Page 38 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

“You don’t need to apologize for not fancying me. That’s not a personal failing, it’s chemistry or love maths or something; you can’t force something that isn’t there.” Now she was feeling bad for him , how had that happened?

Ryan looked down at the contents of their time capsule spread out in the cold sand.

“Fred, I was sixteen, I thought mooning people through the window of the school bus was cool. You wanted to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer and—paradoxically, I might add—had posters of Louis from Interview with the Vampire all over your walls. What we thought and did when we were sixteen doesn’t define us forever.

And if it does, then we’re both screwed.

” He let out a long breath. “Just know that what I said then, I wouldn’t say now. ”

“What are you saying to me?” she asked, confusion etched on her face.

He looked up then and gave her the Ryan Frost special; the smile that had caused teachers to rethink their detention threats and ensured that he was always given the largest cream bun at the bakery.

It was like a choir of goddamn angels leaned out of the clouds and started singing, and Fred got the full force of it.

“Do you honestly think I usually hand deliver that much coffee to your house?” he asked. “You haven’t exactly bombarded me with invites, so I’ve been making excuses to see you. Because ever since you wrestled me to the ground on Krampus Night, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

What in the Love Actually is happening? Fred’s brain was having trouble computing this new information, after years of carrying around the certainty that he didn’t think of her in that way.

“So, just to be clear, you’re saying…what are you saying?

” Ryan Frost, her childhood bestie, now an extremely handsome coffee roaster, appeared to be saying very romantic things to her in a sandpit in the dark and making her stomach feel decidedly wibbly.

Holy jingle bells! If he was intimating what she thought he was, then she needed to hear the words out loud before she could believe them.

He laughed. “I’m saying I like you like you, Fred.”

Ryan Frost likes me? Nope, even hearing them out loud she couldn’t believe them.

“You do?” she asked, incredulous. “Like…you like me like me?”

He nodded, smiling shyly, and then he gazed into her eyes and said, “Very much.”

That’s it! I’m done! Ryan Frost likes me.

With Fred seemingly incapable of coherent speech right then, Ryan continued, “And I know you’ve got this thing going on with Warren, and maybe it isn’t fair of me to dump this on you, but if there’s a chance that you might like me like me, too, then telling you how I feel is the right thing to do.”

“I see.” Her calm words belied the illegal rave that was happening beneath the surface. Ryan likes me, Ryan likes me, Ryan likes me! The words circled crazily in her brain, like a record on repeat, crowding out her other thoughts. She felt exhilarated and in a complete tizz all at once.

“What are you thinking?” asked Ryan, sounding less sure of himself.

Oh, this was a lot to deal with. She wasn’t sure she could cope with cute, cocky and tentative Ryan, all in one hit; she was only human for goodness’ sake!

“Many, many things,” she replied, truthfully. And none of them coherent, she thought to herself.

“Anything I can help with?” he asked, pinning her with those big brown eyes.

“Umm…” What would it feel like to kiss those lips?

“No. No, thank you.” What would it feel like to be loved by Ryan Frost?

She broke his gaze and stared into the hole in the sand, forcing thoughts of Ryan’s lips out of her head.

“Can I have some time to think about this? I’m not saying I don’t feel the same way about you, it’s just unexpected. ”

He smiled, relieved. “Take as much time as you need. There is zero pressure from me, I simply wanted to be honest with you. We don’t need another rowing boat misunderstanding.”

She laughed. “We don’t.”

“And if you decide that you don’t feel the same way about me, then I’ll never mention it again. I’m just happy to have my bestie back in town.”

“Thank you.” Her voice sounded strangely breathy, like she’d been running.

“But please do one thing for me…”

“O-kaaay,” she said, cautiously.

“Don’t rush into things with Warren.”

She smiled. “I won’t be rushing into anything,” she assured him. “My eyes are fully open, I promise.”

Ryan seemed to relax. “Open eyes are all I ask.”

