Christmas at Willoughby Close (Return to Willoughby Close Book 3)

by Kate Hewitt

  “My mother is hoping I’ll dance in this extravaganza of yours and somehow show myself to be a misunderstood Fred Astaire,” Roger explained wearily. “She has it all mapped out in her head—how I’ll stun the crowds, how everyone will suddenly see me differently, the way she thinks I really am, and of course the love of my life will fall into my arms.”

  “Of course,” Lindy agreed, and he gave her a narrowed look.

  “I’m not exaggerating.”

  “I doubt you’re capable of exaggeration.”

  They’d reached Willoughby Close, and Lindy hesitated in the courtyard. Twilight had started to fall, the sky a livid violet, like the colour of a bruise. “Would you like to come in for a refreshing drink?” she asked, daring to tease a little, and she was rewarded with a smile.

  “Thank you, I will.”

  *

  Roger followed Lindy into her cottage, half-wishing this conversation had never started, even though some strange part of him was glad he’d said what he had. He’d never had a close enough friend to say it to before, a fact that felt both depressing and exhilarating, because it seemed he did now.

  He glanced around Lindy’s living area as she shed her coat and boots; it was comfortable enough with a love seat and squashy armchair, a table for four by the French windows, but somehow he’d expected her home to have more personality—posters of ballroom dancers, or vivid-coloured flowers, or a hat stand adorned with wildly patterned scarves. Something to indicate the kind of vibrant person she was, but everything looked fairly bland and standard, like an upscale Airbnb, pleasant but a little boring. It surprised him—the lack of pizzazz.

  “I have Coke, of course,” Lindy said as she headed towards the kitchen area and Roger took off his coat. “Or tea. Or coffee, but I know you don’t like that.”

  “Tea would be pleasant, thank you.” He hung up his coat by the hook on the door, trying not to notice how womanly and warm Lindy looked in her snug-fitting jeans and cranberry-coloured jumper. He’d told himself he was fine with being friend-zoned, that in fact it was better for both of them. He knew he could certainly use a friend, as this afternoon’s conversation had testified to.

  Lindy went to fill the kettle, and Roger crouched down to scratch Toby behind the ears; the dog had flopped onto his fleece-lined bed by the wood burner, and looked happy to stay there for the duration, his eyes rolling back as Roger continued to scratch.

  “So,” Lindy said in a no-nonsense way that Roger knew meant she was intent on continuing the conversation, something he’d rather not do, even though he really had come to terms with who he was over the years. Still, spelling it out to somebody he cared about wasn’t doing his ego any favours.

  “I think you’re underestimating your mum,” she said, and Roger straightened so he could give her what was meant to be a level look.

  “How did you reach that conclusion?”

  “Your mum seems to me like a very grounded person. She’s not away with the fairies, and I think she sees things the way they are, her son included.”

  If Roger was an eye-roller, this would have been the perfect moment. As it was he just gave her a rather wooden look. “How do you think she sees me, then?”

  “As someone who can be a bit standoffish, a little awkward, sometimes plain rude.” A blush touched Lindy’s cheeks but she held his gaze. “And someone who is lovely and kind, with a good heart and a surprisingly gentle manner when it counts.”

  Roger realised he was blushing, too. Was Lindy talking about how his mother saw him—or how she did? Was he crazy to suddenly hope, wildly, that it was the latter—and that somehow it mattered? It changed things between them?

  He cleared his throat, a necessary action. “Thank you for saying so.”

  “I mean it.” She was still holding his gaze, and Roger found he couldn’t look away, although part of him was desperate to. Another part of him was desperate to kiss her. Friends, he reminded himself rather frantically. They were friends. And kissing her now would undoubtedly be a bad idea, not that he would actually be able to work up the nerve to do it.

  “I’m not quite sure how this relates to the possibility of me humiliating myself in a public performance,” he said after a moment. The kettle started to whistle, and then clicked off.

  “I don’t think she believes you’re suddenly going to turn into Fred Astaire,” Lindy said as she poured boiling water into two mugs with teabags. “I think she’s got more emotional intelligence than that.”

