‘Oh Lord, no! I couldn’t be bothered with all that and no doubt those government assessors wouldn’t look twice at me anyway. I’m perfectly mobile. It’s just that my steering is shot.’
‘But they’d have to give you some disability help if it affects your day-to-day living, wouldn’t they? Benefits or equipment or something?’
‘My dear child, people with genuine disabilities are being sent packing – you see it every day on the news. Mine’s an inconvenient trifle. Most of the time I manage perfectly well with a helping hand and you’re doing a marvellous job of that right now.’
Esme wondered vaguely how on earth Hortense was going to manage on snow and ice in Lapland if she couldn’t manage on solid ground but she thought better of saying so. She assumed Hortense must have considered it at some point and decided it wasn’t an issue.
Hortense hardly took a breath as she talked… and talked… and talked… and as the coffee shop appeared in front of them, Esme realised that although Hortense hadn’t shut up the whole time she hadn’t really said anything at all – at least, nothing of consequence.
‘You must forgive me,’ Hortense said, seeming to read Esme’s thoughts. ‘I’m alone at home and I take full advantage when I have the opportunity for a little social interaction. I’m not looking for the pity violins, of course, but I simply miss having someone in the house to talk to.’
‘You live alone?’
‘I looked after my mother for years, and by the time she died I was too old and spinsterly to go about getting a man.’
‘What was the matter with your mum?’
‘No idea,’ Hortense said briskly. ‘She just always seemed to want something or other. Barely put a toe out of bed during her last few years.’
‘Oh… and your dad… I mean, did he die?’
‘Oh dear Lord, no! Mummy threw him out – just like that. Some trifling affair but she had a temper like a sunburnt boar on her. Last I heard he was in Patagonia… Papua New Guinea…? Somewhere frightfully exotic and beginning with the letter P at any rate. I expect he breathed his last there too but I never heard about it.’
Esme tried to form a reply but what could she say to that?
‘Ah!’ Hortense exclaimed, nudging Esme. ‘Looks like the eagle has landed. Two rather handsome eagles, in fact!’
Sitting at a table, engaged in easy conversation, Esme recognised Zach and Brian. Except that Brian had clearly been carefully selective of his online photo to show a rather more flattering version of himself that had to be at least ten years out of date, while Zach’s had done him a grave disservice. In fact, Esme couldn’t help a double take. It was the Zach she recognised from his online profile photo but about twenty times hotter. His dark hair, while flecked with the odd strand of grey, was thick and wavy, and his grey-blue eyes seemed to smile even when he didn’t, and although his full mouth had a natural crookedness to it, something about that imperfection was perfectly adorable. It was hard to tell as he sat at the table but Esme would have bet a decent amount of money that he was tall too, and he filled his soft cotton shirt well.
‘How lovely to see you at last!’ Hortense called from across the coffee shop, and at least a dozen confused faces looked up from their own tables as Hortense trotted through them now, dragging Esme behind rather than leaning on her for support. Evidently, being excited meant she could walk without mishap.
Both Zach and Brian looked up at the same time and broke into broad smiles.
‘We were just debating whether you two would come,’ Brian said in a gruff voice with a northern accent that was hard to place. It could have been somewhere around Tyneside, and Esme resolved to ask when she knew him better.
‘Dear boy, wild horses wouldn’t keep us away,’ Hortense said. ‘Would they, Esme?’ She patted her arm, smiling broadly at the assembled party as if she’d never been so overjoyed to see anyone in her life. ‘Esme and I bumped into one another in the duty free,’ she continued. ‘I’d say she rather saved my bacon. Do you know how much the perfume that I almost bought was?’
‘How much?’ Zach asked.
‘Hideously expensive!’ Hortense cried. ‘Really too much. I honestly don’t know how these people justify it! A bit of dead old flowers and deer sweat and they want seventy pounds for it!’
