The Perfect Christmas

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘I know, but there’s something I want to do first,’ he said. Taking the carton, he put it into the back of the car and then drew her into his arms and kissed her.

  It was a gentle kiss, almost without passion, but then he lifted his head and looked down into her eyes, and kissed her again.

  This kiss was far from gentle. It was a deep, searching kiss, a yearning kiss, and it started an ache inside her that hadn’t really gone away since the last time. And this time, when he lifted his head, it wasn’t sunshine that gleamed through his quicksilver eyes but desire, hard and hot and urgent, and it turned her to jelly.

  ‘Hell’s teeth,’ he muttered, and dragged himself back behind the wheel, closing his eyes and dropping his head back against the headrest. ‘I have to go back to work. I have a clinic. I have to talk to patients, and all I’m going to be able to think about is you. I’ll disgrace myself.’

  ‘It’s your fault,’ she pointed out, wondering if her heart would slow down before it gave up the unequal struggle and just stopped permanently. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’

  He rolled his head towards her and gave a strangled laugh. ‘Oh, yes, I did,’ he said softly and, sitting up, he started the engine, clipped on his seat belt and backed out of the gateway, turning back towards Audley and reality.

  And not before time, Julia thought with a little bubble of panic.

  She almost ran back to the ward, and as she went into Mrs Harrison’s room, Sally looked up and her eyes widened.

  ‘Good lunch?’ she asked, and Julia nodded.

  ‘You might like to go and sort your hair out—it’s falling down,’ Sally pointed out, and Julia looked in the mirror over the basin and groaned inwardly. It was a good job Mrs Harrison’s daughter was having a lunch break, she thought, because she looked thoroughly and comprehensively kissed.

  She pulled the band out of her hair, scraped it back again and twisted it up into a bun, securing it again with another twist of the scrunchie. Better.

  She turned and gave Sally a level look. ‘I’ll take over again now,’ she said, and Sally shut her mouth, handed over the charts and left without a word.

  Julia said goodbye to Katie the following morning with reluctance. They’d spent a little while at the farm with the puppies, and she’d had coffee with Mrs Armstrong and had tried hard not to get dragged into conversation about David.

  When they were leaving, his mother drew her to one side and said softly, ‘Think about Christmas. You don’t have to decide beforehand. Just come—even if you wake up on Christmas morning and want to come over, you’d be welcome. Or even on Christmas Eve, if you just want to come for a drink in the evening. We’ll all be here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Julia murmured, knowing full well she had no intention of joining them at any time but wishing that she could. She removed Katie yet again from the puppies and took her back to the house to wash and change before she left. The Revells picked her up at eleven-thirty, on time for once, and Julia arrived at work for twelve with the knowledge that the weekend stretched ahead of her emptily. She was working on Sunday, but Saturday was a yawning void and she wondered if anyone wanted to swap shifts.

  No. She had to do some Christmas shopping with the few pounds she had available. Should she buy David something? If so, she had no idea what. She didn’t have enough money to get anything worthwhile, and she couldn’t imagine he’d want anything she could make.

  Even a cake would be heartily outdone by his mother’s everyday offerings.

  Oh, rats.

  She found Mr Burrows restless and unsettled, and impatient to get on with the remaining months of his life. ‘I don’t have time to lie here,’ he fretted, and she had to talk to him again about resting to speed his recovery.

  ‘If you don’t rest, it will take longer, so you’ll just have to be patient,’ she reminded him, and took his notepad away again. ‘Now, lie back and count sheep or something.’

  ‘I’ll count bullying nurses,’ he said with a smile, and Julia squeezed his hand and left him to it, going into the room next door to see Nick’s patient with the perforated bowel.

  Mrs Harrison seemed to have turned the corner with her peritonitis, and Julia was pleased to see her daughter sitting with her again. She was waking up more now and talking, and her daughter sat beside her with her knitting and chatted to her when she was awake. The rhythmic clicking of the needles seemed to comfort the elderly woman when she had her eyes closed, because she knew her daughter was still there by her side.

