Chapter 13
‘Morning,’ Quinn said, letting himself into Alex’s kitchen the next day or rather later on that same morning.
Her face lit up at seeing him and he loved her reaction. His heart felt so full of her. This was the woman he was going to marry one day and, yes, that day may be many years in the future but the fact he got to be with her now, albeit secretly, was good enough for him.
She surreptitiously looked over her shoulder to see if Zara was around before wrapping her arms around him and giving him a kiss. ‘Morning,’ she said, the biggest smile on her face.
‘I love you,’ Quinn whispered. He was never going to get tired of saying those words to her or hearing them from her too. He never thought this would happen so it was like having all his Christmases come at once.
‘I love you too, so much. Come for dinner tomorrow night, I want Zara to get used to seeing you more often, not just popping in before school or at work. I want her to be OK with this before we launch it on her.’
That made him feel happy too. If Alex wanted to tell Zara that must mean she wanted more than this friends-with-benefits arrangement.
‘Of course, I’d be happy to,’ he said.
‘Happy to do what?’ Zara said, appearing in the kitchen with her nose in a book.
Quinn quickly stepped back away from Alex, cursing that he hadn’t heard her coming.
‘Umm, Quinn is coming for dinner tomorrow.’
Zara nodded, her attention focussed on the book. ‘OK.’
‘Hey Rocket, I have some news. Santa’s house was decorated overnight,’ Quinn said.
The book was lowered, her eyes wide with excitement. ‘For real?’
‘Yes. It looks pretty cool.’
‘Did you see it happen?’
‘Didn’t see or hear anything. Went to bed around eleven, woke up this morning and it’s completely transformed. The elves must have done it through the night.’
‘That’s amazing. I bet they did it with magic.’
‘I imagine so.’
‘And I’ve just heard that Santa is arriving this evening, at five o’clock,’ Alex said, as if his arrival hadn’t been planned with military precision for the last six months or more.
‘That’s amazing. Can we go and see it this morning?’ Zara said, excitedly.
‘Yes, of course,’ Alex said.
‘I’ll go and get dressed,’ Zara said, for once abandoning her book. ‘And you two can carry on kissing.’
She left the room and they stared at each other in shock.
‘I guess she’s OK with it,’ Alex said.
‘I guess so.’
Word had clearly got around as what looked like hundreds of young children were wandering round Christmas Gardens and the house in awe as they looked at all the decorations and lights.
Alex hadn’t had a chance to have a proper look at all the decorations last night and the overall effect, but in the daylight and with the fake and real snow sparkling in the winter sunshine, it looked spectacular.
Christmas trees were placed around the gardens in a kind of forest trail with little animals and magical folk dotted along the path, and all of the trees were beautifully decorated with lights or garlands or baubles.
The house itself looked wonderful, with two large beautifully decorated Christmas trees that were easily twelve foot high or more standing sentry either side of the door.
The door was surrounded by a huge bauble garland archway and there were several oversized wrapped presents dotted around.
Each window was festooned with a bauble wreath and lights and there were illuminated icicles and snowflakes hanging from the eaves.
The whole house was capped off with the incredible roof which looked like the snow was a foot or more deep as it sparkled in the daylight.
Zara was looking at it all with wide eyes and her mouth open. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It really is,’ Immy said. ‘The elves have done a wonderful job.’
The house door was open and people were wandering around inside.
Santa wasn’t officially due to arrive until tonight, but in the meantime the children were delighted to have a little sneak peek into his home.
Alex knew that Quinn’s upstairs flat would be locked so there was no chance of anyone rooting around in his home and touching his stuff.
‘Is it weird that people are in your home?’ Zara said to Quinn.
‘Not really. It’s Santa’s home, he just lets me stay there for the rest of the year as he doesn’t need it until December. So I can’t complain about it when he does come back. And I get to stay upstairs while Santa moves in downstairs so it’s not like I have no place to stay.’
‘You can always stay with us,’ Zara said, simply.
‘What?’ Quinn said.
‘Harley’s mum’s boyfriend has just moved in with them and, when I asked why, Harley said it’s because they love each other. You two love each other so you should move in.’
‘It’s… not quite so simple as that,’ Quinn said, awkwardly, while Alex had no words at all. Immy snorted with suppressed laughter.
‘Harley says it’s like having a second dad,’ Zara went on.
‘Only better because her real dad is mean to her mum and Harley doesn’t like it.
