* *
He sat out on the veranda, thinking he might have scared her right off. She didn’t emerge.
Well, what was new? He’d watched the way she’d closed down after the boys’ deaths. He was struggling to get free of those emotions but it seemed Julie was holding them close. Behind locked doors.
That was her right.
He sat for an hour and watched the night close in around him. The heat seemed to be getting more oppressive. The smoke hung low over everything, black and thick and stinking of burned forest, threatening enough all by itself, even without flames.
It’s because there’s no wind, he told himself. Without wind, smoke could hang around for weeks. There was no telling how close the fire was. There was no telling what the risks were if the wind got up.
He should leave. He should make Julie leave, but then... But then...
Her decision to come had been hers alone. She had the right to stay. He wasn’t sure what he was protecting, but sitting out on the veranda, with Julie in the house behind him, felt okay. He wasn’t sure why, but he did know that, at some level, the decision to come had been the right one.
Maybe it was stupid, he conceded, but maybe they both needed this night. Maybe they both needed to stand sentinel over a piece of their past that needed to be put aside.
And it really did need to be put aside. He’d watched Julie’s face when he’d confessed that he wanted her and he’d seen the absolute denial. Even if she was ever to want him again, he’d known then that she wouldn’t admit it.
Families were for the past.
He sat on. A light was still on next door. Once he saw a woman walk past the lighted window. Pregnant? Was she keeping the same vigil he was keeping?
If he had kids, he’d have them out of here by now. Hopefully, his neighbour had her car packed and would be gone at dawn, taking her family with her.
Just as he and Julie would be gone at dawn, too.
The moments ticked on. He checked the fire app again. No change.
There were sounds coming from indoors. Suddenly he was conscious of Christmas music. Carols, tinkling out on...a music box?
He remembered that box. It had belonged to one of his aunts. It was a box full of Santa and his elves. You wound the key, opened the box and they all danced.
That box...
Memories were all around him. Childhood Christmases. The day his aunt had given it to them—the Christmas Julie was pregnant. ‘It needs a family,’ his aunt had said. ‘I’d love you to have it.’
His aunt was still going strong. He should give the box back to her, he thought, but meanwhile... Meanwhile, he headed in and Julie was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, attaching baubles to a Christmas tree. She was still dressed in the nightgown. She was totally intent on what she was doing.
What...?
‘It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow,’ she said simply, as if this was a no-brainer. ‘This should be up. And don’t look at the nightgown, Rob McDowell. Get over it. It’s hot, my nightie’s cool and I’m working.’
She’d hauled the artificial tree from the storeroom. He stared at it, remembering the Christmas when they’d conceded getting a real tree was too much hassle. It’d take hours to buy it and set it up, and one thing neither of them had was hours.
That last Christmas, that last weekend, the tree was one of the reasons they’d come up here.
‘We can decorate the tree for Christmas,’ Julie had said. ‘When we go up next week we can walk straight in and it’ll be Santa-ready.’
Now Julie was sitting under the tree, sorting decorations as if she had all the time in the world. As if nothing had happened. As if time had simply skipped a few years.
‘Remember this one?’ She held up a very tubby angel with floppy, sparkly wings and a cute little halo. ‘I bought this the year I was trying to diet. Every time I looked at a mince pie I was supposed to march in here and discuss it with my angel. It didn’t work. She’d look straight back at me and say: “Look at me—I might be tubby but not only am I cute, I grew wings. Go ahead and eat.”’
He grinned, recognising the cute little angel with affection.
‘And these.’ Smiling fondly, he knelt among the ornaments and produced three reindeer, one slightly chewed. ‘We had six of these. Boris ate the other three.’
‘And threw them up when your partners came for Christmas drinks.’
‘Not a good moment. I miss Boris.’ He’d had Boris the Bloodhound well before they were married. He’d died of old age just before the twins were born. Before memories had to be put aside.
They’d never had time for another dog. Maybe now they never would?
Forget it. Bauble therapy. Julie had obviously immersed herself in it and maybe he could, too. He started looping tinsel around the tree and found it oddly soothing.
They worked in silence but the silence wasn’t strained. It was strangely okay. Come dawn they’d walk away from this house. Maybe it would burn, but somehow, however strange, the idea that it’d burn looking lived in was comforting.
‘How long do Christmas puddings last?’ Julie asked at last, as she hung odd little angels made of spray-painted macaroni. Carefully not mentioning who’d made them. The twins with their nanny. The twins...
Concentrate on pudding, he told himself. Concentrate on the practical. How long do Christmas puddings last? ‘I have no idea,’ he conceded. ‘I know fruitcakes are supposed to last for ever. My great-grandma cooked them for her brothers during the War. Great-Uncle Henry once told me he used to chop ’em up and lob ’em over to the enemy side. Grandma Ethel’s cakes were never great at the best of times but after a few months on the Western Front they could have been lethal.’
‘Death by fruitcake...’
‘Do you remember the Temperance song?’ he asked, grinning at another memory. His great-aunt’s singing. He raised his voice and tried it out. ‘We never eat fruitcake because it has rum. And one little bite turns a man to a...’
‘Yeah, right.’ She smiled back at him and he felt strangely triumphant.
Why did it feel so important to make this woman smile?
Because he’d lost her smile along with everything else? Because he’d loved her smile?
‘Clarissa made one that’s still in the fridge,’ she told him. Nanny Clarissa had been so domestic she’d made up for both of them. Or almost. ‘And it does contain rum. Half a bottle of over-proof, if I remember. She demanded I put it on the shopping list that last... Anyway, I’m thinking of frying slices for breakfast.’
‘Breakfast is what...’ he checked his watch ‘...three hours away? Four-year-old Christmas pudding. That’ll be living on the edge.’
‘A risk worth taking?’ she said tightly and went back to bauble-hanging. ‘What’s to lose?’
‘Pudding at dawn. Bring it on.’
They worked on. There were so many tensions zooming round the room. So many things unsaid. All they could do was concentrate on the tree.
Finished, it looked magnificent. They stood back, Rob flicked the light switch and the tree flooded into colour. He opened the curtains and the light streamed out into the darkness. Almost every house in the valley was in darkness. Apart from a solitary light in the house next door they were alone. Either everyone had evacuated or they were all sleeping. Preparing for the danger which lay ahead.
Sleep. Bed.
It seemed a good idea. In theory.
Julie