  She didn’t need observing so closely now, but she still needed checking every half hour and turning and, of course, she had to have the physio to keep her chest and legs moving.

  ‘Wiggle your feet for me,’ Julia would say every half-hour when she turned her, and Mrs Harrison would move her feet a little to help pump the blood back from her calves.

  She got the daughter in on the act, and she proved to be a most useful helper, and reliable enough for some of the routine tasks to be handed over to her.

  ‘How long are you here for?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Till Christmas. She was coming to us, but I don’t suppose she can now. I’ve got the children coming with their other halves and the grandchildren, so I have to go back home, but I’ll be back again afterwards if she needs me, and she can come to us to convalesce.’

  ‘I won’t need to come to you, I’ll be going home,’ Mrs Harrison said confidently, but Julia wasn’t so sure. Her recovery was going to be long and slow. She was nearly eighty, after all, and she’d been extremely ill. Still, time would tell.

  The end of her shift came with the arrival of Angie Featherstone, and she handed over and went home to a house that seemed empty and bleak. She’d need to buy a tree ready to put up with Katie on Christmas Eve, and she had to go shopping for food for Christmas and also presents.

  She’d done the presents from Katie to her grandparents, and presents to her own parents and siblings had been posted ages ago, but she still hadn’t got anything for Katie.

  Or David.

  She tried to watch television, but there was nothing on that caught her attention, so she made a hot drink and went to bed, and early the next morning she got up and walked down into town to do her Christmas shopping. It was Saturday, two and a half shopping days to Christmas, and already by nine o’clock it was heaving.

  It was a horrible day, cold and damp with a blustery wind that cut right through her, and she ducked from shop to shop, fruitlessly searching for anything to give either Katie or David. Time after time she drew a blank, and just when she was despairing of ever finding anything, she saw an old print of Little Soham, with David’s cottage in it, in the window of an art shop in the middle of town.

  It was perfect, and she was just going through the door to ask for it when a sudden gust of wind caught her and pushed her against the wall. People laughed and leant into the wind, hats and scarves flying, and then suddenly there was a grinding, tearing noise and the laughter turned to screams of terror as the tarpaulin-clad scaffolding on the front of a shop toppled slowly outwards and crashed down onto the packed precinct.

  There was the sound of splintering plate-glass windows, and flying glass hurtled through the air in all directions, slashing through the panicked crowd and cutting them down like ninepins.

  For a moment there was shocked silence, and then the screams started.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Julia whispered, her skin crawling with horror, and as she looked around she saw blood everywhere.

  ‘Call the emergency services!’ she snapped. ‘Tell them it’s a major incident and they’ll need medical teams out here fast.’

  ‘Right,’ the man behind the counter said, startled, and she ran out into the street. Oh, lord, where to start?

  People were running round in panic, crawling on the ground and cutting themselves trying to find their relatives, and the screaming was horrendous.

  Then a deep, authoritative voice cut through the panic and silenced them.

&
nbsp; ‘Everybody keep still! Stop moving and wait for help to come to you. If anyone has any first-aid experience, please come over here.’

  ‘David,’ she said, relief flooding through her, and she picked her way across to him. ‘I’m here,’ she said, and he closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and gave her a shaky smile.

  ‘Good,’ he said, and he sounded stunned for a moment, then pulled himself together. ‘Start with triage. There are some hideous injuries—and mind the blood. Remember the risks.’

  ‘I’m a nurse,’ someone said, and another woman ran up and said she was a GP. Someone from a pharmacy brought out a box of latex gloves, and the first aid volunteers helped themselves, then looked to David for further instructions.

  ‘Come with me,’ Julia said, and they waded into the sobbing crowd, scanning for priority cases.

