Chapter Twenty-Three
Thursday 6th December Kendric House
Evan and Haneen not only agree without question, they also help. Evan tasks Ricky with looking up health and safety arrangements. Haneen co-opts Meredith and Rhian to help me.
No money, though. The teenagers will earn credits towards their own projects.
Meredith, not really a teenager, more like early twenties, is hoping to become a caterer. That’s why she’s excited to come shopping with me; one day, she hopes to be promoted to deputy manager in Haneen’s takeaway shop Gift for Gravy . With her local knowledge, she charms the baker into delivering the bread we want, three times a week. Then she takes me to a dairy farm where we get fresh butter, goat’s cheese, and eggs.
That afternoon, it’s an even bigger success. Eighteen people gather round the table to eat drink and tell stories.
The following Saturday it’s twenty-four.
This time Alex and the professor offer a show. They rig up a projector to show slides of one of the murals which is being restored. It shows a beautiful woman in a long blue dress riding a horse with a man on one knee before her offering a rose. According to the professor’s research, it’s an old Welsh legend about the unrequited love of an ancient poet.
“This is the story of Hywel ap Einion Llygliw,” the professor explains. “This humble man was also a romantic poet. His dreams went far beyond the borders of his poverty and simple life. He dreamed of better things, of beauty and joy and of being rich. Sadly, for Hywel ap Einion Llygliw, his dreams turned to pain. One day, he happened to see a lady who made his dreams of beauty seem plain by comparison. Lady Myfanwy. Never before had he seen a woman so exquisitely beautiful, her walk so graceful, her clothes so elegant.”
A move across the table draws my attention to Raff. When he catches my eyes, he gives me a surreptitious wink.
I glare at him for this cheeky reference to my so-called beauty.
“Seeing Myfanwy fired his imagination,” the professor continues. “It lit his heart. What was a romantic to do in the face of such a vision? He instantly fell in love with her.”
The professor really has a way with a lecture. For a split second, I wonder about how he, once a nineteen-year-old student, fell in love with my mother. But then…
“But Myfanwy was a rich lady. She was the daughter of a Welsh nobleman.”
I keep my eyes fixed on the slide in case Raff is going to mime something about me being the daughter of the professor. My father certainly knows how to hold an audience. Everyone is hanging on his every word.
“Hywel was far beneath her, so she turned him down. He wasn’t defeated. He was too much in love to give up. He was a believer in the adage, if at first, you don’t succeed…” The professor pauses waiting for his audience to complete the line.
Everyone round the table calls out, “Try, and try again.”
He nods. “He did. He kept pursuing her, trying every way to charm her, to change her mind. Until…she married a rich man and Hywel’s heart was broken.”
Raff clutches his chest as if stabbed. I have to stifle a giggle and look around to check in case any of the others noticed. No, they’re all watching the professor as he spins the yarn.
Haneen was right. My father is charming, and he’s certainly full of fascinating stories.
Even Jack is happy. Although, his joy is in part because he’s now convinced it’s only a matter of time before he comes to live here. A problem I still don’t know how to solve. But at least when it comes to saying goodnight, he doesn’t cling to me as before. He just takes my hand. “Thank you again, my dear, dear girl. I know you have to ask the owner; he seems a very decent fellow so I’m optimistic. Just know that I’ll be ready to move whenever you say the word.”
My own heart might break worse than Hywel’s.
“If I were a coward, I’d ask Evan to deliver the bad news,” I tell Raff later that night when we’re in bed. “After all, it’s his house and he can explain why the house isn’t suited.”
Raff squeezes me to him. “Well, you’d better do it fast because Jack has been telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s moving here before Christmas.”
“What am I going to do? I won’t even be here for Christmas.”
“Where will you be?” Raff asks.
“Not sure.” I sigh. Mum wants to me to stay with them. I really, really don’t want to do that. Last week I heard from a friend who has a spare room in her house which she offered me at a reasonable rent. It’s only a box room, but it’ll do while I look for something more permanent. The room is vacant from Christmas Eve, so I thought I’d spend Christmas Day unpacking and making my temporary room look like home. I nuzzle into his neck. “That was the thing about the Aladdin tour, I’d have been working.”
“Your family?”
What family? “Mum will be dressed up and drinking champagne with the neighbours. Horrible Howard, that’s her husband. He’ll be drunk and making jokes that only he finds funny.” I lay a soft kiss on Raff’s chest. “I don’t think so.”
