Chapter Five #2
Mark hands Hattie a glass of prosecco. “Hopefully, this will live up to your highbrow taste, ma’am.”
“You’re not all going to be this annoying when Dylan gets here, are you?”
Mark puts a hand on his heart. “As if. Dylan’s the one we like.”
Hattie aims a punch at him, which he dodges with a laugh, while Mel stands there, feeling slightly on the sidelines.
It had taken her a while to get used to the constant teasing, the easy banter between the siblings.
She supposes she wasn’t prepared for it at first, growing up as an only child.
She loves her parents—knows she’s lucky to have them.
But when she first met Finn’s family it had been like a sensory overload.
She thought she’d gotten used to it, but now it’s like she’s forgotten the rhythm, forgotten how to be part of a big family.
“Right, dinner’s ready!” Susan calls from behind the Aga. “Can one of you lot please lay the table?”
“I’ll do it,” Mel says immediately, glad to have a purpose. Hattie helps, showing her where everything is, while Kristen instructs Freya to take her coloring into the living room—presumably having already eaten.
“Can I go on the iPad?”
“I suppose so,” Kristen says. “It’s Christmas, after all…”
There is a general surge of movement as wine is poured and two big saucepans are put in the middle of the long wooden dining table on mats. As Mel finishes putting down the cutlery, Finn grabs her hand, pulls her down into the seat next to him. Then places a hand, very deliberately, on her knee.
She ignores the way heat flashes to her core at the touch and instead gives him a—what she hopes is subtle—warning look.
He cocks his head, the picture of innocence. We’re in the public eye, aren’t we?
She jerks her knee away from him. Yeah, well, my knee isn’t.
His lips twitch, on the edge of a smirk. Your fault for not being more specific. But he lifts his hand in a little sign of surrender. Unlike her, he hasn’t bothered changing since they arrived, his dark green, long-sleeved T-shirt creased slightly from the journey.
He catches sight of her earrings, his brow creasing.
He reaches out, as if to touch them with the tips of his fingers, then drops his hand to the table.
His gray-green gaze finds hers, and for a moment she holds it.
The corner of his crooked mouth quirks up—not a full smile, but more real this time.
“This smells amazing, Susan,” Mel says loudly.
Susan waves a hand in the air as she takes a seat, wooden chair legs scraping over the stone floor. “Oh, it’s just a curry. Quick and easy.”
Mark opens his mouth to say something, but Kristen interjects. “It’s not spicy—don’t worry.”
There is a moment of quiet as plates are filled with rice and steaming curry, and Mel uses the excuse to eat and not say anything.
“So, Finn—how’s the house in Wales?” Mark asks.
Finn looks up the length of the table toward his brother. “It’s coming along really nicely.”
“What’s the profit margin?” Mark, as a conveyancer, tends to get carried away when talking about houses—Mel remembers that from when she bought her flat.
“Mark,” Kristen says with a sigh, “he’s only just got here.”
“I’m just wondering. Have you seen the house, Mel? What do you reckon?”
All eyes around the table turn to her—except Finn, who picks up his wine to take a sip.
“Ah…” Shit, she’s falling at the first hurdle. She makes a show of swallowing food that is not in her mouth.
“Not yet,” she says lightly. “Finn’s waiting for it to be ready to show me.
” That sounds real, right? Even if, when he used to flip houses, he’d invite her around when they were in full construction mode, and they’d pull sleeping bags up next to each other, surrounded by rubble and chaos, and whisper into the night about nothing and everything.
It had been exciting, as if they were doing something they weren’t supposed to be—and it had felt as if he was bringing her into his world.
“Besides,” she adds, “this is his area, isn’t it? I’m sure he can make the decisions on his own.” She keeps her voice light, adds a smile to top it off. But, from the look Finn gives her, she knows he heard the barb. Because he made the decision to end their relationship all by himself, didn’t he?
“Not all the decisions,” Finn says evenly. “Some decisions are mutual.”
“Of course.” She smiles at him over the rim of her wineglass, hoping her eyes add the rest: you prick.
“And what’s next?” Mark presses. “Mel’s got her place in London, right? So are you thinking of settling back there or—”
“Leave them be, Mark,” Susan says firmly.
“It’s up to them where they end up living.
” Where they end up living . Said like there is not a doubt in her mind that they will end up living somewhere together, in it for the long haul.
Alongside the other emotions that brings up, she feels the tiniest bit of guilt, that she knows how this week will end whereas Susan does not.
But she pushes it away. This is Finn’s fault, not hers.
“Right.” Mark holds his hands up. “Sorry. Just interested, that’s all.”
Mel turns to Finn’s sister, figuring a change of subject is in order. “How’s Dylan, Hattie?”
“He’s great.” Hattie smiles warmly. “He’s shooting down in Cornwell at the moment, of all places, for some fisherman movie, which sounds dull, but apparently he’s loving it, says the cast are all really nice.”
She doesn’t want to ask. Doesn’t want to remind them all. But she might as well get the question out of the way. “Have you set a date for the wedding yet?”
She tells herself it’s her imagination, the way the tension around the table thickens, the way Kristen glances at her then quickly away again, like she doesn’t want to look directly at a car crash.
Hattie, however, rises above it. “We’re thinking June. I know it’s a cliché, but marrying the hot actor after bumping into him in a bookshop is a cliché anyway, so I might as well lean into it.”
Finn shoots her a look. “You didn’t meet him in a bookshop.”
