Chapter 13 #3
‘It will go down well, I promise. The one thing all adults need at Christmas is the ability to be silly – to revert to their childhood and remember what it felt like to be a kid waiting up for Santa and playing with toys, back when we believed in magic. If we can do that for those stuffy, uptight men, the promotion will be yours… if you want it.’
‘Of course I do,’ he mutters, but he doesn’t sound half as convincing as he thinks he does.
Leona Lewis is singing ‘One More Sleep’ from the TV while we put the finishing touches to the Christmas tree by hanging multi-coloured rainbow icicles from every branch, even though they’re rapidly losing any glitter they had left on them and it’s now all over us.
‘What will you do with the castle if you get the promotion? It’s just going to stay empty?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe rent it out as an Airbnb if Nancy and Hamish are willing to stay on and keep an eye on things.’
‘An Airbnb, really? You’d let strangers stay here, trample all over your property and poke their noses into all your nooks and crannies?’
‘Doesn’t that sound fun?’ His laugh is as bright as the jingling he’s doing, from his socks to the silver bell ornaments he’s hanging on the branches.
‘I can lock up private rooms, and just…’ He sighs in frustration.
‘I don’t know, Lu. I don’t know, okay? The promotion means leaving.
No promotion means having to sell up. Neither option is what I want, but there aren’t any others, so it has to be one of those two.
How is it any different to having my bosses and Clint stay over Christmas?
I can guarantee they’ll be doing some nooking-and-crannying as well. ’
‘I don’t know, but at least you’ll be here.
You’ll be inviting people to share your home, not stay in an abandoned castle while you’re five hundred miles away.
I keep thinking about those photos from the 1920s.
What your dad said about the castle paying for itself.
This place could be so much more than it is, if it… ’
‘…had someone who wasn’t working all the time to care about it?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ I hang another icicle up and try not to look at him.
I’m getting too comfortable here, acting like I have some right to suggest that how he handles things is wrong.
I don’t know what it’s like to lose both parents and become responsible for a legacy that you don’t know what to do with.
Who am I to say that burying himself in a job he clearly hates isn’t the best way to cope with that?
‘At the moment, it’s just… a ghost. A ghost in a ghostly landscape, and so am I.’
‘You’re not, Ol, you’re…’ I swallow hard. There are so many ways I could finish that sentence, and almost all of them involve saying something I shouldn’t. ‘You’re going to hate London. It’s the antithesis of here.’
He knows as well as I do that wasn’t where that sentence was initially going. ‘Maybe that’s a good thing.’
I meet his eyes. It’s not a good thing, and he doesn’t believe it either.
When the tree is done, it’s an explosion of colour and texture that would be best placed in the early 1980s, and if Patricia Calloway knew I could even think about making a tree look like this, she’d fire me for a second time just to make a point, but some trees don’t have to be perfect, and judging by the smile on Ollie’s face, this one is perfect for him.
He goes to turn the main light off, ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ is playing on the TV, and he comes to stand next to me as we both look up at the glowing lights.
‘This is what I used to do after the tree was decorated. Sit in the dark and daydream about Christmas and magic and what the castle would be like when it was mine, in that silly way where kids don’t understand that to inherit something, your parents have to no longer be here.’
‘What were your plans for it?’
‘At that age, at this time of year, I imagined a Lapland-like place but without the snow. Santa, a herd of reindeer, dog sleds. Somewhere people would spend their holidays and enjoy them as much as we did. I liked the idea of that.’
It warms my heart and I nudge my arm against his, the twinkle of the lights giving me courage to voice something that’s still taking shape in my own mind.
‘Thank you for giving me a chance to come here. To get away from it all. To take a step back and do something different and reassess what’s been feeling so wrong in my life lately.
When I get back, I think I’ll look for something different.
A different kind of job. Smaller shops maybe.
Something where I can be creative and feel like my work actually matters.
Maybe even… move out of London.’ I can’t believe I’m even thinking a thought like that.
I always thought that central London was the place to be, and I’d have really made something of my life if I lived there, and I’ve struggled for years, feeling that leaving would be admitting that I wasn’t good enough to do what I’d always wanted to do, but being here makes me feel like it might be just what I need.
More affordable housing, and smaller shops without so much corporate pressure to impress the millions of Oxford Street shoppers.
Maybe even something else entirely, something more towards interior design because this has been the best couple of weeks of my life, and seeing the castle start to transform is inspiring.
To see what I’m doing making a difference and coming to life before my eyes…
‘Don’t go too far though, because if I get this promotion I’ll be moving to London. I was hoping you’d be there.’
‘In case you need a fake wife for more work events?’
‘No. Not because of that at all. Because…’ His hand twitches towards me, like he wants to stroke my hair but it ends up hovering in midair without touching.
His eyes flick down to my mouth and his tongue wets his lips.
That feeling of unsteadiness washes over me again, and my heart speeds up.
I’m not imagining this. No one would look at me like that if he wasn’t feeling something too…
‘Yes, of course,’ he amends and steps back sharply. ‘No doubt Dand and Halston will come down for a grand opening, I can’t exactly hire a different wife, can I?’
‘Of course not,’ I agree wholeheartedly, because I don’t know where that was heading, but it’s a good thing he stopped it when he did.
One of us needs to be the sensible one because I’ve been feeling things I shouldn’t be feeling for someone who’s paying me to pretend to feel things for him…
and that look was just one of many things that have felt anything but pretend.