Snowflakes at Lavender Bay

by Sarah Bennett

  ‘Oh, darling.’ Rising on her knees, Eliza wrapped her arms around Libby and held her as she sobbed out all her pain and grief over the loss of what might have been. When she finally quietened, Eliza sat back to regard her. ‘You’ll have to forgive me for being stupid, but I don’t understand why this has caused such a rift between you and Owen. Anyone can see he’s absolutely mad for you, and if you didn’t already know that yourself, then this surely proves it.’ Her hand waved towards the plans. ‘Look what he wants for you, Libs. Look how hard he’s trying to give you everything you’ve ever wanted.’

  Libby could only shake her head, gobsmacked at her friend’s blindness. ‘It’s not for him to give it to me, don’t you see that? I should’ve been able to do this for myself. I was doing it for myself, and he’s just swanned in and taken it all over.’

  Eliza frowned. ‘That doesn’t make sense, at all. He’s not taking anything from you, he’s helping you to achieve your dream.’ Her arms came across her chest in a defensive motion. ‘Do you think less of me because Jack’s building a workshop at the farm for my soap-making and stuff? That I should’ve waited and struggled on my own rather than adapt my original plans to encompass a better life we can have together? Does it offend your feminist sensibilities that Sam now lives with Beth and their combined income will allow her to expand and experiment the ranges she carries in the emporium because he’s now shouldering half the rent and bills?’

  Libby stared. ‘That’s not what I said, not at all. And it’s different for you two, you’re in love.’

  ‘And you’re not?’ Eliza snorted. ‘Honestly, Libby, you talk nonsense at times. Do you know what I think this is all about? I think you’re terrified that Owen will let you down somehow and that’s why you broke up with him in the first place. Ever since he moved in here with you, you’ve been looking for another excuse to push him away, to slam the final nail into the coffin of a relationship you’ve always assumed was going to fail anyway.’

  Anger flared, and beneath it a flash of shame which Libby stuffed back down immediately. ‘That’s not true! I’ve bent over backwards to accommodate Owen, to let him be a part of the baby without feeling like I’ve been trying to trap him into anything. I didn’t ask him to do this, I didn’t ask for any of this!’

  ‘Ask for what? For a decent, honest, generous man to fall in love with and embrace your accidental pregnancy while barely batting an eyelash? God, Libby, you’re so right. Why on earth would you ask for something like that?’

  ‘Shut up! You’re twisting my words.’ Feeling sick and sad and sorry for herself, Libby stormed out. Shaking, she threw herself down on her own bed. She couldn’t bear it. Eliza had never so much as raised her voice at Libby in all the long years they’d known each other, never mind spoken to her in such harsh tones. She didn’t understand. Nobody, it seemed, would understand. The tears came, and she let them pull her under.

  She didn’t know how much time had passed, when Eliza knocked once more. ‘I’ve got Owen’s stuff, and I’m going now. I’ll lock up and push the key back through the door behind me.’

  Too afraid to speak in case either of them said something that might rend the very fabric of their friendship apart, Libby lay silently on her side. A soft sigh reached her ears, then Eliza spoke once more. ‘We all love you, Libby, so much. I just wish you could learn to love yourself even half as much as we do.’

  Chapter 25

  He’d considered leaving town a thousand times in the past few days, and only Eliza’s pleading for him to be patient had kept him in the bay at all. Needing something to keep himself from going mad, or from storming down into the town to camp outside Libby’s door and beg her to give him another chance, Owen threw himself into the final decoration and renovation works on Sally’s cottage. Jack and Eliza were busy with preparations for their first Christmas together, and he hated being the spectre at their otherwise happy feast. When he couldn’t stand to be cooped up inside, he took Bastian for long walks over the windswept hills and cliffs surrounding the bay. The Labrador seemed ecstatic at all the attention, and Jack expressed his thanks on more than one occasion for keeping the big dog out from under everyone’s feet.