Fred’s stomach was a mass of fireworks pinging off in all directions, and her head wasn’t much better. This was uncharted territory: two handsome men wanted to mark her dance card, and she liked them both. It was a head scrambler.

“The big question now”—she forced her voice to adopt a normal tone—“is what do we do with this lot, now we’ve dug it up? Do we rebury it?”

“Are we still talking about our feelings? Or are we back on the time capsule?” Ryan asked with a grin, breaking any tension still lingering in the air.

She laughed, grateful for his uncanny ability to put people at ease. “The time capsule. Idiot.” She rolled her eyes at him. Teasing was safer ground.

“Maybe we should make a new one,” said Ryan. “And open it when we’re fifty.”

“You just don’t want to bury your Beyblade again, do you?”

“You got me.” He smiled at her. “I’m glad we did this.”

“Me too.”

—

They filled in the hole, which was much quicker than digging it, and had just smoothed it over when a gruff voice shouted, “Oi, what are you up to?” A bright light blinded them, and they couldn’t see who was behind it. “Get outta there, this is a golf course, not a lover’s lane.”

“Sorry,” said Ryan, covering his eyes. “We weren’t doing anything.”

“Ryan Frost?” The voice became incredulous. “And is that…Freddie Hallow-Hart? I might have known it. Back less than a month and up to your old tricks already.”

Fred recognized the voice. “Mr. McCalister?” she said, at the same time as Ryan said, “Jock?”

The man lowered his torch and harrumphed. “What are you two up to anyway?” His voice was friendly, if a little withering. “I’d expect it from Freddie, but not you, Ryan.”

“So unfair,” Fred moaned, through gritted teeth. “You set one drove of pigs free, and you never hear the end of it!”

“Just taking in the sea air,” said Ryan, scrambling out of the bunker and then reaching a hand down to help Fred out. “What are you doing out at this time of night?”

“Couldn’t sleep. One of the pigs is sick, and I’ve been sitting up with it; thought I’d stretch my legs for half an hour, and ended up down here.

Then I caught sight of a couple of troublemakers out on the golf course.

I should’ve known it wouldn’t be long till you’d be up to no good. ” He was chuckling now.

“I’m not a child anymore,” said Fred, indignantly, as she brushed the sand from her jeans.

Though she had to admit that being caught messing about in a sandpit in the middle of the night wasn’t scoring her any maturity points.

The breeze was stronger out of the shelter of the bunker, and she began to shiver.

Ryan picked the strongbox up and stuffed it under his arm. “Right, we’ll be off,” he said brightly. “Sorry to have alarmed you. Hope the pig recovers.”

Mr. McCalister made a sort of growling noise in his throat that could have been an actual growl or simply the sound of him mulling things over.

“Aye, well then,” he said, finally, “I’ll be seeing you,” and he began to walk back along the edge of the golf course in the direction of his farm.

They watched him go, and then he turned and shouted, “And stay away from my pigs, Freddie Hallow-Hart, or you’ll find yourself on the Naughty List!

” before turning back and trudging away.

Fred raised her arms in mock surrender.

“Come on,” said Ryan. “Let’s get back before you cause any more trouble.”

She barged into him, knocking him sideways, and then fell into step beside him.

When they arrived at the gates of Hallow House, Fred checked the text from her aunt for the code, punching it in with frozen fingers. The walk back up the steep hill from the beach had helped take the edge off the cold but it was quickly seeping back in now, and she shivered.

“Well then, I’ll be off,” said Ryan.

The air was suddenly taut with suspense.

The nighttime noises froze into silence as they stood before one another, the space between them an invisible swirling vortex of “what-ifs” pulling them closer, even as she tried to resist. He held her gaze.

It would only take the barest of movements for their lips to touch, but neither of them moved, and the longing sang out between them.

Though her every impulse screamed at her to kiss him, she knew that acting on it would only complicate things when she wasn’t yet certain what she wanted, which path she wanted to take.

