A Week in Midwinter (Midwinter Lane #2)

One

‘You’ve booked a last-minute romantic break for you and Ted?’

The look of incredulity on my best friend, Erin’s, face didn’t exactly fill me with confidence as I paid for our hot drinks and we headed towards the one vacant table in The Corner Café, our favourite meeting place to catch up with each other’s news.

I should’ve waited until we sat down before I told her, but I was excited, and I’ll admit, more than a little anxious about my spur-of-the-moment booking. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer and I blurted it out the moment she joined me in the queue.

Momentarily lost for words, I nodded and forced a smile

‘Do you actually know your boyfriend?’ A deep frown replaced Erin’s previous expression and her perfectly shaped brows knit together as she pulled out a chair and draped her bright blue faux fur jacket over the back of it.

All my doubts came flooding back, and I tried to think of something brilliant to say in response as I removed my almost identical jacket – but in red – and hung mine on a hook on the wall beside our table.

We’d bought the jackets together in the January sales, laughing because so many people said we looked like twin sisters rather than best friends, and we’d agreed some years before that we should dress the same sometimes, just for fun.

It was true. We did look remarkably similar with our blonde hair and green eyes – an unusual combination as most blonde-haired people we knew had blue eyes. Erin said that was just one of the things that not only made us special, but meant we would always be best friends. My hair was a little shorter and more of a golden blonde than Erin’s icy white, and my eyes had a hint of hazel whereas Erin’s were emerald green. Plus, Erin was an inch or two taller, and one size larger than me, but from a distance, we looked virtually the same.

‘I … I thought it would be … a lovely surprise.’ I pulled out my chair and sat opposite her, brilliance having failed me, yet again.

Erin snorted derisively. ‘It’ll be a surprise all right, but as for lovely…’ Her words trailed off as she shook her head and leant towards me, her long blonde ponytail swishing back and forth like a wagging finger. ‘Have you gone completely mad, Lucy?’ She stared at me as though she expected a serious answer to that question.

I managed a laugh, but even that sounded slightly maniacal, and when the small, wafer thin, chocolate heart sitting on top of my hot chocolate, sank beneath the mountain of whipped cream and disappeared, it was as if it had taken my own heart with it, along with all the remnants of my joy and excitement about my up-coming week away.

‘You think I’ve made a mistake?’ I mumbled, plunging my spoon into my drink to retrieve the chocolate heart, but it was only half its original size by the time I managed to scoop it out and it was more of a gooey blob than anything resembling a heart.

I usually removed the little chocolate token before it sank, The Corner Café having added wafer thin chocolate shapes to all its cream-topped beverages for as long as I could remember. Throughout the year, each one symbolised something related to the month, or a special occasion. The first two weeks in February had always been a chocolate heart. From the fifteenth onwards, it was usually a snowflake, or a cloud, or a raindrop, dependent upon the weather.

‘A mistake?’ Erin bit her chocolate heart in half, having removed hers from her own hot chocolate the moment she sat down, and she shook her head again. ‘A mistake is an understatement. Unless you plan to go on this romantic break alone. You’ve been dating Ted for over a year. How many days has the man taken off work in that time?’

I glanced across the table and met her piercing green eyes. ‘None.’

‘And how many weekends has he worked even though his job only requires him to be in his office from Monday to Friday?’

‘Erm. I’m not sure, exactly.’

That was a lie, and we both knew it. of the things I sometimes moaned about to Erin was the number of hours my boyfriend spent working.

Ted was an accountant, and he was always in great demand. I had no idea accountants were so popular, until I started dating Ted. He checked his phone every few minutes, night, and day, and he received and sent more texts in one evening than I did in one week. It was the only thing we argued about. Well. Not exactly argued. Ted didn’t argue. Politely disagreed about, would be more accurate.

‘Ball park figure,’ Erin demanded.

I shrugged pathetically. ‘About half.’

Erin raised her brows and fixed me with a hard stare.

‘Okay,’ I admitted grudgingly. ‘Almost every weekend. But sometimes it’s only one of the days. And sometimes only mornings. And, because he worked for most of Christmas and I only saw him briefly on Christmas Day, he promised me on New Year’s Eve that he’d spend more time with me once the January deadline was over. That he’d make more time for our relationship. He even said we should try to find the time to go away together for a few days in February. So this week away will be perfect.’

Erin didn’t seem convinced. ‘Are you sure about that? The evidence so far is not looking good.’

