Christmas under a Cranberry Sky

by Holly Martin

  As she approached the houses she could see there were six men working on one house, painting or hammering or repairing the roof. Gabe was among them.

  ‘Great, you’re here.’

  He hopped down from a ladder as she got nearer and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I can’t wait for tonight,’ he whispered, causing Pip to blush.

  She was trying really hard not to think about the night ahead because every time she did it made her shake with nerves. It was silly, she knew Gabe, and she’d already made love to him before, albeit twelve years before. But in reality, the thing that was probably making her most nervous was that after making love to him she knew there would be no going back. She was falling in love with him all over again and making love to him would cement that bond between them. What if he turned around in a few weeks or months and rejected her? She would be devastated all over again.

  Not knowing the turmoil that was tormenting her, he took her by the hand and led her to the nearest house. ‘If you start in this house then work your way through them all. Some of them may need a bit of dusting and hoovering before you decorate, the tall cupboard next to the bathroom should have all the cleaning gear you need. There’s a tree inside each house and there are two big boxes of decorations in this one, but you’ll need to make sure there are enough decorations for all six trees so go sparingly. There’s also a box of garlands which you could use around the room, over the fireplace or on the windows, and there’re some candles and other things too. It’s basically just window dressing. Is that OK?’

  She saw the look of concern in his eyes.

  ‘Yes, it’s fine, stop worrying.’

  Just then Luke roared up on the snowmobile.

  ‘Did you tell him the good news?’ Luke asked, getting off the snowmobile and walking towards them.

  ‘No, I… Not yet.’ Pip glared at him, trying to suppress the urge to smack him in his stupid smug face.

  ‘What news?’ Gabe said.

  ‘You’re soon going to be hearing the pitter-patter of tiny feet.’

  ‘Who’s pregnant?’

  ‘Probably Dasher, possibly Blitzen too.’

  Gabe turned back to her in confusion. ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘Rudolph got in the girls’ pen while Pip was feeding him.’

  Pip stared at Luke as he sold her down the river. What an ass.

  ‘Wait. You let him through the gate? Did you not try to stop him?’

  ‘To be fair to her, she was too busy getting Wren out of the way of being trampled. Rudolph was on a mission, I doubt anyone could have stopped him,’ Luke said.

  Well, that was a quick about-turn. Had Luke just defended her?

  ‘He knocked Pip over too, she banged her hip. You might have to kiss that better later.’

  With that Luke sauntered over to join the other men.

  ‘Are you OK, were you hurt?’ Gabe asked.

  ‘No, I’m fine. I’m sorry. It just happened so quickly and the only thing I cared about was Wren.’

  ‘It’s OK. Don’t apologise. The last thing I’d want is you or Wren getting hurt. Besides, baby reindeer will be a good draw for the tourists. I was going to breed them at some point anyway, we’ll just get there a little earlier than expected, that’s all.’

  ‘Gabe,’ Luke shouted. ‘Give us a hand with this, will you?’

  ‘I better go, I’ll see you later,’ Gabe said as he jogged over to join his brother.

  Pip let herself into the house and looked around. It was like a much smaller version of the lodges up at the resort. A small lounge area with a bedroom and bathroom off the lounge, plus a tiny kitchenette at the back. It had the same wood walls and cosy sofas, with brightly coloured cushions and throws. The large empty Christmas tree stood in one corner ready for her to work her magic.

  The place did need a clean. It wasn’t filthy, but there was a thin layer of dust over every surface. She found the cupboard and set about dusting and wiping down all the surfaces and then gave the floor a good hoovering.

  Just as she had put the vacuum cleaner away, her phone rang. She dug it out of her pocket and smiled when she saw it was Wendy. She answered it and then put it on loudspeaker so she could continue with her work.

  ‘Hey honey, how’s it going?’

  ‘I’m working on the review,’ Pip lied. There had been no time for that and at the moment she didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it. She would do it and she would hand it in before Christmas, but at the moment she was just enjoying spending time with Gabe again. For the first time in ten years, work was taking second place.

