Page 107 of Under the Mistletoe with You

‘Thank you,’ she says.‘This was ...kind of you.’

‘You’re welcome.I did mean what I said – we don’t really know each other yet, and I want to know everyone here.’

‘You’re new here, right?You seem determined to stay.’

‘I am.And I want to actually be a part of the community.’

She snorts a delightfully piggy snort.‘Oh, don’t ask for what you might regret,’ she says, but not in a cruel way.It’s a little sad.‘I don’t mean to be such a stickler all the time.I suppose it’s who I’ve always been.Who my mother was.Who I had to be with my ex-husband, or perhaps who he made me be.’

Ursula sighs and Christopher could swear he heard his own heart break a little.‘And I know being that version of me just makes Tamara and me fight, and means everyone hates me.But I don’t really know how else to be.’

How long has she been moulding herself into someone she doesn’t even recognise?

Christopher reaches across the table and takes her hand.‘I think there’s always time for us to reinvent ourselves.I’m trying it right now.’

‘How’s that going?’

He pulls a grimace, and she snorts once again.‘It’s hard, but I’m trying to find out who I am, I suppose.And, like you say,howI want to be, which I think is halfway to who.’

‘That sounds nice.I think I’ve been here too long.No one will think I’m being genuine,’ Ursula replies.

‘When is there a better time to turn over a new leaf than Christmas?’

It’s quite possible that he really has watched too many holiday movies in the last few months, as he’s almost certain that’s one of Nash’s lines fromMushing Home for Christmas.It’s one of Christopher’s favourites, even if it is a very thinly veiledBalto-rip-off-turned-romcom, where Nash played a musher called Forrest Tenzing opposite an Anna Kendrick-type.No wonder he’s so good at being around snow, though it’s quite possible it was all fake for the movie.Hopefully they don’t still make that stuff out of asbestos, like the snow inIt’s a Wonderful Life.

In the end, they sit and talk for half an hour over their coffees.Christopher shares his recent adventures in baking, while Ursula opens up about how tricky it is to co-parent with her ex-husband.In the end, he finds he likes her – there’s some elements of Esther’s bristliness that he recognises.He’s used to brusque people bossing him about, after all.

The thing he needs to remember is that someone might have an attitude he can’t quite place, but it’s so often because strangers are unknowable.It’s only when you can see where someone is coming from that you might be able to understand their slightly cranky exterior.

Sure, that absolutely doesn’t excuse someone being a total dickhead, but that was how it had seemed to be with Nash too, wasn’t it?Christopher had thought him rude and cocksure and demanding, when really he was stuck in a new country, alone, with seemingly no one knowing where he was, with a tricky disability to manage alone.No wonder they sparked off.

And they still have so much to talk about, he and Nash.

As the last of the light fades outside, Ursula says, ‘I’m going to do it, you know.Try and start afresh.I always was going to.’Her confidence appears to wobble and she falters slightly as she adds, ‘If you think they’d like that?’

‘I think everyone would like that.’

He’s not one hundred per cent sure of that, but hell, if the village tookhimin, an outsider, maybe they can stretch to find space for Ursula to be a different kind of person than the one they’ve always known.

* * *

They walk back to the village hall together, and everyone seems ready to embrace Ursula’s help ...Perhaps that was all it took, someone else to disrupt old habits, for them to work together?Or maybe, a quiet part of him says, maybe it was you.Maybe all it took was Christopher putting himself out there and bringing someone else into the fold.It feels good, he must admit.

Thanks to all the visits they’d made over the last few days, they already have a list of people who are going to need a hot dinner on Christmas Day.

‘Ursula, do you want to join us ringing everyone?’Shaz asks, all the former snark dropped now.‘We were going to ask Nash to ring, but we thought everyone would just say yes to him no matter whether they need it or not.’

‘Yes,’ Ursula nods happily.‘Please.I want to help.’

It takes a couple of hours to ring round everyone, and together with Ursula, they work out the best routes to pick people up, so that everyone can be at the bakery for mid-afternoon the following day for an early dinner – late enough to give them time to cook, and early enough that the older members of the community wouldn’t be asleep before it was served.

When Ursula nips to the bathroom, Shaz nudges Christopher.‘How did you get her to agree?’

‘I just listened to her,’ he says truthfully.‘I think she wants to turn over a new leaf.’

Shaz raises an eyebrow.‘Might take the whole tree.’

‘I know it’s not my place when you all have history, but perhaps it could be a kind of Christmas miracle.’