With an effort, she took a step back. “Thank you for tonight,” she said, feeling the weight of the spoils from the time capsule in her pockets. “I had a lot of fun.”

“Me too,” he said, smiling. “I’ll catch you soon. I’m sure I’ll find another reason to come up here.”

“Maybe I’ll invite you, so you don’t need to think of an excuse.”

“I’d like that.” He tilted his head to one side. “I’ll see ya.”

“See ya.”

He turned and began to wander back down the hill, this time in the direction of the town.

She heard the crackle of his boots on the frosted path even after the darkness had enveloped him.

The singing Christmas tree she’d stuffed into the bay hedge burst into song once more as she climbed wearily up the garden path.

The leaves on the hedge shook as “ With a hey and a hee and a ho-ho, with a hee and a ho and a hah-hah! ” rang out into the night.

A spooked fox darted out from behind a hydrangea and dashed away into the darkness.

At this rate Fred would be digging a hole to bury the singing Christmas tree along with her feelings.

Back in the house, she divested herself of her winter layers and opened the larder.

She panned her phone torch around the small, shelved room until she landed on what she was looking for.

At the back, stacked up beside a sack of flour, were a dozen or more bags of Coast Roast coffee.

Ryan wasn’t lying when he’d said he’d been delivering coffee as an excuse to see her.

There was enough here to see them through an apocalypse.

Ryan Frost likes me . She smiled to herself and backed out of the larder, snagging a half-packet of chocolate digestives as she went.

In bed, with a mug of hot tea in one hand, her feet slowly thawing beneath the thick duvet, she dunked the biscuits as she eyed her letter to her future self in the lamplight.

She had decorated the envelope with shiny stickers of hearts and stars and written “To Future Fred” in curly script.

After another dunked biscuit, she placed her mug and the open biscuit packet on the bedside table and took up the envelope.

As she opened the letter, a handful of pressed flowers fluttered out—daisies, violets and pansies—which she carefully dropped back into the envelope. She smiled to see her old handwriting, loopy and free, with hearts above the “i”s.

Dear Fred of the future!

How are you? I hope you live in an apartment in London or New York and have a job where you get to wear fancy clothes and go out to dinner. At the moment I don’t know what I want to do when I leave school. Maybe I’ll be a writer like Jo in Little Women .

My best friend is Ryan Frost, and I think I might secretly love him, but I won’t tell him until I am sure.

I don’t know if loves me, though, because boys are a bit stupid about that stuff.

Speaking of Ryan, I hope you are married now.

I think he will be a good husband, but if you haven’t married Ryan, I hope it’s because you married Howard from Take That!

Dreamy! I hope I get cooler when I’m, like, twenty.

I’m not cool now, and it’s really annoying being the girl no one wants to dance with at the school disco.

I hope my thighs are thinner. I hope one day there will be a school reunion and everyone will see how much I’ve changed, like a caterpillar into a butterfly.

With lots of love,

Fredricka Hallow-Hart

Aged 12

She read the letter twice. Past-Fred would be very disappointed by her lack of apartment, husband, children, job, fancy wardrobe and thinner thighs. Although she did have good tits, and even though they hadn’t been on past-Fred’s wish list, she reckoned she’d still be impressed.

Replacing the letter carefully back in the envelope, she reached for the biscuits again.

Tonight had been revelatory in more ways than one.

Her conversations with Ryan had thrown her into a quandary.

Did she keep seeing Warren—to see if what they had begun might have legs?

Or should she see if the spark she’d felt with Ryan tonight was as combustible as she suspected it might be.

Past-Fred had certainly thought it was a goer.

But what if the spark was just that—a lighter with a worn flint, all spark and no flame?

One thing was certain: she couldn’t date them both. Well, she could, but she wouldn’t, that had never been her style. She was a one-man-at-a-time kind of woman. The question was, which man?