  ‘Help me,’ people were saying, but they could only do so much, and when the sirens sounded just moments later, Julia heaved a sigh of relief.

  David and a group of strong men had lifted the scaffolding off the people trapped under it, propping it up on things dragged from shops to support the poles so rescue workers could get underneath and assess the injuries.

  Now she could see him working on someone just a few feet away, and he lifted his head and hailed the paramedics.

  ‘Major arterial bleed here,’ he said, and they ran over to him and relieved him so that he could continue with his triage.

  He scanned the area and beckoned Julia, who had just tied a scarf tightly round a bleeding arm to staunch the flow.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, and he drew her into the shop immediately opposite the scaffolding, where they picked their way carefully over the shattered glass.

  The shop had been packed, and as the ends of the poles had come through the window the glass had flown in and caused mayhem.

  ‘This isn’t going to be nice,’ he warned, and she looked around and her hand came up to cover her mouth.

  ‘Oh, lord,’ she said, gagging slightly.

  ‘Come on,’ he said bracingly. ‘You’ve seen worse.’

  She wasn’t sure that she had. Following him and trying to scrape together her professionalism, she stepped over the decapitated body of a woman and followed him into the devastated interior.

  They worked for nearly an hour, and then David decided they’d be more use at the hospital. ‘They’ll need emergency surgical teams,’ he told her. ‘We could open up a theatre—will you scrub for me? Have you got time?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, all too ready to get back to the clinical order of the hospital instead of the pandemonium of the shattered street.

  Within half an hour they were in Theatre, repairing the damage done by flying glass and shattered shop-fittings. Some of the injuries were straightforward, others much more complicated and life-threatening.

  Pregnant women, terrified children, old men who’d lost their wives in the chaos and were worried to death—all came through their hands and were repaired and sent off to be slotted into corridors and odd nooks and crannies and sorted out by the police and medical social workers so they could be reunited with their loved ones.

  They were working until nearly six that night with only a short break between cases while the theatre was cleaned, and by the time the last casualty was stitched up and put to bed they were dropping with exhaustion.

  ‘Come on,’ David said firmly to her as she slumped in the changing room. ‘I’m taking you home.’

  ‘My clothes are covered in blood,’ she told him, almost in a trance.

  ‘Stay in your scrubs. My car’ll warm up fast.’

  She nodded. ‘I need to have a shower, but I just want to get out of here.’

  ‘Me, too. Let’s go to your place and pick up some clothes, and then go over to the cottage and wash and change and have something to eat. You don’t need to be alone this evening and neither do I.’

  She nodded again and went with him, content to let him take over. She felt too tired and shocked to argue, and her house was too empty without Katie. She grabbed a few things from her bedroom and ran back down, fed Arthur and went back out to David’s warm car with a feeling of relief.

  It was cosy and safe and there was something hugely comforting about his presence.

  The cottage when they got there was warm, because the woodburner had been alight earlier and the embers were still glowing.

  ‘You go and shower,’ he told her firmly, ‘I’ll get the fire going and start supper.’

  Julia ran upstairs and went into the bathroom and turned on the taps, but the water ran with blood and she stared at it and started to cry helplessly, great shaking sobs that racked her body and ripped through her, tearing her apart.

  ‘Julia? Let me in. Julia!’

  She stumbled to the door and opened it, falling into David’s arms, and he held her tight and rocked her wordlessly.

  ‘It’s the blood,’ she wept. ‘All I can see is the blood.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he soothed, and, leading her back into the bathroom, he perched on the side of the bath and turned off the taps, then pulled her down onto his lap, cradling her against his chest. ‘Shh. It’s all right. I’ve got you.’

  She shuddered in his arms, and his hands came up and rubbed her shoulders soothingly.

  ‘It was just so awful,’ she said emptily. ‘Just before Christmas. Those poor people.’

  ‘I thought you were under it,’ he said. ‘I’d seen you a moment before, and then I lost you in the crowd. When it came down…’

  He broke off, his arms tightening, and she slid her arms around his chest and hugged him back. ‘I’m fine. I’m here.’

