Page 30 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

“And how is Warren?” Ryan asked on Friday morning, as he wiped down the top of the coffee machine with a damp cloth.

Mina rolled her eyes and carried on refilling the shelves with bags of beans.

Fred had brought her laptop into town to start creating a marketing strategy that they could use across the Hallow-Hart Crackers socials. She’d popped into Coast Roast to get a takeaway coffee and ended up working on a barstool at the counter.

“Good, I think,” she said, absently. “I haven’t seen him in a few days.

I’ve been designing the new website and he’s been working on his article, plus he has other smaller pieces to get in to his editor.

I think he picks up a lot of the slack for other journalists on the paper who aren’t as conscientious as he is. ”

“Right.”

Fred looked up from her screen. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“No, it definitely meant something.”

Mina shook her head. “Here we go. Fred, you might be the one seeing Warren, but I’m the one who has to listen to Ryan moaning about him all the damn day long.”

“I see.” Fred’s hackles rose just the teensiest bit.

“I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Well, thank you, that’s very kind of you. But I’m a grown woman, so…”

Ryan looked up at the ceiling and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Do you actually like him?” he asked.

“Umm, yeah, I think so. But you clearly don’t.”

“It doesn’t matter if I like him, I’m not the one dating him.”

“So, you don’t like him.”

“Like I said, it’s not about me.”

“And yet, you are the one who brought it up.” She pressed a finger to her lips.

“Actually, Mina brought it up,” he said, and grinned at her.

Mina dropped the bag she’d been holding back into the box on the floor, and put her hands on her hips. “Oh, no!” She shook her head. “Don’t you pass the buck on to me. Fred’s got ears, she could hear your attitude for herself.”

“Yes, I could,” said Fred. “So, spill it.”

Ryan looked deeply uncomfortable as he rearranged the paper cups. “He just seems a bit full of himself, that’s all. I don’t like his manner.”

“His manner?” Fred laughed.

“He watches a lot of Bridgerton ,” Mina whispered.

“Okay, okay, fine, mock me if you will, but I don’t think he has a nice way with people.”

What could she say to that? It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought it herself but, in his absence, she felt like she needed to fight his corner.

“It’s a nervous thing,” she said. “He’s socially awkward, and he overcomes it by being—”

“A prick?” Ryan offered.

“When he’s just with me, he’s a completely different person. He’s sweet and self-effacing.”

Ryan burst out with a disbelieving guffaw. “Really? Self-effacing? Try self-absorbed, self-serving…”

“That’s not fair, you’ve only met him, like, three times,” Fred protested.

“You’ve barely spent any more time with him!” Ryan retorted. Dammit, he had her there.

“I don’t want to get in the middle of whatever this is.

” Mina gestured between them. “But I must admit that meeting someone three times ought to be enough to get a measure of them. I mean, the first time you could have caught him on a bad day, we all have those, and first impressions are hard. And maybe the second time—if he’s still being a prick—you could blame it on stress or nerves.

But if by meet three he’s still displaying the same behavior that gave you the impression he was a prick the first time”—she was using her hands like balance scales—“then maybe he is, in fact, a prick.”

Ryan raised his eyebrows at Fred, like, “See, Mina thinks so too!”

Fred scowled at him. “That would make sense”—she addressed Mina, ignoring Ryan—“were it not for Warren confiding in me that he is socially anxious, and he doesn’t like how he comes across, but the only way he’s found to manage it is to employ a kind of alter-ego.”

Mina tilted her head, considering. “Okay, I can understand hiding behind a persona to make up for a lack of confidence.”

“Thank you.” Fred pulled a told you so face at Ryan.

“This is such bullshit!” Ryan shook his head in disbelief. “If he was that worried about the way he comes across, he would have changed tactics by now; found another way to overcome his shyness. I’m sorry, Fred, but he is full of it.”

Fred raised her chin. “You don’t need to be sorry, because he isn’t full of anything.

” He was a bit full of it, she knew this, but her stupid pride would never let her back down in an argument, especially with Ryan.

In her mind’s eye, sensible Fred was holding up a sign that read, What the actual F!

Have you learned nothing? But she ignored it.

“I did a little digging…”

“Oh, for god’s sake, really, Ryan? You’re a private detective now, are you?”

“No!” he retorted, petulantly. “I just looked him up.”

“And?” Fred challenged.

