‘I’ve only just found you,’ she said. ‘Why would I want you to go?’
The kiss was so gentle that Tania wasn’t sure it happened, Gull’s head dipping to touch his lips against hers with an imperceptible softness. ‘Thank God,’ he whispered into her ear, as he wrapped his arms even more tightly around her.
If this was Tom’s version of a pared down Christmas lunch, Madeleine thought, as she carried the dish of roast potatoes to the table, then she wanted very much to be around when he cooked a full-blown one. The potatoes smelled divine, the tops of each one like a golden halo of crispiness.
‘How do you get them to be so perfect?’ she asked.
Tom followed her over, a plate of sliced turkey in one hand, a bowl of vegetables in the other. ‘Parboil them, then sprinkle them with semolina before they go in the oven, it’s my top roast potato hack.’
Clara nodded. ‘That’s how Mike used to do them, too.’
‘How come I don’t know any of these things?’ Madeleine said, plonking the potatoes in the centre of the table. She shrugged. ‘Too busy enjoying the fruits of other people’s labour, I suppose. I’m going to have to take a cooking course.’
She took a seat next to Rose, pushing the cracker to the side of her place setting and taking the napkin onto her lap.
‘That’s a great idea,’ Rose said, a grin on her face. ‘Because I can’t cook, either.’
She felt Rose reaching for her hand under the table, taking hold of it and squeezing. This was easily her most memorable Christmas Day to date. In Madeleine’s opinion, it cruised effortlessly ahead of the year when her parents’ next-door neighbour dressed up as Santa, then got monumentally drunk and spent the afternoon dismembering the gnomes in his garden; shouting about how they hadn’t packed the presents properly in his sleigh, and that they were worse than useless and could all expect their P45s in the New Year.
She glanced across to where Lysander sat. The chiselled perfection of his jawline was pointedly turned away from her, the focus of his deep-water blue eyes resting entirely on Clara, as he offered her some vegetables. He still hadn’t acknowledged her existence since she’d called him a wanker the previous evening– which now felt about a million years ago– and Madeleine wondered if he ever would. Her gut told her probably not, and in all honesty, she could live with that.
As she looked around at the others it struck Madeleine that to a casual observer, this table might look like millions of others. The scenario of a group of friends and family enjoying Christmas lunch together copied and pasted into a large proportion of the homes across the western world. And the calmness that had enveloped the lodge this afternoon was most welcome, in her opinion. After the excesses of the previous week, she was very much hoping the only excess that would occur today would come in the form of one too many roasties.
She noticed Tania’s gaze had come to rest on her. No, not on her alone, it was on Rose too, her eyeline flitted between the pair of them. Rose was asking Tom about his taste in fiction, her fingers still entwined with Madeleine’s under the table. Had Tania noticed Rose’s comment about cooking? Or the stretch in Rose’s arm, across onto her lap? On impulse, she lifted their hands into view and dipped her head down to kiss the back of Rose’s, before sliding them back out of sight. Rose glanced her way and smiled, her corkscrew curls springing across her shoulders, then carried on with a comparison between which actors Tom felt were best suited to play his favourite fictional character on the big screen. It felt so natural, but Madeleine had done it on purpose. She looked at Tania again, watched as Tania flexed her eyebrows into a momentary frown before an expression of enlightenment settled onto her face, alongside an almost imperceptible nod. Madeleine allowed herself a small grin, and Tania smiled too, before her attention was distracted by Gull offering her some wine. Madeleine felt the last tension held by her shoulders melt away as she sighed contentedly, at last untangling her fingers from Rose’s and helping herself to some potatoes.
Chapter 42
As Christmas Day relaxed its way into evening, Clara sank back against the multitude of cushions banked in the corner of the sofa. The flames in the wood burner rose and fell, hypnotic swirls of orange and yellow, every now and again the sinking of a log was accompanied by a hiss and a firework of intense sparks. Someone had put the TV on, a film playing in the background which nobody was watching. On the other sofa, Tania leaned against Gull, the little key ring Madeleine had agonised over purchasing the previous afternoon dangling from her fingers, the silver Près du Ciel pendant glinting in reflected light as she twisted it one way, then the other. The pair of them looked so comfortable together. Gull’s hand rested casually across her collarbone, Tania’s legs were folded up on the sofa, her feet hidden from view under another cushion as her body moulded into his.
At the dining table, Tom and Rose were teaching Madeleine how to play poker. If the amount of laughter was anything to go by, Clara presumed Madeleine wasn’t even close to perfecting her ‘poker face’. Or perhaps it was something to do with the amount of génépi liqueur both girls had downed.
She smiled as another peal of laughter rang out. Something had shifted inside her since she’d opened up to Madeleine the previous evening. When Madeleine started to laugh at the mention of Poppy’s biscuit escapades, it seemed so natural to tell her more. And once the memories began to tumble from her lips, all about her baby girl and then about Mike, it seemed as if she had been selfish to keep them all to herself for so long. The pull to be with them was still strong, it was still gnawing away at her, but it seemed there might also be legitimate alternatives to consider.
Footsteps heralded the return of Lysander, bouncing up the steps from a self-confessed ‘comfort break’, his eyes a little too bright as he slotted himself onto the sofa beside her. She frowned. Lysander’s reliance on chemical stimulus wasn’t a secret, at least, not between Tania’s closest friends.
‘Clara, Clara, Clara. Have I ever told you just how damn beautiful you are?’ He sniffed, then wiped at the side of his nose. Clara glanced across at Tania, in time to see her grip the key ring in the palm of her hand, a crease between her eyes forming as she watched her brother.
‘Yes, Lysander, you have,’ Clara said. ‘About a hundred times. You know something?’
‘Not much, nope. What you got for me?’
‘You don’t need that stuff. You should stop taking it.’
He tilted his head at her, in mock confusion, but she knew he knew exactly what she was talking about. He dropped the expression, visibly sagging before he said, ‘Easier said than done.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said.
He paused for a long moment, his expression serious, then said, ‘OK. I’ll cut you a deal, my gorgeous Clara.’
‘Will you?’
He sniffed again, decisively this time. ‘Yes. I will. I’ll get some help for my little problem if you agree for me to organise some professional help for you, too.’ He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. ‘What do you say?’
She shrugged. ‘Sounds good to me.’
‘There is one condition,’ he said, a lazy smile seeping back onto his face.
‘What’s that?’