“Then why not stay here with me?”
It’s tempting. “I don’t want the professor to feel like I’m forcing him to play happy families.”
My ‘father’ has made it very clear he doesn’t want family, and my hanging around on Christmas Day would corner him into having to give me a card or a present. All the things families do. It’ll also oblige Haneen and Evan to sort of adopt me. Damsel in distress again.
I don’t know if Raff can read my mind, but he must guess enough.
“You don’t have to be a guest, why not be a host? Host a Christmas party for the Squad?”
I open my mouth to argue, but the idea grows on me. A little. It takes shape. And the best part of it is that I’d get to spend Christmas with Raff. That beats unpacking in a box room any day.
“You know that I’m not really a cook.”
“Make sandwiches,” he says. He’s leading me gradually to a new challenge because surely he knows and I know he knows that I won’t make sandwiches for Christmas. That such a scheme would push me to research recipes and create something a bit better. Actually, Haneen might help. We could do a combined Christmas. Would they be okay with that?
I thread my fingers through Raff’s hair, combing the soft locks all the way to the ends. “Are you going to be here to help me?”
“Of course. We could put on a fabulous Christmas dinner with games and everything. Give the Squad something to remember us when we’re gone.”
“I’ll be starting rehearsals for Sleeping Beauty in January.” And he’ll be off too.
“What’s Mauritania like?”
“Like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
I want to draw him out because this location filming is fascinating. I’ve been googling the show, but all the pictures look over-the-top fantastical. Sand dunes, stark reddish cliffs and sand and stone houses.
“Are you looking forward to going back?”
He sighs but doesn’t answer. Instead, he holds me closer and kisses me again and again until we both forget Christmas and everything else. But a few hours later, when he’s lying beside me, one arm folded under his head, his eyes on the ceiling, he does answer.
“I am looking forward to getting back. I love the work. But it’s not a stroll in the park. The place might be beautiful and very picturesque but we’re filming in winter, which makes it hot in the day and freezing at night. It plays havoc with you if you’re not acclimatised to it. It’s dry and the sand gets everywhere, and I mean everywhere .” He emphasises his words with a meaningful look.
“There’s a reason the Tuareg men cover their heads and faces in cloth. But the worst of it is that we’re filming in the north, literally in the middle of the nowhere. No internet, no phone signal that’s any use.”
“What if you need to contact someone?”
He lifts one naked shoulder in a half shrug. His body is always hot, as if he has an internal furnace.
“The production crew obviously have a mobile office with a satellite link, so if you book a session, you can go in there and use one of their computers to check your emails. Mostly we’re stuck in our trailers with nothing to do but drink.” He purses his lips. “Or worse.”
Worse.
So much hidden in this one word. My imagination supplies the rest.
I’ve been around filmsets and TV studios where drug taking is not uncommon. The stuff isn’t cheap. And usually, it’s not just the drug taking, it’s the random sex, the self-destructive behaviour, the bad company.
I snuggle up close and kiss his chest again, right above his heart. I keep my lips there a long time trying to kiss away the pain that he must have carried. I desperately want to know more about what happened but don’t want to spoil the moment with questions.
He must understand me because he gathers me close. “I’m good, really I am. And we’ll have a wonderful Christmas.”
Okay, I will stay. And I will do my best to give him and everyone else a wonderful Christmas. I think…“I’ve never hosted a Christmas dinner before. Let’s hope I don’t let you down.”
He squeezes me to him. “I have faith in you.”
Welsh Hagrid, my Welsh Hagrid. How was it that only a month ago, I’d hardly even noticed him. He was never on my radar as a possible boyfriend. Now…
Now he has morphed into this incredible man.
One day when we’re both back in our normal lives, I’ll catch an episode of Clan and see him on screen. I’d be thinking, that’s him, the man who believed in me. The only man who saw the real me.
No boyfriend will ever measure up, not the Armani suits, not membership at the Hurlingham Club or cocktails at the Sky gardens.
And yet, like the unattainable Myfanwy, he is out of my league. His career is such that we will never cross paths. Let’s just hope that I don’t spend my life pining for him as Hywel did for Myfanwy.
And he’s right, Christmas here will be so much better than spending it anywhere else. Tomorrow I’ll ask the Squad if they can get out of The Glyn for Christmas dinner.