to let you know that you are welcome to come too tomorrow—or at any point over the holidays. For an hour or a night or the whole week. Whatever you need. There’s no need to call ahead, please. If you want to come just turn up, I’ll make sure you have the address. Now sit down, do. I tend to eat in here—I don’t like eating in the kitchen and sitting in sole state in the dining room would be far too lonely. I rarely use it now.’ She sighed. ‘This house is far too big but it’s so crammed with memories—of my husband, of your mother—that I hate the idea of leaving.’
‘When did my grandfather die?’ Another family member he would never know.
‘When your mother was eighteen. It hit her very hard. She was a real daddy’s girl. I sometimes think that’s why she fell for your father. He was so certain of everything and she was still so vulnerable. Your grandfather’s death had ripped our family apart and we were all alone in our grief. I still miss him every day. He was my best friend. He made every day an adventure.’
The soup was excellent, thick, spicy and warming, but Alex was hardly aware of it. Best friends? So it could work.
‘That’s the nicest epitaph I ever heard. He must have been an amazing man.’
How would Alex be remembered after he died? Hopefully as a talented and successful architect. But was that enough?
No. It wasn’t. He wanted someone to have that same wistful look in their eye. That same mingled grief, nostalgia, affection and humour. No. He didn’t want just someone to remember him that way.
He wanted Flora to. He wanted every day to be an adventure with his best friend. Not because it was safe and made sense. No. Because he loved her.
FLORA WOKE WITH a start, rolling over to check her phone automatically. Five a.m. and still no answer from Alex.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the luminous green stars still stuck to her ceiling. It had been a typical Christmas Eve; Horry had turned up during dinner, ready to hoover up all the left-over rice, pakoras and dahl, and then Greg had insisted on babysitting so that Minerva and Flora’s mother could join the rest of their family for a couple of drinks before they all trooped to the ancient Norman church for the short and moving celebration of Midnight Mass. It wasn’t often they were all together like this, but it just made Alex’s absence all the more achingly obvious. Flora had tried not to spend the whole evening checking her phone. She had failed miserably, barely taking part in the conversation and mouthing her way through the carols.
Still no word. She just needed to know he was okay.
No, she was kidding herself. She wasn’t that altruistic. She wanted to know, to look deeper, to see if somewhere, deep inside, he cared for her the way she so desperately wanted him to.
And if not to ask herself if that was all right. If all he was capable of offering was friendship mixed with passion, then should she agree to marry him anyway—because she would still be with him? Was it settling or being pragmatic? Selling herself short or grabbing the opportunity with both hands?
Although it was rather moot; having said no once, she wasn’t sure how to let him know if she did change her mind. It wasn’t exactly something you could drop into conversation.
Flora turned her pillow over, plumping it back up with a little more force than was strictly necessary, and attempted to snuggle back down; but it was no use. She was wide awake. Not the pleasurable anticipatory tingle of a Christmas morning but the creeping dread that nothing would ever be the same again.
Well, she could lie here and brood or she could get up, make coffee and make a plan. She reached for her phone again and the sudden light illuminated her room and the bags of presents still piled in the corner. It was an unwritten law that all presents had to be snuck under the Christmas tree without the knowledge of anyone else in the household. Flora and Alex usually spent most of the early hours trying to catch the other out—a heady few hours of ambush, traps and whispered giggles because it was also a sternly enforced law that nobody could get up before seven a.m., the edict a hangover from her childhood.
She swung her legs out of the bed, feeling for her slippers in the dark and shrugging on the old vintage velvet dressing gown Alex had bought her for her sixteenth birthday, before padding quietly across the room to retrieve the bags. The house was in darkness and, not wanting to wake anyone else up, she switched on the torch on her phone to help guide her down the windy stairs. Alex’s door was still ajar, the empty room dark.
Her bags were bulky and it was all Flora could do to get them quietly along the landing and down the main stairs. Every rustle of paper, every muffled bang as the bag hit the bannister made her freeze in place, but finally she stepped over the creaky last step and into the hallway. Not for the first time she cursed her mother’s decision to furnish the wide hall as a second sitting area. Not only did she have to dodge the hat stand, umbrella stand and the hall table, but she also had to weave around a bookcase and a couple of wing-backed chairs before she reached the safety of the sitting-room door.
Flora froze, her hand on the handle as she clocked the faint light seeping under the door? Another early riser? She could have sworn she had heard all her family make their stealthy present-laying trips soon after she had gone to bed, and it was far too quiet to be either of her nieces.
One of them had probably left the light on, that was all. She turned the handle and nudged the door open with her hip as she lugged the two bags into the room, turning to place them next to the tree...
Only to jump back when she saw a shadowy figure already kneeling under the tree. Grey with tiredness, hair rumpled and still in the clothes she had seen him in yesterday morning, on his knees as he added his own gifts to the pleasingly huge pile. ‘Alex?’
He rocked back onto his heels. ‘Merry Christmas, Flora.’
Her throat swelled and she swallowed hard, so many things to say and she had no idea which one to start with. ‘You’re here?’ Great, start with the blindingly obvious. ‘I tried calling...’
‘I know. I got your message, thank you.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘That’s a long story.’ He nodded at the bags lying forgotten at her feet. ‘Shall I pretend I haven’t seen those and go and put some coffee on?’
She blinked, trying to clear her head, take in that he was actually here, that he had come home. ‘Yes. Coffee. Thanks.’
The corners of his mouth quirked up in a brief smile. ‘Good. I could kill for one of your dad’s mince pies as well.’
Normally Flora took her time placing her gifts, making sure they were spread out, tucked away, but right now she didn’t care, chucking them onto the pile haphazardly with no care for the aesthetic effect. She switched off the lamps and sidled out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her before turning into the kitchen.
The scent of coffee was as welcome as the sight of Alex. Really here, reassuringly here, leaning against the counter, a mince pie in one hand, a mug in the other. ‘Nothing says Christmas like your dad’s baking.’
‘That was the title of his last interview.’ Flora leaned over and stole a crumb off his plate. ‘It’s good to see you, Alex.’ It didn’t feel like less than
