A Christmas Gift

by Sue Moorcroft

  She tipped back her head to gaze through the skylight. There were no stars to lighten the darkness. ‘It’s true what Blair said: it’s not her to blame for my family not having enough money. Because it’s me.’

  The rustlings that had been accompanying Joe’s movements around the flat paused. Then suddenly he was sinking down to sit beside her. ‘That’s hard to believe.’ His warmth was right next to her. Not quite touching.

  But when his arm curled tentatively around her, she gave in to temptation and huddled into him like a shivering kitten. ‘It wasn’t deliberate.’

  He laughed softly. ‘That I can believe.’

  ‘I had no idea how business really worked.’

  For once she found herself actually wanting to drag out the shame that had festered for so long.

  ‘I knew someone Dad contracted to had gone bust owing him a lot of money, but not that Dad was holding on by his finger ends as a consequence. He hid that he was pinning everything on one big job to stave off creditors and keep the workforce in employment. It was a job for local millionaires, Martin and Emma Luck. People used to call them the Lucky Lucks, but they’d accumulated their money through hard work, rising to partners in a London ad agency. They’d cashed in and bought Bellthorpe Hall, between Peterborough and Cambridge, for a less pressured lifestyle.

  ‘My family had a nice life too, as you know,’ she continued, settling her cheek more comfortably against his shoulder. ‘We were invited to a barbecue at Bellthorpe Hall one Sunday. I knew Martin and Emma were Dad’s clients, but I never had to worry about what that meant. I was home for the summer. The sun was shining and there was lots of lovely food. And drink. Have you ever drunk punch?’

  ‘One of those bowls of fruit floating in alcohol?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘They look innocuous. But they’re not.’ She groaned, the memory feeling cold and clammy inside her. ‘I had about four glasses and got tipsy. I was a nineteen-year-old university student, I’d been drunk before but I’d always been able to gauge the potency of what I was drinking. This time it snuck up and turned me into a loud-mouthed show off. I’m surprised I’ve never sworn off alcohol like you.’

  His voice rumbled in her ear. ‘I’ve never sworn off through high ideals. I’ve just never had the compulsion to try much. The smell reminds me of being deeply miserable.’

  ‘Right.’ She let herself be sidetracked for a few moments. ‘So if you liked a girl, but she’d been drinking, you’d be repelled because you could smell wine on her?’

  He burst out laughing. It was so sudden and loud that Georgine jumped. ‘You’ve got me there,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve never let a woman drinking alcohol deter me – unless she was actually drunk.’

  Not examining too closely why she felt a twinge of relief that he wasn’t religious about the smell of alcohol, she returned to her story. ‘Martin and Emma Luck had two daughters, Chelsea and Bex. Bex was OK, I got on well with her, but Chelsea was a couple of years older than me and she and I didn’t warm to each other. She had her boyfriend with her that day and they disappeared off on their own into the house.’

  She wriggled self-consciously. ‘After a while I began to feel rather ill.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ he said drily.

  ‘I didn’t want Mum and Dad to know I’d drunk too much so I sidled into the house too. I’d visited once before, but I didn’t know the layout very well. There was a loo on the ground floor, but that was being used by other barbecue guests, so I thought it would be a good idea to creep upstairs and get a little privacy. I knew where the family bedrooms were so I went to the other end of the house.’

  ‘I have a horrible feeling that I know where this is heading,’ he murmured, his voice full of sympathy but also holding a tiny thread of amusement.

  She groaned again, feeling as if she ought to be inspecting this memory through her fingers. ‘I opened what I thought would be a guest room, looking for an en-suite I could hide away in,’ she confessed miserably. ‘It was a guest room all right – Chelsea’s boyfriend’s room. He and Chelsea were stark naked, right in front of my eyes.’

  ‘Oops.’ His arm tightened.