  Jack, Eliza and Sally had gone off to Truro in the family Land Rover after lunch for another endless round of Christmas shopping, leaving Owen and the dog to fend for themselves. Not being able to bear being cooped up inside, he clipped on Bastian’s lead, shrugged on a thick jacket and headed for yet another walk.

  Still feeling a little hollowed out, but better for some fresh air, Owen let himself in through the front door of the farmhouse. Laughter and chatter echoed down the stone corridor from the kitchen, loud enough, he hoped, to cover his entrance. Not in the mood for conversation, he’d made it a couple of treads upstairs when a voice piping high with excitement froze him mid-step. ‘Owen! There you are, you’ve been gone ages!’

  Plastering a smile to his lips, Owen turned to stare down at Noah who was practically vibrating with excitement. ‘Hey, Noah. Sorry, I went for a walk and lost track of time. What’s all the ruckus?’

  Noah clapped his hands together as he did a little dance on the spot. ‘Uncle Jack says we can decorate the tree tonight. We were going to start straight after tea, but I wanted to wait for you. Come on!’

  Unable to think of a way to refuse without bruising this sweet little boy’s ego, Owen took his outstretched hand and allowed Noah to tug him towards the sitting room. Chairs scraped back on the kitchen tiles and Eliza, Jack and his mum followed them into the main family room. A huge pine tree dominated the corner between the window and the Inglenook fireplace, the top branches almost touching the ceiling. ‘That’s a tree and a half,’ Owen said, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ Jack responded with a cuff to his shoulder. ‘Imagine how much fun I had wrestling the bloody thing into place without you here to help me.’

  ‘Sorry, I lost track of time…’

  Jack waved his excuse off with a casual gesture. ‘Don’t sweat it, mate. You’ve got a lot on your plate, I was only teasing.’ Leaning closer, he lowered his voice to make sure he couldn’t be overheard. ‘Look, I know Noah’s keen to have you involved, but don’t feel like you have to stay.’

  The sympathy in his gaze told Owen some of the bleakness inside him had leached out onto his features. He glanced across at Noah who was kneeling before the tree in a jumble of bright tinsel and felt a glimmer of something good stirring. Perhaps an evening of innocent fun might be just the distraction he needed. ‘Thanks, but I’m good,’ he said quietly to Jack before raising his voice. ‘I’ve never decorated a Christmas tree before, Noah, so you’ll have to tell me what to do.’

  Eyes like saucers, Noah stared up at him. ‘Not ever? Not even once?’

  Owen shook his head. ‘Nope. We weren’t big on Christmas when I was a kid.’

  ‘Oh, that’s very sad.’ Noah patted the rug beside him. ‘You can sit here with me.’

  Ten minutes later, Owen was almost wishing he’d snuck upstairs after all. The string of lights in his lap were even more tangled than when he’d first taken them from the cardboard box of decorations—though how that was even possible, he had no idea.

  ‘Here, I’ll swap you.’ He looked up to see Eliza extending a bottle of beer in his direction.

  ‘Thank you, God,’ he muttered to her laughter. Checking behind him to make sure none of the five hundred baubles Noah had tipped from the box was at risk of getting smashed, Owen scooted back until his shoulders rested against the edge of the sofa. Plonking down next to him, Eliza crossed her legs then tugged the tangled mass from his lap into hers.

  He watched for a few moments as her clever, nimble fingers tugged and teased the first section of lights into a neat, straight row. ‘How do you do that?’

  With a glint in her eye, she grinned at him. ‘Magic.’ She pointed to a section of the wire. ‘Hold it there so that bit doesn’t get snarled up again.’

&
nbsp; Her bossy tone amused him no end. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She flashed him a quick look then bent her head back to her task.

  Sally switched on the television and scrolled through the music stations until she found one playing non-stop Christmas videos. Grabbing Noah by the hand she boogied on the spot to ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’.

  ‘You’ve been hiding those moves from us, Mum,’ Jack said with a grin as he attempted to herd the baubles into a neat pile before they fell victim to some very enthusiastic jiving.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it!’

