And then he was running, surprisingly slowly, downhill, the wind pushing him back until he felt like if he leaned into it and raised his arms he might actually take flight, like all the litter and bits of moss and roof tile swirling in the air.
Where was she now? His brain fought for the information he needed. What was the place called? He’d heard her say it. Port? Port… Suddenly it came to him. Port Kerr-no. That was what it had sounded like when she’d said it, soft and lilting in her Cornish accent.
As he moved Down-along through the storm, he held on to the cottage garden railings, dragging himself, barely able to see. Another few metres and he’d be there.
He’d get into the shop, search online for her ferry company, get her number and he’d call her as soon as possible. He’d tell her everything that had raced through his head in the last hour and, crucially, he’d tell her that he wanted her.
When he reached the turning for the bookshop he threw himself into the shelter of the narrow passageway between the cottages and the wind sharply dropped away. For a moment he leaned against the wall, panting hard and wiping the rain from his face. Would she want him? Well, that was the big ridiculous hopeful question, wasn’t it? So far today, all evidence had pointed towards the obvious answer: Duh! She’d already left, hadn’t she? And yet, the light Alex had ignited within him again after so long spent in the shade, still burned for her.
Turning his head towards the shop, all closed up and dark now, he had to blink and peer through wet lashes to be sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.
There, on the doorstep of the Borrow-A-Bookshop, was a woman with white hair hanging in sodden ropes down her back, slumped on the top step, her face hidden, sobbing over the note he’d left for Jowan only moments ago saying he was on his way to the airport.
‘Alex!’ he cried.
Magnús, unable to prevent the tender swelling in his heart at the sight of her, understood in that instant that he was in grave danger of falling very much in love this Christmas if she should only smile at him again.
He bounded through the passageway and across the square, the rain hitting him hard once more, and just as she lifted her head, exclaiming in bewildered amazement and relief that he was still here, Magnús pulled her to her feet.
She clawed strands of her wet hair from her face and tried to make herself presentable, impossible now she looked like she’d been dredged from the bottom of the sea, but Magnús was looking at her like she was a mermaid upon a starlit rock on a summer’s night.
The only thing that occurred to him to say at that moment was to enquire if she wanted him to kiss her.
Her laugh warmed him right to his core. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I ran all the way back here in a storm, ruining a perfectly good pair of slippers in the hope you’d kiss me again.’
Trying hard to hold back tears through his laughter as he glanced down at the muddy fur of her pink boots, Magnús’s relief hit him hard and without thinking about anything other than the impulse building inside him, he kissed her against the bookshop door, not minding the storm at all, and she pulled him close against her as though telling him she’d never let go again.
The pair kissed on, utterly unaware that, as their lips met, all across Clove Lore the fairy lights on every Christmas tree, and every bulb lighting the mid-winter early-afternoon streets, flickered and buzzed before the power supply for the entire village cut out, plunging every home into darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Eye of the Storm
There is a point in the swell of a storm when all life holds its breath and hides its head. An innate animal instinct for self-preservation kicks in and while the wind and rain rage on, each creature settles itself, seeking comfort.
This moment befell all the inhabitants of Clove Lore at precisely two-fifteen on the afternoon of December the twenty-third, as the low-sinking sun in the west became obscured entirely by the thickest, darkest band of cloud to collect over the fragile, beautiful Devonshire coast in ten decades.
The clouds roiled and turned in upon themselves like black fire. Furious winds forced underneath the cloud formed a fierce corridor of air that blasted against the land and whipped up the waves.
When the lights went out, Clove Lore had been plunged into darkness, save for the Big House where the lights in the attics and kitchen, powered by their own noisy generator, glowed on.
After lunch, Minty and Jowan had drunk black coffees huddled by the old Aga. Aldous had lazily licked his lips and curled up asleep at his master’s feet. They sat in companionable silence listening to the radio telling of the safe delivery of twelve Chinese sailors taken from the container ship now at anchor off the coast.
‘Here’s to them.’ Jowan raised his mug, and Minty followed.
‘Safe harbour,’ she said, and both drank, sinking into silence again, waiting for the storm to pass.
Three floors up in the attics, Leonid read in his calmest voice to Izaak from his book about camellia cultivation, stroking Izaak’s brow as he listened, both crushed together on the big armchair.
They’d carefully unpacked the poppy seed cake – a Christmas gift from Izaak’s mother in Krasnik, with a note signed in defiance of the prejudices that had driven him to England in the first place: ‘For my two sons, from your loving Matka’.
They were trying hard to ignore the storm outside and the inevitable thoughts of Leonid’s parents’ abject silence this winter. They had remained unmoved by Leonid’s many messages asking them to try to be happy for their son and his groom.
Leonid kissed Izaak’s temple and they each took bites of the cake as Leonid turned another page, both of them visualising camellias coming into fat green bud in the spring sunshine and red poppies bobbing their heads in peaceful summer fields.
Out in his little house on the main road that led away from Clove Lore, Bovis did not yet know the electricity had shorted. In a bubble bath neck-deep, by candlelight, he feverishly turned the pages of a book he’d meant as a gift, now desperate to discover which of the Miss Bennets’ stories would end happily and which in regret. This is how readers are born.
A little farther along the main road, when thrown into sudden darkness, Elliot and Jude had scrabbled for the torch from Elliot’s vet bag. At least their gas stove still worked in the power cut, so they cooked together in the dim kitchen, their LED star lights shining in the steamy windows.
