were sounds coming from indoors. Suddenly he was conscious of Christmas music. Carols, tinkling out on...a music box?
He remembered that box. It had belonged to one of his aunts. It was a box full of Santa and his elves. You wound the key, opened the box and they all danced.
That box...
Memories were all around him. Childhood Christmases. The day his aunt had given it to them—the Christmas Julie was pregnant. ‘It needs a family,’ his aunt had said. ‘I’d love you to have it.’
His aunt was still going strong. He should give the box back to her, he thought, but meanwhile... Meanwhile, he headed in and Julie was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, attaching baubles to a Christmas tree. She was still dressed in the nightgown. She was totally intent on what she was doing.
What...?
‘It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow,’ she said simply, as if this was a no-brainer. ‘This should be up. And don’t look at the nightgown, Rob McDowell. Get over it. It’s hot, my nightie’s cool and I’m working.’
She’d hauled the artificial tree from the storeroom. He stared at it, remembering the Christmas when they’d conceded getting a real tree was too much hassle. It’d take hours to buy it and set it up, and one thing neither of them had was hours.
That last Christmas, that last weekend, the tree was one of the reasons they’d come up here.
‘We can decorate the tree for Christmas,’ Julie had said. ‘When we go up next week we can walk straight in and it’ll be Santa-ready.’
Now Julie was sitting under the tree, sorting decorations as if she had all the time in the world. As if nothing had happened. As if time had simply skipped a few years.
‘Remember this one?’ She held up a very tubby angel with floppy, sparkly wings and a cute little halo. ‘I bought this the year I was trying to diet. Every time I looked at a mince pie I was supposed to march in here and discuss it with my angel. It didn’t work. She’d look straight back at me and say: “Look at me—I might be tubby but not only am I cute, I grew wings. Go ahead and eat.”’
He grinned, recognising the cute little angel with affection.
‘And these.’ Smiling fondly, he knelt among the ornaments and produced three reindeer, one slightly chewed. ‘We had six of these. Boris ate the other three.’
‘And threw them up when your partners came for Christmas drinks.’
‘Not a good moment. I miss Boris.’ He’d had Boris the Bloodhound well before they were married. He’d died of old age just before the twins were born. Before memories had to be put aside.
They’d never had time for another dog. Maybe now they never would?
Forget it. Bauble therapy. Julie had obviously immersed herself in it and maybe he could, too. He started looping tinsel around the tree and found it oddly soothing.
They worked in silence but the silence wasn’t strained. It was strangely okay. Come dawn they’d walk away from this house. Maybe it would burn, but somehow, however strange, the idea that it’d burn looking lived in was comforting.
‘How long do Christmas puddings last?’ Julie asked at last, as she hung odd little angels made of spray-painted macaroni. Carefully not mentioning who’d made them. The twins with their nanny. The twins...
Concentrate on pudding, he told himself. Concentrate on the practical. How long do Christmas puddings last? ‘I have no idea,’ he conceded. ‘I know fruitcakes are supposed to last for ever. My great-grandma cooked them for her brothers during the War. Great-Uncle Henry once told me he used to chop ’em up and lob ’em over to the enemy side. Grandma Ethel’s cakes were never great at the best of times but after a few months on the Western Front they could have been lethal.’
‘Death by fruitcake...’
‘Do you remember the Temperance song?’ he asked, grinning at another memory. His great-aunt’s singing. He raised his voice and tried it out. ‘We never eat fruitcake because it has rum. And one little bite turns a man to a...’
‘Yeah, right.’ She smiled back at him and he felt strangely triumphant.
Why did it feel so important to make this woman smile?
Because he’d lost her smile along with everything else? Because he’d loved her smile?
‘Clarissa made one that’s still in the fridge,’ she told him. Nanny Clarissa had been so domestic she’d made up for both of them. Or almost. ‘And it does contain rum. Half a bottle of over-proof, if I remember. She demanded I put it on the shopping list that last... Anyway, I’m thinking of frying slices for breakfast.’
‘Breakfast is what...’ he checked his watch ‘...three hours away? Four-year-old Christmas pudding. That’ll be living on the edge.’
‘A risk worth taking?’ she said tightly and went back to bauble-hanging. ‘What’s to lose?’
‘Pudding at dawn. Bring it on.’
They worked on. There were so many tensions zooming round the room. So many things unsaid. All they could do was concentrate on the tree.
Finished, it looked magnificent. They stood back, Rob flicked the light switch and the tree flooded into colour. He opened the curtains and the light streamed out into the darkness. Almost every house in the valley was in darkness. Apart from a solitary light in the house next door they were alone. Either everyone had evacuated or they were all sleeping. Preparing for the danger which lay ahead.
Sleep. Bed.
It seemed a good idea. In theory.
Julie was standing beside him. She had her arms folded in front of her, instinctive defence. She was still in that dratted nightgown. Hadn’t he asked her to take it off? Hadn’t he warned her?
But she never had been a woman who followed orders, he thought. She’d always been self-contained, sure, confident of her place in the world. He’d fallen in love with that containment, with her fierce intelligence, with the humour that matched his, a biting wit that made him break into laughter at the most inappropriate moments. He’d loved her drive to be the best at her job. He’d understood and admired it because he was like that, too. It was only when the twins arrived that they’d realised two parents with driving ambition was a recipe for disaster.
Still they’d managed it. They’d juggled it. They’d loved...
Loved. He looked at her now, shivering despite the oppressive heat. She looked younger, he thought suddenly.
Vulnerable.
She’d never been vulnerable and neither had he.
But they’d loved.
‘Julie?’
‘Yes?’ She looked at him and she looked scared. And he knew it was nothing to do with the fires.
‘Mmm.’
‘Let’s go to bed,’ he