‘They don’t need to justify it,’ Zach said, shooting Esme a conspiratorial smile. It looked like he’d got the measure of Hortense already. ‘Their brand is enough justification as far as they’re concerned – it’s all about conspicuous consumption, isn’t it? Would you like something to drink?’ he asked, gesturing for the newcomers to sit.
‘I’ll get them …’ Esme began, but he waved away the offer.
‘Honestly, it’d be my pleasure. I’m getting a fresh one anyway and we have a good hour before boarding.’
Esme relaxed into a smile. ‘In that case a flat white would be lovely, thank you.’
‘Black coffee for me,’ Hortense said. ‘The blacker the better. If it’s so black light can’t escape, that’s perfect.’
Brian added a request to the order and Zach got up. Esme stood up too.
‘I’ll come and help you carry it all back to the table,’ she said.
‘Right, that’d be good – thanks.’
They left Hortense making herself comfortable with Brian and went to join the queue at the counter. Esme glanced back and could see them engaged in conversation now, getting to know each other, she supposed.
‘I think Hortense is going to be a handful,’ Zach said in a low voice.
Esme turned to him. ‘I’m glad you’ve said it. She’s absolutely lovely but a bit…’
‘Full on?’
‘I suppose so. But then it’s better than being moody and miserable.’
‘I don’t doubt she’s going to be hilarious but I think we might well need another holiday when we get home to recover from this one. Brian seems like a top bloke too. I’m glad you decided to come,’ he added, pulling her back from her thoughts.
‘I thought I ought to in the end.’
‘But you weren’t sure?’
Esme shook her head. ‘I’ve never travelled alone before. I don’t know what’s been scarier – deciding to do the holiday alone or deciding to meet you guys instead.’
‘And do you feel you’ve made the right choice?’ His eyes were gently teasing, as if he was about to share the punchline of the best joke in the world.
Esme smiled at him. ‘I hope so. Yes – I think so. I could hardly say anything else to you, could I? It’d be a great way to offend you before we’d even got on the plane.’
‘It’d take a lot more than that to offend me.’ He sunk his hands into his pockets and smiled down at her. Now that she was standing next to him she realised that her hunch had been right – he really was quite tall. A comforting sort of tall.
Around them china clinked on china and metal on metal and the low hum of conversation was overlaid by the sounds of the baristas shouting orders at each other and the coffee machines chugging and hissing. The air was spicy and warm and rich and sweet. It could have been a coffee shop in any town, apart from the televisions hanging from the walls listing the departures of various flights and the broad windows showing the runway where planes taxied to and fro. It was hot too, compared to the brisk wind outside the airport terminal, and Esme wished she’d taken off her coat before coming to the counter with Zach as her cheeks blazed. She wanted to ask why he was travelling alone. Did it mean he had no one? It seemed so unlikely talking to him now – so open, so agreeable. Not to mention handsome, although Esme was trying hard not to notice that aspect and her guilty thoughts quickly turned back to Warren, at his desk working hard and completely oblivious – for now – of her betrayal. It didn’t feel quite like that to her, but in light of the conversations they’d had about this trip it was the way he’d see it once he discovered she’d gone anyway. So much for compromise, she thought wryly. She’d failed spectacularly there.
‘Flat
white you said?’
Zach’s innocent question wrenched her back from the whirlpool of guilt she was about to get sucked into.
‘Please. And Hortense’s was black.’
‘Yes, how could I forget that?’ He grinned.
He repeated the order to the barista who nodded and took payment before flitting off to prepare everything.
Zach leaned against the counter. ‘I love the smell of fresh-ground coffee, don’t you? I think if I lost my sense of smell then the smell of coffee would be the thing I’d miss most.’
‘I’ve never really thought about it.’
‘I must have about ten gallons a day when I’m working. I don’t suppose it’s doing me much good but I generally run out of adrenaline by ten in the morning so it has to be good strong coffee.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Theatre producer.’
Esme smiled. ‘Wow! So you must meet loads of famous people?’
