Chapter 25
I close the front door of the Airbnb, already shivering from the cold outside. From the kitchen, I hear the low murmur of Elliot’s voice, and he emerges a few minutes later, holding his phone.
“I managed to get hold of the property manager for this place,” he says.
“She said the main road should be cleared by morning, so we should be fine for the book festival. We might have to dig the car out ourselves, though. There’s a spade in one of the cupboards, apparently. I’ll look for it later.”
“Right,” I say faintly, as he goes back into the kitchen without waiting for an answer. “I’ll … just have to wait it out then, I guess.”
I go back over to the sofa and sit down, already worrying about what I’m going to look like tomorrow morning, once I’ve slept in my clothes; not to mention how I’m going to get through the next few hours with just me and Elliot, and absolutely no distractions.
Unless we’re counting that whole ‘love letter’ thing he said earlier, which is definitely proving to be one hell of a distraction for me…
“Do you still like pasta?” Elliot calls from the kitchen. “I hope so, because that’s all I’ve got.”
“Um, sure. Whatever.”
I’ve been so focused on everything else that’s been happening today that I haven’t even been thinking about food, but my stomach gives a loud rumble at the very mention of it, reminding me that I haven’t eaten since breakfast.
“Feel free to switch the TV on if you like,” he yells again. “This shouldn’t take too long.”
There’s a moment of silence, then the radio comes on in the kitchen; a 70s rock band singing about how they wish it could be Christmas every day.
Yeah, right.
I take a quick look at the huge TV that’s built into the wall above the fireplace, but the remote for it looks a bit like the control panel of the International Space Station, so I decide not to risk it, and set to work lighting the fire instead; which is harder than you might think, because it’s one of those electric ones that are designed to look like real flames, and it, too, comes with a remote I’d need a degree to figure out.
I manage it at last, but I somehow press a button that dims the living room lights at the same time, and it’s only as I stand back to admire my handiwork, taking in the flickering logs and soft lighting, that I realize I’ve inadvertently managed to create quite a romantic little scene out here: a scene I’m still struggling to reverse a short while later, when Elliot appears in the kitchen doorway, holding two plates piled high with spaghetti, and looking completely taken aback by the changes in the room.
“I, uh, I was really cold,” I say quickly. “I thought I’d switch the fire on, but then I did something to the lights as well. Sorry.”
“Oh. Okay,” Elliot says, carrying the plates over to the dining table and setting them carefully down. “D’you want some wine with this? There’s a nice bottle of red in the kitchen.”
Through the open door, Jingle Bell Rock comes to an end, and Ella Fitzgerald starts singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas instead. I swallow hard, trying not to listen to the lyrics, which always make me cry.
“Fine. Sure,” I say quickly, ignoring the fact that red wine always seems to stick to my teeth, making me look like Dracula’s stressed-out sister. “Whatever you like.”
I take a seat at the table and sit there silently as Elliot produces the wine and pours it into two crystal glasses. Ella’s almost at the bit about how someday we’ll all be together, and I’m dangerously close to tears now.
“Right,” says Elliot, having finally run out of things to do rather than sit down opposite me. “Well, I guess we should … hey. What’s wrong?”
His ‘man stoically about to face dinner with his ex’ expression changes to one of concern as he catches sight of me sitting there, my bottom lip starting to tremble.
“It’s nothing,” I say firmly, determined not to let this get to me. “I’m fine. Seriously. I’m absolutely fine.”
I pick up my fork and stick it into the pasta in a way that I hope demonstrates someone being ‘absolutely fine’.
Elliot, however, knows me better than that.
“Holly,” he says warningly, sitting down in the seat next to me, rather than the one at the opposite end of the long table, which I assumed he’d go for. “Out with it. Did something happen? Is it the pasta? I know I’m not the best cook in the world, but —”
“No. No, of course not. The pasta’s fine. It’s lovely,” I tell him, forgetting that I haven’t actually tasted it yet. “Look, it’s just this song,” I go on, seeing he isn’t going to give up until I tell him the truth. “It always makes me sad. It’s … well, it’s a difficult time of year. That’s all.”
Elliot listens carefully to the last few notes as they fade out.
“Is it your mom?” he asks, his face softening. “Does it make you think of her.”
“Her and … oh, just everything,” I say, twirling my fork into the spaghetti.
