Page 133 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
Kate dashed out of the café, leaving her camera on the counter and the Pear Tree bell jangling furiously behind her. She didn’t stop to pick her coat up off the floor. She didn’t stop to say to hello to the people who called out to her.
She walked as fast as she could through the thick snow, across the green, through the copse and down the lane. She didn’t stop until she reached her front door. She jabbed the key into the lock, slammed the door behind her, and threw herself, wellies and all, across the sofa by the kitchen window.
She lay there for a long time. Thinking. Her head was in a whirl. Had he meant to kiss her? Or was it a reaction to his close encounter with the partridge? What did he mean when he said,Don’t go? Don’t go because he wanted to keep his old friend around? Or don’t go because he felt more than friendship?
She couldn’t let herself think that. She just couldn’t. The fall to earth if she allowed herself to hope and it came to nothing would be too much.
“That’s enough, Kate Turner,” she said to herself.
She pulled her face out of the cushion and stood up.
“No more of this.”
•••••
Kate wiggled her largest portfolio case out of the under-stairs cupboard and laid it open on the kitchen floor. Next to the dresser was a large chest of drawers that Kate used to store her work. With methodical diligence she worked her way through the drawers, dropping sketches and mood boards into the case, ready for the move.
The kiss kept invading her mind, unbidden, causing her heart to leap and her stomach to thrill. It would catch her unawares and steal her breath, scrambling her mind. She’d drop papers and lose her train of thought. It was a heroic effort just to keep working.
She sifted through folders and old handmade books. Kate picked up a book bound with scraps of William Morris fabric; the paper was thick, good quality, beginning to yellow at the edges with age.
It was a book of leaf studies: photographs, sketches in pencil, charcoal and ink. Some washed over with color. Some vibrant with oil pastels; an old waxy smell rose up from the pages. Actual leaves stuck in with glue crumbled to russet dust as Kate turned the pages.
A third of the way through, the sketches became all about one tree. The pear tree. Watercolors and photographs. Dried leaves and pressed blossoms. Blossoms taken from the spring, before Matt’s family were killed. Kate sighed. No matter how much distance Kate put between herself and Matt, the roots of that pear tree would always be tugging at her soul, pulling her back to him. She closed the book and put it back in the drawer. And went to bed.
•••••
Kate woke up early; it was still dark. She remembered being in Matt’s arms, recalled the taste of lips. The dark was full of Matt. She flung the curtains open, switched on the lights, and began to pack in earnest.
By lunchtime she had filled several packing cases, ready to be moved into storage. She had also written out a rental advertisement, which she would place with the local paper after Christmas.
Kate turned her attentions to her Christmas cake. Keeping busy was the only way to keep her mind from lingering on Matt’s lips. And his crazy hair. And his brown and gold eyes. And his slim athletic body...
Stop it, she berated herself.It didn’t mean anything. He has a girlfriend.
She kneaded the marzipan until it was almost too warm and soft to work with. Her woes of the previous day had transformed overnightinto a kind of wild hopeful excitement; it was, she knew, completely inappropriate and yet she didn’t seem to have control over her own thoughts.
She quite rationally put much of this down to being sex-starved and feeling trepidation about leaving Blexford. But she’d still had to hoover the house twice while listening to Christmas hits and singing along loudly, just to keep her mind from wandering.
It would have been easier if he’d just stayed mad at her. Then at least she could feel angry and wronged. She could leave feeling she had the moral high ground. But the kiss had turned everything on its head.
She’d dusted the whole house and scrubbed the bathroom until she was in danger of removing the enamel. She’d changed the sheets on her bed and washed the old ones. If she was burgled now, she could rest easy that the robbers would have no alternative than to declare her housekeeping skills a triumph.
She felt like someone had switched her controls to fast forward. Perpetual motion was all that stood between her and the abyss.
Kate started to get ready for her final date: the Twelfth Date of Christmas. She was meeting Drew at Fitzwilliam Park at six thirty p.m. by the Palace Royale coffee house. She watchedA Christmas Carolin the bedroom as she dressed. There was no point dressing up too much as it was going to be freezing. She slipped on her best dark navy jeans and Petula’s latest creation. She pulled on a pair of thick hiking socks and blow-dried her hair, pulling it up into a loose bun and pinning it, so that little curly straggles of hair fell about her face and neck.
By four o’clock she was perfumed and lipsticked and ready to go. She decided she would take a slow walk to the park and drink coffee in the Palace Royale until it was time to meet Drew. She shoved a book in her handbag—an Agatha Christie; she couldn’t risk anything with romance at the moment—and headed out into the snowy dusk.
In her haste to escape Matt the day before, Kate had left her warmest coat in a heap on the floor. She wore instead a gray three-quarter-length duffle coat and wrapped a stripy scarf in pastel peach, green, and pink twice around her neck.
Blexford hill, steep at the best of times, was impossible to get down without a sledge and even then, only the impossibly brave or the impossibly stupid would try it. Kate wasn’t chancing a broken leg before Christmas, so she took the long way down.
A series of footpaths trickled down to Great Blexley through the hillside in a zigzag, alongside fields and garden fences. In places the snow reached the top of Kate’s boots.
It was a quiet route and for the first time that day it gave Kate the unwelcome chance to be contemplative. The snow here was largely untouched but for the tracks left by dog walkers, and her only company were the sheep that baaed mournfully as she passed them, and the occasional surprised rabbit.
The paths were mostly lined by high hedgerows, but occasionally there was a gap and here the world seemed to fall sharply away to reveal the whole of Great Blexley sprawled out down below: twinkling lights, white roofs, church spires, and the sea at the end of it all, a strip of navy blue reaching up to meet the charcoal sky.
