Chapter 21
Boxing Day passes in a blur of toasting marshmallows over the fires, eating too much, and being blown around on a walk along the coastal path.
This is the real joy of Christmas – the hard part is over, there’s plenty of food in, no work is expected of anyone, and everyone’s just hanging out at the castle, spending time with their families or in the guest lounge with others.
In the evening, Nancy is reading a bedtime story with Maisie and I unlock the private living-room door to find Ollie and Rory, sitting on the rug in front of the multi-coloured Christmas tree with an instruction booklet and piles of plastic bricks spread out between them as they put together the Lego Lamborghini set that Ollie got for Rory.
They both look like they’ve had enough of plastic bricks for one night, and Rory gets up when I come in.
‘I’m going to bed.’ He hugs Ollie and then me. ‘Night, Dad. Night, Mum. Best Christmas ever.’
‘Don’t let your real parents catch you saying that!’
‘They’ve got some competition. It’s good to keep them on their toes. When they get home, they’ve got to out-do this, and we don’t intend to let them forget it!’
I’m unsure where he gets his evil genius tendencies from, but I can’t help laughing as he locks the door behind him, giving us privacy.
I sit down on the rug beside Ollie and move the partially built car aside. ‘You look like you need a hug.’
He bites his lip and nods, so I scooch over and wrap my arms around him.
He curls into me, wrapping me up in his long arms too. ‘This is everything I wanted Christmas to be. My parents would have loved the past few days. The castle so full, happy, alive. Making a Lego kit with my “son” like I did with my father… I wish it could always be like this.’
‘They’d want you to be happy, Ol,’ I say gently, because although his words sound happy, his demeanour is the opposite. ‘They’d understand that your job isn’t making you happy.’
‘And they’d understand that the castle can’t pay for itself, and I’ve spent the past fifteen years studying and watching and learning and training – desperately trying to make myself better at this job so I’d be ready when this promotion came up.
Earning enough to keep the castle will make me happy. ’
‘No, it won’t, not in this way. You and I both know that. Not one of those people out there are happy.’
‘They’re really, really rich. They can afford to be unhappy.’ He pulls out of my arms and his fingers fiddle with a thread of the rug.
‘Can they? Do they know how miserable their wives are? Do they know that money doesn’t make up for time and affection?
They extol family values, but they prioritise work over everything.
That’s not love – that’s accepting that money makes it easier to tolerate someone.
’ I sigh, but I trust Ollie completely and I decide to share some of the things I’ve learned over the past few days.
‘Michelle prefers it when Halston doesn’t “waste time” in coming home from the office at night.
Gisela is on the brink of leaving Clint.
One of them is on her eighth affair and her husband hasn’t got a clue. ’
‘Oh, Dand knows all right.’ Ollie glances at me with a raised eyebrow, already knowing who I’m talking about without me mentioning Orla’s name.
‘He just doesn’t want to upset her by letting her know he knows.
It’s not like they’re going to divorce so he turns a blind eye.
He says she deserves the attention and he hasn’t got time to give it to her. ’
‘That’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard. When they first fell in love, they could never have expected their marriages to turn out like this…’
It’s bothering me so much because I like these people.
The wives, the husbands, the children. They all deserve better than what they currently have, and it’s all because of a job that Ollie’s going to get too.
‘I think they were like you once – young, idealistic, chasing a promotion they thought would change their lives.’
‘Didn’t it?’
‘For the better?’
‘Improved their bank balances, their lives followed.’ It’s a muttered sigh that he clearly doesn’t believe.
‘No, they didn’t. Not one of those people has a richer life than you. Not one of them has more people around them who love them and want the best for them than you do. And if they were like you once… what if you end up like them one day too?’
He leans forwards and scrubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. ‘What am I supposed to do instead, Lu?’
‘A Christmas retreat,’ I blurt out. ‘This. Everything we’ve done in the past month, but thrown open to paying guests.
The decorating, the tree cutting, baking festive dishes in your amazing kitchen, reading in the library, curling up in front of a crackling fire after a bracing walk along the coast, singing Paul McCartney songs around a bonfire… ’
‘Right, great, October to December. Limited spaces, a lot of effort and expense involved. What about the other nine months of the year?’
‘A bed and breakfast. A year-round hideaway from the world. Wildlife spotting. Hiking and rambling. Corporate events. Weddings. Celebrations. Writing retreats. Reading retreats. You own something that’s so special, Ol, and people would pay to share a small part of it for a little while.’