  ‘I don’t care about the review. I want to know how it’s going with your gorgeous ex-boyfriend or was it ex-husband?’

  Pip smiled as she turned her attention to the boxes of decorations and started to divide them equally into six piles in order to see what the allocation was for each house.

  ‘It’s going good,’ Pip said, vaguely. ‘And no we weren’t married. He was my best friend and then he was my boyfriend.’

  ‘I need more than just “It’s going good.” I’ve just sat through the most boring meeting in the history of all boring meetings and I have another one to go to shortly where Arsehole Marcus will no doubt drone on about how wonderful he is. Give me something to make me warm and fuzzy. Are you two giving it another go?’

  ‘Yes we are. I’ve agreed to stay here for a few weeks or months to see if we have anything worth fighting for. It was hard to get involved with each other when we both knew that I was leaving in two weeks.’

  ‘Aw honey, I’m so happy. Everyone needs a bit of love in their lives. Even if this isn’t forever, it’ll still do you good to have someone who cares about you for a little while. Have you kissed yet?’

  Pip blushed. Was this what it was like to have real friends, to talk about stuff like this? There was a part of her that wanted to shout about it from the rooftops, but there was a part that wanted to keep it private, just something special between her and Gabe.

  ‘Yes, a few times.’

  ‘And? Was there pizazz?’

  Pip laughed. ‘There definitely was that.’

  ‘And, um…have you done anything else?’

  ‘We’re taking it slow, Wendy,’ Pip lied, knowing that if she told her that they planned on sleeping together that night, Wendy would be ringing up at nine o’clock the next morning to get all the gory details about their night of passion.

  ‘Of course, yes, good idea. Don’t want to rush things. But you already know him. You can skip most of the preliminaries. No, you’re right, be careful. Have you told him you’re there to review the hotel?’

  ‘Oh god, no. He doesn’t need to know that. Everything is so fragile between us, I don’t want to rock the boat if I don’t need to. He is already so stressed about the journalists coming in two days and apparently there’s a big hotel reviewer among them who is making him worried. I’ll tell him once things are a bit stronger between us and things have calmed down at the hotel. I’m sure he’ll laugh about it. But as the review is going to be the best review I’ve ever written, it won’t affect him, so I don’t think he really needs to know.’

  ‘Honey, if you are going to be in a relationship, honesty is really important.’

  ‘I know. I will tell him, but maybe in a few days when he isn’t so worried about the hotel.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you know best. Go and have fun with him and then let me know all about it.’

  ‘I will. Well, most of it.’

  Wendy laughed and they said their goodbyes.

  Pip draped garlands over the fireplace and hung them in the windows, placed candles around the bottom of the fireplace and over shelves around the room, then she turned her attention to the tree decorations. Among the gold baubles and red ribbons there were hand-carved wooden ornaments that Joy had obviously created. There were also mini glass snow-globe type baubles which Mikki had clearly made. There were other decorations that had obviously come from some of the other village shop
s too. It was a lovely touch; not only was it great buying products from the village to support the shops, but it helped make the Christmas trees local and more personal. It might also encourage some of the guests to go and buy some of the decorations as souvenirs.

  She draped the lights over the branches, working her way up towards the top and then slowly she started adding decorations, being careful to intersperse the different decorations across the tree. It took a lot longer than she’d thought it would. She’d never decorated a tree before – spending every Christmas since her dad had died in a hotel in different locations across the world meant that the hotels were already decorated. After her mum had died, her dad had never wanted to decorate the house for Christmas; he hadn’t even wanted to celebrate it. Pip had no memory of whether she had decorated a tree before her seventh birthday, but she guessed not; her mum liked things a certain way.

  There was something almost sad about reaching the age of twenty-nine and having never decorated a Christmas tree. She wondered if Gabe decorated the tree in his home with Wren or whether the professional Christmas decorators they’d hired to bedeck the lodges up in the resort had done his house too. What would it be like to be part of a family, decorating the tree together, maybe making mince pies, spending Christmas Day together unwrapping presents? She had envied Gabe and his family growing up because they had all that togetherness that she simply didn’t have.

