Chapter 10
Closed for the Holiday , the sign read.
Eleanor tapped softly on one of the small panes of glass in the front door and took a step back to look down the deserted street. She had been taken by surprise that Jake had actually believed her. This wasn’t exactly London. There wouldn’t be a single shop open on Christmas Day in the small town of Aviemore. Trust a man not to know that , she thought. All the shop fronts along the thoroughfare were dark and devoid of life, apart from this one. A soft glow emanated from within, filtering through the slats of the wooden blind that hung in the front window. It illuminated the large Roman lettering, etched in black on the window in an arc, which read Wilbur’s Bookstore .
Eleanor stepped up to the door and tapped again, urgently this time. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her. Eleanor looked up and down the street once more and spotted a car parked a little further up the street. It had its lights on, so she couldn’t see who was inside the car.
Eleanor shivered, and not because of the cold. Ever since she’d arrived in the Cairngorms the previous day, she’d felt like she was being followed. Clearly, the feeling had no basis in reality. It was true that she hadn’t felt that way in London, but she was still putting her heightened sense of anxiety and paranoia down to the pregnancy. She started to think about the morning sickness and cravings she had to look forward to. And those things would just be the beginning.
Eleanor was raising her hand to the door for the third time when she heard the sound of a key in the lock. She was so relieved when the door opened.
‘I decided to pay you a visit,’ said Eleanor as she stepped into the dimly lit shop. She could smell freshly brewed coffee.
She took a seat in the cosy café corner by the window. When the blinds were open, it had a view of Aviemore’s little train station across the road. The station was popular with tourists because it wasn’t just an ordinary station. On Platform 3 was the Strathspey Steam Railway, which offered a step back in time to a bygone era with nostalgic train journeys through the stunning scenery of the Cairngorms.
Eleanor took a peek through the slatted blinds at the station across the road, promising herself that, one day, she would make that trip. But at that moment she was back in the same seat where she had sat just the previous day, Christmas Eve, when she’d nipped out before Jake had arrived at The Lake House.
She looked about her at the bookshelves lining the walls of the small second-hand bookshop while she listened to the sound of cups and saucers being arranged on a tray, and the coffee machine brewing the coffee.
Her mind wandered back to the events leading up to her visit there the day before. She’d known that if Jake missed the train, he would want them to drive up to Scotland together on Christmas Eve. That was why he had been on the phone, leaving her a dozen or more messages. But she hadn’t answered the phone on purpose; she had been angry and hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction of having his own way. She had agreed to spend Christmas in Scotland, which was just what he wanted, so she had expected him to make the effort to catch the train, just like they normally did. Rather than hanging back at the apartment, waiting for him, Eleanor had decided she was getting the sleeper train – with or without him.
Once she’d arrived, she’d decided she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. He had spoiled her Christmas, so she was going to make his as unpleasant as possible.
Well, that had been her line of reasoning at the time. Sitting in the back of the chauffer-driven car on her way to London Euston Station to catch the sleeper train, her temper had cooled off considerably; so much so that she felt quite embarrassed by her behaviour in not answering his calls. She’d wished Jake was with her or that she’d held on in the apartment and travelled with him by car instead of insisting that Edward take her to the station alone.
She recalled turning around and looking out of the back window, as if by some miracle Jake would be in his car, travelling right behind them, flashing for the Jag to pull over so that she could resume the journey with him. Eleanor had turned back in her seat to resume her solitary sulk while staring out of the front window.
She had slid down further in her seat to avoid Edward’s judgemental glances, which said, I told you to wait for him , and had stared miserably out of the car window. It was two-thirty in the afternoon, and the mass exodus from the city had already begun. ‘The traffic gets worse every year,’ Edward had commented.
‘That’s why we get the train,’ Eleanor had shot back. At least, that was what she and Jake had been doing for the past few years.
When they had been kids, it had all been part of the fun; the anticipation of the Christmas holidays spent in that most magical of places – Aviemore in Scotland. The ridiculously long drive from London – an entire day spent bored in the back of the car – had been worth it. But back then, the family hadn’t been able to afford to fly or take the overnight Caledonian sleeper.
At first, after they had got married, Eleanor and Jake had continued that tradition. But Edward was right; every year the traffic got heavier, the going got slower and the urge to drop the absurdly long car journey and just fly grew stronger. Of course, it wouldn’t be the same – but then, Eleanor knew that over time, nothing ever was.
Eleanor had enjoyed the long car journeys with Jake, and she knew he’d felt the same. However, as Jake’s career in the company took off, doing that long journey and arriving exhausted just spoiled Christmas Day. That was why they’d compromised and started to get the sleeper train.