  Georgine took a deep breath. ‘Chelsea was incandescent. She called me all kinds of names and because I was tipsy, instead of apologising and making myself scarce, I piled into the argument. Her boyfriend was standing there, clutching a pillow to hide his man parts, and I was standing my ground, telling Chelsea she couldn’t speak to me like that. Didn’t she have any manners? I was a guest. It was all drunken bravado of course. I was mortified, but I didn’t know how to make my mouth sober up enough to get me out of there. It was horrible.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘And then Emma arrived, having heard the commotion. She instantly took her daughter’s side, of course. She told me exactly how she felt about my behaviour.’

  ‘So you finally apologised and all was forgiven?’ Joe asked, not very hopefully.

  ‘That would have been too sensible,’ Georgine responded bitterly. ‘I marched downstairs, barrelling up to Mum and Dad in the garden to announce that Emma had shouted at me and they had to take me home.’ She cringed at her younger self. ‘It was a totally spoiled-princess moment. Emma arrived hot on my heels and explained to my parents that I’d invaded her daughter’s privacy and abused their hospitality. Indoors, she would have accepted a private apology and said no more about it, but now I’d made things twenty times worse by making a public scene, she was afraid she had to ask for my apology in public too. And I refused.

  ‘Dad was horrified. Mum kept trying to placate Emma, but she probably didn’t realise these clients held the fate of Randall France Construction in their hands either. Martin asked us to leave. On Monday morning the Lucks got in touch with their architect and said he had to line up another construction company, or cancel the whole thing. Sober and ashamed, I rushed round to apologise, but they didn’t even allow me over the doorstep. They said it was a bit late now and shut the door.’

  ‘Wow.’ He tried to look into her face. ‘Seriously? They didn’t make allowance for you being a bit drunk and big for your boots?’

  ‘Maybe they’d got on in business by not budging an inch. What came next was hideous. Dad’s company went to the wall. Thirty people lost their jobs and we lost our house, cars and the boat. Dad started selling things to stave off the bank foreclosing, but it was like trying to hold back the tide with a bucket. The day –’ she swallowed hard ‘– the bailiffs came and took the cars, I was there alone. Crying.’ Her voice wobbled.

  ‘You poor thing,’ he muttered hoarsely, pulling her closer. ‘And you were only nineteen? Somebody should have tried to protect you.’

  ‘Dad did,’ she admitted, feeling calmer now. ‘He said I shouldn’t blame myself too much because he was the one who’d pinned his escape plan on one job. Then Mum left. She couldn’t cope with the penury and certainly not with the shame. Blair just wept all the time. I feel as if I’ve been simultaneously trying to make amends and make ends meet ever since.’

  ‘And Blair and your dad still blame you?’ he sounded incredulous.

  ‘I don’t think Dad ever did. After he had his first stroke he’d moved us into the rented house in the village and we managed to live there on my earnings and his benefits. Blair just can’t seem to help bringing it up in moments of stress. She had this lovely life and I lit the fuse that blew it up.’ She tried to laugh. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean this to be a pity party. I just felt … I didn’t want you to think I was the kind of person who’d get the family in a mess and not care.’

  Joe’s hand stroked her upper arm. His voice deepened. ‘Does it matter what I think of you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied unguardedly. Then, embarrassed at being so direct, glanced around for distraction. She noticed patterns on the skylight above. ‘Wow, is that snow?’ It was quite wet snow, judging by the way the flakes made star shapes on the glass, but it was beginning to settle.

  Joe glanced up.
‘Pretty. I’ve never been here when it’s snowed,’ he said. ‘I care what you think of me too. When I was a teenager and part of the Shitland gang, stuff happened. The kind that could get me sent to naughty kids’ school.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘I used to lie awake worrying what you’d think about me if I got caught.’

  ‘Oh,’ Georgine breathed, disarmed by this frank confession, amazed to think she’d had this unexpected and unknown influence.

  ‘I took things,’ he admitted suddenly. ‘There was gang pressure and Chrissy and me were really hungry.’

  ‘You had to steal to eat?’ Suddenly her story was reduced to ‘the princess got her comeuppance and deserved it’.

