Chapter 18
Mabel
Christmas came, and the people around me went.
The colleges were emptier each day, the snow falling more thickly.
When I left my staircase in the morning, my footprints were the first to break through the white.
When I returned from the library in the evening, they had been swept away as if they were never there. As if I were never there.
That wasn’t the only thing that made me feel like a ghost. I was only sporadically in touch with other people: Clara called a few times, Davie sent me snaps of the family dogs wearing reindeer antlers, Zoe ignored my texts, and Blake … Blake didn’t communicate at all.
I didn’t text him either, just stared again and again at the open chat, wondering what it was that held him back.
The kiss, or everything else. Me, or all the stuff about the professor, Ashton, his friends, his …
society. What was the mistake, the big, glaring error always stirring at the back of my mind when I thought about that night?
I should have been relieved that he made no attempt to pick up what Norah had interrupted.
Yet I felt a pang of disappointment every time I took out my phone to find no new messages from him.
Like on Christmas Eve, when I got back to my room around six.
Flecks of snow were melting on my coat, my hair was damp, and the tip of my nose began to tingle unpleasantly as soon as the heated air began to gnaw at its chilly armour.
I rubbed it with the ball of my hand as I checked my phone again, so that I didn’t notice the box ouside my door until I nearly tripped over it – even though it was wider than me and as tall as my chest. I looked for the sender’s name, confused, but all I could see on the lid was my own name.
That and the outline of a … bird. For a moment I thought it was a starling, but then I realised there wasn’t a twig held in its beak but a beaded necklace.
So, a magpie. Suddenly I knew who’d left me the box.
I glanced around, but saw no one. Everyone else on my staircase had gone home.
I was alone with a box so large it was a struggle to manoeuvre it over my doorstep.
Something inside it rustled as I put it next to my bed.
I stared at it uncertaintly, taking out my phone again and opening the chat with Blake.
Pica
Have you ever seen the movie Seven with Brad Pitt?
As soon as I’d sent the message, he came online. Immediately, he started typing.
Heathcliff
I promise you, I didn’t leave a severed head on your doorstep.
Pica
If the size of the box is anything to go by, it’s not severed.
Heathcliff
Just open it, Pica.
I bit my lower lip to hold back a smile.
I put the phone down without answering, slung my damp coat onto the bed and picked up some scissors from my desk.
Even before I’d opened the lid, I could smell what it was.
I caught a tart waft of pine needles and resin, and moments later, the first prickly branch came poking out.
A tree, its spreading branches already decorated.
Stars made of gold and silver-laquered glass, hand-painted baubles, ornaments made of crystal and straw.
My heart grew heavy and warm. My knees felt weak, and I sat down on the edge of the bed.
Mum and I had always chosen our tree together, decorated it, drank our mugs of caramel hot chocolate beside it.
After she was gone, somehow I’d associated Christmas trees with everything I’d lost. But to be gifted one – by someone who didn’t even know what it meant to me – made me feel for the first time in six years like I could begin to think about what I’d had.
What I’d always been grateful for at Christmas.
Giving in to a sudden impulse, I called Blake. He picked up in seconds. ‘You got me a Christmas tree?’
‘Mmm.’ I heard him take a few steps, then a door swung shut. ‘You like it or you don’t like it?’
‘I…’ I stood back up, moved closer to the present. The worst thing was probably how much I did like it. I didn’t want to be so moved. I didn’t want it to take my breath away. ‘How did you even know I was still here?’
‘I saw Zoe with Ashton the other day, and we had a brief chat. She told me you were staying in college over the break, seemed a bit worried about it. She said Christmas isn’t an easy time for you.’
The soft feeling in me deepened. ‘My mother got into an accident around this time of year. Stuff’s just been a bit … difficult, since then.’
‘I understand. Should I not have?’
‘No, it’s fine.’ Gently I reached out and stroked a branch. ‘Sounds like you’ve talked to Zoe more than I have lately. She didn’t even say goodbye before she left.’ I fell silent briefly, running my fingertips over a scratch on a silver glass star. ‘Nor did you.’
‘I know.’ Something crunched, and in the distance I heard the rustling of leaves. I pictured him standing in the snowy driveway of some big house, and wondered why even in my imagination he seemed out of place there. ‘I was worried you might be regretting what happened at the Christmas party.’
