He knew all of it. How she was feeling and why she was feeling it. But he wasn’t pushing her.
There was a strange pressure in her chest. “There isn’t anything anyone can do, but thanks. I appreciate the offer.”
She was touched that he’d asked. Even if the rest of her life was a disaster, she still had Will as a friend.
She was relieved that what happened at the wedding hadn’t changed that. He could have judged her. She was certainly judging herself.
He reached out and briefly squeezed her hand. “It’s going to be okay, Becks. Christmas, I mean. The party. You’re going to be fine.”
She knew that she wasn’t going to be fine at all, but her superpower was hiding her feelings so no one was going to know.
Except Will.
Chapter6
Jennifer
She drove home via the forest. It was a detour, but she was worried that the single tree she’d already bought and decorated for the living room wouldn’t be enough. Not with Hayley’s expectations riding higher than Santa’s sleigh.
She’d asked her mother to describe the key elements of a Christmas movie and had made a few notes on her phone. She intended to print it out when she got home so that she could use it as a checklist, but for now she needed to buy more Christmas trees.
She parked alongside a couple of other cars and stepped out into the clearing that had been decorated for Christmas. She had to admit it was charming, particularly today with snow dusting the trees and the scent of the forest in the air.
For the whole of December they opened a special Alpine-style Christmas cabin that sold hot drinks, decorations and various speciality foods. When the children were living at home it was where they’d always gone to choose their tree. They’d made an expedition of it, combined it with a walk along one of the forest trails and a warming mug of hot chocolate.
Her spirits lifted and for a brief moment she felt the same rush of excitement she’d felt as a child when Christmas approached. It was a shame Jamie hadn’t brought Hayley home a week or two earlier so that they could bring her here and include her in the preparations. Anticipation was such a big part of Christmas.
It was a slightly strange feeling to contemplate that her son was possibly about to announce his engagement to a woman Jenny had never even met. No matter how old her children were she still worried about them, which was a waste of time, of course, because they were adults and she had no control over their decisions. And although she enjoyed them as adults, there were still times when she thought wistfully back to those days when they were very young.
Christmas was one of those times.
She stooped and picked up a pinecone, remembering a time when Rosie had stuffed her pockets full of them and then taken them home and sprayed them silver. Jenny had loved those impromptu decoration-making sessions, watching her daughter giving free rein to her creative talents. Rosie had often felt left behind by her brother and sister and Jenny had made a point of displaying prominently everything Rosie made.
She hesitated and slipped the pinecone into her pocket, feeling an ache of nostalgia in her chest.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to come to the forest on her own. It was filled with too many memories.
She wished now that she’d brought Martin. He always loved the Christmas preparations and had complained that he’d often missed trips like this because he was working. But even as she had the thought she dismissed it. He would have said no, the way he said no to everything at the moment. A few weeks before they’d been invited to early Christmas drinks with friends, but Martin had said that he was just too tired and she’d felt too awkward and embarrassed to tell them the truth, so she’dmuttered some excuse about life being crazy with all three children about to descend.
And she hadn’t really wanted to go either because being with them would have made her feel worse about her own life. These particular friends seemed to have retirement sorted. They volunteered, they took long cruises to warm places, they saw their children and babysat for their grandchildren when needed. Their schedule was so packed it was hard to find time to see them. They weren’t sitting on the sofa staring out of the window. They certainly didn’t feel that life was over.
She felt guilty for making the comparison, even fleetingly. She needed to work out what had happened to Martin to suddenly change his view on retirement but wasn’t sure how to approach it. She was dealing with a whole new version of her husband. The man she knew well and had shared most of her life with was capable and sensible. Whenever she had a problem, he was the one she went to for advice. There was a reason his patients had been willing to wait weeks for an appointment to see him when they could have seen a different doctor on the same day. This new version of Martin was a mystery to her, and she wasn’t sure how to handle him.
Still, right now her priority wasn’t Martin—it was to turn their home into something resembling a Christmas grotto.
With her mother’s words wedged in her brain, she bought one more large tree for the hallway, and chose several medium-sized trees in pots, reasoning that they could go in the garden after Christmas and hopefully be used again next year.
Having loaded those into the car, she went back to the log cabin that had been converted into a shop for the Christmas season. She bought extra sets of fairy lights and garlands for the stairs. Extra trees required extra decorations, so she bought those too. Trying not to think about the cost of it all, she loaded all her purchases into the car and checked her list once more.
Outdoor lights.
Before she could change her mind, she called the man who had fixed a leak in their roof the winter before. She spoke to his wife, who began the conversation by saying he was completely booked with only a few days to go until Christmas, but then changed her mind when she realised who she was talking to.
“Roy will be over this afternoon, Jenny, and he’ll sort you out. And don’t worry about buying lights, we have plenty here so I’ll pack them all into his van and you can discuss it with him. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for you and Dr. Balfour. He’s the reason our Milly is still alive. Virus, that first doctor we saw said, but Dr. Balfour wasn’t having any of it. He had one of his feelings, he said, and we’re all grateful for that. If he hadn’t given her that injection when he did—”
It was something she heard a lot. Everywhere she went, it seemed people had a reason to be grateful to Martin. It made her proud, but also reminded her of how all-consuming his job had been and the difference he’d made.
Maybe the challenge of giving it up was greater than either of them had anticipated.