Erin was a Detective Constable in one of the MITs (Major Investigation Teams) within the Metropolitan Police. She had always wanted to be a police officer, even as a kid, and she was a really good one. Not that she had ever told me much about her work, thankfully. Murders and such weren’t things I particularly wanted to hear about and Erin was, and always has been, one of those people who keeps everything close to her chest.

Although, when one of our friends was toying with the idea of becoming a crime writer and had questioned Erin about her job, Erin had gone into quite a lot of detail at the dinner table. I’m not sure if it was her description of a rather grisly murder, or the prawn curry our host served at that dinner party, but a few people left the table saying they weren’t feeling well.

Sometimes, when we were chatting, Erin made me feel as though I was sitting across the table from her in an interrogation room. Which was exactly how I was feeling at that moment, and I was half expecting her to ask me to sign a confession.

‘I, Lucy Parkes, confess to the crime of doing something utterly stupid, by booking a break away for me and my boyfriend, Ted, knowing full well that the chances of him actually wanting to go away, are remote, to say the least.’

Of course, Erin was right. She always was.

Ted lived for his work and rarely, if ever, took time off. Not only was he on the partner-track at one of the largest accountancy firms in Kingston upon Thames, where we lived, he also did the accounts for several friends who ran small businesses but couldn’t afford the hourly rates charged by the prestigious firm of SKM. The firm, like many other accountancy firms, used an abbreviation of the partnership name. But the partners of SKM had good reason. Sampson Krappe Moore didn’t have quite the same ring. Even if it did make me and Erin giggle.

Ted did tell me, the day we met, that his work came first. It was one of the things that attracted me to him. In addition to his good-looks. I’ve always liked a man with a strong work ethic, and it was apparent from that very first night, that Ted had his future career path mapped out. But I foolishly thought that, as our relationship progressed, he would want to spend a little more time with me. If anything, we spend less time together now. Although, with the tax deadlines at the end of January, I understood that November, December, and January were busy months for him. But we’d been dating for a year last November, and after his promise on New Year’s Eve, plus his suggestion that we should go away together, one of us had to book a getaway, so it might as well have been me. Especially as Ted hadn’t mentioned it since.

But I’d booked this romantic break the day before, yet I still hadn't summoned up the nerve to tell Ted what I’d done.

And that wasn’t just because I knew Ted was a workaholic. He also loved city-life – and the hamlet of Midwinter, where we were going for our romantic break, consisted of three cottages high up on Midwinter Ridge, and a farm in the valley below. Not exactly what one might call, buzzing.

However, the nearby town of Fairlight Bay, situated on the seaward side of Midwinter Ridge, had lots to offer.

And I should know. It’s where I fell in love for the first time, ten years ago.

And where I made the biggest mistake of my life.

Which was why I had been having doubts about the romantic break I’d booked for me and Ted.

Why had I picked Midwinter? Out of all the places I could’ve chosen for a romantic week away – why there?

Was it because one of the results of the search I’d done for ‘idyllic country cottage getaways in the UK,’ listed Fairlight Bay as the place that offered everything I was looking for? Albeit on page five of those search results. Or was it because I had actively scrolled through each page of results until I had spotted the words, ‘Fairlight Bay’?

Had I done it subconsciously?

I’d had a couple of glasses of wine at lunch yesterday. Had that impaired my thought process?

All I can say for certain is that the moment I saw the words, ‘Fairlight Bay,’ my heart gave a little leap, a warm flush spread over me, and a twinge of excitement swept through me.

I’d clicked on the link, scanned the list of rental properties available for the dates I’d wanted, seen the cottage on Midwinter Ridge on the cute little lane with a babbling brook a mere stone’s throw away, and typed in my credit card details within a matter of minutes.

And then came the downer.

The cottage might be perfect for me, but was it perfect for Ted? I loved the countryside; Ted – not so much. He preferred the city.

And was it wise to return to somewhere so close to Fairlight Bay after all these years? Would being in the place where I’d thought I’d met the love of my life, drag up all the pain and heartache I’d tried so hard to put behind me?

And what would I do if – by some quirk of fate – I bumped into him ? The man who smashed my heart to smithereens.

I’d convinced myself that I was over him, but was that true? Would I ever get over him entirely? People say you never forget your first love. That was true for me. I hadn’t forgotten him. I’d like to say that now, when I think of him, it’s simply, happy memories, but that wouldn’t be true. I told myself that I hardly remembered the man. That wasn’t true either. I tried extremely hard not to remember him. Yet somehow, he still popped into my head every now and then. However much I might have wished he wouldn’t.

