, the phone was ringing.

‘Goddamn it.’ She contemplated not answering. It was probably just that old pervert Harry Hotham, trying to pin her down for a dinner date. Disgusting old goat. But years spent in the cut and thrust of a TV studio had left her congenitally incapable of leaving telephones to ring. Pulling herself up out of the bath like a Kraken, dripping lavender water all over the oak floorboards, she skidded down the corridor into her bedroom. Just as she was about to pick up the phone, the answer machine kicked in. She heard her own voice played back to her.

‘This is Laura. Please leave a message.’

God, I sound awful. So depressed! I must remember to do a perkier version in the morning.

‘Laura, hi. This is Daniel.’

She froze. Daniel. Daniel Smart? Daniel Smart was an old flame – a very old flame – from her student days at Oxford. Head of the Boat Club, and president of OUDS, the prestigious university dramatic society, Daniel had always been destined to do great things. They’d had a fling in the Christmas of Laura’s second year – they’d actually spent the holiday at Fittlescombe, in the cottage at Mill House, the year before Laura’s parents sold it. When the romance fizzled out, Laura had been briefly heartbroken. But it all felt like a lifetime ago now. Last she heard, Daniel was a wildly successful West End theatre producer. Married. Happy.

‘Look, one of our old Oxford lot told me you were in Fittlescombe.’ He laughed nervously. ‘I know I shouldn’t. But I came over all nostalgic. Anyway, probably silly of me. I just thought I’d get back in touch, see how you are.’

Laura sank down on the bed, shivering. In her haste, she’d forgotten a towel. The Aga kept the kitchen warm, but what little central heating there was upstairs at Briar Cottage all seeped out through the warped and rotting windows. Laura’s bedroom was as cold as any polar base camp. Pulling the knitted bedspread off the bed, she wrapped it around herself.

‘Well.’ Daniel laughed again. ‘If you do want to call, I’m on 07891 991 686. But if not, and you think I’m a complete lunatic, I quite understand. I probably am. Love anyway. Er … bye.’

There was a click. Laura stared at the red flashing light in the answer machine for a long time, too stunned to move.

Daniel. Daniel Smart had called her! Tracked her down, here of all places. As if that weren’t bizarre enough, he’d sounded so awkward. Almost shy. The Daniel Laura remembered was supremely confident. Never in a million years would he have left her a message like that back in the old days. She, Laura, had been the nervous one, the one who couldn’t believe her luck that the likes of Daniel Smart might be interested in her.

Maybe he’d changed. Maybe time had softened him.

Perhaps Daniel Smart had also been through some tough times. Like me.

Laura pulled the bedspread more tightly around her and, quite spontaneously, smiled.

Perhaps, at long, long last, her luck was about to change.