  “Perhaps,” Roger answered doubtfully. He thought his mother was sensible, but like everyone, she still hoped. Still dreamed.

  “I think she hopes that you’re going to surprise yourself,” Lindy continued as she fetched the milk from the fridge. “That even if you fall flat on your face, you’ll find you haven’t humiliated yourself, after all. People will be supportive and encouraging, and you’ll discover they’ve got your back.” She paused in pouring the milk to give him an earnest, sincere look, and Roger found he had no idea what to say, or even how to feel.

  No, he knew how he felt. Yearning and hopeful, longing for something nebulous and nameless and yet unable to articulate it, even to himself. And Lindy’s soft, sincere look was making it harder to act normal, if he even could.

  “You seem very sure of all that,” he said after a moment when the silence seemed to spin on between them, a golden thread Roger was afraid to tug.

  “I am, at least as sure as I can be of anything.” She paused, seeming to struggle with herself for a moment, and then added, “You know, I had a similar school experience to you. I wasn’t bullied, exactly, but I didn’t really have any friends, because we travelled so much, and Sixth Form was just something to be endured.” Another pause while he struggled to fill the silence, and then she continued, “And even now I don’t know that I have a lot of friends. Real friends, anyway. I’ve got plenty of acquaintances and people to have coffee with, go out for dancing or drinks, but the kind of friend you can call in the middle of the night and just say ‘help’?” She gave him an honest, almost bleak look. “Not so much. No one, in fact, except maybe Ellie, and she’s so busy now with her own life…” She shrugged. “So yeah, no one.”

  Roger simply stared, words bottling in his throat. Words he longed to say—how he didn’t have that person, either, and how he could be a friend like that for Lindy. He wanted to be that person, and he wanted to be able to say it. Yet despite the intensity of his feelings, the words wouldn’t come. They felt physically impossible to verbalise, a pressure in his chest that wouldn’t be moved, and so he simply stared.

  Lindy smiled wryly and handed him a mug.

  “Thanks for the tea,” Roger finally managed to say, wishing he was saying so much more, and yet knowing that he couldn’t. He only wished he could.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What we really need to be thinking about now, is palliative care.”

  The words seemed to fall in the unhappy stillness of the consulting room and then evaporate into nothingness. At least, that was how it felt to Roger. He certainly didn’t absorb their meaning, for he was still staring dumbly at the consultant, a kindly looking woman in her fifties with frizzy grey hair who had been seeing his mum from the start, with a look of blank incomprehension.

  “Roger?” Ellen prompted gently, and he realised his mother must have said something, and he hadn’t heard.

  “Sorry…what were you saying?” He turned to her, trying to focus on her face yet for some reason it blurred in front of him. Still, he knew it so well. A neat grey bob. Faded blue eyes. Skin that was wrinkly and yet soft, a smile that curled up at the corners.

  “I was asking Ms Weston if I should look into hospice care,” Ellen said, her tone soft and full of sympathy…for him. She was the one with cancer, and yet she was treating him as if he were the one in need of care and support.

  “No, of course not,” Roger answered swiftly. “There’s no need for that. I moved to Wychwood to take care of you, and that’s wha
t I’m going to do.” Belatedly he realised how aggressive he sounded.

  Ellen laid a hand on his arm. “Roger…the burden might be too much for you. And the last thing I want is to be a burden, to you or to anyone.”

  “There is a very good hospice locally,” the consultant supplied. “A very welcoming and homely place.”

  Was that supposed to make him feel better? “I don’t understand why we’re talking about hospices,” Roger declared. He still sounded aggressive.

  “Because it’s time, Roger,” Ellen said gently. He couldn’t stand the fact that she felt the need to comfort him.

  “But you’re perfectly healthy. I mean, you seem perfectly healthy. I know that is not actually the case, but…” His mum was fine. Yes, she was thin and frail and tired, and she often fell asleep on the sofa several times a day, and going to the ballroom dancing class was just about the only thing she could do all week, but still. She didn’t need to go into a hospice. Not yet.

