Page 49 of The Secret Holiday Kiss

‘Just tell me things.’ Daisy glanced at May, but she was discussing something intently with Sophie and Imogen. ‘Tell me whatever it is that you want to tell me.’

‘It might be nothing. It probably is, but—’

‘Please, Jazz. The control freak in me is doing some extra freaking over here.’

Jazz laughed. ‘OK. So. He’s lovely, and he’s a lot of fun too, and Omari says he’s the best boss. I have no red flags to report. I just … I wonder if he’s in some kind of trouble.’

‘Trouble?’ Daisy sat back, her pulse rate picking up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘A little while before you got here – it must have been in October – he took me into Norwich. He’s still got a place there, and I assume when Mary and Winnie’s house is done he’ll move back. I wanted to go to this workshop, a session about getting into early years, and he agreed to drive me. The course was great, no issues there, but then, when I went to meet him at the car afterwards, he was …’ She shook her head.

‘He was what?’ Daisy swallowed and took a sip of her wine.

‘He looked terrible. Pale and sweaty. He was like a caged animal, and he couldn’t look at me. He was tense and silent the whole way back. I asked him if he’d done what he needed to do, and he grunted. Then I asked if he was OK, and he said fine but it was so cold and un-Avery like. I couldn’t joke him out of it.’ She sat back on the sofa, her brow furrowing. ‘He could have had some bad news, you know?’

‘But why not just tell you that, even if he didn’t want to talk about it?’ Daisy murmured.

Jazz snapped her fingers. ‘Exactly. He was so quiet. So then I just … paid attention.’ She shrugged. ‘I realized he goes to Norwich every Friday, and I’ve tried to be around, to drop in and see Omari when he finishes work. I mean, I want to do that anyway, but I’ve also tried to notice things.’

‘And what have you noticed?’

Jazz sighed. ‘Avery is always like that when he gets back from Norwich. It’s like his cheerful mood, all his buoyancy, gets totally stripped away.’

‘What do you think it is?’ Daisy was both triumphant and horrified. Triumphant, because her intuition had been right; there was something he was keeping from her, and clearly he hadn’t told May or she wouldn’t be so openly confused about him losing his mojo. Which meant it was something he wasn’t telling anyone, and whatever it was didn’t sound good, which was why she was also horrified.

Jazz glanced over at May. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ve spent a lot of time in dodgy places, with dodgy people, and the way Avery looked that first time? The way he acts when he gets back from the city?’ Daisy nodded, thinking of the black door, the way it had become this ominous thing in her mind. ‘I get the sense that he’s involved in something … awful. That he’s being threatened or intimidated, forced into something he’s not happy about. I know that look: I had friends who ended up like that.’

‘Like what?’ The room had faded, the fire and the chatter, the lamps in the corners and the twinkling Christmas tree, the dogs on the rug. Daisy felt cold dread sliding through her like poison in her bloodstream.

‘Like they were trapped. Caught up in something they couldn’t get out of without coming to harm. I’m sorry,’ she added, and she looked so worried, her features so pinched, that Daisy’s dread intensified. ‘I didn’t know who to tell, but Omari said you and Avery seemed close, and you’re so …’ Jazz let out a little laugh, ‘you’re so responsible. Usually I would go in all guns blazing, or I’d speak to Fiona and Ermin, or – I don’t know. I’d do something. But I get the feeling that it needs to be handled delicately. That it’s not something he wants other people to know. I wondered if you could talk to him?’

‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said without hesitation. ‘Or I’ll try to, at the very least.’

If Jazz sensed that Avery was in trouble, and that it couldn’t be dealt with head on, then Daisy had to trust her. The younger woman knew what she was talking about, and Daisy took experts seriously. She would try and bring it up with Avery; she would tread carefully, and see if she could coax it out of him.

She squeezed Jazz’s shoulder, then went to top up their drinks. Her secret holiday kiss came with strings attached, and her only option was to tug on them and see what fell loose.

Chapter Sixteen

The next day the sunshine was bold and made everything sparkle, inside and out. It was the first day of December, but in the manor’s living room, it looked more like September. Daisy stood in the middle of the space they would be using for the ball, holding her coffee cup and her plate with toast and apricot jam, the dogs at her feet, and took it all in. It looked different in the sunlight than it had done the night before, for their meeting.

The wide windows at the back of the room faced a forest of trees. Except at some point Harry – or someone he’d hired – had thinned them out, so the sunlight broke through in a way it hadn’t done when she was younger. The walls were cream, the artwork colourful but sparingly spaced. The furniture was new and modern, apart from the tea-chest table; the rugs were soft, and the floorboards had been lightened. Right now, the Christmas tree was giving it a healthy dose of festive shimmer, but Daisy still felt her blood pressure lower when she spent time in here.

When she’d lived here, this room had been a treasure trove. Her parents had decided it was too big to be the main living space, so they’d used the room next door, which was cosier and less ostentatious. But, instead of doing something magnificent with this room, it had been used for storage.

There were the books that wouldn’t fit in the bookshop, or were waiting their turn to be shelved. It had housed broken bits of furniture that needed to be fixed or refurbished. Her mum had been happy for other villagers to use it, and Daisy remembered stacks of chairs from the hall, spare toys from a crèche that had been run there, even some bike racks that had been bought for the edge of the green.

Daisy had loved exploring, even when she was told to keep out, that the towers of stuff were dangerous and could fall. But it had been gloomy too, never used to its full potential. Now she was seeing it in a fresh light, and she knew she was right: paper chains and a Christmas tree and string lights would be nice, but this room deserved more than nice. This room, her ball and the people of Mistingham, deserved something truly special.

‘What do you think, Terror?’ she asked the russet dog who was sitting closest to her.

‘That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?’

Daisy spun around, coffee slipping down the side of her mug, her toast nearly sliding off her plate. Her breath got stuck halfway up her throat, because Avery’s hoody was a dusky grey-blue that made his eyes look almost silver, and his smile was wide, no sign of worries below the surface. Daisy cursed her extreme response to him being there.

‘I was talking to the dog.’

‘I know.’ He shot Terror a nervous glance, peered around Daisy as if searching out his brother.