The Christmas Stocking and Other Stories

by Katie Fforde

  She got out of her heap of covers on the sofa, dressing as she went, with a glance out of the big window that would have told her it was warmer if easyJet hadn’t already done so. Then she went into the kitchen end and put the kettle on.

  Felix, his hair sticking up at the back, joined her there shortly afterwards, smelling of toothpaste.

  ‘Morning!’ she said. ‘The black ice has gone.’

  ‘Morning.’ He kissed her cheek carelessly, as if it were part of his routine. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘My flight has been reinstated. I got a text.’

  ‘So are you going to go to France? We’ve eaten all your present cheese!’ He didn’t sound devastated but maybe he was hiding his feelings.

  ‘It’s hardly worth going to France now, but I should go home.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll get the Landy out and sort your car. It should still be drivable, but if it’s not, I’ll take you where you need to be and arrange to get your car back to your house.’

  ‘That would be great. I mean, great if you could get my car back on the road. But there’s no need for doing all that other stuff. I can do that.’

  ‘I’d like to do it. It would be a sort of thank you for all the work you did on the tiles and being so …’ He fell silent. He examined her as if she were a strange creature he was trying to identify. ‘So lovely,’ he finished eventually. ‘I’ve just loved spending Christmas with you.’

  Tears caught at her throat. ‘And I’ve loved spending it with you. I adored seeing the deer.’

  ‘I’ve loved every minute of it,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you have to go?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ve got to face real life now.’

  ‘Me too.’ He made a face. ‘It sucks, doesn’t it?’

  She laughed in agreement but she wasn’t sure what he meant. Was it real life he didn’t like? Or the fact that they had to separate?

  Her car took a bit of rescuing, but his Land Rover was up to the job and towed it out from where it was resting, its nose against a tree.

  At last it was facing the right way, on the track, and it had all Romy’s bits and pieces in it.

  She got in and opened her window so she could say goodbye. Felix leant in.

  ‘Hey – I’ve got a good idea! Let’s go to the pub? It’s on your way. It’s still Christmas, after all, and you could use their Wi-Fi.’

  ‘OK!’ said Romy, her spirits lifting ridiculously at the thought of one last drink with Felix, albeit a non-alcoholic one.

  He got to the pub before she did and was waiting by his vehicle showing her a space where she could park. The car park was quite crowded.

  So was the pub, but full of Christmas cheer and bonhomie.

  Felix was obviously known there. ‘Hey – happy Christmas, mate!’ the barman called. ‘Your usual? Oh! What’s the young lady having?’

  ‘Ginger beer, please,’ said Romy, admiring the way the barman had stopped himself commenting on it being her at Felix’s side, and not Lauren.

  ‘Same as himself!’ said the barman. ‘When he hasn’t got a chauffeur, that is.’ He winked. Then he slapped a couple of packets of crisps on the bar. ‘Those are on the house. Christmas present.’

  Romy couldn’t help laughing as she followed Felix to a bench in the corner that was unoccupied. ‘Do you think all his Christmas presents are packets of crisps?’ she asked.

  Felix shook his head. ‘No, only people he likes get crisps. Everyone else gets pork scratchings.’

  ‘It’s weird we both like ginger beer,’ said Romy, after they’d toasted each other.

  ‘There are lots and lots of things we both like,’ said Felix. ‘Bats, for example. We can see them in the summer.’

  Romy cleared her throat. Him using the word ‘we’ and ‘summer’ in the same breath was lovely.

  ‘So, if it’s really “back to reality” time we better get our phones out. Get that social media fix I’ve not been missing,’ said Felix briskly. ‘The Wi-Fi is strong here.’

  Romy would have been happy to ignore the outside world for a bit longer but as the Wi-Fi had been her excuse for coming to the pub and not just going straight home, which included having no heat or hot water, she produced her phone.

  ‘I wonder how Christmas has gone in France,’ said Felix. ‘See if there are any pictures?’

  There were loads. Gus’s younger sister seemed obsessed with recording every moment of the Christmas holidays. Maybe she didn’t feel she’d properly experienced anything unless she’d put it all on Facebook.