She’d caught Jake fast asleep on the sofa that morning and had been surprised to find out he’d driven up rather than catching a flight from London with Marcus when he’d missed the train. It was little wonder he’d fallen asleep on the sofa and was too exhausted to wake even when she’d gently lifted his head to position a pillow and had draped a blanket over him.
‘You look sad, Ellie. What’s the matter?’
Eleanor snapped back from her reverie and looked down at the cup of coffee that had just been placed in front of her. ‘Won’t you join me?’ she said, looking up at her companion.
‘Yeah – just like old times.’
That made Eleanor smile. ‘Yes, just like old times.’ That was a joke. They’d met only the day before, right there in the bookshop – two strangers joining one another with a cup of coffee on Christmas Eve, sharing their troubles.
‘Let me get rid of this first.’
Eleanor watched Robyn put her fingers in her mouth and pull out a thick wad of bright pink bubble gum.
‘Not very lady-like, I know,’ said Robyn, holding the sticky goo between her thumb and forefinger, ‘but a girl’s got to have some vices.’ Robyn stood and walked to the far end of the shop, her bangles clanging, her short black skirt flapping above quite spectacular red and green striped wool tights, her oversize black army boots clumping on the wooden floor. She returned empty-handed.
Eleanor couldn’t help but watch her and smile. Robyn was the antithesis of her old school friends or any friends she had ever known, and yet when they had met just the previous day, they had inexplicably hit it off.
There were no old times, as Robyn had put it, but Eleanor wished there had been. She would have loved to have taken Robyn home to see the look on her mother’s face. She would have loved to have had a friendship from school that had survived into adulthood and not dropped away as quickly as you could say, university educated with a career , or tall, tanned and stunning, seen at all the right parties, often linking arms with a celebrity . Eleanor believed the latter called themselves It Girls – whatever that was meant to mean.
Of course, she knew all too well the real reason her so-called friends had dropped her like a stone, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she didn’t have a career or long legs. It was jealousy. She possessed the one thing most of them wanted desperately but did not have – a husband. And it couldn’t be just any man; it had to be someone handsome, clever and powerful in order to cement their social standing and elevate them to the glossy pages of HELLO! magazine.
The so-called friends who had stuck around, Eleanor had later realised, were only after one thing – her brother. So it probably hadn’t helped that Marcus had rejected them all in favour of an American. It was a long-distance relationship that, to begin with, they’d all said wouldn’t last. But to everybody’s surprise, it had. She was a bright, beautiful, sassy, Harvard- educated East Coast lawyer from a distinguished line of East Coast lawyers, and she was blessed with beauty and brains. But what set Marcus’s fiancée, Lydia, apart from her contemporaries was that she and Eleanor had something in common – they both supported charitable organisations, and, like Eleanor, she took her commitments very seriously.
Eleanor had been disappointed to discover that she wouldn’t be joining the family for Christmas that year, but she supposed it was understandable that she would spend Christmas with her own family. Once she and Marcus were married, they would spend the Christmas holiday together. The only question on everybody’s lips was: when were they going to set a date? Eleanor hoped it would be soon, because the plan was that Lydia would move to London to live with Marcus permanently. At present, Eleanor’s only girlfriends – if you could call them that – were the older women sitting on the charity boards and the circle of company wives who, with their tales of baking and babies, made Eleanor want to run to the hills.
Robyn was just so refreshing. Eleanor smiled affectionately at her new friend.
‘You’d think I’d be glad that the bookshop is shut for Christmas Day, but business has been so slow that sometimes I think I’ll go mad without someone else to talk to.’ Robyn sat down opposite Eleanor, her bangles clicking on the wooden table. Her dark hair, which was piled high on her head, looked messier than Eleanor’s, and her eyes were lined with thick black make-up, contrasting with Eleanor’s natural, make-up-free complexion.
Eleanor glanced at the bookshop door with the Closed sign in the window. There would be no trickle of customers today. She turned to Robyn. ‘You’ve always got Wilbur to talk to.’
Robyn looked at her. ‘Are you serious?’
Eleanor nodded solemnly, although she couldn’t imagine a single thing that Wilbur, the bookshop owner, and Robyn could have in common.
Robyn confirmed this. ‘You know, I think I’d go insane if I had to talk to him all day. In fact, there’d be nothing for it – I’d have to do him in, or myself – one of us would have to go.’ Robyn offered Eleanor a wicked grin.