Sam Worth, the love of my life; the one who got away. The only man I’d ever truly loved. The one man who broke my heart.

Did he ever think of me? I doubted it. To Sam, it had merely been a holiday fling. He had made that abundantly clear.

‘We’ll be hundreds of miles apart,’ he had said, on that last night we were together in Fairlight Bay. At that time, ten years ago last July, my family was about to move from Kingston upon Thames to Aberdeen, in Scotland, because my dad worked for a major oil company and his new position was based there. ‘Long distance relationships rarely work,’ Sam had added. ‘And we’re young. I want to travel the world. You’re off to university in September. This has been fantastic. Something neither of us expected. But all good things must end, so they say. Don’t you think?’

I remembered every word of that conversation; each one another knife in my heart. Yet there had been a hint of doubt in his voice at that moment and my foolish heart had held so much hope when I looked into his eyes and saw the lingering passion.

But that passion was mixed with confusion and fear and although he had held me in his arms, his body had been tense, and it was as if he was building a wall between us as he spoke. Brick by brick until, no matter what I might have said, I knew I couldn’t break through. I had fallen in love. Sam had been in lust.

Yes, we were young. But at eighteen, we were adults. And yes, we would have been living hundreds of miles apart, but if Sam had asked me to stay in Fairlight Bay, I would’ve stayed. I would’ve done anything to be with him. But his mind was made up.

‘Holiday flings happen,’ he had said. ‘Don’t they? We’d be mad to think this was anything other than that. Wouldn’t we?’

He was staring at me with a strange intensity, as if he were trying to convince us both, and then he looked away into the distance. No doubt thinking of all the girls he’d meet on his travels. I got the distinct impression that all he wanted to do was get away from me as quickly as possible. So, instead of telling him I loved him, I merely nodded and agreed.

‘Yes,’ I said simply, as my heart silently screamed during the ensuing silence.

‘Yes? Okay. So we agree. Erm. If you’re ever back in Fairlight Bay, come and see me,’ he added, the words tumbling out as though he couldn’t say them fast enough. ‘And if I ever find myself in Aberdeen, I’ll look you up. Or in Leeds, while you’re at uni.’ He swallowed hard and then he smiled the smile I’d fallen in love with the first time I saw it, except this time it seemed forced somehow. ‘I’d better go.’ He turned and walked away but after taking a few steps, he spun around and for a split second I thought he would run back to me and sweep me up in his strong arms. But he stood his ground. ‘I wish things could be different,’ he had said, his voice cracking as if he actually cared. ‘You’re … you’re special, Lucy. I won’t forget you.’

‘I’ll never forget you, Sam,’ I said. I desperately wanted to say that things could be different if we wanted them to be, but I couldn’t seem to get the words out, and he abruptly turned and marched off, my heart breaking and tears rolling down my cheeks as I watched him walk away.

After the most incredible, magical, passionate, and romantic week of my life, we had gone our separate ways that night. And I hadn’t seen him since.

Mum, Dad, and I had moved to Aberdeen, and in September I had gone to university in Leeds, but by the time I graduated, my parents had divorced and Mum had returned to Kingston upon Thames, a mere sixty miles or so away from Fairlight Bay.

While I was in Leeds, I had shared a house with three other girls and two guys. During my second year there, I’d had a brief relationship with one of the guys, more in the hope that he might help me get over Sam than in the hope that anything would come of it. Needless to say, the relationship didn’t last. Both my head and my heart constantly compared him to Sam. No one could compete with that memory.

When my heart could bear it, I’d looked Sam up on social media. He had a couple of accounts but he didn’t seem to update them much. I’d been sorely tempted to get in touch, but I’d stopped myself. Just seeing his face – and that devastatingly gorgeous smile, brought back all the pain I’d felt that final night. Why would I put myself through that again? Only an idiot – or a masochist – would do that.

I’ll admit, I did check his accounts for updates several times during the first few months, at least those that were open to the public, but he still didn’t seem to be updating any of them, and as it hurt so much to look, I stopped looking. What was the point in wishing for something that could never be?

Sam Worth was just a holiday fling. He had told me so himself.

I had to accept that only one of us had fallen in love that week in Fairlight Bay.

And that had not been Sam.