  ‘So, which one is Gus?’ asked Felix, poring over the pictures.

  ‘That one,’ said Romy, pointing him out with a finger.

  They scrolled through the pictures for what seemed like a while. It was hard not to notice that in them was a woman Romy didn’t recognise. It wasn’t one of his sisters; it was someone else. And in every picture she was next to Gus.

  ‘Do you know who she is?’ said Felix.

  Romy shook her head. She was feeling odd. It was quite obvious that this woman really liked Gus. She couldn’t tell how Gus was feeling because he was always facing the camera, taking part in the explosion of photos proving what a wonderful time he and his family were having at Christmas.

  ‘Want me to do a bit of internet digging?’ asked Felix. ‘Find out who she is?’ There was an eagerness in his offer that made Romy smile.

  ‘You can do that?’

  ‘Probably. If she’s not that up on internet security.’

  She passed the phone over to him. She could see he was dying to investigate.

  While Felix’s fingers danced over her phone, Romy examined her feelings. How would she feel if it was proved that Gus had met someone else in France and had obviously enjoyed her company? The trouble was, she couldn’t feel anything. If she really tried to feel something, she realised it was a sort of bland happiness for Gus.

  ‘OK,’ said Felix. ‘She’s called Samantha, and she gets on really, really well with Gus’s family. Ah. Her most recent Facebook post – do you want to know what it says?’

  ‘Of course! Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Because it’s a bit – well …’

  ‘Just show me.’ She took her phone. ‘“That moment when you’re spending Christmas with friends and discover that your friend’s brother is really cute.”’ And there was an emoji of a happy, blushing face. Underneath the status was a picture of Gus beaming at the camera while Samantha planted a delicate kiss on his cheek, his hand on her knee.

  Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. Then Felix said, ‘Back to mine then?’

  ‘Back to yours.’

  ‘Great! There’s a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with my name on it!’

  Then he turned her chin towards him and kissed her, properly, right there in the pub.

  She didn’t care how many people were watching them; she was lost in his kiss and the promise of what was to come.

  ‘Get your coat, you’ve pulled,’ she said, laughing, when he finally let her go and she’d got her breath back.

  ‘Who’d have thought a Christmas stocking could make me so happy?’ he said as they went to the car park.

  ‘Have to say, it’s made me very happy too!’ said Romy.

  Ginny had a headache and the taxi, ordered for them by the best man, smelt strongly of Lynx and pine-flavoured car deodorant. The smell made her feel sick, although that could have been from a mixture of too much Prosecco – which she never wanted to drink again – and general exhaustion. Across the car, Ben also looked worn out and nauseated. Considering it was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives and Christmas Eve, it was pretty bloody awful.

  The day was over and, although she knew she probably shouldn’t be, Ginny was glad; the whole thing had been more stressful then she’d ever imagined, but without the benefit of the wedding she’d dreamt of at the end of it – just the wedding everyone else had wanted. Still, she thought, not long now and they’d be at their honeymoon destination: the little luxury ha
ven in the New Forest, deep in the woods, that she’d booked last spring when she thought getting married on Christmas Eve was a really good idea.

  At least there was a silver lining to their unconventional timing: they were now on their honeymoon, and therefore didn’t have to spend their first Christmas with either of their families, neither of which they got on with. The more she thought about it, the more relieved Ginny was that she didn’t have to speak to her mother for over a week, and Ben’s mother ever again, if she could possibly wangle that.

  Both mothers had completely hijacked the wedding, guilt-tripping them into having people and things they really didn’t want – or rather that Ginny didn’t want. Ben had been mysteriously absent for all of the wedding preparations, leaving Ginny to try and fight alone for the wedding they wanted, and ultimately to lose the battle.

  Ben hadn’t even given Ginny a proper explanation for his absence, only vague excuses of being ‘snowed under’ at work, or being ‘offshore’ earning extra holiday time for their honeymoon. He was home for one weekend when he went on his stag do, which meant they hardly even saw each other, let alone had meaningful conversation. After months of the same, Ginny had drawn her own conclusions: Ben didn’t like confrontation, and was happy to abandon her to it.

