Page 18 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
“Good luck with victim number three!” shouted Matt after her. Kate flipped him the bird with her free hand and heard him laughing as she walked away.
“Charming!” said Barry, who was leaning against the café’s wall with a hammer in hand. Kate flushed.
“That was for Matt,” she said by way of an explanation.
“Obviously,” said Barry.
Barry was a bear of a man, as broad as he was tall, with a mass of long gray hair that matched his grizzled beard. He’d been a roadie back in the day and had bought the pub after an infamous guitarist from the seventies left him a sizable chunk of cash in his will.
“When’s the next date?” asked Barry.
“Does everyone know about my dates?” asked Kate.
“Yes,” said Barry.
Kate nodded. It figured. Nothing got past the Blexford residents.
“It’s tonight, actually,” said Kate.
“Not gonna make this one cry, are you?” Barry asked with a smirk.
Kate narrowed her eyes.
“I’ll try not to, Barry,” she said.
Barry bent down to Kate’s height; his blue eyes twinkled beneath a draft-excluding monobrow.
“Any of these fellas gives you any trouble, you send ’em round the Duke’s Head,” he said.
Kate smiled.
“Thanks, Barry,” she said.
•••••
Barry strode off and Kate was alone in the village square. It was just past eight a.m. Now was the lull. The early birds had been out already for their newspapers, and soon front doors would be slamming and children would be skipping and scootering and cycling to school, with their parents running along behind them, bundled down with lunchboxes and backpacks. But for now, it was quiet.
Kate collected some pinecones and dropped them into an old tote bag she kept rolled up in her coat pocket for just such an occasion. Someshe would drop into the hearth in her bedroom fireplace and some would be tied into Christmas garlands, along with cinnamon sticks and dried orange slices—which were currently finishing off in the airing cupboard—to be hung from the windows and the kitchen dresser.
She also needed to clear her head. She had designs to work on and a date tonight that she was less than enthused about. And the look of utter contentment on Sarah’s face the other night in the snow was still tugging at her insides. Why was that?
Kate tried to remember herself being that happy; she was sure she must have been, certainly at the beginning with Dan and those first few weeks with Rhys. But for her, contentment waned quite quickly to become a faint questioning, which bloomed into nagging doubt and ultimately wholehearted assuredness that it wasn’t right. Laura called it self-sabotage. Kate called it gut instinct.
“You can’t give up at the first hurdle,” said Laura, when Kate had ended her brief affair with James after he got mayonnaise on his upper lip while eating a burger. “That wasn’t even a hurdle,” Laura went on. “You dumped him for a small lip indiscretion!”
“It wasn’t working anyway,” said Kate.
“You didn’t give it a chance,” Laura objected. “You pressed the self-destruct button prematurely. This is a classic case of your self-sabotage.”
“I disagree,” said Kate. “A man is like an optional extra; you should only take one on when it is beneficial to do so. It’s like refraining from the fourth plate at the all-you-can-eat curry buffet. Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean you have to have it.”
•••••
As she wandered home the snow had all but disappeared, small patches surviving only in the darkest recesses beneath the hedgerows. Theweather had warmed by a few degrees and the silver frosts had turned leaf-strewn paths to mush and grass verges to bog.
Kate sucked the coffee froth through the hole in the lid, and the hot liquid followed it. She smiled to herself; the first coffee of the day was a joy unlike any other. She walked, swinging her bag of pinecones and stopping occasionally to pick up an amber or russet leaf, not yet withered to brown by the cold.
It was ten o’clock by the time she reached home. A wicker basket filled with carrots, parsnips, and a celeriac with alien tentacles sat on the kitchen table; her dad must have been up early too.