‘It’s not quite that glamorous,’ he said with a soft laugh. ‘It’s more small-scale productions, niche stuff, provincial theatres, nationwide tours – that sort of thing. I’m hardly Cameron Mackintosh.’
‘Still, it must be quite exciting.’
‘It keeps you on your toes, that’s for sure. And you do get a massive sense of pride when you finally see a production come together – that feeling never gets old. I must love it, but sometimes when I’m phoning people at one in the morning because some huge disaster has befallen us the day before opening night I have to wonder if I’m sane.’
‘I’d love to do something like that.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Nothing right now. I’m between careers. Which means I don’t know which minimum wage job I’m going to get next.’
‘Oh. I suppose that might be quite worrying?’
Esme’s mind went to all the other, far more pressing issues in her life right now, and she shook her head. ‘It should be, but right now I’m not stressing about it. I’m sure I’ll get something soon.’
‘The philosophical approach. I generally find it’s the best one to adopt. Enjoy your holiday and then worry about job hunting.’
‘That’s exactly what I intend to do.’
He folded his arms and regarded her with what appeared to be some amusement. ‘Do you feel like running off yet?’
‘Running off?’
‘From here. Us lot. I only ask because this is probably your last chance – once we’re on that plane together I reckon you’re stuck with us. And I have a feeling it’s going to get lively,’ he added, angling his head across the coffee shop.
Esme looked over at Brian and Hortense. Their conversation had swiftly moved on from shy smiles and niceties and they now seemed to be embroiled in some heated debate. Esme and Zach had only left them alone for two minutes.
‘Do you think they’re arguing already?’ Zach asked.
‘It’s hard to tell. If they are it doesn’t look as if it’s getting too violent yet.’
Zach laughed. ‘We might have to keep an eye on them this week.’
‘Like a pair of toddlers?’
‘Something like that,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve only chatted to Brian for ten minutes or so, but I can tell from those ten minutes and what I’ve seen of Hortense so far that they’re worlds apart. We might get a few more debates before the week is out.’
‘As long as it doesn’t get out of hand,’ Esme said, still looking at them. ‘Friendly banter is one thing, but I don’t think I’d fancy refereeing an argument between those two.’
‘I’m sure they can be adult about their differences.’
‘You’re right, though. We are a funny bunch to be hanging around together when you really think about it. All different ages and backgrounds that would never meet in normal life, and if we did, we probably wouldn’t be more than passing acquaintances.’
‘Do you think passing acquaintances can have a good time on holiday together?’
‘Maybe. I hope so. I hope our funny bunch are more than that when the week is out. I’d like to think we could be friends.’
‘So you think I’m funny?’ he asked.
She glanced at Hortense and Brian again, and then back at Zach who constantly seemed to be sharing some private joke with only himself, and she shook her head.
‘OK, maybe not you. Not yet I don’t.’
‘Give me time – I’ll work on persuading you otherwise.’
Esme had to laugh.
‘So, you’re sure you don’t want to run off and leave the funny bunch to it?’
‘No, I don’t think I’ll run off just yet.’
‘At least it’s only seven days, eh?’
‘That too,’ Esme replied with a smile. ‘If all else fails there’s a big snowy wilderness to hide in.’
Zach grinned broadly at her. ‘I’m glad you decided to come.’
Esme stopped laughing and another wave of heat rose to her face. She wanted to say that she was glad she’d come too. But Warren was at work and she pictured him getting home to a cold, empty flat and a note from her and she wasn’t so sure after all.
Eleven
The flight had been delayed by two hours and while everyone had groaned and grumbled and stalked the departure gates restlessly, the delay had given Esme time to get to know her new travel companions better. She discovered that Hortense had never felt the need to marry and now raised chickens and sometimes sculpted, and Esme found herself rather envying her bohemian lifestyle. Brian was an ex-headmaster at an inner-city comprehensive school whose wife had left him shortly before his retirement saying he was just too boring to spend her twilight years with and, since then, just to prove her wrong, he’d made every effort to be as far away from boring as it was possible to be. He sent her photos from each new adventure, just to make a point that he was having way more fun than she was. Esme liked Brian a lot, and she thought that his wife probably hadn’t given him much of a chance to show her that life beyond retirement could be very different from a life that must have been characterised by long hours at work in a demanding job.
