‘My dad used to swear by soursop tea to help him relax if he was struggling to sleep.’
‘Soursop tea?’
‘Yeah. Soursop trees grow in Jamaica. He used to get the dried leaves over here from the herbal health shops and then boil them up.’ I pressed my lips together, remembering the tang of the hot tea on my tongue when he gave me a sip, sitting on his lap in his leather chair. One or two sips was always enough but now I suspected his cuddle was the real sedative. ‘It’s kind of like sour green tea. I don’t know if it works.’ A lopsided smile caught at me, from that bittersweet tangle of remembering and missing him. ‘He was always pretty chilled though.’
‘He’s…not with you any longer?’ Nick’s voice was so quiet, I struggled to hear him.
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘He died when I was eleven. The big bastard C.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He’d gone so pale and still that he would have rivalled the snowman the kids were making outside. I could have said the usual ‘it’s okay’ or ‘thank you’ but I wanted to give him the space to tell me about his mum. There would be no more natural time for him to mention it, and my breath froze in my chest waiting, because if he didn’t – if he couldn’t tell me or didn’t want to – did that mean he just wasn’t interested in letting me get close to him? I know I said to him last night that this was only going to last for the few days he was staying here but…I wanted him to tell me.
The silence just stretched on until I sighed. ‘It’s shit. Losing a parent. Losing anyone.’ I shook my head. I hated that terminology, even though I used it. ‘Losing’ someone. It’s not like you’d misplaced them. You knew where they were…and where they definitely weren’t.
I swung my gaze around the clutter once more, because looking at Nick and knowing that despite how close it felt between us when we were kissing and joking around, he was not ready to be vulnerable with me, was making me feel lonely and cold.
And that was fine. I was on my own and I wanted to stay that way for a while anyway. I certainly didn’t want to be vulnerable around anyone either. Especially not men who would be flying off soon and might even be writing a blog post on my Christmas nightmare to share with millions of people. This was the wake-up call I needed. Nick and I were not anything but two people finding some use for each other over a difficult Christmas. I needed to shake off this clingy veil of disappointment and get back to the job at hand.
I pointed to a grey shape over in the corner. ‘Think you can brave the mini-beasties enough to dig that out with me?’
Nick cleared his throat. ‘If you promise to come to my rescue if they attack?’
He was obviously trying to move on as well. Good. This was all good. And sensible. And fine.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.’ I forced a bright smile and we started to move things around to clear a path to a wheelbarrow tucked underneath a tarpaulin.
Nick pushed it outside with relative ease and then attempted to move it along the lawn. The wheel sank into the snow and when he pushed his weight against it to power it through, his feet slipped. I made a grab for him around the waist, but his momentum carried us both down, so he ended up face first in the snow and I was on his back, the extra weight driving him in deeper.
I rolled off before he suffocated and he lifted his face up, spitting out snow and swearing. I couldn’t help it, I was laughing again and even though he must’ve been freezing, he laughed too.
‘This isn’t funny,’ I managed to say.
‘Stop laughing then,’ he told me but that only made us both crease up more.
‘Seriously though—’ I took a deep breath ‘—what do I do now?’
‘I’ll give it another try. It might not be too bad once it gets going.’ He struggled up and this time he held out his hand to help me up, but I pulled away as soon as I was standing. There was no time for more kissing, and I wasn’t sure it was a wise idea anymore, no matter how much I wanted to. ‘And otherwise we just carry up as much as we can and go back for the rest.’
‘Just leave it out on the road?’ I screwed up my nose.
‘It’s colder than a fridge out here. I think it’ll be okay.’
‘All right.’
When he tried again with the wheelbarrow, with a little more judgement and a little less brute force, it did move. Not quickly but it did move. He got hot enough from the exertion to take off his lovely big coat and he lined the wheelbarrow with it. I worked at clearing the snowdrift that mounted up in front of the wheel every couple of metres while Nick took a breather.
I did offer to help but maybe he wanted to prove something or maybe he was just being a gent because he insisted on carrying on. By the time we went past the hotel, the kids had gone inside and when we finally got to the bottom of the hill, the butcher was waiting for us.
We loaded up all the meat and poultry into the wheelbarrow, wrapping it up in Nick’s coat so its packaging didn’t tear on the rough bottom of the barrow, and we watched the butcher’s van drive away.
Nick stood for a moment, hands on his hips, his breath gusting out in big steamy clouds.
‘In my mind, this seemed a lot easier,’ I admitted apologetically.
‘It was a good idea,’ he insisted. Little curls of hair were clinging to his forehead and I couldn’t resist the impulse to unstick them and push them back. But when I touched him, the tingle was undercut with anxiety and I pulled my hand back again quickly.
‘Maybe on the way up we should take a handle each and push together,’ I suggested.
‘Okay.’ He looked at me for an extra beat, as though he was thinking of saying or asking something else, but then he grabbed the handle of the wheelbarrow.