Eleanor empathised. She’d bumped into Wilbur, literally, on her way into the bookshop just as he was leaving for the Christmas holiday. He visited family in England for Christmas and he wouldn’t be back until the New Year, when Robyn’s job there would finish. He’d left Robyn in charge on Christmas Eve. Wilbur was stuck in a fifties time-warp, with his thick bottle-bottom glasses, hand-knitted, patterned jumpers and a permanent look of surprise on his face, like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights of the modern world. He was about as uncool as Robyn was cool.
Eleanor glanced furtively at Robyn’s low-cut black top, which revealed bare, porcelain-white shoulders, and felt very prim all of a sudden. She undid the top button of her blouse. ‘It was getting late,’ Eleanor began, ‘and I guessed you weren’t going to take up my invitation.’ She remembered watching the clock on the wall and half-listening for the doorbell during Christmas lunch.
Robyn put her coffee cup down. A white, frothy moustache covered her upper lip. ‘Christmas is for family, Ellie, and I wasn’t about to intrude on yours.’
‘Family and friends,’ Eleanor corrected her. Although they had only met the previous day when she was browsing in the bookshop, she had invited Robyn over for Christmas dinner. She had been very disappointed when her new friend hadn’t turned up.
Robyn licked her upper lip.
‘Besides, who wants to spend Christmas on their own?’ said Eleanor. It was that very thought had motivated her to go back and find out why Robyn hadn’t turned up.
‘I do,’ Robyn said, surprising her. ‘The little flat isn’t bad,’ she continued, glancing at the ceiling to indicate the living quarters above the shop. ‘And it’s been a pretty good holiday job so far.’
Eleanor looked around the bookshop; there were rows and rows of books that appeared to be in no discernible order; it was more like a crusty old public library than a bookshop. It wouldn’t have surprised Eleanor if Wilbur didn’t exactly do a roaring trade. Presumably his one concession to modernity had been the coffee corner, and that had all been down to his wife’s insistence, apparently.
‘When do you go back to college?’ Eleanor asked, secretly hoping Robyn would be around until she returned to London with Jake.
‘To tell you the truth,’ Robyn confided, ‘I’m not sure I want to go back.’
‘You’re dropping out?’ Eleanor said, putting her coffee cup down. ‘But why?’ She felt that if she had been in Robyn’s position, she’d definitely be going back; St Andrews University, art history – studying on the same course as a member of the Royal Family had a few years earlier, no less. It was all so exciting.
Robyn was uncharacteristically silent. She singled out a bright red bangle on her wrist and studied it intently.
‘What will your parents think?’ Eleanor persisted. And come to think of it, exactly where were Robyn’s parents on Christmas Day? Nobody spent Christmas alone; not someone Robyn’s age, anyway.
Robyn looked up. ‘How was the book?’
‘The book?’ Eleanor repeated.
‘Yes, you know – that book on babies you bought yesterday.’
Eleanor understood; the subject was now closed. Whatever problems she was having at college, be it academic or otherwise – and Eleanor strongly suspected the latter – Robyn didn’t want to confide in her. She had no choice but to accept that – for now.
‘Not exactly my chosen reading material.’ Eleanor sighed.
‘Me neither.’ Robyn grimaced.
Eleanor found it strangely comforting that she wasn’t the only young woman on the face of the planet to find the whole business of babies and motherhood rather, well, disturbing. ‘I’m just surprised you managed to find the book so fast.’
Eleanor’s brief perusal of the bookshelves yesterday had revealed a chaotic mix of fiction and non-fiction. There was little chance she would have found anything remotely resembling what she was after from those crammed bookshelves. But Robyn had produced the book almost immediately, as though she knew instantly what Eleanor was after the moment she had walked into the shop. Either that, or Robyn had been reading the book herself.
‘Don’t you feel …?’ Robyn hesitated. ‘Don’t you feel a little young to be having a baby just yet? I mean, all that responsibility, and it’s, like, a lifetime thing. Don’t you feel you haven’t lived a little first?’
‘I am twenty-six.’ Eleanor wondered why she had said that. Then she realised. In her mother’s day, twenty-six had been a perfectly acceptable age to be married with a child, and her mother hadn’t hesitated to tell her so on the one occasion she had voiced her doubts. But she wasn’t living in her mother’s day, and no self-respecting career woman started thinking about babies until her biological clock was making loud gonging noises – at least ten years on from where Eleanor was now. But as her mother was wont to remind her, despite her charitable work, she was no career woman. Eleanor stared forlornly into her empty coffee cup.
‘Look, that was really thoughtless of me.’ Robyn reached across the table and clasped her hand.