  Pip stepped back to admire her work. It looked good, the tree sparkling and twinkling with the lights and decorations.

  The door opened and she turned to see Luke filling the room. God, the man was so big he’d give Hagrid a run for his money.

  ‘Lunch has just been delivered, thought you might want a sandwich, there’s ham or turkey.’ He offered a sandwich in each of his hands.

  ‘Turkey please.’

  He tossed it over to her.

  ‘Gabe’s gone back to the hotel to deal with something, he said he’d be back soon.’ He looked around. ‘The place looks good, not as good as the lodges the professional decorators did, but you know, it looks OK.’

  Pip let out a laugh of indignation. ‘You’re such an ass.’

  His eyebrows shot up at this before she saw the first smile she had probably ever seen from him. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  She did mind. She would much rather eat alone than have to deal with his company, but if things were going to work with Gabe and she stayed here on the island, then she and Luke would have to learn to put aside their differences and at least be civil to each other.

  She nodded and he sat down on the sofa. She sat down on the chair facing him.

  A silence descended on them, and where silences with Gabe were never awkward, this was tense and weird. She watched him as he ate his sandwich, but it seemed he had no intention of talking to her.

  She decided to see if she could get to the bottom of this angst between them. She had no idea what she had done wrong.

  ‘Why do you hate me? What did I do?’

  Luke paused in eating his sandwich. ‘I don’t hate you.’

  ‘OK, you don’t particularly like me very much. Even growing up you made that very clear.’

  ‘That was different. You weren’t the only one with issues growing up, Pip. You think you have the market on crappy parents; you don’t.’

  This surprised her. Lizzie and David had always been such loving, doting parents to Gabe, Neve and Luke. Although she had to remember that Lizzie wasn’t Luke’s mum. She’d never really considered Luke to be Gabe’s half-brother before and neither had the rest of the Whitakers, though technically he was.

  He sighed. ‘I didn’t hate you, I was jealous of you. You fitted into my family so easily. They all adored you and I didn’t feel I fit at all.’

  ‘That’s not true. Lizzie loved you.’

  ‘I know that now. I have a better relationship with her now than the non-existent one I have with my real mum. But when I was a child it was easier to hate her for breaking up my parents’ marriage.

  Pip didn’t know how David and Lizzie had met; she had been too young to really ask. They had been together before Pip was born, so she hadn’t really comprehended that there was a whole other life that had happened before then.

  ‘Did your dad have an affair?’

  Luke bit into his sandwich and chewed slowly. He swallowed and took a swig from his water bottle.

  ‘Yes. Mum and Dad were always arguing, screaming at each other. Well, it was mainly my mum who was screaming at him. When I was five he came home and announced he was leaving. That he’d been having an affair with Lizzie and that he loved her and wanted to be with her. The only thing I got from that conversation was that he no longer wanted to be with us. From what I can gather after talking to Dad years later, Mum wouldn’t let him visit or see me after he left. Mum got together with a new man very quickly and…’ He swallowed. ‘Well, long story short, this new guy used to beat the crap out of me every chance he got and Mum…well, she used to let him.’

  All the anger she felt towards Luke vanished in an instant. Her dad had been an arsehole to her, treated her like scum, but he had never once raised his fists to her. ‘I’m so sorry you went through that.’

  He shrugged, though she knew he was trying to be blasé about it. ‘The school knew that I wasn’t living with Dad any more and that Mum had this new guy. When I was getting changed for PE one day, the teacher spotted the bruises and called my dad in. I went to live with him after that and I barely saw my mum again. Lizzie lavished me with attention and love, but I just blamed her for everything that happened. She was already pregnant with Neve by that point and the baby, when she arrived, became their new focus. Gabe quickly followed and they were this perfect little family unit with me as the third wheel. They never made me feel like I was the outsider. I know now that those feelings were more about me than about how I was treated, but it was easier to hate all of them and you were part of that. As far as I could tell, Lizzie loved you more than she loved me, probably because you were cute and adorable and I was a brat.’