It wasn’t a question, and yet it was. And I was still me: not a good liar. ‘I don’t regret it. I probably should, but I don’t. What about you?’
He laughed a little breathlessly. Maybe he was just cold, maybe he was relieved. ‘I got you a Christmas tree. What does that tell you?’
I forced myself to sound casual. ‘Guess it could be a thank-you present, because the kiss was so incredible.’
‘No comment.’ I could tell he was still smiling. ‘But no, that wasn’t how I meant it.’
‘How, then?’
‘As … a suggestion. What if we gave each other a Christmas present this year?’
‘If it was anybody else, I’d say you were about to make me an indecent proposal,’ I said dryly, although my body flooded with a treacherous heat.
‘Don’t worry, I just mean … a break. From everything around us. Just until the end of the year – maybe we can pretend that things aren’t quite as complicated as they are.’
The last trace of a smile faded. I rolled a little ball of resin between my fingers.
The tree was wounded, and so were we. All of this – the kiss, the conversation, each spark of intimacy between us – it all felt good, strong.
But it wasn’t. Whatever this thing was between us, whatever it might become if we let it, it was doomed to fail.
The strangeness of our first meeting, my determination to thwart his friends, the enmity they felt towards me in return: all of it tore an open wound in what we were.
We would never be undamaged. We would never work. We would never be … right.
‘As impossible, you mean,’ I whispered.
‘Yes.’ His smile was sounding sadder now. ‘What do you think?’
He knew all the objections as well as I did, but for some reason they didn’t seem to bother him enough to make what seemed like the obvious right choice.
Perhaps because, like me, he’d sensed that keeping our distance didn’t feel right, either.
If all you have are wrong choices, maybe you just have to pick your poison.
And Blake and I – we felt like the best kind of wrong I could imagine.
‘It wouldn’t be Christmas without miracles,’ I answered, pushing all my doubts aside with an effort of will. ‘Or without a tree.’ Carefully, I took a woven heart into my palm. ‘You didn’t have to do this.’
‘I know. But the thought of you spending Christmas all alone in your room was hard enough already.’
Suddenly I was glad we were only speaking on the phone, and that he couldn’t see me. By now my face was so hot that the reflection in the star was flushed red. ‘These ornaments are really pretty,’ I said, trying to deflect.
‘Most of them are heirlooms, so some are a bit dinged-up.’
I jerked my hand back. It was just like when he told me the books in the small library were first editions.
‘You’re giving me a tree decorated with heirlooms?
’ I knew from what Davie had told me that the Ames family was extremely wealthy.
If even one of these baubles cost more than about two quid, he was crazy to let me anywhere near them.
‘I guess I am,’ he replied calmly. ‘Only the magpie is new. It reminded me of you, for obvious reasons.’
It took me a moment to find the bird. It was about the size of a walnut, made of glass in shades of black, white and blue, and so delicately crafted you could make out every single feather. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It is.’ Another smile. One so soft that it flowed down the telephone line and wrapped itself around me. More heat rushed to my face, until I felt ashamed of myself.
‘Heathcliff?’ I was smiling. ‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘You’re with your family, right? How’s it going?’
Again there was the crunch of snow under his feet as he walked on. ‘I’ve only been here a few hours. Aspen and I are alone with the staff – I doubt there’ll be much change there within the next few days.’
‘Where are your parents?’
He hesitated. ‘Busy. Companies like ours don’t take holidays.
’ There was a trace of bitterness in his words.
I guessed he was mainly thinking of his sister.
Blake’s face rarely looked as tender as it had when he was telling me about her.
I think that must have been the moment when I finally admitted to myself that I …
liked him. He couldn’t be all bad if he loved someone that much.
‘I see.’ I sat down on the bed with the magpie in my hand. ‘Aspen must be pleased to see you.’
He sighed deeply. ‘She’s made a list of about fifty Christmas movies for us to watch together.’
I grinned. ‘Sounds perfect.’
‘Are you doing anything except revising?’
The pattern of feathers felt as rough beneath my fingertips as the answer felt on my tongue: ‘We’ll have to see.’
‘Hmm.’ He didn’t push, which I was grateful for. Just because we were taking a break from the chaos, that didn’t mean it had ceased to exist. I’d promised Davie I would keep going, and I fully intended to.