Page 14 of Christmas off Script
‘Please, can you take down the canvases in the living room so I don’t have to see them again, and change the lock screen image on my phone?’ Ella swallowed. ‘In the bath, after you left, I forced myself to look honestly at my relationship with Oliver, and…’ She took a deep breath. ‘It always felt a bit one-sided. Like I made more of an effort than he ever did. On the phone to him earlier, I offered to give up helping Michelle, quit my job and move up north to be with him. But it would have been yet another way I did things to make his life better, not the other way around.’
Leo was silent, keeping perfectly still as his pulse quickened in panic at the thought of Ella leaving Foxbrooke.
‘I haven’t seen Oliver since the end of the summer holidays and even before that he’d been distant,’ she said quietly. ‘I was so desperate to make it work, I didn’t allow myself to contemplate that our relationship had already been broken for a very long time.’ Taking out her phone, she unlocked it and passed it to him. ‘Use any other photo, just delete the one of him, please.’
Leo did, inserting a photo Ella had taken of one of her line drawings, this one featuring a princess with long black hair, her arm around a lion, the two of them facing forward as if posing for a portrait. He handed the phone back to her.
‘Thank you. I love that picture.’
‘So do I. It’s of us.’
‘Us?’
‘She looks like you, and my star sign’s Leo as well as my name.’
Ella gave him a watery smile. ‘She looksnothinglike me and that’s not what I was thinking about when I drew it.’
‘Ah, but your subconsciousdefinitelywas.’
She rolled her eyes, but her smile was less tentative. ‘If you say so.’
‘Oh, I do.’ He moved to the kitchen door. ‘Anything else you want me to get rid of?’
‘Yes, please. There’s a picture in our bedroom of me and him. I don’t want to see it again.’
He saluted. ‘Consider it done. Why don’t you get the ingredients sorted out? I’ll be back in a bit.’
She nodded, and he left the room.
Leo collectedthe canvas prints and the picture of Oliver and Ella from their room that he remembered taking, and hid them outside behind the garden waste bin. He would collect them and take them to the recycling centre when she wasn’t around.
Taking out his phone, his finger hovered over Oliver’s number. He desperately wanted to ring him up and tear him a new one, but what was the point? Even if Oliverdidtake Leo’s call, he’d no doubt hang up again halfway through Leo’s first ‘you fucking arsehole’.
Shoving his phone in the pocket of his jeans, he went back in the house. In the kitchen, Ella had lined up all the ingredients he’d brought, including eight bottles of vodka.
He clapped his hands. ‘Now, this looks like a party!’
She smiled. ‘I’ve still got the Mason jars from last year to pour it into.’
‘Cool. Are we starting with limoncello?’
‘Yes, but if your pieces of peel have any pith on them, we’re making separate batches. And I’ll make sure to write “made by Ella” on my bottles so your family doesn’t think my standards have slipped.’
Leo clapped the back of his hand to his forehead. ‘Madam, you wound me with your aspersions!’
She threw him a potato peeler. ‘Prove me wrong.’
He flexed. ‘Get ready to swoon at my lemon-peeling skills.’
That comment earned him a belly laugh from Ella that made his soul sing.
They stood side-by-side at the counter, peeling the zest from the unwaxed organic lemons he’d brought, and he internally breathed a sigh of relief. Ella’s world may have been crumbling around her, but here they were, bringing a bit of normality back into her life.
‘Are mine up to scratch?’ he asked when they were done.
She peered at them. ‘Not bad, Foxbrooke. You’ve upped your game.’ She pulled a face as she looked at the sixty-five lemons he’d brought. ‘Do you think we’ve gone overboard this year?’
‘Go big or go home? And no-one complains when they get it as a Christmas present.’