  ‘I know.’

  He lifted her to her feet and stood up, then peeled the top of her scrubs off. Her bra followed, then her trousers and shoes and pants, until she was standing naked in front of him.

  He turned on the shower, stripped off his clothes and lifted her into the bath with him, pulling the curtain round them and holding her against him under the stream of hot water. After a moment she relaxed, and he reached for the shampoo, washed her hair and rinsed it and then soaped her, scrubbing her arms and hands to get rid of the memory of the blood.

  She did the same for him, her fingers working through his scalp, running over his body, lathering him until he was so clean he nearly squeaked.

  And then suddenly something changed, and they stood face to face under the stinging spray and their eyes locked.

  ‘Oh, lord, Julia, forgive me,’ he said raggedly, and his mouth came down over hers and he kissed her with all the pent-up yearning of the last few weeks.

  She kissed him back, pressing herself against him, winding her limbs around his and sobbing his name, and then he lifted her against him, propping her against the tiles and driving into her until she screamed his name and fell apart, her body convulsing around him, and she felt the heavy, pulsing throb of his climax as he spilled deep inside her with a shuddering cry.

  For a long moment they stayed there, motionless under the stream of the shower, and then David lowered her gently to her feet and wrapped her hard against his chest, his lips pressed to her head.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said gruffly, and she nodded against his chest.

  In fact, she wasn’t sure. Her legs felt like jelly, her heart was still racing and in the back of her mind was a nagging thought that wouldn’t quite come into focus.

  He turned off the water, stepped out of the bath and wrapped himself in a towel, then swathed her in another one and lifted her out like a child, settling her on his lap as he perched on the loo seat and rubbed her gently dry.

  ‘I didn’t mean that to happen,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry. And we didn’t think about contraception.’

  The thought focused.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It didn’t seem like a priority at the time. Are you likely to get pregnant?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I’ve got a
coil. I had it put in after Katie, and I’ve never done anything about it. I suppose it’s still all right.’

  She felt the tension go out of him, and he hugged her gently against his chest.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘And just in case you’re worried, you won’t catch anything from me. I’ve always been very careful.’

  She stared at him, shocked. It had never occurred to her to think otherwise, and she realised how long she’d been out of circulation. ‘David, I never even thought of it,’ she said honestly.

  ‘You should.’

  ‘I’ve never needed to.’

  He sighed and stroked her wet hair back from her face. ‘Come on, let’s get you dried and dressed and downstairs by the fire,’ he murmured. Lifting her to her feet, he towelled her briskly and propelled her into the bedroom. It was chilly and she dressed quickly, suddenly shy of being naked in front of him.

  Ridiculous after what had just happened, but nevertheless. Her body was nothing to write home about, her breasts changed by pregnancy and lactation, her abdomen still slightly curved below the waist from childbirth and lined here and there with stretch marks.

  Andrew had been shocked at the change in her, and no amount of exercise or skin care had been able to eradicate the damage. David obviously hadn’t seen it, but now suddenly Julia was desperately conscious of it and dragged her clothes on hastily before he could notice.

  ‘I forgot socks,’ she said in dismay, looking down at her cold feet.

  ‘No problem.’ He pulled open a drawer, fished out a pair of soft, thick socks and threw them at her. ‘Right, let’s get downstairs by that fire,’ he said, tugging a jumper over his head and picking up another pair of socks for himself. He ushered her down to the sitting room, tucked her up by the fire and poured her a glass of wine, then pulled on his socks, went out to the kitchen and came back with a tray of bread and cheese and fruit cake.

  ‘It’s a bit scratch, but it’ll fill a hole,’ he said, and set it down on the toolbox. ‘Tuck in.’

  She did, suddenly starving, and when they’d eaten their fill and finished the wine he looked across at her and held out his hand.