  “Of course, Ellen, you don’t need to go into hospice at this very moment,” the consultant said in a strangely jolly tone. Talk about inappropriate. “I think perhaps after Christmas, maybe January or February would be the time to make that transition. But it’s important to be prepared, and also to contact the hospice in question, to make sure there is space.”

  “Book a room like in a hotel?” Roger filled in bitterly. The notion was offensive to him, but the consultant gave him a level look.

  “Yes, more or less, I’m afraid.”

  “Roger,” Ellen said softly. “We knew this was coming.”

  Yes, they did, especially when, six months ago, the consultant had advised no further treatment. But there was, Roger realised, knowing something in theory, in his head, and knowing it in reality, in his heart. The two were worlds apart, and it was the second kind of knowledge—immediate, overwhelming—that was hammering him now.

  “We will discuss it, of course,” he said, his voice colder than he intended, considering he was talking to his mother. “But I believe it is rather precipitous, to be talking about matters relating to hospices and palliative care at this stage in your illness.”

  “Like I said, it’s important to plan ahead,” the consultant reminded him as she gave Ellen a sympathetic smile. “But I think there is some discussion that needs to happen between you two, so perhaps I should leave you to it? Unless you have any further questions, Ellen?”

  “No, thank you, Gina,” Ellen replied warmly. “You’ve been brilliant. I don’t have any questions.”

  Roger said nothing.

  Neither of them spoke again until they were out in the hospital car park, under a steely late-October sky.

  “It’s not her fault, you know, Roger,” Ellen said gently. “You need to stop blaming Ms Weston for the fact I have cancer.”

  “Of course I don’t blame your oncology consultant for your cancer diagnosis,” Roger said, stumbling only slightly over the dreaded C-word. “The idea is completely nonsensical.”

  “Feelings are sometimes nonsensical, Roger,” Ellen answered. “Even for you.”

  “I don’t blame Ms Weston,” Roger insisted.

  “It’s tempting to blame someone, though, isn’t it?” Ellen said on a sigh. “Heaven knows I’d like to sometimes.”

  “I simply don’t believe it is necessary to discuss palliative care at this precise moment,” Roger said, sidestepping the whole uncomfortable blame conversation, which he definitely did not have the emotional capacity to think about.

  “If my consultant thinks it’s necessary, it most likely is.”

  Roger unlocked the car and opened the passenger door for his mother before he headed around to the driver’s side. “She sees you once every six weeks,” he stated as matter-of-factly as he could. “Granted she has the expertise, but she does not see you day in and day out the way I do, and so she does not have the familiarity with your situation that I have.”

  “Which I believe is exactly the point. You see me every day, Roger, and so you don’t notice. It’s the same with children—you don’t realise they’re growing until you look back and see a photo of them seeming so much smaller, or their trousers are suddenly three inches too short. You always grew out of them so quickly.”

  “What is the point you are making?”

  “That I have been growing weaker,” Ellen stated quietly. “That I’ve been feeling…like I’m fading. Every day I feel a little less here than I used to. It’s an extraordinary feeling…but it’s also a good one. When I die, it won’t be a wrench. It will be a slipping away.”

  Roger’s throat was too tight to speak, and so he simply concentrated on navigating out of the car park at the John Radcliffe. He didn’t want to think about his mother fading. She was only sixty-six.

  “I’m sorry, Roger,” Ellen said. “I know this is hard on you.”

  He shook his head, an instinctive movement. “It’s harder on you.”

  “I don’t think it is. I know where I’m going.” His mother had been a devout churchgoer all her life. Roger did his best to attend with her most Sundays. “You’re the one who is going to be left alone.”

  He didn’t need reminding of that. “Still,” he managed.

  “It’s why I’ve hoped to see you settled,” Ellen said on a soft sigh. “I know you get impatient with me and my obvious attempts, but you’re a good man, Roger. You’d make a lucky woman a wonderful husband.”

  Debatable in the extreme. Roger stayed silent.