‘No, it’s alright. Really.’ Eleanor looked up. ‘It’s nice to have someone I can really talk to for a change. My mother and I don’t exactly see eye to eye.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. I know exactly how that feels.’
‘You do?’
Robyn patted her hand affectionately. ‘Let’s just say I think you and I have a lot in common.’
‘We do?’ Eleanor resisted the urge to ask Robyn exactly what she meant by that. Of course, she was intrigued. She wanted to know more about her new friend. What had happened at college to make her consider not going back? Why wasn’t she spending Christmas with her family? Had they had a falling-out? But for now, Eleanor was content just to hope they could stay friends; maybe in time, Robyn would open up to her the way she had already opened up to Robyn. Had that really happened only the day before? Yet again, her thoughts wandered back to Christmas Eve ...
The previous day, Eleanor had decided not to hang around The Lake House waiting for Jake’s arrival. She hadn’t expected him to reach the house until late that day, and hadn’t been able to bear the thought of a whole day filled with her mother’s disapproving asides when she found out Eleanor had not waited behind in London for her husband to finish work.
So Eleanor had taken herself into town – alone. Shopping was the only option, even though the thought filled her with dread; almost as much as getting into a car and driving. That was why she loved London; it was the perfect place to live if you hated driving, and she always had Edward on hand if she desperately needed a car.
She’d walked up and down the long parade of shops. Aviemore, nestled in the valley of the Cairngorm mountains, consisted of one long shopping street. Many of the shops sold souvenirs, with others selling walking and skiing clothes and equipment.
The small town was the last stop before the long country road, which wound through forests of pines and picturesque lakeshore scenery, led you past the Cairngorm Visitor Centre. It also passed the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, which offered guided walks to see free-roaming reindeer up on the mountains. Not far past the centre, the road climbed to a dead end at the car parks below the ski lifts up to the Cairngorm Mountain ski resort.
Eleanor had felt relieved that she had got out of the ski trip, although as she had walked through the town, she hadn’t enjoyed being jostled by last-minute Christmas shoppers and tourists who had descended on the small town for the start of the ski season.
Eleanor hadn’t been able to think of a single thing she needed to buy. Then she had found herself standing outside a decrepit little shop across the road from Aviemore railway station.
At first glance, the shop had looked closed, even though the sign hanging haphazardly on the front door had said Open . Unlike the other shops, there had been no last-minute Christmas shoppers there. The lacklustre Christmas decorations didn’t exactly entice people inside, and nor did the dimly lit, poky shop that she could just about see through the grimy window. But Eleanor had stepped inside just to get away from the shopping frenzy just about everywhere else.
As she had absently scanned the cluttered bookshelves, it had occurred to her that it was probably the time to start finding out more about this business of babies. She had a strong feeling she wasn’t going to be one of those women to whom motherhood would be second nature. She didn’t want to turn to her mother for advice – she wasn’t exactly Eleanor’s picture of the ideal parent. Her mother spent far too much time in la-la land, as far as she was concerned. She’d never been a hands-on mum. Eleanor recalled criticising her mother once, on that score, and her response had been, Darling, that’s what nannies are for. Unlike her mum, Eleanor wasn’t even going to entertain the idea of a nanny, so she had to find out about motherhood elsewhere.
The young woman dressed all in black who was working in the bookshop had handed her a book with the front cover bearing a picture of a woman, her face smiling adoringly down at the baby in her arms.
Then, something unexpected had happened. Eleanor had taken one look at that picture and had just disintegrated into a shaking, snivelling wreck.
The tears wouldn’t stop.
The humiliation wouldn’t stop.
This had never happened to her before. She was just thankful the shop was deserted.
The young woman had disappeared in a fit of embarrassment, or so Eleanor had thought. But then she had reappeared carrying two empty cups and saucers and with a box of tissues tucked under her arm. She’d guided Eleanor to a seat at the table near a wood-burning stove, placing the cups and saucers on the table in front of her. She’d opened the box of tissues and offered Eleanor one. Eleanor had taken one and blown her nose.
‘Wait here.’ The young woman had pulled down the blind at the window, flipped the sign on the door to Closed , and disappeared again.
Eleanor had taken another tissue from the box and had looked towards the back of the shop, where she could see a large picture window that overlooked a small but pleasant garden and the snow-capped mountain peaks rearing up beyond the town.
The young woman had returned a few moments later, carrying a tray with two mugs of black coffee along with sugar and cream. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she’d asked, passing Eleanor a cup of coffee.