  The little glimmer inside Owen continued to grow as he watched their antics and a strong sense of rightness settled in his heart. He didn’t need the Blackmores and all their darkness and unhappy secrets, he needed this. To be surrounded by good friends who might one day become more to him than that. He’d have to find a way to heal the rift between him and Libby to do so, and he still wasn’t sure he could forgive her.

  As though reading his thoughts, Eliza gave his elbow a nudge. ‘Have you seen her?’

  He shook his head. ‘Didn’t seem to be much point.’

  Shoving the tangle of lights aside, Eliza curled her knees up under her chin and his heart lurched at the familiarity of the pose. ‘I know she hurt you, but you should try and see things from her point of view.’

  Biting his lip against the urge to demand why it shouldn’t be Libby trying to see things from his side, he settled for a grunt which was clearly enough of a cue for Eliza to continue. ‘Libby’s never had anything of her own—not really. Though she’ll tell you until she’s blue in the face it was her choice to stay in the bay, there was never any way she was going to leave her dad. They grew so close after her mum died, and I know the thought of leaving him alone was impossible for her to comprehend, so she convinced herself that everything was of her choosing.

  ‘I don’t think she’d ever allowed herself ambitions of her own, not that she was willing to admit, at least, and then she saw Beth making a go of things with the emporium and I think it stirred up a need in her. The teashop would be her thing, a way to prove to herself, and everybody else, that there was more about her than mad hair and an ability to sling chips into hot fat six nights a week.’

  ‘She’s much more than that.’ Owen was unable to hold back the protestation from spilling forth.

  Eliza patted his knee. ‘I know that, and you know that, but Libby’s always allowed other people to define her by the image she projects. If she looks like a misfit, and acts like a misfit then nobody can see the little girl inside still lost and broken after all these years. With this new dream of hers, she was taking her first steps out from beneath the shadows of the past…’

  Realisation dawned. ‘And I took it from her, just like she said. She let me see behind the mask, and I betrayed her trust by lying to her from the start. I thought if I gave her everything she wanted, she’d see I was in it for the long haul, but instead I ruined it because now she thinks I think she couldn’t manage to get it for herself.’ Owen’s head dropped back against the sofa cushion. ‘I’ve been such a bloody fool.’

  Chapter 26

  The wind howled under the eaves of her bedroom window, sending Libby burrowing deeper beneath the layers of quilts and blankets piled upon her bed. She couldn’t seem to get warm, despite her fleecy pyjamas and a thick pair of her dad’s old walking socks which came to her knees. Every time she got close to dropping off, the wind would rattle her window, or a creak would sound from somewhere inside the house, sending her ears straining. The familiar noises had never bothered her before, nor had sleeping alone in the house, but it wasn’t fear that kept her tossing and turning—it was hope. Hope that the next creak would be the pressure of a footfall on the steps rather than the beams shifting and settling in the storm.

  Idiot.

  Bashing her pillow into some semblance of comfort, Libby turned on her side and curled her legs up tight, trying to keep within the little cocoon of warmth her body had created beneath the sheets. She lay there unblinking for five more minutes before throwing off her covers with a sigh. Perhaps some hot chocolate would warm her up enough to sleep. Having settled the quilts back down to try and keep the heat trapped beneath them, she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her black fuzzy dressing gown and padded from the room. She only made it as far as the landing before stopping, her eyes drawn to the half-open door of what had been Owen’s room like iron filings to a magnet.

  Forget about him. Unheeding of her brain’s silent demand, Libby pushed open the door and switched on the light. She hadn’t been in here since the night of her row with Eliza and there were still clothes spilling out from the chest of drawers, still papers scattered over the old desk in the corner from her friend’s hurried attempts at packing. After two weeks of stubborn silence, it was clear to Libby that Owen would not be returning. She should sort out the rest of his stuff and arrange for it to be dropped at the farm. Thanks to her insomnia, now seemed a good a time as any.