“He’s full of shit. That big play he makes about coming from the wrong side of the tracks, or whatever narrative it is that he’s pushing, it’s all bullshit. His family are rolling in it. He’s a former private school kid from Surrey.”

This rocked her back on her heels, but she wasn’t going to let Ryan see he’d rattled her. There had to be some explanation. Maybe he’d got the wrong Warren Reeves…

“And before you tell me I’ve got the wrong Warren Reeves, I saw pictures of him with his family in Cannes; he was a few years younger, but it was definitely him. Last year he had a private box at Ascot.”

Dammit! She couldn’t believe her bullshit antenna was that rusty. Or maybe it wasn’t. He’d made it clear that he didn’t get on with his family, but she’d assumed that his life was tough financially. But she couldn’t have pulled that idea out of nowhere, could she?

She rallied. “Just because his family has money, that doesn’t make them good people. We don’t know why he’s had to remove himself from them.”

“Absolutely. I get that, but there’s something not right here, Fred, I think he’s playing you.”

“I disagree.” Fred pulled her shoulders back.

“I don’t know how you can’t see it.” Ryan raised his arms in exasperation.

“You always do this!” Fred rounded on him. He was touching a nerve, but she wasn’t about to back down. “You always think you’re the only person who can see people’s ‘true colors.’?” She made air quotes around the words and deepened her voice to mimic his.

“What are you talking about? You haven’t known me for twenty years.”

“Seventeen. And I remember.” She blurted it out, before she had time to think better of it.

“What exactly do you remember?” he demanded.

Her mind conjured pictures from the past: late September sun dappling the water; the green paint of the boat peeling back to reveal the red underneath; the look of bemused horror on Ryan’s face when she’d kissed him.

But she couldn’t tell him that. Instead, she opted for a different truth, the truth she had used to excuse herself from his vicinity ever after.

“That we were best friends until you decided that I had a problem with your mates, and cut me off,” she said. It wasn’t a lie.

“No, you did have a problem with my mates, and I didn’t want to have to choose between you and them, but you made me.

What was I supposed to do? I would have chosen you over any of them, but you were weird that whole year, you pushed me away.

And when we did hang out, all you talked about was getting the fuck out of Pine Bluff. It felt like I’d lost you either way.”

The tinge of sadness in his voice tugged at her heart.

“You are misremembering how that story went,” said Fred. She was surprised that it still hurt, that what had been monumental for her meant so little to him that he didn’t even recall it. “And your mates were thugs,” she snapped.

It was true, they were bullish and crass, but that wasn’t why she’d been “weird”; her weirdness derived from nursing a broken heart and not being able to talk to her best friend about it. Because he was the one who’d broken it—not that he remembered doing it!

“Maybe so, but I never cut you off,” Ryan said. “You did that all by yourself.”

“Okay.” Mina held her hands up in surrender.

“This has descended into…I don’t exactly know what, but I don’t want to be in the middle of your weird-arse historic dramas.

I’m going to take my lunch break.” She grabbed her coat and bag from under the counter and made a quick exit, twisting the Open sign around to Closed on her way out.

They were quiet for a moment; both had folded their arms tightly across their chests.

“Listen, I get that Warren rubs you up the wrong way,” said Fred, placatingly.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t like him,” said Ryan, in a calm voice. “And that’s all there is to it.”

Fred took a deep breath. “And I’m sorry, but I don’t care whether you like him or not.” She’d worked too hard to restore her autonomy to allow any man to pressure her into their way of thinking, even Ryan.

Ryan looked at the ground as she snapped her laptop shut, grabbed her stuff and left the shop.

Fred huffed her way out of the crowded little arcade and back onto the high street.

A light fluttering of snow was causing much excitement.

There was a queue for the grotto down the side of Frost Hardware, and she waved to Martha as she passed.

The market was loud and colorful, and she found herself wandering along to the Hallow-Hart hut to see her mum.

“Hey, darling.” Bella smiled when she saw her. She was just finishing up serving a customer who had bought four boxes of crackers.

Fred let herself in through the back and came to sit on the stool next to her mum, behind the counter.

“Everything all right?” Bella asked.

Fred grimaced as she pulled out her laptop and set it on the counter. “I had a fight with Ryan,” she mumbled.

“Blimey, it’s just like the old days!”

“We didn’t fight that much, did we?”

Bella pondered for a moment. “No, but he always knew how to get under your skin. He was never afraid to tell you things that you might not want to hear, while the rest of us tiptoed around you.”

“Was I that bad?”