She flaps a hand at him. “Details, details. I chatted to Mum and we reckon June is the least risky in terms of weather, don’t we, Mum?”
Susan’s gaze flickers up to Hattie then down to her plate again. “Yes, love. I’m sure June will be lovely.”
There is another round of quiet, the scraping of cutlery against china. Then Susan pushes her knife and fork together, takes a sip of her water—and somehow turns the action into a command for attention.
“Now that you’re all here,” she announces, “I’ve got a surprise for everyone.”
“That sounds…ominous,” Hattie says suspiciously, and Mel can’t help the smile.
“You know how much I love Christmas, but this year I thought we could go one step further, really make the most of it. So I’ve taken the liberty of making us a little…well, a little agenda.”
“An agenda ?” Mark’s voice is incredulous.
Hattie grimaces. “This is giving me flashbacks of having to sit in horrible office meetings, taking minutes.”
Finn slides his gaze over to his sister. “All of, what, the two months you worked in an office?”
She gives a dramatic shudder. “Still enough to make me break out in hives whenever I think about it.”
Susan huffs, a touch of impatience leaking in. “A list, then. A Christmas list.”
“A list of what?” Kristen asks.
Susan beams around the table. “Activities. I’ve planned a different Christmassy thing for us to do each day.”
“Activities,” Mark repeats slowly. “Like for Freya?”
“No, for all of us. Freya included, of course.”
Everyone at the table stares at Susan. Mel wants to ask what activities, exactly, she has in mind and whether it will involve her spending more or less time with Finn—but doesn’t feel like she can be the one to pipe up.
Then Kristen smiles. “I think it sounds brilliant. It’s a lovely idea, isn’t it, Mark?”
“Uhh, yes.” Mark runs a hand through his thinning hair. “Sure. I mean, it would be nice to have a bit of time to relax, but—”
Kristen stops him with a look.
“There’ll be plenty of time to relax,” Susan says breezily. “I’m not talking about army drills here, just fun activities to get us all in the Christmas spirit.”
Everyone seems to take a moment to process that. Then Hattie lifts her prosecco in a toast. “Well, I’m all for it. I like activities. I’m sure Dylan will be on board, too, when he gets here.”
Mel glances at Finn. Had he known about this? Because, to her, this sounds like a whole lot more time pretending in front of everyone than they’d planned. But from his expression, and from the reaction of everyone else, she’s guessing this is as much a surprise to him as it is to her.
“Mel has work to do while she’s here,” Finn says, his voice carefully neutral.
All eyes swivel to her in a way that makes her feel immediately awkward. She clears her throat. “It’s fine,” she finds herself saying. “I’m sure I can spare an hour or two a day.”
“Excellent!” Susan smiles around at all of them.
“Do we get to know what the activities are?” Finn asks.
“I’ll tell you as we go—that’s part of the fun!”
Apparently, no one wants to argue with her, because that seems to be the end of that as the conversation moves to other things.
At the end of the meal, Mel uses the excuse of helping to clear the table and do the washing up to stay out of the way as much as possible, while Mark and Kristen head to the cottage next door with Freya.
She feigns tiredness after the long journey and heads up to bed before Finn.
But, although she is tired, her brain won’t switch off as she slides into her side of the bed, regretting the flannel pajamas she opted for.
She barely drank anything at dinner, but she can feel a headache pressing down on her temples, even as she closes her eyes, tries to breathe through it.
It shouldn’t be this hard to be around them all again.
And that just shows how na?ve she is, doesn’t it?
She listens to a voice note from Priya while she waits for her brain to switch off, smiling at the sound of her best friend’s voice, who is telling a story about attempting to learn cricket so she can be part of the school’s teacher cricket team and, given Mel knows how bad Priya’s hand-eye coordination is, she can just imagine how that went.
It’s nice, hearing that she’s throwing herself into things out there.
She’s thinking the lightness in Priya’s voice sounds a little forced, until Priya asks, carefully, how the first day with Finn has gone—which explains the tone.
Mel sighs as she finishes the voice note.
She’ll figure out how to reply to that in the morning.
She’s still not asleep by the time Finn comes in, even though it must be more than an hour later—like he’s waited, allowing her to fall asleep first. He moves in the dark, using his phone torch to fumble around, getting ready.
She keeps her body very still, eyes closed.
The torch light moves closer to the bed, briefly lighting up her eyelids, and she feels Finn pause.
She wonders what’s going through his mind and feels that odd self-consciousness, the idea that he might be watching her fake sleep—even if she can’t open her eyes to check.
The duvet is pulled back, the torch light goes out, and she feels the mattress sink under Finn’s weight.
She doesn’t have to open her eyes to know that they are curled up on opposite sides, as far away from each other as they can get.
Despite that, the scent of him still moves to take up the space between them, fresh pine and that pleasant sawdust smell that reminds her of him sanding down wood in the houses he worked on.
She finds herself inhaling it, so many memories waiting for her, if she wanted to let them in.
She doesn’t, she tells herself firmly. She doesn’t want the memories—she just wants to get through this week, fake the breakup with him, and put him behind her.
She listens to the sound of his breathing and, despite what she’s telling herself, she finds her own and settles into a rhythm to match his. It’s achingly familiar, the way her body responds to his, like it’s on a program she can’t switch off. She takes a slow, silent breath.
It’ll be fine, she tells herself firmly. It’s only one week—she can do this.
But she still doesn’t fall asleep until the early hours of the morning and, when she does, her dreams take her to places she’d rather not be, places she’s tried to forget about. Places with Finn.