It’s Greg Lake who brings me round. He’s singing about how you get the Christmas you deserve. I pull away, blinking, trying to get my eyes to focus. It’s not easy.
‘You’re going to have to stop doing that,’ I tell him. ‘It makes me forget things.’
Patrick screws his nose in the nicest way. ‘Forget what?’ He thinks I’m trying to be cute.
I’m trying to be sensible. I want to put a stop to all the giddiness before it hurts both of us, but I also stupidly, annoyingly feel like sayingto hell with it, let’s get lost in the woods forever.
‘This is dangerous,’ I tell him.
He smiles back. ‘I don’t think it is.’
‘Jesus!’ I lift my eyes in appeal. ‘You’redangerous,’ I say, but I get the feeling anything I use as a protest will fall flat right now. It’s so cosy and warm and nice up here under our blanket. I decide to spoil it good and proper. ‘It’s easy to want me when there’s music playing and it’s Christmas and you’re half-cut on champagne,’ I say.
‘I’ve had one glass.’
‘But when the cold light of day hits, you’ll regret this.’
‘Doubt it.’ He’s so sure, it’s exasperating.
‘I went on a date this month with a geezer who was horrified by my grey hair. And then another date with a bloke who’d, in essence, set himself up as a one-man charity, delivering shags to lonesome elderly ladies who live out in the sticks.’
‘What? A sort of feels on wheels kind of thing?’ he says, wickedness sparkling in his eyes.
I bump his arm with my own. ‘I’m not joking. I’m saying I’ve gotten too old for dating, and I’m definitely…’ I put my glass down, ‘too old for you.’
‘Can’t I decide that for myself?’ he says, serious now.
‘No, you can’t,’ I grump, folding my arms.
‘I’m sorry those guys were shitty.’
‘Thanks. They really were.’ I picture Charlie’s self-assured grin. I think how it was actually nothing like Patrick’s. How could I have thought it was?
‘But that’s not me,’ he’s saying. Then he waits for my reaction.
I don’t know what else to say. I’m back to being tired all of a sudden. ‘Come on,’ he says, making to move. ‘One last stop?’
We blow out the candles and leave them alongside the basket and blankets. I assume the elves are coming back for them. I cling to my winter posy and try to walk like someone who hasn’t just drunk two glasses of bubbly and been kissed until her knees went weak.
He doesn’t reach for my hand this time as he leads the way down a long flight of stone steps between the lawns where the frost glints, reflecting the coloured lights. There’s no moon or stars, just low cloud and colours in the air, and there’s no words either. Maybe my warning worked. Maybe we’re heading back to the friend zone and this is what reacclimatising feels like. I hate it.
Once we arrive among the crowds again, it’s clear how much the temperature’s fallen. Every shivering leaf and blade of grass is touched by a hard frost.
I feel a bit stricken, but still, it was the right thing to do.
We don’t talk as we walk through what I’m guessing in autumn is an orchard alive with ripe fruit and buzzing bees; now the trees are bare and decorated with sequined lanterns in the shape of oversized red apples. It’s me who draws out my phone this time and I ask Patrick to stand in amongst them while I snap a shot. He folds his arms and tips his head a little, lifting his eyes to me as I count down from three.
‘Good one?’ he asks, and looking at my screen, I have to stop myself saying it’s perfect.
‘Yep.’ I shove my phone in my pocket.
He says there’s a shortcut to skip the crowds if we go through a gate in a drystone wall which to me looks like the outer perimeter of the estate gardens, but when we pass through theStaff Onlyexit I realise we’re at the back of what was once the gardener’s cottage where the Dunham Gravey staff must take their coffee breaks in better weather. There are picnic benches, big bins and a designated smoking area under an awning.
‘Through here,’ Patrick says, walking just ahead of me round the side of the darkened cottage with the wordsEstate Officeon the bolted door.
We come out into another public area floodlit with very tall, conical trees entirely made of lights. There must be twenty of them at least. That’s not what holds my attention, though. What I’m interested in is the fact that the entire place is absolutely teeming with costumed elves.
‘Ready?’ asks the approaching man with rouged circles on his smiling cheeks and wearing a green and red stripy outfit with a bell on his hat.