  ‘I had no idea you felt that way towards me.’

  ‘I didn’t always. By the time I hit my teens I had grown up enough to realise that I was pretty damned lucky to belong to such a great family and that my mum was probably the root of my parents splitting up, not Lizzie. By that time my hatred towards you, Gabe and Neve just turned to frustration at having all these little kids around. I was fourteen; you were seven. We were years apart. You were the annoying little sister that was always hanging around. Although to be fair, you only remember the times I was an arse to you, you don’t remember how many kids I threatened to beat up who were giving you a hard time or Thomas Campbell who called you a freak and I punched him in the face.’

  Pip smiled. ‘I remember him coming to school with a massive black eye the day after he called me that. I didn’t realise you were the one who had stuck up for me.’

  ‘Of course I did. As far as I was concerned you were my kid sister. The only one allowed to give you a hard time was me.’

  ‘So what changed? OK, you didn’t hate me when we were teens, but what’s with all this angst now?’

  He finished his sandwich and wiped his hands on his jeans, which were already dirty. She’d probably have to hoover the sofa again once he had left.

  ‘As much as I found Neve and Gabe annoying growing up, I love them and want to protect them too. I was the big brother, that was my job. Gabe loved you so much, it was ridiculous how much he loved you. When you left, you physically broke him. He was a mess. But that day your aunt came up to sort out your dad’s house, Gabe saw her car in the drive and came down to ask where you were. She told him that you were never coming back. He came back to the farm absolutely heartbroken. He collapsed and we had to rush him to hospital.’

  Pip felt her breath catch in her throat, her heart missing a beat. Gabe had never told her this.

  ‘He kept on having these panic attacks, heart palpitations, blacking out. The d
octors didn’t know what was causing it. It went away after a few days and they released him saying it was likely to be stress. And although it didn’t happen again, he was broken for years after.’

  She had destroyed him. It broke her heart to hear that. She swallowed down the emotion, determined she wasn’t going to cry in front of Luke.

  He looked like he wanted to say something else but was wrestling with it.

  ‘My wife had an affair,’ he said, eventually.

  That threw her. Where was he going with this?

  ‘The only woman I ever loved, the only one I have ever trusted and she betrayed me. I was working at the zoo when I met her. I loved my job, never wanted to leave. She was working there during the high season and we met, fell in love and married eight months later. My job at the zoo wasn’t enough for her. I wasn’t good enough for her. We had enough money to get by but she wanted me to leave and get a job that was bigger and better paid. We argued about it constantly. In the end we had a big row and she left.’ Luke took a swig of water. ‘She came back three months later, pregnant and in tears, claiming the baby was mine, said that she was a fool and she loved me and wanted to get back together again. I knew that kid wasn’t mine. We hadn’t had sex at all in the last few months we were together. I also knew that she had been sleeping with one of the big corporate sponsors of the zoo. And I knew he’d kicked her to the kerb when his wife found out, so she’d come crawling back to me, and you know what I did?’

  ‘Told her to sling her hook?’

  ‘I took her back. Because stupidly, I still loved her and I thought maybe she still loved me too. She wouldn’t let me sleep with her though, said she didn’t want to hurt the baby. A month later, I come home and find her screwing the baby’s dad in our bed. She came back to me with nothing, no home, a child that wasn’t mine and I took her back and then she betrayed me with the bloke who dumped her as soon as she found out she was pregnant. As he was screwing her, I heard him say how he wanted to keep seeing her but they had to be careful that his wife didn’t find out again. He wasn’t man enough to end things with his wife and be with her; he wanted the best of both worlds, his adoring wife and his illicit affair, and I could hear her agreeing to it. She had told me that I wasn’t good enough for her, but the bloke she screwed behind my back was complete scum, so what kind of arsehole does that make me if this lowlife she was sleeping with was better than me?