Zach, for all his apparent open friendliness, was harder to read. He volunteered very little personal information, other than providing funny anecdotes about various theatre productions he’d worked on, like the time one of his actors had got stuck in a lift and when the curtain opened, the only person who knew the missing thespian’s lines and was available was Zach himself; an accidental debut that proved to be Zach’s one and only terrifying foray into the world of acting – at least on stage rather than behind it. He briefly told them how he’d got into that world in the first place, as someone who hadn’t really been interested in theatre at all but had been captivated during a summer break from college working with a lighting manager at his local rep, something a friend at the time had fixed him up with because he was struggling to find a part-time job and the theatre had been struggling to get someone who knew about electrics and would work for tea and biscuits. Zach, rather fortuitously, knew some basics about electrics because as a teenager his dad had taken him on as an assistant when he’d rewired their house, and the rest was, as the saying went, history. Zach had always planned on training to be a vet, but he’d had such a good time at the theatre that summer that the course of his future career had changed from that moment on. His parents had been horrified that he was turning away from a job that would pay handsomely to one where he’d be scraping to buy milk and bread most weeks, but then they’d seen how happy he was and how he was managing to make good-enough money, and eventually they’d come round.
He was content to tell his new companions all of this, but Esme got the impression there was so much more he was holding back, and that what he wasn’t saying about his life was something so huge and painful that he simply couldn’t say it, a hole that would swallow him if he dared to peer into it. Relationships past and present were barely touched upon, nor did he mention his current marital status, and while nobody was under any obligation to share suc
h things, Brian and Hortense had both been happy to tell all. Esme didn’t mind because she wasn’t ready to share her personal information either, except for the part where her grandma had died before she’d had a chance to travel to Lapland with her as they’d intended, at which point Brian looked as if the information he’d just been given was a live hand grenade, Hortense rubbed Esme’s back violently and Zach regarded her quietly with a look of such profound compassion and empathy that Esme wondered if something similar had happened to him too. It made Esme uncomfortable to be the focus of so much attention and she was glad when Hortense turned the conversation to how much she was hoping to take a trip out to visit a native Sami tribe to watch them hack a reindeer to death.
‘It’s only natural,’ she concluded emphatically. ‘After all, it’s what our ancestors did. And they use every bit of the creature – nothing is wasted. It’s a marvel really.’
‘But now we have Sainsbury’s for that sort of thing,’ Brian said firmly.
‘I’m with Brian,’ Zach said. ‘I might give the reindeer dismemberment a miss, if it’s all the same to you.’
Esme simply smiled. Maybe a week with these people wouldn’t be so bad. If she really tried hard, she even imagined she might be able to put Warren out of her mind for some of it, though she was certain he’d be doing his furious best to remind her of his existence at every opportunity. As if to labour the point, her phone pinged and she briefly checked it to see his name on the screen.
Don’t forget it’s your gym night tonight. Sorry I can’t come and meet you there but I’ve got something on at work and have to stay over.
God, how she hated that bloody gym. She might have felt guilty about it, but there was a secret, slightly perverse pleasure in the idea that instead of going to a gym she hated and being bored out of her tree, she was about to get on a flight for the trip of a lifetime.
Eventually they’d been allowed to board the plane, where Esme had been separated from her new friends for a time due to their different seat allocations. She’d sat down, suddenly hit by an overwhelming sadness at the empty seat next to her. Sometimes she still couldn’t quite take in that her grandma had gone, and it would take something like an empty seat to bring it all back with a force that knocked her flat. But she rallied now and reminded herself of why she’d chosen to come on this trip even though Matilda could not and she’d do her darndest to make the most of her grandma’s last gift, if only to honour her memory.
The Christmas Wish: A heartwarming Christmas romance Page 9