  ‘Oh, darling!’ he said. ‘We have the rest of our lives together. Let’s just let our mothers have what they want. I really don’t want to fight with them just now!’

  ‘Does that mean I have to fight with them?’

  ‘No, just give in gracefully. Does it really matter, anyway?’

  With an attitude like that, Ginny really hadn’t had a hope.

  In a funny way the wedding would have been easier if Ginny’s father hadn’t been so generous. But while he was lavish beyond sense in some areas – he hired the most expensive videographer he could find – in other ways he was curiously mean. The wedding favours had been donated by a business acquaintance for whom it was a bit of useful publicity. This meant each guest received a miniature packet of cheese and biscuits to take home. Had there been some alcohol – a small bottle of port or something – Ginny would have been happier. But no, her father had discovered that if alcohol were included in the gift, the hotel would charge corkage. She could only be relieved that her father wasn’t chummy with someone who produced ball bearings or there would have been a selection box of them on the tables.

  Whenever she protested about any of the wedding plans, she was accused of being a bridezilla; in fact, this accusation was flung at her if she even expressed an opinion. ‘What do you mean you don’t want mustard on your sandwich? That’s ridiculous! Everyone likes mustard with ham!’ Ginny couldn’t even say that she thought hiring white doves was a ridiculous extravagance. And her saying she didn’t really like birds being too near her was dismissed as diva-ish nonsense. ‘They’ll be so pretty!’ her mother had said. ‘If you will get married in the middle of winter, you’ll need something to make the photos look half decent!’

  And so her wedding had turned into a giant showing-off fest by her parents for their family, friends and business acquaintances. If Ginny’s parents had a hundred guests each, Ben’s parents had to as well. Ginny hadn’t had the strength to object; she’d been allowed a couple of her closest friends but no one else who wasn’t in some way ‘useful’. If she had, she’d have had another earful of ‘ungrateful’ and ‘don’t you know how much this wedding is costing?’

  She dreaded to think how much the whole thing was costing and in some ways she felt she’d rather not know. However, she was fairly certain that if her mother hadn’t been so set on having the wedding she’d never had, her father would have made a contribution to a deposit on a house, which would have been so much better than a massively expensive ‘do’.

  Currently they lived in Ben’s flat. It was small, had no garden and, crucially, was within ‘popping in’ distance of his mother. And because she’d always ‘popped in’ when Ben was single, his mother didn’t see any reason to stop when he had a girlfriend. Ginny didn’t think their being married would stop her either. She felt spied on and criticised and was desperate to move. The cost of the wedding probably made this prospect even more distant.

  All Ginny had wanted was a small wedding in their local church, followed by a reception at their local pub. This did really great food and could also put people up for reasonable prices. But no, Ginny’s mother had not been satisfied by this idea.

  She’d tried to talk to her dad about her feelings, but he’d brushed away her objections. He’d been brainwashed by her mother into believing a humongous wedding was every girl’s dream, and anything Ginny said to the contrary was just her being silly. He took her protests that the wedding was getting out of control to mean she was secretly thrilled at the extravagance, but didn’t want to show it. If Ben had been around more he might have been able to make her father see sense, but he was never there! Now the wedding was over she’d have to confront Ben about his recent behaviour, but not tonight. She didn’t have the strength.

  Not only had Ben ducked out of all the arguments and arrangements but he had chosen his best friend as best man. Any normal best friend would have been fine, but Eddie wasn’t normal – unless you considered being a caricature of a best man was acceptable behaviour in real life. The jokes that were so off colour they created a whole new palette, the practical jokes that were about as funny as amateur night at the local pub, and the inappropriate asides that made everyone uncomfortable. Thank goodness her mother didn’t know what MILF stood for.

  ‘I suppose we won’t have to invite Ed and my mother to the same social events, will we?’ she said.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Ben. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I was just saying, it won’t matter that Ed offended all of my family and most of yours. We won’t want to bring them together socially ever again.’

