CHAPTER TWO – SYLVIE #2
The old Castleton Town Hall was three hundred years old, but it hadn’t been used for around thirty of those.
The Brownies and Scouts and other organisations from Weight Watchers to the hodgepodge crochet club had utilised the building as a safe meeting space for years in an attempt to stop the council selling it on, but it hadn’t been quite enough.
Even an attempt at getting it registered as a listed building had failed.
The rumours of the sale had started around last Christmas. Julian knew that Hazel dreamt of getting married here, and it had been our first mission when they’d asked me to plan their wedding.
The sale was already being negotiated, but between myself and Julian, we’d managed to get the contract signed, sealed, and delivered before the sale one had. It’d secured the venue for their wedding and delayed the demolition until afterwards.
Julian’s father wasn’t a high-powered lawyer for nothing.
That didn’t stop me imagining the worst, though. It was kind of my job. I had to be ready for every single scenario, including the ones most people wouldn’t think about, and I needed to have someone take liability for anything going wrong.
It sure as hell wasn’t going to be me.
Kim chuckled as we headed into the main room where the ceremony would be held before it would be flipped for the reception.
“The lines on the flooring show you roughly where everything will be set up,” she replied, handing me a slip of paper with a floor plan on.
“I’m sure you have one of these already. ”
“I drew it.” I laughed. “But it’s nice to see it all in place in person. Do you mind if I take a moment to measure it up?”
“Of course not. It’s only masking tape on the floor, so you can adjust what you need to.”
“Thank you.” I set my folders down by the door, pulled out my tape measure, and got to work.
I walked the aisle, making sure it was the correct number of steps for Hazel’s wedding march.
I counted the chair spots, ensuring there was enough room for all the guests invited to the ceremony.
I measured the spot that would house the festive floral archway they’d be married under, checked the marked positioning of the table where they’d sign their marriage certificate, and did it all again two more times to make sure.
Satisfied, I made a few notes that would be relevant and gathered all my belongings from the doorway.
I looked back at the room.
I could barely believe my baby sister would be married here in three weeks’ time.
That there’d be white chairs with red and green velvet bows, a seasonal archway with holly and pines and mistletoe, Christmas trees in every corner, candles and fairy lights and every other imaginable festive wonder filling this room.
With a happy sigh, I coddled my folder to my chest and stepped outside to meet Kim. She reassured me again that I’d have a venue confirmation by the end of the day, and after double-checking my details were correct on her form, I bid her goodbye and headed for the town square.
The good thing about Castleton was that everything in the village was within walking distance. It didn’t take terribly long to get from A to B, and I was even more grateful for that fact given the biting wind that was whipping through the air.
I pulled my hat from my bag and put it on, tugging it over my ears, and adjusted my scarf to give me as much coverage as possible.
Living in the south had made me weak, and I’d packed the wrong damn scarf for this cold weather.
I was either going to have to buy a new one or ask Nana for a key to my parents’ house to sneak out one of my old scarves before they returned from their place in Spain for the wedding.
The last thing I needed was to admit to my mum that I’d gone soft.
I’d never hear the end of it.
Despite my feelings about this place, I had to admit that everything about Castleton at Christmas was simply magical, and that became clearer and clearer as I made my way into the middle of the village.
The twenty-something foot tree in the centre of the square was intricately decorated with what had to be thousands of fairy lights and oversized baubles and snowflakes. Giant pinecones adorned the branches, and the empty ones were coated with a thick spraying of white to imitate snow.
A giant star twinkled on top, and strings of lights stretched out from that point to various other buildings around the square, dressing it in some sort of canopy of lighting that I knew I would look incredible as darkness fell.
Holly trees and fake snowmen decorated the sides of the road, and all the businesses on the square were appropriately decked out for the season with garlands and wreaths and twinkling lights in their windows, even though it wasn’t dark yet.
Clearly, Castleton had no intention of letting astronomical energy prices get in the way of their festive fun.
I swung a right and headed for the café.
It was perhaps the most enthusiastically decorated business of the entire square with a nutcracker outside the door, a Santa hat shaped ‘open’ sign, and a full-blown Christmas village in the window.
It was also the best spot in the village to get a hot chocolate in this cold weather, so that’s what I was going to do.
I didn’t recognise the young girl behind the counter, and that was something I was thankful for.
I’d spent the entire day doing wedding stuff with and without Hazel, and all I wanted was to get a hot drink that’d hit the sweet spot without having to make small talk with the locals who would undoubtedly be happy to see me.
That’s what Castleton was.
One big happy family, where Harold from the butcher would meet Arnie at the pub and tell him that he saw you, and Arnie would tell his wife who’d tell her hairdresser at her appointment the next day, only everyone there would overhear, and they’d tell their mum or their dad or their babysitter, who’d tell the owner of the corner shop, their vet, their dentist, and their cousin’s ex-lover.
The next thing you knew, the news of your presence would spread like the flu in a preschool, except there was every chance you’d gain two kids, thirty pounds, a cheating ex-husband, and a hook for a hand along the way.
I paid for my hot chocolate and left as quickly as I could, avoiding a bumbling group of teenage girls who were giggling about something or another that I was sure I was far too old to understand.
My phone buzzed in my pocket right as I pushed the door open, and I reached for it as I made my way outside.
I bumped the door with my hip as a shadow fell over me, and I instinctively stepped out of the way at the last second. The glaring blue of the paint on the inside of the door flashed before my eyes before it abruptly stopped, and I inhaled sharply at the sudden movement.
There was a hand on the door.
My gaze trailed from the hand along the arm, up to the shoulder and the clean-shaven, sharply shaped jaw that gave way to pale pink lips and a square nose.
It continued until I caught a pair of dark blue eyes framed by dark brown lashes and brows and hair that peeked out from under a black bobble hat.
Eyes that were uncomfortably familiar.
Indignation flooded my body, setting every nerve ending alight with the kind of frustration you only saw in the movies. The kind that came with the sight of someone who was just downright bloody infuriating.
A stomach-squeezing, fist-balling, jaw-clenching, toe-tightening kind of indignation.
Him.
That bloody man.
The pain in my arse, the orchestrator of my nightmares, the absolute bane of my motherfucking existence for seven years of my life.
“You,” I said in a low voice, one so rough that it could wake the dead. “You.”