reason she hadn’t had time to text back. It was called having a job, having a life. Just because Juliet didn’t have one and decided to cram her days full with fussy little craft activities and gourmet cooking, it didn’t mean she could pass judgement on anyone who didn’t want to do the same.
But that was typical Juliet. If you weren’t doing things her way, you were doing them wrong. And it had always been like that, no matter how hard Gemma had tried.
No wonder the people she worked with felt more like family than her own sister did. Not the actors, of course. They were a law unto themselves. But the rest of the crew. For a few months at a time they’d live together, eat together, share everything. It felt more like home than sitting on Juliet’s pristine sofa trying not to drop biscuit crumbs. At least film people knew how to work as a team, and they needed and respected her contribution.
She lay still and stared at the ceiling. Why? Why was she putting herself through this? And the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if spending Christmas with her sister was a good idea after all. Goodwill to all mankind? Hah! The way she was feeling right now, Juliet might end Christmas night in a body bag.
It was so quiet in the house that Juliet was tempted to slump into an armchair with a bottle of wine and not get up again. The only thing that stopped her was a good, hard look at the kitchen clock. It was only ten past three on Saturday afternoon. She’d resisted the urge to do that kind of thing after Greg had left and she certainly wasn’t going to do it now. Besides, she had too much to do. The clotted cream fudge the kids were giving out as teacher presents this year wouldn’t make itself.
She was just measuring out the golden syrup when she became aware of a dull electronic hum in a nearby garden. She listened to its comforting droning while she boiled the mixture, then whisked it until it began to crystallise, but as she poured it into the pan to cool she frowned.
The mower had started off as a muffled hum, but now it sounded as if it was much closer, almost as if it was right outside her kitchen window. She walked over to the other side of the room, wiping her hands on her apron, to look out over her back garden.
The next second she was running outside, wooden spoon still in her hand.
‘Will! What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted.
Her next-door neighbour just looked up then kept walking the mower along her lawn. ‘I think I’m cutting your grass,’ he said, totally deadpan.
Juliet’s mouth opened and closed. She put her hands on her hips and frowned. Eventually she said, ‘I was going to get around to that myself, you know.’
‘Do you want me to stop?’ he yelled over the noise of the engine.
She frowned even harder. She knew he would if she asked him to, but the thought of having to add one more job to her schedule made her shoulders sag. He was almost two-thirds of the way through now, anyway. It would be silly to ask him to stop, but it didn’t sit comfortably with her to let him do it for nothing, so she went back inside and returned a few minutes later with two brightly patterned bone-china mugs of tea and held one aloft. He nodded but didn’t come and collect it until he’d dealt with the extra tough grass round the bottom of her lone apple tree.
She sipped her tea and watched him over the rim of her mug as he switched the mower off and jogged lightly up her long, thin garden to join her. She blushed as he approached.
She’d always considered him a nice-looking man. He was tall and sporty looking, with chestnut-brown hair and eyes that she thought of as warm, even though she couldn’t remember the precise colour. He was younger than her by a couple of years, but she never got the feeling he was taking pity on the middle-aged woman next door. Besides, she didn’t look too bad for a woman who’d just hit forty. She took good care of herself, dressed nicely.
‘Thanks,’ Will said as he took the mug from her and gave her one of his rare but rather captivating smiles.
They both stood and looked at Juliet’s freshly mown garden. ‘Actually, it’s me that needs to thank you. I’ve been meaning to do that for weeks.’
He shrugged. ‘I was doing my garden anyway …’
‘I know. I could hear you while I was in the kitchen making fudge for the kids’ teacher presents. It just took me a while to work out the rumble of the mower had moved closer and was in my garden instead of yours.’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘Fudge? That sounds very labour-intensive.’
She sighed and shook her head. ‘I’ve always done something home-made. It started off when Violet was little and Greg was just starting the business. It was the cheap option back then, and somehow it’s just become a tradition.’
His eyelids lowered a little, as if he was studying her. Juliet resisted the urge to fidget. It was always so difficult to tell what Will was thinking.
‘Traditions like that aren’t carved in stone, you know. You can change them any time you want. Wouldn’t it be quicker to just run down to the supermarket and pick up a bottle?’
‘I suppose so … but the teachers get so much wine and chocolate this time of year, I just wanted to give them something special.’ Her expression softened and her lips curved. ‘And I don’t want to be accused of contributing to the alcoholism of primary school teachers …’
‘But contributing to their obesity is okay?’
‘Shut up,’ she said, and laughed softly.
He turned to study the garden as he drank his tea. She’d thought, when they first met, that maybe there was a little flicker of something between them. She’d quickly eradicated it, of course, since she’d still been married to Greg and Will had been tied up with a serious girlfriend. And then after Greg had left she just hadn’t been in any shape to think about men at all – unless abject hatred was involved. She looked across at him, frowning as he stared at a patch of clumpy grass near the greenhouse, and wondered if she was going to have to tell him not to get the strimmer out, but then he turned to her and spoke first.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, Juliet, you look like you’ve had one hell of a week.’
‘Thanks!’ she said in mock outrage. Will didn’t always say a lot, but when he did, he definitely didn’t mince his words. He wasn’t wrong, though. She sighed and held out her hand for his empty mug. ‘Come in for another one of those when you’re finished and I’ll tell you all about it. I even have fudge cooling in the pan …’
Wills ears pricked up. She knew he had a fondness sweet things, and she could always make another batch for the kids’ teachers.
‘It’s a deal,’ he said, and smiled again, more gently this time, and something at the bottom of Juliet’s stomach quivered.
She held her breath and nodded. And then she took the mugs into the kitchen and closed the door without looking back.
She didn’t know if she liked that quiver.
It