  “I was hoping something might have happened with Lindy,” Ellen confessed. This seemed to be the time for honesty, but Roger couldn’t rise to his mother’s heartfelt level.

  “We’re just friends.”

  “That’s a good basis for more—”

  “I don’t think there’s going to be more, Mum. Sorry.” Despite—or perhaps because of—their heartfelt conversation a few days ago. He’d talked far more honestly with Lindy than he had with anyone else in his entire life, and he’d felt, or at least hoped, that it had been the same for her, based on what she’d said.

  And yet despite that, they were still clearly friends. Just friends. They’d had a lovely time drinking tea and chatting once that brief intensity had passed, but Roger knew he was still firmly in the friend zone, and he definitely didn’t have either the expertise or confidence to attempt to remove himself from that area.

  “Well, you never know,” Ellen said with a firm upbeatness that was her trademark tone. “Don’t give up hope quite yet, sweetheart.”

  The fact that his mother knew he had any hope was humiliating, although unsurprising. Once again Roger didn’t reply.

  *

  He could have gone back to work after the appointment, and in fact he’d been intending to, but by the time Ellen was settled back in Wychwood, Roger knew he didn’t feel like logging a few hours at the office, crunching numbers. The reality of his mother’s situation was starting to penetrate the dazed numbness he’d been feeling since Ms Weston had delivered the news about palliative care—and it was being replaced with a swamping sense of desolation he couldn’t bear to acknowledge, never mind actually feel.

  And yet he did feel it—it permeated every pore, took over every sense. It was like a fog surrounding him, claiming him, no matter how he tried to fight against it. A man his age shouldn’t feel this devastated, he told himself, to no avail. Losing one’s parents as an adult was the expected course of events. It was natural, more natural than the reverse, at least.

  And yet everything about it felt wrong.

  “You don’t have to fuss over me,” Ellen chided him as he tried to push a cheese scone on her for the third time that afternoon. “Really, Roger, I’m all right. I think I’d just like to sleep.”

  Which he was keeping her from. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But call me if you need anything.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  It was four o’clock on a chilly, grey afternoon, and Roger had nothing to do. He left his mother’s cottage and w
alked down Wychwood’s high street, feeling at a loss. He was caught up on housework and cooking, laundry and ironing, and the weather wasn’t welcoming for a walk. Besides, wandering alone through the woods or along the river would just remind him of Lindy, and in the state he was in, he couldn’t bear to think about her—her friendliness, his mother’s wishes. His own hopes, because yes, he hoped, even though he had no real reason to.

  He kept walking down the street, with nowhere to go, feeling lost in a way that had nothing to do with his physical location. His gaze blurred as he took in the quaint shops, the people hurrying to and fro, the sun blotted behind thick grey cloud. Then he focused on the Tudor-looking building in front of him—The Three Pennies, Wychwood’s remaining pub.

  Roger had never been inside; he wasn’t particularly a pub man, although he occasionally made himself go out with some co-workers in Oxford when they went to the effort of asking him. Yet now he headed into The Three Pennies, resolute and on his own. He needed a drink.

  *

  “It’s not even five,” Emily protested laughingly as the four women headed into The Three Pennies on a wave of reckless bonhomie, with Lindy taking up the rear.

  “It’ll be five by the time we get our drinks,” Ava answered blithely. “Or almost. And I’m not even drinking, so the rest of you lot better be, so I can at least watch.”

  “That sounds a bit weird,” Alice teased.

  It had been Ava’s idea to go out to the pub at four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon; Lindy had been doing some paperwork at home when Ava had marched up to her door.

  “I’m summoning the troops,” she’d announced. “I’ve got baby brain and swollen ankles and stretch marks, and I need sympathy.”

  “Okay,” Lindy had said gamely enough. She didn’t know Ava all that well, having only socialised with her in groups, and frankly she was still a bit intimidated by her oozing sensuality and confidence, even when she was six months pregnant, but she was determined to accept any and all invitations, especially after her unexpected confession to Roger that she didn’t really have good friends.