‘Like it?’ Vince asks as he shows me, with his arm in a cast and clearly still in some discomfort, around the place.
‘I do. It looks amazing, Vince. Really, I can’t imagine how much work it’s all been—’
‘Aw, it was nothing really,’ he says with a shrug. A pause hovers. I will him not to say,So, will you move back in, now I’ve done all of this for you?
Perhaps he senses my apprehension. Because instead he just smiles and says, ‘I’m really happy you like it. Now, I’m sorry to be such a hopeless idiot with my arm stuck in this blasted thing, but d’you mind making us a pot of tea?’
*
Shugbury hasn’t changed. Of course it hasn’t. It’s barely altered in one hundred and fifty years – apart from the fact that a teeny sliver of Manchego costs something like £875 from the fancy cheesemonger’s. The days – and then weeks – go by, and although Edie wanted to fly home immediately, we persuaded her that everything was okay. She might as well finish off a work project and fly home for Christmas as planned.
I drive us to meet her at Heathrow. Spotting us at arrivals, her face breaks into an enormous smile. ‘Dad, are you all right?’ She hugs me and kisses him, taking care not to knock against his bad arm.
‘Good as new, sweetheart,’ he assures her. ‘Just been roughed up a bit. D’you think it makes me look tough?’
She laughs, then steps back and assesses Vince more thoroughly. ‘What are we going to do with you, Dad?’
‘Wait on me hand and foot?’ He arches a brow.
‘Business as usual then, Dad?’ she teases him, catching my eye. My heart swells with love for her.
There’s no awkwardness; no suggestion that things are different now, and that it will be stilted, the three of us being together. As I drive us back to Shugbury it’s almost as if Alice and Perthshire and the bookshop had never happened at all.
‘Why were you even doing DIY? You know you hate it,’ Edie retorts as she surveys the home make-over.
‘I was trying to be manly and macho,’ he explains, ‘to impress Kate.’ I smile at him then. Christmas is going to be okay – I can feel it. And as the days go by, when we’re alone together, I tell her everything that’s happened. Between her dad and me, that is. And okay, I miss out certain aspects – the Fergus aspect – but she seems to understand and takes it in her stride.
‘Shugburyisa lovely town,’ she ventures the next day. We’ve bought paper cartons of mulled wine from the Christmas market in front of the church.
‘It is,’ I agree. ‘There are loads of places far worse than this...’
She catches my eye and we laugh. She’s cut her reddish-brown hair short, and it shows off her expressive brown eyes and generous mouth. In a baggy sweater, black jeans and Converse, she is a natural beauty. ‘It’s not for you, though, is it?’ she ventures.
I hesitate. ‘No, darling. I know it sounds horribly ungrateful because loads of people would kill to live in a town like this. And I have tried, honestly.’
‘I know, Kate. I feel disloyal even saying this, ’cause it was always lovely to visit Gran and Granddad here...’
‘They doted on you,’ I remind her with a smile.
‘Yeah. They were so kind to me. But I couldn’t bear it, being here permanently,’ Edie continues, ‘and I do understand why you left.’ She looks at me. I know she means,It’s not just about Shugbury, is it? It’s about Dad too.‘Whatever you do will be the right decision,’ she adds, sounding so much older than her years. I’m grateful to her for understanding, even though I don’t really know what I’m doing next, and what the ‘right thing’ will be.
Edie seems so much more self-assured than the last time I saw her properly, face to face. Last Christmas, it was – a whole year ago. She didn’t make it over in the summer as a bunch of her new friends persuaded her to go on a road trip instead. ‘Maybe you and Dad could come out here?’ she’d suggested. But that hadn’t happened either. Instead I’d run away from my life here, and made a new one in a little Perthshire town.
And now, it seems, that’s over too.
*
Edie and I choose last-minute treats from the Christmas market. Then we stroll home and decorate the real tree I picked up from a nearby farm. Vince’s parents always had an artificial silver one but I knew Edie would prefer a real pine, like we always had when she was growing up in London. ‘I love the smell of it,’ she enthuses.
Christmas Day is just the three of us, although Vince had invited Colin over for drinks in the evening, worried that he might be lonely. During Vince’s brief hospital stay he took care of Jarvis again. He seems to have been something of a rock these past few weeks.
The four of us drink too much, and there are rowdy toasts:
To Vince for hauling this bungalow into the modern age in preparation for selling it!
To Colin for finding him knocked out cold on the floor!
To Jarvis for not eating him!