  ‘Yeah.’ He looked away. ‘I was caught by this woman once when I was stealing a pork pie. The police were involved, but I ran. Then I got better at it.’ He looked straight into her eyes. ‘I found ways to blag food too. Once, a teacher took me to casualty because I had a huge egg on my head. The nurse asked if I was dizzy and I said yes. She asked if I’d eaten breakfast. I said no, which was the truth, and she gave me a sandwich. It was a revelation! I repeated it as often as it would work, bashing my head on a wall and going into casualty on my own, saying I felt dizzy. Then, at what seemed the right moment, I’d add that I hadn’t eaten that day.’

  He withdrew his arm from around her and turned in his seat so he could take both her hands. His brown eyes regarded her levelly. ‘I never stole once I lived with Shaun. It was only when I was desperate.’ A faint smile. ‘Only a few people know. The reason I’ve told you now is that I don’t want to do … this … without you knowing the worst of me.’ He leant in and brushed his lips across hers.

  Heat flooded through Georgine. It felt so good to feel the softness of his lips, caressing so slowly, so gently that it seemed to sensitise her whole body.

  She almost stopped breathing as she kissed him back. Never, with any other man, had she felt so hot, so shocked, so wanting.

  His mouth moved to her throat. ‘Georgine,’ he murmured against her skin. He lifted her onto his lap to be cradled by his body, firm against hers. ‘I feel as if I’ve wanted you in my arms for most of my life. I can’t quite believe it.’

  Her hands stroked his shoulders as she let out a quavering laugh. ‘Whatever happened to each of us in the past, here and now feels right.’

  And that’s when her phone began to ring.

  She groaned. ‘If it’s important, they’ll call back,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Sure?’ Joe settled her so snugly against him that she could feel the pounding of his heart.

  The ringing stopped.

  ‘Positive.’ Georgine nibbled her way along Joe’s jawline as his hand rose to cup her breast and she pressed against him, loving the heat building inside her.

  The ringing began again.

  Joe’s embrace slackened.

  ‘Hell.’ Reluctantly, Georgine forced her arms to unwind themselves from around his neck. Breathing unsteadily, she slid off his lap and searched around for her bag. Crouching beside it and pulling her phone from one of its zipped pockets, she answered, ‘Blair?’ aware she sounded irritable. But for goodness sake! To be yanked out of that tingly, heart-rushing moment with Joe was just too much – and then she realised her sister was crying. ‘What? What’s up?’ she demanded, alarm returning her brutally to real life.

  ‘It’s Dad,’ Blair sniffed. ‘I called to see him and he’s really poorly. I can’t rouse him properly. I’m worried about another stroke.’

  Georgine jumped to her feet. ‘I’m on my way. Pull the red cord and do whatever the emergency centre staff tell you. They’ll probably call an ambulance.

  ‘Dad’s ill,’ she told Joe briefly as she ended the call and grabbed her bag. She stopped. ‘Damn, my car’s at home,’ she said, remembering Joe had driven her back to work after the episode with the bailiffs.

  Joe was already on his feet. ‘I’ll take you to collect it.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ she said fervently, shoving her phone away with trembling fingers and racing up the hall. ‘Blair thinks Dad’s had another stroke.’

  He was right behind her, dragging her jacket off its hook and holding it so she could scramble her arms into the sleeves.

  ‘I can take you into Bettsbrough from here, if it’s better,’ he offered.

  Grateful at the way he’d switched to crisis mode when only minutes ago they’d been hot and heavy on his sofa, she gave him a hard hug. ‘Thanks, but I want my car in case I have to follow the ambulance to hospital or something.’

  ‘Then let’s get to it.’

  Collars and hoods up, Joe wearing his beanie hat, they dashed out into the sleet and snow, which was much nicer to watch through a skylight than to feel flying on the wind into their faces, and ran down to Joe’s car.

  Strapped into the passenger seat, Georgine stared at the snow driven against the windshield in the cold early evening, willing the journey to pass quickly so she could get to her father. Perhaps he was on the way to hospital already. She hoped so if it was a stroke, because time was of the essence. The prospect that Randall might now be further incapacitated and need different care, even a different place to live, seemed frighteningly real.

