Page 35 of The Christmas Retreat
When the door closed I thought of getting out of bed and locking it, in case she had an afterthought and came back, but before I could do it I had dropped fathoms deep into sleep and strange dreams of Noel’s Winter Solstice figures pursuing me into the darkness …
*
I always wake really early, and next morning I lay in bed for some time, thinking of the previous day and all the strange experiences and surprises it had brought. I had literally been pitchforked into a strange new world and would be living in close proximity to a diverse selection of people. Presumably everyone was hoping for what Nerys had described: an opportunity to recharge their creative batteries; a peaceful stay in the country.
But with Evie in their midst, about to root in the family history like a truffle hound, and likely to assume the role of the catalyst who causes a series of unexpected changes, things might not work out quite the way they expected, but more like the Chaos Theory in action.
But then, there might be nothing much more to find out about Arwen and her connection with the painter Cosmo Caradoc after all.
Then, of course, there was Rhys, a complication I hadn’texpected. I hoped I’d made it plain that I’d almost forgotten I’d ever met him so that he wouldn’t try and talk to me about our previous encounter. There wasn’t anything he could say about it that I would want to hear.
I’d tried to put any thought of our first meeting behind me long ago. I mean, it was such a something-and-nothing thing really, even though it had hurt at the time.
I had let my agent persuade me to go to my publisher’s annual November party. I’d had a big and unexpected success with my first Mrs Snowboots book the previous Christmas, and my second was about to be published. The party was held in the foyer and courtyard of a museum, which was interesting – it felt very strange and mysterious to be there when it was closed – but big parties where I knew no one really weren’t my thing and this was the only one I ever went to.
Of course, no one took much notice of me, for which I was deeply grateful. The lion of the evening was Rhys Tarn, whose first literary novel,The Labyrinthine Heart, had been mega the previous year and had won a couple of hugely prestigious prizes.
Our agents were friends, and when they moved our way she introduced us and Rhys and I fell into conversation. We were both very young, he only a couple of years older than I was, and both of us still surprised by our success. Left alone in our corner for a few minutes in one of those quiet eddies that sometimes happen in crowds, we just sort of clicked. It was an instant attraction, a feeling as if we’d known each other for ever … or it was forme. I’d never felt that way about anyone other than Will before then, and we had long since split up for the first time.
Rhys and I seemed to have such a lot in common. Wehad both got unexpected success young – he was an established and award-winning poet, too, before his first novel was accepted – we both hated large parties, we loved the country and he sympathized with my wish to live there and said he spent as much time as he could at his family home, which was near the sea.
The talk was just so natural and I could have sworn our attraction was mutual, especially when, as he spotted his editor moving purposefully in our direction with the MD in tow, he asked me quickly for my phone number and said he’d ring me because he’d love to see me again.
I scribbled it down hastily before he was swept off and swallowed up by more important people than a mere children’s author.
After that, I’d kept my phone with me constantly for days, until finally it dawned on me that he was not going to ring. Perhaps he never meant to, but had asked for the phone number of any reasonably attractive woman he met and our mutual attraction – that moment when our eyes had first met with a kind of astonished surprise – had only been on my side?
It was only then that I thought to google his marital status and found that he had been married to the artist Annie Ashwin since 2009. The name rang a bell and I dug out a Sunday supplement feature on New Young Creatives from April 2009. I’ve always been a great one for cutting interesting stuff out and putting it in my sketchbooks. And there was Rhys, among a group of others, tall, dark and craggy like a young Heathcliff – and there, too, was Annie Ashwin, a Pre-Raphaelite beauty with a cloud of dark auburn hair, large eyes and a short upper lip, dreamily gazing at him. They must have married soon after …
I felt ashamed then, realizing that, if anything, he’d onlybeen looking for an affair and then decided not to bother, andIcertainly wouldn’t have given him my number if I’d known he was married!
No, as I said, it was all something and nothing, a non-event, and I should be grateful in retrospect that he hadn’t contacted me and I’d really fallen for him before I knew he was married.
I didn’t need any apology or explanation; there was nothing to discuss. I only wanted to forget the whole thing.
And nor, I suddenly remembered with relief, was I related to him, even remotely, because Nerys had said that he was Timon’s nephew, not hers.
I got up and put on jeans and a warm, brightly striped jumper. Then, remembering what Evie had said about my hair, I braided it, which made the roughly chopped ends less noticeable, and went down to breakfast.
I was suddenly totally ravenous.
Arwen
Letter from Arwen Madoc to Milly Vane, Friday 6 June 1919
My dearest Milly,
So much has happened since I wrote to you before church last Sunday, but I will begin where I left off.
We all went to church in the big car, including Cosmo – and I am finding it easier to call him that now, since I often forget he is so much older than I, except when he has one of his autocratic turns and reminds me very much of Mr Rochester. (And, no, I certainly do not envision myself in the role of Jane Eyre, before you ask!)
I was introduced to the vicar’s three daughters after the service and the eldest, Lily, told me all about herself. She is about Edwin’s age, and has a sweet, sad face, rather like the well-known drawing of Charlotte Brontë. I remembered that Maudie had told me she had been engaged to the Prynnes’ elder son, who had been killed in battle. Cosmo and his friend, Mr Jones, walked home afterwards and thisis apparently usual, for Cosmo takes his Sunday lunch at Mr Jones’s house.
Maudie and Bea had been plotting to persuade Mrs Prynne to let them be part of the welcoming party on Friday when their invalid younger son, Mark, finally comes home, but she was too spry for them and made off to her car when Bea tried to buttonhole her!
On the drive back Bea was quite indignant over Mrs Prynne saying that she was sure Mark would be pleased to see all his old friends, once he had recovered enough.
‘As if I was just anyone, and we had not had an understanding and were practically engaged!’ she said. Maudie replied that since she was so young at the time, she didn’t think her papa or the Prynnes had taken the affair seriously and then, too, Mark had done the honourable thing after he was injured, by writing to beg her not to feel that she was in any way engaged to him.
