not been able to talk very much yet. She’s just so tired and frail.’
‘That’s awful.’
She took a deep decisive breath.
‘The house sale is the right thing. My stupid sentimentality about some bloody doorframe does not affect that decision. She’s going to need someone on hand 24-7. Plus there’s the massive garden, and the house needs tons of upkeep.’
‘What I’m here for,’ he remarked. Admittedly he had to factor his other life into that statement, but with pretty regular trips away he was careful to schedule his work around his travels, and he had a local kid who covered basic garden upkeep if he was away for longer than a few days at a time. ‘And I’ve been keeping tabs on Olive over the last few months. My place is only five minutes away, and I programmed my number into her speed dial.’
She laughed.
‘I’m not sure Gran knows what speed dial even is.’
He grinned at her over the rim of his coffee cup. In that moment of laughter, the stress had disappeared from her face. She was very pretty, he decided, in an unkempt kind of a way, with her messy waves of dark blonde hair, and wide brown eyes. A thin film of grey plaster dust clung to her skin, and, as he watched, she unknowingly rubbed her forehead and smudged it.
‘She does now,’ he said. ‘I put your number in too. And her hairdresser, she asked specifically for that one.’
She was staring at him as if he was some new and interesting life form.
‘Seriously?’
He nodded.
‘Of course, she’s only ever used it to ring me up when I’m feet away in the garden to tell me to come in and eat my bodyweight in cake. She falls in the hallway and I don’t hear a bloody thing from her.’
‘That’s because I was here, thank goodness. It was pure luck; I’d only happened to call in because I had an interview just down the road. Otherwise she could have been there for hours.’ She ran a hand distractedly through her dusty hair. ‘I can’t even go there in my head. What could have happened.’ She smiled at him gratefully. ‘That’s a really kind thing to have done though. Thank you.’
He raised his coffee cup in acknowledgment, feeling mildly awkward.
‘You’re welcome. Anything else I can do, just shout. Only like, maybe not loud enough to wake the dead next time.’
She smiled.
‘You’re a writer, aren’t you? On a newspaper. Olive told me.’
‘Local press,’ she said, in between fast sips of tea. Everything she did had an urgency about it, as if she didn’t have a moment to waste.
‘What’s the rush?’ he said. ‘The place isn’t even on the market yet. I mean, I might be missing the point, but if she’s moving in with you when she comes out of hospital, does it really matter if it takes a few months to sort this place out?
‘Rod wants to get it on the market as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘Once Gran comes out of hospital, which I really hope is in time for Christmas, she’s going to need me a lot, and I won’t have time to sort through all this stuff. There are people you can pay to come in and do it all for you, house clearance, it’s called. Rod suggested it, but I don’t want just anyone going through her things. I mean, don’t get me wrong, probably 90 per cent of the stuff up in that attic is just fit for the tip, but there might be things that are important to her, that she will want to keep.’ She paused. ‘That I will want to keep.’
That one sentence made it clear that sorting through this place was as much about her coming to terms with letting Gran go as it was about the house, and he could understand that need well enough. Before he knew what he was doing he was offering.
‘I can help you with anything you want over the next day or so. I know I’ve got this to-do list anyway, but that’s mainly painting, sorting out any wood that’s rotten or needs replacing, that kind of thing. I’m going to be around. I can help you bring stuff down from the loft if you like, help sort through the shed—’
‘Oh, bloody hell, I’d forgotten the shed!’ she said, clapping a hand against her forehead. ‘I bet that’s full of stuff too. Grandad’s been gone ten years, and it was his hangout. I don’t think I’ve ever known Gran go in there since.’
‘It’s not too bad,’ he lied, knowing perfectly well it was stacked with boxes of tools, gardening rubbish, and old golf clubs that dated back years, but not wanting to add to the stress. He brought his own tools and equipment on the van, so rarely needed to venture in there.
To distract her, he picked the wooden box up from the corner of the worktop where he’d dumped it on the way into the room. It was covered in dust, rectangular, and fairly shallow, with a curved wooden lid that hinged at the back. It looked like the kind of wooden box that might contain an engraved plate, or perhaps a set of cutlery, or crystal glasses.
‘Want to check this out then, before you rush off and crash back through the attic?’ he said, setting it down in front of her. ‘Since it nearly cost you your leg.’
The box! She had almost forgotten it. She sat up. A chat to Jack, and now the stress of the clear-out felt vaguely more manageable. At least she knew she had some muscle she could call on if push came to shove and she ran out of time hefting stuff down from the attic. She blew the dust off the lid in a sneeze-worthy cloud, then followed it with a swipe of her hand, revealing highly polished wood, the colour and mellow glow of a conker. A carved border of holly sprigs edged the lid. Her stomach gave a tiny twist of excitement, and she automatically took a deep breath as she opened it, not having the faintest idea what might be inside. This must be a taste (though on a much more minor scale, obviously) of how it felt when someone gave you a box that could only contain a ring. She could only guess at that feeling, not having received a proposal from Rod yet. That particular event was earmarked in their general life plan to take place after and not before he achieved partnership at his accountancy firm. Partnership itself was targeted at thirty-five, so she probably had a couple more years to wait, although there was always the possibility of it being moved forward if events happened earlier than expected. The wait didn’t matter. The certainty was enough.
The inside of the box was divided up into twelve squares, and in each square nestled a paper- wrapped package. All except for one square in the middle, that one was empty. Tucked inside the lid was a blank envelope, cream coloured, the edges dog-eared and creased as if it had been opened many times. She carefully extracted a thin sheet of paper, smoothed it out.
‘It’s a letter,’ she said, frowning. It was handwritten in faded black ink, a sloping script. She read aloud:
On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me …
That’s how the song goes, and you, Olive, are my true love. Words can’t describe how much it pains me to be called away now, when all I want is to spend every minute of every day with you, my darling.
I am not leaving you though, not really, and to prove to you that even though the world we are in today is full of uncertainties and horrors, I am yours.
For every day of these twelve days of Christmas, I am sending you a present, a part of me, to keep with you for ever, whatever may happen.
