Page 48 of The Night Before Christmas
When Felicity first made the decision to do this, all of –what was it?– two or three days ago, it was on condition that she did not allow herself to feel guilty. This was her time. Something she needed to do. She had resolved to throw caution to the wind. Live recklessly. Spoil herself. All that jazz. Except that she did. Feel guilty, that is. It seemed to be a permanent state of mind these days. Shortly after her arrival on the island, a shockingly beautiful and apparently very tiny pile of stones in the middle of an expansive blue sea, the guilt set in in earnest.
For starters, amidst all the extremely last-minute.com preparations, Felicity had blown more than £1,000 on a luxury hotel room for the week, an act of extremely un-Felicity-like behaviour. But then again, what on earth was she saving for anyway? She had everything she needed for the life of spinsterhood that was once again beckoning and a lifetime supply of rescue cats at her disposal, after all. What was a rainy-day fund for if not to blow a grand at the gorgeous Bella Dame Hotel in Guernsey?
Perhaps she was having some kind of breakdown. Who knew?
Anyway, when she walked into her beautiful room and saw the four-poster bed and roll-top bath and chocolates on the pillows, the guilt left her alone for a bit, presumably struck dumb in awe and wonder or something.
Felicity had chosen this hotel deliberately. It was far enough from the places that made her heart stop but close enough to the places she loved, and yet not somewhere that triggered any memories itself. In fact, she thought, as she put the tiny kettle on, she could happily spend a week here and not do any of thethings she knew she really had to. She ran a bath and ate the tiny chocolates and wondered how long it was until dinner, and tried to pretend she didn’t know full well that she would need to get on with things tomorrow. For now, she decided, it was only fair to enjoy herself. It had been an eventful few weeks, after all.
She checked her phone. Still no message from Penguin Man. Her heart clenched at the thought of him. His blond hair. His twinkly blue eyes. A blond titan.
He might forget me while I’m away,she thought, suddenly. And then immediately cursed herself for being such a sap.Get up, Felicity! Go and do what you have come here to do.
First stop was the gin bar downstairs, where a rather attractive Irish waiter served her a delicate bowl-shaped glass full of the special gin brewed on site, mixed of course with the finest tonic water and all the trimmings. Not that the in-house gin distillery was the real reason she had chosen this hotel, of course.
She was just contemplating a second drink when a waitress – who looked about twelve years old – arrived and led her through to the dining room, politely egging her on while she stuffed her face with the most divine lemon linguine and sticky toffee pudding and tried to look like she belonged in a place like that. No one seemed to think it odd that she was alone. In fact, dotted amongst the elderly couples and one or two families in the room there were a couple of other ladies who looked to be staying there on their own. Although they were wearing rather more pearls than Felicity.
‘What brings you to Guernsey?’ asked a very smiley elderly man later, when they were all being served coffee in the lounge, satiated, and glowing from the gin and the roaring fire.
Felicity hesitated.
Oh, what the hell.
‘I was born here,’ she said, simply.
‘Is that so?’ said the man, raising his glass in salute. ‘How long since you’ve been back?’
Felicity took a gulp of her third G&T of the night.
‘Twenty-five years. It’s good to be back.’
And as she said it, she meant it. Sort of.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
They had leftthe island when she was seven. One day, after school, Tristan and Felicity had returned home to find all their things in boxes and a removal company loading a huge lorry with their furniture.
‘We’re going to a hotel tonight,’ their mother had said, with false brightness, ‘and then tomorrow we start a new life.’
Felicity and her brother had exchanged nervous glances. Their mother was smiling but it was that strange, fixed smile they knew all too well. Felicity started to cry.
‘What about my friends, Mummy? I told them I’d see them at school on Monday. It’s our prize-giving next week and we’re all getting a prize, Mrs Taylor said.’
‘We’re going to England. We’re getting the hell out of this place. And you’re going to make some new friends so don’t you worry about that.’ She wagged her finger in Felicity’s face. This was a voice you didn’t argue with.
Tristan was crying now, too. He was a bit older and had been much quicker to fully grasp the implications of this strange announcement.
‘I don’t want to go to England! I want to stay here. I want to see Dad! I am not going! You can’t make me!’
‘It’s lovely, you’ll love it,’ drawled their mother. She was slurring her words. ‘We’re going to Derbyshire. It’s really beautiful.’
Neither of the children could have cared less about what it looked like.
They cried all the way to the hotel. Then they cried and complained most of the night while their mother just sat on the bed with that same fixed grin on her face, rocking ever so slightly back and forth as they screamed and shouted around her. By the next morning, Felicity and Tristan were so strung out and exhausted that as soon as the hire car rolled off the ferry at Poole, they fell asleep. They slept all the way up the country and they didn’t wake until they heard a strange man shouting at their mother as she tried to park their old car at the bottom of what looked like a ravine. They had made it safely, which was a bloody miracle in itself, one they only really appreciated as adults. At the time, the fact their mother had been drunk at the wheel hadn’t even been on their radar. The much more pressing issue was that the lorry had got stuck across the road, there was nowhere for them to pull in and the removal men had to trundle all their worldly possessions half a mile vertically up the hill. In Felicity’s memory, it was all just a blur of fury and tears and rain.
Felicity had grown to appreciate it, as an adult, not just surviving the journey of doom but the beauty of the place they had arrived at. As a child all she could remember of her introduction to Derbyshire were those hills. Their aching leg muscles as they walked up and down, up and down, up and down, usually in the wind and rain and fog, all the way to their tiny terraced house perched on the side of the valley – although it felt more like a cliff – near Matlock Bath.
The town was usually grey and wet, and the rented house was grotty and cold and smelled of mushrooms. She had to share a room with her brother for the first time in her life. Theabsolute pits, that was. Until he decided to leave too, anyway. They had to walk two miles to school each morning and the other children looked down on them. She wanted to tell them all about Guernsey, about the life she had left behind. But no one ever asked her or showed the slightest interest. Not until high school, anyway. They had travelled halfway up the United Kingdom and now they were all alone in this strange new place, with just their gin-soaked mother for company.