  When Joe pulled up behind her car she wanted to thank him and fly to her dad’s side, but she hesitated, one hand on the door handle. Her heart set up a pitter-patter but she didn’t shy from voicing the facts, though her voice emerged thick with tears. ‘Joe, I’m not sure if this is the wrong or right time to say it, but my life’s often like this. Things go wrong. I’m not the golden girl you used to know. I’m sorry if I’m being clumsy or rude. I’m too frightened to think straight.’

  His eyebrows flicked up. Then down. ‘I see.’ But his smile returned and he reached out to give her arm a reassuring pat. ‘Go then. Your dad’s your priority.’

  ‘That’s kind of my point.’ She opened the door and hopped out, the snow lying in wait to sting her face and slither down her neck.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me—?’ she heard Joe begin to say as she flung the door shut. But her focus was all on getting to Randall. Finding her keys, she fumbled with the ignition, jumping to see a figure loom over the driver’s window, then she realised it was Joe clearing snow with his hands. She cleared the front and back screens with the wipers and he stood back as, arms rubbery, she found first gear and released the handbrake. Joe was a good man, she thought as she roared off up the road. But now she had to get to her dad.

  Joe drove back to Acting Instrumental, thoughts whirling. Georgine had seemed to be warning him about not jumping into a relationship. For a split second he’d felt hurt that she’d pause in her headlong flight solely to warn him off. Then it had hit home that she was actually trying to protect him.

  It had felt as if she’d reached inside him and stroked his heart.

  He pulled up at the electric gates to Acting Instrumental and whirred down the window. The black iron gates swung open in response to him tapping the out-of-hours access code into the keypad, and he drove into the car park.

  When he’d switched off the engine he sat thinking, the only sound that of the occasional whisper of snow blowing against the windscreen. Apart from the site supervisor’s car parked close by, everything he could see, edged with snow and occasionally sparkling in the glow from the security lighting, was his. This patch of the planet, these buildings, this car, even those trees.

  Real and tangible, things he could touch and trust.

  Both he and Georgine had stuff in their pasts that made it hard for them to trust. But she’d trusted him for a few all-too-brief minutes this evening, her body soft and exciting, her emotional guard down. Georgine was real and definitely something he could touch – a shiver ran through him at the memory of doing exactly that. Being on the brink of acting out his fantasy had left him feeling slightly shocked. But so hot.

  Next time, he’d explain about The Hungry Years and the reasons he’d been reticent about his real place in the musi
c industry till now. He’d been going to do it at the end of his confession tonight but then he’d looked at her lips and his scrambled brain had told him that then was the right time for a kiss. Now he was away from her and could think properly, he knew that he could trust her with his secrets.

  And, maybe, one day, his heart. And a heart wasn’t a Christmas gift you could return intact, even if you kept the receipt.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Georgine half expected to see an ambulance in the car park when she pulled up outside her father’s block. As there was no sign of one, she locked the car and ran to the main door and up the stairs. There was only one lift and it was slow.

  Outside Randall’s door she paused, trying to control her breathing. Her dad’s condition wouldn’t be improved by her running in like a headless chicken. Several moments later she let herself in quietly. ‘Hello, it’s me.’

  ‘Hi, honey,’ croaked a familiar voice. And there was Randall in his chair as usual.

  ‘Hey, Dad.’ Georgine hurried across the hall to the sitting room.

  Blair rose warily from the seat opposite him. ‘He’s awake now,’ she said unnecessarily.

  Georgine kissed Randall’s forehead. It was hot and clammy. ‘So, what’s been going on?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Inhection, pobbly,’ he croaked, lifting his right hand to his left ear.

  ‘Another of those ear infections, do you think?’

  Randall nodded. Then he smiled his one-sided smile and patted her hand. ‘Cold.’

  ‘Yes, it’s snowing. Very wet stuff. I don’t think it’s settling much. You’re very hot to the touch.’

  He nodded, then winced and said something that sounded as if it might be ‘earache’. He was pale except for pink patches on his cheeks.