“It’s one of those songs that tricks you into thinking it’s lovely and festive, but when you really listen to it, you realize it’s actually quite sad.
It’s about missing someone. About wishing things were different. God, I hate this time of year.”
For just a second, I think he’s about to reach out and hug me. For another second, I think I might quite like that. But then he appears to reconsider — or maybe I just imagined it — and picks up his cutlery instead.
“So you still hate Christmas, huh?” He takes a bite of his pasta, somehow managing to make it look easy, while I struggle to get mine to stay on my fork. “Even though you live in a town that seems to have become weirdly obsessed with it since I was last here?”
“Especially because of that,” I reply vehemently. “It’s like it’s Christmas all year in Bramblebury now. Did you know we have two separate Christmas shops now? Only they’re called ‘shoppes’ obviously, because that’s what the tourists like.”
“Sounds horrible,” Elliot agrees gravely. “D’you want me to change the radio station? Or switch it off? I could put on some k-pop instead? Or, I don’t know … gangster rap? Death metal? That’s probably as un-Christmassy as it gets.”
“No, it’s fine. We should be safe now that Ella Fitzgerald’s done her bit,” I reply, smiling in spite of myself. “If Joni Mitchell starts singing River, though, I won’t be responsible for what it does to me.”
“That one’s my favorite,” Elliot protests, grinning at me over the top of his wine glass in a way that takes me back ten years, to when he used to smile at me like that a lot, and it never failed to make my stomach flutter. It turns out it still does. This does not bode well.
“Oh, mine too,” I reply, looking away. “It’s a great song. But…”
“Sad?”
“Sad. Very, very sad.”
I pick up my own glass and take a large gulp, wondering why so many Christmas songs are about people leaving places — or just wishing they could.
“This is really good,” I say, gesturing to the pasta in a bid to change the subject. “I didn’t realize you were such a good cook.”
“Well, I didn’t really get the chance last time I was over here,” he replies. “But I’m a man of many talents. Cooking is just one of them.”
He goes back to his food, and a silence descends, his reference to ‘the last time’ he was here serving as an unwelcome reminder that we’re not just two old pals having a nice chat about our favorite music, and what kind of pasta we like.
“I still can’t believe we found those letters,” I say, grasping at the first topic that comes to mind when the silence gets too much to bear. “You couldn’t make it up, could you?”
“No,” agrees Elliot. “Well, you could, I suppose. It would make a great opener for a novel. I wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to make their reason for not staying together something a lot more interesting, though.”
“Zombie apocalypse?” I suggest, not particularly wanting to revisit our earlier conversation about whether or not Evie and Luke did the right thing. “Alien invasion?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a deadly virus that sweeps the world,” he deadpans. “But no. Just … something other than them being sensible. I hate it when people are sensible. It’s just so disappointing.”
“I guess I can see why it would be a bit of an anticlimax for you, considering how invested you were in their story,” I say pointedly. “You have to admit, it’s realistic, though. That’s how real life is, most of the time. I would know; my entire life has been an anticlimax.”
It is, admittedly, a very weak attempt at a self-deprecating joke, but, judging by the look that crosses Elliot’s face, he’s taking it very seriously.
“Do you really think that?” he asks quietly. “That your life’s been a disappointment?”
“Well, no, not really,” I reply carefully, sensing that this conversation is about to take a turn I’m not entirely prepared for.
“I mean, my life might not exactly be bursting with drama and excitement, but I have a house and a job. Two jobs, really. I have my health. So, you know, it could be worse.”
I could be snowed into an Airbnb in the middle of nowhere with the ex who left me, for instance. Oh no, wait…
“‘I have my health?’” says Elliot, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Oh, come on, Holly. It’s okay to want more than that, you know. You’re allowed to have dreams. Next you’ll be telling me there are kids starving out there, so we have to count our blessings.”
“There are kids starving out there,” I mutter, stung. “And we should count our blessings. It’s … well, it’s what grown-ups do, Elliot. We’re not kids anymore. And there comes a point when you have to accept that life isn’t just all about doing whatever you want, without any consequences.”
“We weren’t ‘kids’ when we met,” he points out. “We were in our twenties.”
“Which is still way too young to be making any major life decisions,” I retort. “That’s why I think Luke and Evie did the right thing. It was … sensible.”