‘Not as much as I’d earn with this promotion. Probably not even as much as I earn now, and that’s not enough.’
The silence hangs between us, and I know what I want to say, but I’m not sure I’m brave enough to actually voice it.
I’m not even sure if it is what I want, but every time I think about leaving in a few days, I know I’ll regret not saying this more than I’ll regret saying it.
Even if he doesn’t feel the same and I do nothing but make a fool of myself.
He deserves to know there could be another realistic option.
I reach over and take his hand, trying to draw strength from how special this connection with him feels.
This might’ve started off as pretend, but there’s nothing pretend about it now, and I have to trust that he feels it too.
I push out a breath and then inhale deeply, like filling my lungs might buoy my confidence and give me a few extra seconds of grace before I finally say something that could change everything about both our lives.
‘What about me? What about what I earn or what I could earn? If there were two of us… Two of us earning, two of us contributing to the bills, and two of us making the most of everything this place could be…’
‘You’re going to pay half my bills… from London?’
I shake my head because I’m going to burst into tears if I utter another word. I didn’t expect it to make me so emotional, but I’ve never been in a position where something mattered this much, and I’m willing him to understand what I’m trying to say.
He does, instantly. His eyes start welling up too. ‘I thought living in London and working somewhere as influential as Oxford Street had always been your dream life.’
‘Dreams can change, and from the moment I met you, I think mine did.’ I swallow hard and take another deep breath.
‘I want to go back to freelancing for smaller shops. This could be the perfect place to do that. There’s Campbeltown and the gorgeous little shops there, and there are links into Glasgow and other cities.
If I’m not looking for another fixed job, I can commute from anywhere.
I could even work remotely if I focus more on digital strategy and design aspects or advise on shop layouts… ’
‘You would stay? Here? With me?’ He sounds so disbelieving and his fingers have inadvertently curled around mine so tightly that he’s clutching my hand like it’s a lifeline, but that’s exactly what he’s given me – a lifeline.
The time to step away from my life and realise what was wrong in it rather than just blundering onwards and hoping it would magically fix itself.
‘I don’t know. If you wanted me to. If you wanted to make a go of the castle, of your dad’s idea, his retirement plan.
Those photos in the library. He left you with another option and you’ve been too busy to see it.
You’re nothing like your bosses, Ollie, and you’d never be happy with a life like theirs.
You’re pretending to be something you’re not to make them want you, when the truth is they’d be so bloody lucky to have you exactly as you are. ’
‘I’m too mixed-up to dismantle that at the moment, but when I do, I think I’ll owe you a thank you.’ His grip on my hand tightens as he leans over to plant a kiss on my cheek, and when he sits back upright, I can see a hint of excitement shining in his eyes.
‘I’ve been researching. There’s tourism funding and heritage grants.
This castle is historic, it’s a part of Scottish history, you could get funding on that basis.
There is so much we could do here, and if you gave it everything rather than working every hour under the sun and coming home too exhausted to think straight, you’d have a chance to see that. ’
‘I do see that. I didn’t, but since you got here…
’ He twirls the ring on my wedding finger around as he thinks about it.
‘These past few days are exactly what my father wanted. The castle full of life. Somewhere for people to go. A sanctuary away from busy city life – that’s what it was to him.
He never intended it to be kept to ourselves.
He wanted to share it. I’d buried that. After they died, I wanted solitude, I couldn’t imagine the thought of letting people in, and then I got my job and didn’t have time to even think about it, but then you came…
I didn’t expect you. I didn’t expect to be in this position. ’
‘What position would that be?’
He meets my eyes, knowing full well I’m challenging him to admit it out loud to me and to himself. ‘The one where I hope I don’t get the job. I hope they give it to Clint instead.’
I breathe a sigh of relief at hearing him finally say it, and because of all the reactions I imagined when I said those words, he reacted exactly how I dreamed he would.
I don’t want to push him any more tonight, so we sit in silence and watch the rainbow-coloured lights twinkling through the tree branches with no pressure to do anything other than be here, together.
‘You really think we could do it?’ he asks in a whisper, answering where his mind has been for the past few minutes.
‘From our first conversation, I’ve felt like, between us, we could do anything. You made fake marriage and borrowing children sound like a completely reasonable way to spend Christmas. There’s nothing we can’t do together.’
An emotional laugh bursts out of him and he kisses my forehead and rests his head against mine, our bodies leaning against each other’s, our fingers tangled together, and the twinkling tree lights give me hope.
We’re both daydreaming about the same thing – the possibility that the magic of this Christmas never has to end.