And, quite bizarrely, Eleanor had done just that, pouring out her heart to a complete stranger.
‘Everything will turn out ok,’ Robyn had said to her, and for some reason, Eleanor had found the words of a stranger comforting.
‘Will you come and spend Christmas Day with us?’ she had said on impulse.
Robyn had clearly been taken by surprise, ‘I’m not sure I …’
‘Of course. How stupid of me,’ Eleanor had realised she was forgetting her manners. ‘We’ve only just met, and you don’t even know me.’
‘What’s there to know?’ Robyn had shrugged her shoulders. ‘All I know is that I like you. We could be friends, at least for the Christmas holiday. I don’t know a soul in town yet, apart from Wilbur.’
Eleanor had been surprised to hear this. She’d assumed Robyn was home from university for the holidays and was working in a shop local to where her parents lived. She’d said this to Robyn, asking what she was doing in Aviemore, but Robyn had just shrugged in response, and had said cryptically, ‘I have my reasons.’
Eleanor had found herself hoping they would be friends long enough for her to find out those reasons – certainly longer than just the Christmas holidays. ‘Will you come then, and spend Christmas with me and my family?’
‘Maybe.’
Eleanor had got up to go and had nearly left without the book. When Robyn had handed it to her, the cloud had resurfaced. It was blacker than ever.
‘Ellie?’
Eleanor looked up from her coffee cup. ‘I was just thinking about yesterday – how silly I must have looked, sitting here crying my eyes out.’
‘Yeah, you’ve cost Wilbur a fortune in tissues.’
Eleanor smiled.
Robyn scooted over to the seat next to the window and opened the blind. She breathed on the window pane and drew something on the window, making a squeaky noise on the glass pane.
‘What are you doing?’
‘X marks the spot,’ said Robyn putting her face close to the window. She looked back at Eleanor. ‘The mountain up there.’ Robyn pointed out of the window. ‘I came for the skiing, but all I’ve seen so far is the inside of this bookshop.’
‘How come?’ Eleanor hadn’t known she could ski. But then, how much could you really learn about a person in one afternoon?
‘My fault, really. I forgot my skis.’
‘How did you manage that?’ Eleanor could imagine forgetting to pack your ski gloves or something incidental that you could easily overlook, but forgetting your skis for a skiing holiday was pretty, well, funny.
‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘Uh-uh.’ Eleanor shook her head, casually resting her elbow on the table and her hand over her mouth.
‘You are, aren’t you?’ Robyn pointed an accusing finger at her.
Eleanor shook her head furiously.
Robyn reached over and grabbed Eleanor’s hand away from her mouth to reveal a wide grin.
‘Well, it is rather funny, isn’t it?’ said Eleanor in between fits of giggling.
Robyn’s lips parted into a toothy grin. ‘I guess it’s not the sort of thing you forget to bring on a skiing holiday.’
They both stared out of the window at the snow-covered peaks.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Eleanor suddenly. ‘I’ve got skis, the whole shebang. You can borrow them.’
Robyn turned away from the window to look at her.
‘Oh hell, you can have them. Think of it as a Christmas present. And you don’t have to worry about giving me anything in return,’ she added hastily, ‘because you already have – your friendship.’ She knew she had been sorely in need of a kind word and a sympathetic ear. ‘I doubt I’ll be going skiing again in the foreseeable future. Anyway, I’ve always hated skiing.’ Eleanor had expected Robyn to jump at the chance, but instead she sat there, calmly considering it.
‘It won’t be the same,’ Robyn said finally.
‘I know that,’ said Eleanor, ‘but we’re near enough the same height and build. I’m sure you could get used to …’
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ She turned back to the window and scrubbed out the X in a couple of squeaks.
‘What is it, then?’
Robyn stared out of the window. ‘We used to come here for holidays when I was a child.’
‘Really?’ Eleanor was pleased to discover that they really did have something in common. Perhaps Robyn had had her first experience of skiing there; perhaps she had joined one of the kiddie clubs to learn to ski, just as Eleanor had. Perhaps they had even met already in one of these clubs years earlier. But something in Robyn’s voice stopped Eleanor from asking for the details of happy childhood memories. She wondered if the memories had become sad ones, maybe because of recent events.
‘Your parents don’t come anymore?’ Eleanor said softly.
Robyn shook her head, ‘One can’t and the other won’t,’ she said cryptically.
‘Why?’
‘You don’t want to hear my pathetic sob story.’
‘Tell me.’ Eleanor leaned over and touched Robyn’s shoulder. Robyn turned away from the window, her face streaked with black where her thick mascara had run with her tears.