She says Jake is nice and plays with her and sometimes brings her toys and gives her hugs.
And I said my dad was mean to my mum too but now he isn’t here and you could be my dad, because you’re nicer. ’
Alex let out a little gasp. ‘What do you mean, your dad was mean to me?’
She had tried to shield Zara from Liam’s nastiness as much as she could, but she couldn’t exactly shut Zara in her room whenever he was in a nasty mood because that would have meant her being in her room for the last eighteen months of Liam’s life.
She had tried to tell herself that Zara, at three and four years old, was too young to understand, but clearly not.
Zara nodded. ‘He made you cry. I remember that. He made you cry a lot. Quinn never makes you cry.’
Alex bit her lip. She had no recollection of crying in front of her daughter.
She always tried to walk away from Liam when he got too nasty, and obviously took Zara with her, but she’d always tried to keep the tears at bay in front of Zara.
It broke her heart that Zara had negative memories of her dad.
Before his friend died Liam had been a wonderful father.
She resolved to try and find some videos of him and Zara in happier times.
But she had no idea how to address this.
Immy gave Alex a consoling stroke on the back.
Alex knew she would never jump to Liam’s defence; her sister had despised the man ever since she’d found out what Alex had lived with for the last eighteen months of his life.
Alex looked at her sister. She was pissed that not only had Liam made her cry but that Zara had seen it.
Quinn cleared his throat. ‘Your dad was a good man, but he got sick and that sickness made him do and say mean and nasty things. The man he was before he got sick would have hated that he made your mum cry – he loved you both very much.’
Alex smiled with love for him, he always knew the perfect thing to say. Immy was clearly biting her lip to disagree that Liam was a good man but her sister knew that Alex never wanted to speak ill of Liam in front of Zara, regardless of his appalling behaviour.
Zara was quiet for a while. ‘I don’t really remember him.’
‘We can talk about him any time you want to,’ Alex said. ‘And I have lots of photos and videos of the three of us together, we can look at them too.’
‘And I have many stories of what we got up to when we were kids,’ Quinn said. ‘You just need to ask and I’ll bore you with them for hours. Nanny will have plenty of funny stories about him too.’
‘OK, maybe I’d like to look at some videos of him some time.’
‘Just say the word,’ Alex said, even though she knew watching those videos would hurt because they had been happy and Liam had thrown all that away so easily.
‘But I’d still like a new dad,’ Zara went on. ‘I haven’t had one for a long time. And if you two love each other why can’t Quinn move in like Jake did?’
‘Quinn is very special to us,’ Alex said carefully. ‘And there will be a time in the future when he will move in with us. Or we’ll move in with him but—’
‘In Santa’s house?’ Zara almost screamed with excitement.
‘Well we might, we haven’t talked about it,’ Alex said, feeling like they were going off topic quite spectacularly.
‘Why haven’t we talked about it?’
‘It has to be the right time,’ Quinn said.
‘No it doesn’t, we can talk about it anytime, we could talk about it now,’ Zara said. ‘Can we move into Santa’s house, Mum, can we?’
‘Why don’t we go and have a closer look at the forest trail and the house,’ Immy said, helpfully. She held out a hand for Zara and, surprisingly, she took it. They walked, or in Zara’s case bounced, towards the house, leaving Quinn and Alex alone.
‘And there was I thinking that if Zara knew about us it might be easier than trying to sneak around,’ Alex said. ‘But there was nothing easy about that.’
Quinn was looking serious. ‘She’s bound to compare herself to other families, especially as most of her friends all have dads and she doesn’t.’
‘True. She’s never said anything to me before about wanting a new dad. I wonder if that’s because she always got what she needed in that regard from you.’
‘I’ve done what I can but her upbringing is all down to you, and probably Immy,’ Quinn said. ‘You’ve done the job of a mum and a dad. She’s brilliant, sensible, funny, clever and all of that is down to you.’
‘Oh, I don’t think I can take any credit for that, she’s brilliant all on her own.’ Alex paused, biting her lip. ‘I’m sorry she said those things about Liam, I know that must be hard to hear.’
‘That he was mean? I saw that with my own eyes. I’m sad that she saw it though.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ Alex sighed. ‘I never knew she saw me crying. I’ve never said anything negative about Liam to her as I always hoped she remembered the good times not the bad. Thank you for saying what you did.’