Page 12 of Every Christmas Eve
Downstairs, I could hear my mum and dad laugh over breakfast. It was one of my favourite sounds in the world. Life was good for me and my family, but the big day at Ballyheaney was going to make it even better. I just knew it.
My heart lifted when I read the brief text message from Ben. I imagined he had woken up full of butterflies for the day that lay ahead, just like I had.
Let’s rock it 2Day, Lou. Can’t w8 2CU later.
If he couldn’t wait to see me again, I could have doubled that feeling right back, even if it had been less than twenty-four hours since we’d parted ways.
We’d spent the evening before arranging tables for the party in the blue ballroom, blowing up balloons for a display in the hallway where a photographer would capture guests on arrival, and ferrying boxes into the kitchen where Ben’s sister, Cordelia, was helping the usual hired chef to prepare canapés.
But I wasn’t only helping out as an excuse to be with Ben.
I was involved officially that year, as I’d been helping at Ballyheaney House all summer after I’d got the holiday job for a student helper there, which had been advertised on the bulletin board in our local supermarket.
I took it as a sign of our destiny to be together when I was the successful candidate, but in reality the decision was no doubt influenced by my assistance in the delivery of Little Eve the year before, as well as by my obvious fascination with the home’s magnificent design.
No matter how many times I visited, I viewed everything at Ballyheaney House with wide-eyed marvel.
The high ceilings, the ornate teardrop chandeliers, the decorative floor tiles and intricate woodwork, the huge oil paintings, the centuries-old tapestries, the luxurious upholstery on the curved mahogany chairs: I was both deeply inspired and in awe every time I discovered something new.
It was like a dream. But at Christmas it was even more special. It was a place that made me dance around a floor brush or sing into a feather duster. It was a place where I felt right at home, and where I felt like I’d found my tribe with Ben’s mum Tilda, Cordelia, Uncle Eric, Little Eve of course, and even Jack, Ben’s grumpy father, who loved to show me around the red-brick walled garden with its climbing white roses.
‘You know this house almost as well as I do now,’ Ben told me when I clocked in at Ballyheaney House as soon as I’d got showered, dressed and ready for the day ahead. ‘I must say, my mum is a super fan of yours now too. And don’t even start me on Uncle Eric. He thinks you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. He doesn’t take to many people, believe me.’
I blushed as I polished bundles of silver cutlery, while Ben folded red napkins at a round table in the drawing room. We’d found our own private little corner, away from the madness and rush of the other parts of the house, and barely paused for breath as we caught up on what had happened in each other’s lives since we properly saw each other last.
Which was on Christmas Eve a full year ago.
‘I missed you in the summer,’ he said to me as we worked side by side. ‘Imagine, the only fortnight I was home in July, you were jetting off with your family to Spain! That really was a bummer.’
‘I know, I felt the same, Ben, believe me. It was a last-minute arrangement for my family to go to Santa Ponsa,’ I explained to him. But what I hadn’t revealed was how it had only happened because my dad won a few quid on a lotto he was involved with at work.
However, Ben or no Ben, my summer days in Ballyheaney House were some of the very best of my life as I emerged into young adulthood. As well as mucking out the stable where we shared our first kiss, my job also involved grooming Sally and Little Eve, walking them round the grounds and helping to clean the amazing rooms in the house; and on my lunchbreak I’d read in the sun by the roses in the walled garden, which gave me the kind of inner peace that I feel like I might have been searching for ever since.
I was devastated when September came round and I had to give up my post at Ballyheaney House so I could focus on my chosen subjects for A level with a view to making the grades for university.
Ben too was knee-deep in preparing for his Leaving Cert in Dublin by then, so he rarely made it home, but as soon as December came, I made a point of offering my services for the biggest event on our village’s social calendar, with the ulterior motive of an infatuated seventeen-year-old.
‘We’ve been texting each other almost every day this year,’ I reminded him as I buffed up the cutlery to the sounds of ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ from the CD I’d brought with me especially. ‘I don’t think my phone has ever been so busy, but yes, it was a pity we missed out in the summer. Ships in the night, that’s what we are, Ben.’
‘Yet here we are again,’ he said. I didn’t need to look at him to know he was grinning from ear to ear, because I was too. ‘I feel very lucky to be back in the company of my bestie.’
‘Ahh, that’s sweet,’ I replied.
‘I was talking about Uncle Eric,’ he joked, so I gave him a playful nudge in return.
It was such a thrill to be behind the scenes with the Heaney family on Christmas Eve as they welcomed in musicians, caterers and the local media, including a very fussy photographer and a representative from the nominated charity who had arrived far too early and was now vacuuming the stairs while Tilda Heaney applied her make-up in her bedroom. Her husband, Jack, was off shopping for extra fairy lights as the decorator had brought faulty spare bulbs for the hundreds of lights around the garden, and Uncle Eric had just arrived from his fancy townhouse in Wicklow, dressed like someone from a period drama.
I adored Uncle Eric (which everyone called him, even Tilda Heaney), so I was very glad to hear that he liked me too.
‘Ah, there you are,’ he said when he found us tucked away in the drawing room. ‘My two shining stars of BallyheaneyHouse. But don’t tell Cordelia I said that. As her godfather, she’d be very upset and rightly so.’
‘Rather you than me admit that in public,’ said Ben, shooting me a glance as if to sayI told you so. ‘She’d send you to the Tower for that, Mr Darcy.’
Uncle Eric looked down at his very elegant, navy knee-length jacket, white frilled shirt and cream dandy-style trousers. The corners of his lips curled up at the comparison to Jane Austen’s famously dashing hero.
‘A gentleman always dresses to impress on occasions like this, especially when I live in hope each year that my secret one true love might walk through those doors,’ he declared. ‘Surely you aren’t wearing that, Benjamin? Haven’t I taught you anything in your eighteen years?’
Ben patted at his scruffy T-shirt and jeans with a shrug. I thought he looked extra sexy, especially in the bottle-green tee, which complemented his dark auburn hair and light stubble.
