‘Someone’s here for you. It’s more than my job’s worth to go scrabbling around condemned buildings looking for old ladies,’ he mutters, and he trudges off, grumbling.
‘What’s got into him?’ says Lucy, but nobody answers because there are two strangers standing in the doorway of the foyer, one a young woman in a slanting hard hat that clearly doesn’t fit, and she’s holding the arm of a man – a man Izz’s age or thereabouts – who is looking around at the room like he’s stepped inside a haunted house.
‘No,’ Izz says in a sharp whisper. ‘It can’t be.’ And I watch as my friend walks towards them at the foyer doors.
‘What’s happening?’ I ask Lucy, but she’s crying for some reason.
‘Quick,’ she says, dragging me in Izz’s wake.
We keep our distance as Izz reaches them and the man breaks away from the young girl who is also, weirdly, crying, and it’s only now I see it.
I see the years falling away. I see the village hall in bright light and full colour. I see coloured bunting strung along the walls and generations of the same families laughing together, tea poured from the big silver urn, and Izz, my dear friend, I see her walking tall and lithe, her head tipped a little to one side in that girlish way she’s always had, and she’s stepping bravely towards the man who had held her captivated so long ago, a man who’s holding his arms open to her, his chest rising and falling heavily, but with a look on his face like he’s greeting his closest loved one, like no time has passed at all, and they fall into each other’s arms.
Chapter Nineteen
Shutting it all out
I haven’t shown my face at the gingerbread grotto, but the word on our social media streams is that they’re queued round the block to get in.
Leo Bold makes an excellent Father Christmas, by all reports, and I was sent a lovely picture of Sully laughing his head off sitting on his knee.
I can smell the mulled wine in the air even from my cottage door, so I’m guessing Lolla’s husband is going great guns at his stall by the school gates. Lucy tells me they’re charging three quid a cup, so that’ll boost the coffers even more.
I’ve stayed away. Haven’t been needed, really, not now the exhibit’s set up and everyone’s got their jobs to do. I’m surplus to requirements, as I should be.
Patrick will probably have gone to Dunham for his night shift last night as usual, and goodness knows where he is now.
I’ve taken a day off. The first of many.
Mum was the first person to phone and congratulate us on raising the hundred grand. Even though, as Mr Carruthers suggested, it still might not be enough to stop the planning application, it’s still way beyond anything we’d ever dreamed of raising, and it could go some way to throwing a spanner in the works with the luxury redevelopment.
Mum was kind enough not to say anything about Patrick. She saw it all on the expat news channels, of course. So she gets it – why I’m hanging up my apron, surrendering the measuring bowl.
Her recipe is still at Sully’s bakery, so he’ll know what to do when it comes to it next year. I’ll be blissfully unaware.
I’m done. Had it. Knackered. Retired.
‘Tea?’ Izz asks.
‘No thanks,’ I say, lifting myself from the sofa in the den where I’ve sat all day watching the fire and avoiding all the phone calls.
I made the mistake of picking up the first few times. One of the glossy magazines had somehow got my landline number, wanting to do a story on age-gap romance. I’d not meant to laugh so unkindly before I put the phone down on them. Probably should have tried to be more dignified, but hey, what’s dignity anyway?
Then there was a tabloid after a quote for their feature on ‘going viral for all the wrong reasons’. I let Lucy handle that one, and she had a few choice words for that journalist, none of which they could quote in a national newspaper.
After that, we turned off all our devices and unplugged the landline, and it’s been nice and quiet, apart from Izz and Alexi talking late into the night at the kitchen table.
We’d sneaked them out the back of the hall and into Mr Collins’s van – which was very sporting of him considering the trouble we’ve caused him recently. Izz’s cottage is reportedly still besieged by the press, and it’s all been a bit much, so she’s staying here another night until it all calms down.
‘They can’t stay in town forever,’ Izz said this morning after she and Alexi did a bewildered meet-and-greet down the high street, shaking hands and being hugged by folks their story has struck a chord with. ‘They’ll have to go home for Christmas eventually,’ she said, grateful to have my cottage to retreat to where she could talk with Alexi in peace.
Alexi’s granddaughter left this morning, needing to get back to work. I’d promised her we’d take good care of him. No sooner was she driving away than Alexi turned to us and said, ‘Thank goodness for that. She’s a wonderful girl, but she does hover so.’
We managed a decent bit of dinner last night, but I felt increasingly like a gooseberry in my own home, and surrendering the two bedrooms for their use, Lucy and I crashed in the den. My second night out of my bed, and doesn’t my back know it! I’ve a knot in my spine that aches every time I move, much like the knot in my heart every time I think of Patrick lost for words when asked to confirm if I was or wasn’t his dear old mum or in fact his new girlfriend. Lucy’s told me a hundred times we don’t look like there’s an age difference; it was just my unfortunately migrating make-up, and when people under thirty see natural grey hair on a woman they make stupid assumptions. None of it helped, but it was nice that she tried.
Fern arrived a few moments ago, tiptoeing inside as usual.
‘It’s amazing to meet you,’ she says to Alexi, and she jumps back a little when he reaches out a hand to shake.