  ‘Ed is a good bloke,’ said Ben, on the defensive. ‘He’d do anything for you.’

  ‘Except make a speech that is suitable for a wedding, rather than one that belonged at a stag do.’ But she said it very quietly. She didn’t want to fight about it. It was over, after all.

  Ginny caught a hairpin that had slid out of her bridal up-do and down her neck and suppressed her desire to say ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ She closed her eyes. As she relaxed in the back of the taxi, slowly winding its way deeper into the heart of the New Forest, Ginny tried to pep herself up. After all, she’d just married Ben, the supposed love of her life even if he wasn’t her favourite person at the moment; her parents had thrown them a fairy-tale wedding, even if it wasn’t the small church wedding she’d wanted; and whilst she felt hurt and let down by all of them, she resolved to try to forgive and forget. She only hoped it would be possible.

  She awoke to Ben saying, ‘Are you sure this is it?’

  ‘The satnav says it is, mate,’ said the driver. ‘Withycombe Lodge.’

  ‘It’s in the middle of a wood!’ said Ben.

  Ginny cleared her throat. ‘It’s on the edge of an estate – a country estate—’ she added just in case Ben thought it was the other kind. ‘It was the housekeeper’s cottage.’

  She forbore to point out that when he had been consulted on their honeymoon destination, he’d just said, ‘You do it! It’s more your thing than mine.’ She went on, ‘And look, your car’s here!’ Thank goodness the best man hadn’t messed up that bit. ‘Let’s go inside!’

  She felt revived by her doze and got out of the car, eager to see the cottage that had been her ‘happy place’ over the past weeks, when the wedding seemed like the most expensive nightmare ever. She hoped it would be a sanctuary for her and Ben, where they could spend the first few days of married life getting to know one another again.

  Ben dealt with the taxi while she found the keys that had been left, endearingly, she thought, under a plant pot. They were charmingly old-fashioned keys, no fancy seven-lever locking systems for this little establishment.

  On the
website the cottage had looked rural but very high-spec, with a Jacuzzi bath, every sort of in-house entertainment you could dream of, and a kitchen filled with glamorous, gleaming, intelligent appliances which could take the top off your boiled egg for you, if you knew how to programme them properly. There was even a hot tub somewhere in the woods.

  Ben had gone straight to his car and so she let herself into the cottage, briefly wondering if Ben should have carried her over the threshold. But as in her eyes Ben had done nothing right for months, she wasn’t surprised and only mildly disappointed. She also appreciated having a few minutes on her own.

  It was the wrong cottage; she knew that the moment she was through the front door. The address was right but the interior most definitely wasn’t. This wasn’t high-end luxury, this was – she looked around – well, old. Not old in an outdated way, but old like cottages she had once seen in a living-history museum. It was out of a different century.

  Firstly, it was cold, but she noticed it was very clean. There was a beeswax, lavender smell and she realised it must be polish.

  She went from the little hall, complete with old-fashioned hallstand including a mirror with age spots, into the sitting room. This was simply, even sparsely furnished. There was an inglenook fireplace with space for a kettle to one side of it, and what would have been a bread oven. There was a settle, pulled in close to the fire, and two wooden chairs. There was a small bookcase, which seemed of a later period than the rest of the room. On the deep windowsill was an oil lamp which, when she checked, proved to be still run by oil – it hadn’t been converted to electricity. The mantelpiece, too high to reach almost, had two candlesticks and a pair of Staffordshire dogs. There was a dresser with blue and white china plates on it. A couple of faded watercolours on the wall depicted scenes of farming life, haystacks, heavy horses, yokels wearing smocks. She realised it was probably the original room in the house; the little kitchen, which also led off the hall, would be a later addition.

  The room had a lot of charm, she had to admit, but it was definitely not what she’d booked. And – she was quite sure about this – she was not going to admit this to Ben. She was too exhausted, and he didn’t deserve an honest confession of the mistake she’d made when he’d contributed so little. No, she would tough it out and pretend it was what she’d intended for them all along.