  Refusing to question her motives, she spent the next fifteen or twenty minutes emptying the drawers and folding his remaining clothes into neat piles. She refused to think about how good he’d looked in the navy T-shirt she was refolding for the fourth time, how the stark lines of his tattoo had poked from beneath the edge of the sleeve, revealing that little hint of the dark, rough youth who lurked under the shiny veneer of arrogance Owen wore like a second skin. The old grey jumper beneath her fingers was just a lump of wool, not a heated reminder of the last time they’d been together in the hut. She didn’t long to go back to that afternoon, when they’d been nothing more than carefree lovers without a clue of how fate would turn their lives upside down.

  Abandoning the clothes—and the bittersweet memories trapped between their folds—she moved towards the bed. The covers still sat in a rumpled heap at the bottom, where he’d kicked them away on the morning of the Christmas market, she supposed, and one of the pillows remained on the floor knocked there in his haste to be up and about. Bending, she picked up the pillow and spotted a notepad lying half-hidden beneath the edge of the bed. Thinking to place it on the desk with his other paperwork, she picked it up and the words on the page caught her eye.

  Dear K.B.

  It’s the start of the Christmas market today, and there’s so much to do. Your mum will be selling her stuff for the first time, and I know it’s going to be a huge success. I’ll have to keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn’t do too much, you know how stubborn she can be! I wonder what it’ll be like to show you all the Christmas lights and decorations for the first time. I can’t wait to find out what makes you smile.

  Love, Daddy x

  Choked, Libby read the note through twice more, then began leafing back through the pages. The first half of the notebook was filled with similar little letters, and she had to blink back her tears to be able to scan through this secret world filled with Owen’s observations and wishes for their baby. Half in a dream, she wandered back towards her room and settled herself on the window seat beneath the old blanket her mum had knitted whilst carrying Libby. With trembling fingers, she turned to the very first entry.

  Dear K.B.

  I saw you for the first time today. Not that I could make head or tail of you until your mum showed me. You looked like a kidney bean all curled up around yourself, so that’s what I’m going to call you until we meet properly—K.B.

  You should’ve seen your mum tonight, she looked magnificent. I’ve always loved her hair, even when it was bright bloody pink, but there was something sophisticated about her tonight, like a glimpse of the woman who’s been hiding beneath the girl. If she ever lets the rest of the world see her the way I do, she’ll conquer it the way she’s conquered me.

  I can’t wait for you to meet her, I know you’re going to love her just as much as she will you, and that won’t even come close to how much I love both of you. I’m lying here in bed, wondering how I ended up this lucky.

  I’m going to gi
ve you everything you need, no matter how worried I am right now of mucking things up—of mucking you up. I’d pull down the moon if you asked me to, and all the stars too. It scares me to think there’s no ends I won’t go to to make sure you’re happy. You’re only a shadowy image in a photo, a little ripple under your mum’s skin, and already I’d burn the world to keep you safe.

  You’re everything to me, and so is she. I’ll always keep you safe.

  Love, Daddy x

  A tear plopped onto the page, and Libby quickly brushed it away, catching her nail in the tiny hole Owen had scored through the page from repeatedly underlining the word ‘always’. Holding the notepad close to her chest, she rested her forehead on the ice-cold pane of the window. ‘Oh, bloody hell, Owen. Now what am I supposed to do about you?’ The wind had dropped, bathing the empty promenade in an eerie silence, and to her astonishment a snowflake fluttered past the window. It almost never snowed in Lavender Bay; they weren’t on the right latitude for something like that, or so her dad tried to explain to her once when she’d bemoaned the lack as a child. Another flake drifted past, and then a third until soon the world beyond her window was obscured by a thick floating curtain of white.

  Hours later, she was still locked in the same position, eyes fixed on the excited children running up and down the promenade, laughing parents following in their wake. The snow hadn’t lasted long and had left barely enough of a covering for them to scrounge up more than a snowball or two, but they didn’t seem to care. The image should’ve given her joy, but all it did was drive home what might never be for her and Owen, and their own little one.

  A creak upon the stairs disturbed her. She was ready to dismiss it as one more phantom shift of the old building, when it came again, and she was up off the window seat like a jack springing from his box. Heedless of the pins and needles, she ran on numb feet out onto the landing and stopped short.