Page 11 of A Cornish Winter’s Kiss

Jude looked at the text from his stepmother and sighed. This was all he needed – an enquiry about his plans for Christmas. Worst of all, she’d sent it via WhatsApp, which meant Viv would be able to see that he’d read it and expect a reply he wasn’t ready to give.

Hey Jude! Sorry, you know I can never resist doing that! Your dad and I were just wondering if you’ve given Christmas any thought yet? It would be brilliant if you came here. Fi and James are coming with the family and we’d all love to see you!!! V xx

It was times like this he wished his stepmother didn’t even have his number.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Viv; he did.

She was a warm, welcoming type of woman, with a ready smile and a hearty embrace, whether you wanted one or not.

Viv was so nice, he could even forgive her tendency to end most of her sentences with at least one exclamation mark.

She was also at least six million times more likeable than his first stepmother, Sandra, who had gone out of her way to make Jude feel unwelcome and unwanted.

She’d remind him whenever the opportunity arose that he was adopted and on more than one occasion exclaimed loudly that he was ‘not Charles’s real son anyway’ as a result.

Her words had cut Jude every bit as deeply as she’d intended them to, and they’d left scars long after her short-lived marriage to his father had come to an abrupt end, for reasons he’d never been party to, although he suspected she’d just met someone else she preferred.

Jude had been ten years old when his adoptive mother, Ros, had died in a skiing accident that had ripped their little family of three to shreds.

All his memories of Ros were good ones; she’d had the same kind of warmth as Viv.

Over the years, the sharpness of those memories had blurred around the edges.

There’d been many times when he’d wanted to ask his father whether his recollections of his mother were accurate or the result of a combination of the passage time and rose-coloured glasses.

But his father had seemed to shut down following Ros’s death, at least when it came to communicating with his son.

Just six months after she’d died, Charles had met Sandra, and Jude had been shipped off to boarding school when he’d turned eleven.

He’d been certain that his father’s new girlfriend had influenced the decision, but he doubted Charles had put up much of a fight.

By the end of his second year at Membory Grange, two months after his thirteenth birthday, his father had married the woman who Jude was convinced had been the inspiration for every wicked stepmother to ever feature in a fairytale.

He’d hated boarding school at first, grieving the loss of both his parents in different ways, but once Sandra was a permanent fixture in his family home, school had become Jude’s salvation, and he’d dreaded going back home for the holidays each year, especially the Christmas one, when his old friends would be busy with their families and not allowed to come out, meaning he was stuck with his father and stepmother.

Sometimes when Sandra was being particularly venomous, Jude would crave one of his mother’s hugs so much that he’d spray some of her perfume, from a bottle he’d taken from her dressing table after she’d died, on to a pillow.

It allowed him to pretend just for a moment that he was resting his head on his mother’s shoulder again.

In those moments, he’d confide to his mother what was going on, talking to a woman who was no longer there about how tough life had become without her.

The idea of anyone ever finding out what he did was mortifying.

He was a teenager, for God’s sake, not a baby, something Sandra reminded him of every time he tried to seek out his father’s attention for anything.

She couldn’t bear Charles going to watch his son’s rugby or cricket games, and there was no way she’d step back to allow them any one-to-one time together.

She resented Jude’s existence and she didn’t even try to hide it.

From time to time Jude had thought about finding his ‘other mother’, the one who’d given birth to him, but he’d always decided against it.

It was a decision he’d made to protect himself from further hurt, having already been faced with what felt like a lifetime of rejection.

Why set himself up for more? Especially when Sandra had taken such delight in reminding him, when his father was out of earshot, that even the woman who’d given birth to Jude hadn’t wanted him.

Weirdly, he’d never even considered trying to find his ‘other father’, the one whose DNA he shared.

Perhaps it was because Charles was still around and he had a father, albeit a very definitely flawed one.

School had become even more of a refuge after Viv’s arrival.

She’d joined the team of staff as a house parent, essentially taking on the role of stand-in mother to the boys in Jude’s boarding house.

He’d liked her from the start, but had never dreamt she’d end up being his second stepmother, not least because she’d still been married to Mr Hemmersley at the time, the very jolly new head of maths who’d also joined the school, along with their daughter Fiona.

It wasn’t until almost ten years later that his father and Viv had got together, in a support group for people who’d been widowed, two years after Nigel Hemmersley had suffered a massive stroke and died.

Viv had recognised Charles immediately from their interactions during Jude’s time at the school, and the rest had been history.

Sandra had been long gone by then, her marriage to Jude’s father having lasted less than four years but leaving a legacy that had endured for the eighteen years since their marriage had ended.

Nothing had changed between him and his father, despite the fact that Charles had been married to Viv for more than seven years now and she’d never once made Jude feel anything other than welcome.

It made his inability to answer her text difficult to explain.

He was very fond of her, his stepsister Fiona, and her family, but Christmas had never been the same since Ros had died.

He’d found different ways of celebrating over the years.

The run-up to Christmas with friends was usually about get-togethers over a meal and a few drinks, and having a laugh.

There’d been the uni years too, and one occasion when Jude and his flatmates had attempted to cook an early Christmas dinner, in mid-December, with only a hob and a microwave.

It had been a miracle they hadn’t all died, but they were still exchanging photographs of the world’s most unappetising Christmas dinner all these years later and laughing at the memory.

There’d been some good times over Christmas in the years since his mother had died, but it had never been that same special family occasion without her.

They’d all been in such good spirits setting off for the family ski trip to Val-d’Isère the day after Boxing Day, with plans to stay through New Year.

Except Ros hadn’t even made it until New Year’s Eve.

She’d had a terrible accident on the second day and had clung to life for forty-eight hours before the medics had told Charles there was no hope of recovery.

The Christmas decorations had still been up when they’d flown home with her body, and something had broken inside both Jude and his father that even Viv hadn’t been able to fix.

Although he could celebrate the run-up with friends, Christmas Day itself was different, and it still felt wrong without his mum.

Even now, it was easier to do Christmas alone, just him, Rufus, and a bottle of single malt.

The sort of festivities DCI McGuigan would be proud of.

It had been that way for as long as he could remember, and he told himself there was no reason to change it.

Maybe, deep down, he wanted more, but he hadn’t felt like a part of his father’s family in years.

The rejection he’d experienced after his mother’s death was what had convinced him that people weren’t really capable of loving anyone else, unless it fitted neatly into the plans they had for their own life.

It wasn’t selfless or unconditional, not in Jude’s experience since the death of his mother anyway.

The only time he’d let his guard down and thought he might have found a new life for himself, Mia had reminded him that trusting in anyone else was like building a house on sand.

He’d spent time with her family in the year they’d been together, and it had almost felt like a vision of his future, with a family of his own one day.

Except all the love Mia had professed to have for him hadn’t meant anything when someone else had come along.

Whatever she’d convinced herself she felt, it wasn’t real, and he didn’t want his happiness to ever rely on someone loving him.

He’d been let down too many times to be certain that was possible.

Rufus was the only one he’d loved who’d never let him down, and that made the thought of spending Christmas with just his dog far more appealing than the alternative.

The trouble was not everyone understood.

Closing the WhatsApp message, Jude sighed. He’d think about what to say in reply later, but for now he had somewhere he really needed to be.

‘Right, let me just get this straight in my head, so I don’t forget.’ Jasmine sounded deadly serious, almost as if she was about to start taking notes at her end of the call. ‘Who was it you said you wanted to play you in the Netflix miniseries about your murder?’

Emily laughed. ‘He writes about murders, he doesn’t do them. At least I hope his research doesn’t go that far.’