Page 11 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas
“Ryan! Grab that TV, would you, and bring it in,” Aggie shouted back along the path.
“You know you don’t have to do that,” said Fred.
“Ha, have you tried saying no to your aunts?”
Fred sniggered. “I don’t think anyone has.”
“I don’t mind.” Ryan grinned.
“Well, of course you don’t, that’s their special brand of mind control.”
Ryan laughed and followed the aunts into the house with her flat screen in his arms and her flowery Cath Kidston rucksack on his back.
Out of his elf costume, it was easier to see the changes the years had made to him.
He had more hair for a start—dirty blond, chin length and tucked behind his ears—and the beard he’d abandoned for being too patchy in his teens was now fully grown in, softening what she knew to be a ridiculously sharp jawline.
But behind the beard and the laughter lines, and the surprisingly broad shoulders—did he work out, these days?
—he was still fundamentally Ryan Frost, her old partner in crime, the boy she’d last seen waving her off from his dad’s fishing boat as her mum drove her down the coast road and away to university and a life beyond Pine Bluff.
The boy who’d made it clear that he would never think of her that way.
Fred pulled herself back to the present and looked over at the bags and boxes on the ground, and the enormity of her situation steamrollered over her anew.
“Breathe it out, honey,” her mum said, taking her hand and squeezing it. “You’ve got this. And I’m here to pick up the bits that you haven’t.”
Like it or not, nobody could read her like her mum. She allowed herself to rest her head on her mum’s shoulder. “Thanks, Mum.”
With Ryan helping too, it didn’t take long to ferry everything into the house. She was on her third trip back to the van when she saw a motorbike pull up outside the gates. She carried on down the path and called out, “Can I help you?” The courier flipped up his visor and checked his phone.
“Ms. Fredricka Hallow-Hart?” he asked as he unclipped his messenger bag and pulled out a plain A4 manila envelope.
“Yes. Is this from Lockwood and Peters?”
Her final layoff documents hadn’t been ready before she’d left London, and the firm had promised to have them couriered up to her as soon as they were.
With luck, the envelope would contain the severance offer she’d been negotiating.
Their first offer had been almost offensively small, and she’d had to call in her union rep.
They had finally agreed on a figure, but it had needed to be okayed by the head office first.
“Dunno,” the man said. “Sign here, please.” He pulled a tablet from inside his leather jacket and pulled up a screen, before holding it against the gate for her to see and handing her a stylus through the railings with which to write.
She signed and swapped the stylus for her package. In another moment, he was gone, leaving only a cloud of dust behind, which felt rather like a metaphor for her life.
“Any chance you could check for my phone?” Ryan asked, coming up behind her. “I need to get to work, and if I stay here much longer your aunts will have me rearranging all their furniture.”
“Yes. Sorry. It might be in the car.” She tucked the envelope under her arm and headed to where she’d parked.
Ryan walked with her. “I enjoyed last night. Catching up. It’s been a long time,” he said.
“It has,” Fred replied.
“It’s strange, isn’t it, how we’ve known each other forever, and yet we don’t really know each other at all. But at the same time, it kind of felt like we’d last seen each other only a few days ago. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do. I thought that too. I guess it was the familiar setting; you know, being chased by Krampus and all that totally normal stuff that happens around here.” She gave him a knowing smile.
“There’s no place like home,” he said, chuckling.
“That’s why I left it.” She heard the snide edge to her voice, and softened it by adding, “But it has its charms.” She didn’t want to sound shrewish, especially when she wasn’t sure she even believed her own rhetoric anymore.
She had derided Pine Bluff for the same reasons that she had built barriers between her and her mum: to mask her homesickness and drown out its siren call.
“It does indeed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back here either, but now I’m here, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather live.”
“You left Pine Bluff?”
Ryan laughed. “Don’t sound so surprised. You’re not the only person to have ever left town, you know.”
She flushed as she unlocked the car. Tossing the envelope on the passenger seat, she reached over to the back and pulled out the bag containing her jeans. “No, of course not,” she said, a little breathlessly, as she straightened back up. “You just always seemed so set on staying here.”
“Well, you know, I had this best mate who ditched me for a place at university and promised she’d come back and never did…
I’m kidding you.” He laughed. “But your departure did make me wonder what lay beyond the border. I traveled for a bit. Then took a job in Cardiff and, well…you know about the breakup and burnout. I was still in Cardiff until a couple of years ago, but when Dad got sick, I decided to relocate the business back here, so I’d be on hand. ”
Her mum had told her all about Diggory’s heart attack; he’d made a full recovery, but it had been a lifestyle adjustment.
“The business ?” she asked.
“Didn’t I mention that?”
“You did not.”
He grinned sheepishly and raked his hand through his hair. “Yeah, I kind of started my own business. It’s doing pretty well.”
“That’s so great! Get you being all entrepreneurial.” She nudged him.
“I’m not just a pretty face, you know.”
Don’t I know it!
“It must have been tough to relocate the business up here. Couldn’t your brothers have helped your parents?”
“They do. But they’ve also got their own lives. Benj can be out on the trawler for days at a time, and Rab’s head teacher at the primary school, but with all three of us in town, the chances are that one of us will be around if our folks need a hand.”
“That’s nice.”
Ryan shrugged. “I like being back. I was missing my nieces and nephews growing up, living so far away, and then when Dad had his heart attack I just thought, why am I living miles away from the people I love most?”
His words struck a chord within her that she didn’t want to hear. She fished around in the pockets of her jeans until she found Ryan’s phone and handed it back to him. “Sorry about that, stealing mobile phones isn’t usually my style.”
“Really? You have changed,” he said, flashing her a smile.
“I hope you didn’t miss any important business calls.”
“None that couldn’t wait, I’m sure. But I’d better get to it, all the same.” He started walking backward toward his Land Rover. “Say bye to your family for me.” He gave a wave.
“I will. And thanks for your help.”
“My pleasure. Maybe we could meet for a coffee sometime?”
“Sure.”
With one last smile that had her wanting to reach back through time and stay there, he drove down to the gates and leaned out of the window to press the intercom button.
A moment later, the gates whirred open, and Ryan stuck his arm out and waved as he drove through them.
She stood for a moment, considering how strange it was to feel so comfortable around him after so long apart.
Then she retrieved the envelope from the car, ran her forefinger along the fastened edge and pulled out the contents.
“What?” she asked aloud, turning the papers over and checking inside the empty envelope.
That’s not right. Instead of her latest layoff forms to sign, she was holding a set of divorce papers for a man named Warren Reeves.
She checked the front of the envelope. Oh, for pity’s sake!
It wasn’t even addressed to her. She’d been so distracted; she’d simply signed for the damn thing without checking it.
The intended recipient was staying down at the Crooked Elm.
He’d probably been in the bar last night.
Dammit. She’d have to go down there. She was hoping to spend the rest of the day getting her room straight and acclimatizing to being back in her old home, but she couldn’t very well leave Warren Reeves without his divorce papers, especially since she didn’t know how long he’d be staying at the pub.