Lois stood there in the dark as a hush swept over everyone.
‘This is it!’ whispered Linda.
‘Ten…nine…eight…’
Lois and Linda joined in with the countdown and as everyone cheered after they reached ‘one!’ the Christmas lights sprang into life, bathing Croftwood in a warm glow of twinkling, starry lights that made the town look picture perfect and beautifully Christmassy.
Lois thought how amazing it would be if it was snowing, and right on cue snow began to gently fall as the choir sang ‘Oh, Christmas Tree.’ It was completely perfect. She and Linda hugged each other briefly then Linda left to look at the market leaving Lois to soak up the Christmas magic, letting the fake snow catch in her hair and on her coat, imagining that it was the real thing.
‘Magical, isn’t it?’ Oliver said softly as he came to stand next to her.
‘It really is,’ grinned Lois, knowing she looked like a loon but not able to help herself. ‘I love Christmas, this kind of Christmas. You know, the traditional parts.’
‘I do know and luckily Pats knows that I need this more than she does, especially this year.’ He was looking up at the Christmas tree, the lights reflecting in his eyes and making them sparkle.
‘Merry Christmas, Oliver.’
‘It’s a bit early for that, Lois,’ he said breaking the spell. ‘You can’t go around saying that until at least the week before Christmas.’
‘Sorry, I thought we were in a Christmas movie for a second there. Right, I’d better get back to the library or Rosemary will be sending out a search party.’
As she turned away, Oliver gave her the briefest of touches on her shoulder making her stop and look around at him.
‘Merry Christmas, Lois,’ he said sincerely, then turned away and headed towards the coffee house.
How she had wanted to take him in her arms at that moment and stand in the fake snow and pretend they were in a Christmas movie. She closed her eyes for a second and allowed herself to wonder but then firmly put it out of her mind. She seriously needed to get a grip where Oliver was concerned otherwise she was going to end up miserable, and after getting her life nicely on track in the wake of Alex leaving, she wasn’t going to let that happen.
Now that the Christmas spirit had got her, Lois was happy to immerse herself in Christmas preparations. She spent Sunday in her pyjamas with Spotify playing Christmas songs to her while she made and decorated a gingerbread house, prepared a batch of blackberry vodka from some blackberries she had frozen in the summer and printed some Christmas cards with a kit she had bought at the craft market the day before.
When she’d finally exhausted herself, she sat on the sofa with half of the roof from her gingerbread house, having posted a picture of it on Instagram before it was demolished and watched three terribly cheesy Christmas movies back-to-back with a glass of wine in her hand. It had been the perfect Sunday. She was just settling down to watch theStrictlyresults show when her phone rang.
‘Lois?’ It was Alex. She hadn’t heard from him at all since the dinner they’d had when she’d felt as if she’d broken his heart.
‘Alex, how are you?’
‘I’m really good. Look, I just wanted to tell you, for closure or whatever, that you were right about us. We did the right thing, and we should both move on.’
It was such a relief to hear him say that and she was glad that it had only taken him a week to get over the fact that she didn’t want to get back together.
‘That’s great to hear. Thanks for ringing.’ There was nothing else to say.
‘Maybe we can go for a drink next time I’m in Worcester so you can meet her.’
So that was how he had brought himself around, with a new girlfriend. Lois smiled. ‘Great, I’ll look forward to that. Take care.’
‘Bye, Lois and thanks for setting me straight. You did me a favour.’
It was only ever going to be a matter of time before Alex found someone new and Lois was glad. She’d half suspected that he’d started seeing other people once he’d moved to London and that that was really at the heart of his decision to end their relationship, but it didn’t matter now. She was glad that it was done and dusted. She topped up her wine, poked at the fire to perk it up a bit and sat on the edge of her seat to see who was going to make it into the quarterfinals.
27
Robert had been in touch a couple of days later as he’d promised. He’d arranged a meeting with the head of County Libraries for himself and Lois, so she was heading to the Hive. She was nervous because she’d not told Robert about the posters going out. That had been over a week ago and she still hadn’t had a formal go-ahead, but she knew that people had started voting for them. The huge pile of voting cards that they’d had on the desk for people to pick up had all disappeared on the day of the light switch-on. She just hoped that the head of County Libraries hadn’t been in the vicinity of Croftwood over the past week.
Andrew was at the information desk when she arrived.
‘Lois! You didn’t waste any time getting your new pad a nomination for Library of the Year.’
‘How do you know about that?’ she asked, knowing that Andrew would not have ventured to Croftwood to see the posters.
