Her Christmas Eve Diamond

by Scarlet Wilson

  Tillie nodded but didn’t say anything. Cassidy took a deep breath. ‘When I found your coat, I also found a parcel of letters.’ She hesitated for a second. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I read them, Gran. The ones from Peter Johnson, your US Air Force friend.’

  She paused, waiting to see if would get any reaction. She knew some people would think she was strange, trying to have a normal conversation with a confused old lady, but to Cassidy she couldn’t communicate any other way. She loved and respected her gran, and she hoped beyond hope that some of what she said might get through. ‘He looked lovely, Gran.’

  She pulled out the black-and-white photograph. ‘I found a picture of you—you look so happy.’ She couldn’t help the forlorn sound to her voice as she handed the photo to her gran.

  Tillie took it in her frail fingers and touched the surface of the photograph. ‘So pretty,’ she murmured, before handing it back.

  Cassidy sat backwards in her chair. ‘He wrote you some lovely letters. You never told me about him—I wish you had.’ She stared out the windows, lost in thought.

  She’d read the letters the night before, tears rolling down her face. Peter Johnson had met her gran while he’d been stationed in Prestwick with the US Army Air Force. His letters were full of young love and hope for the future. Filled with promises of a life in the US. Most had come from Prestwick, with a few from Indiana at a later date.

  Had he been her gran’s first love? What had happened to him? Had he gone back to the US and forgotten about her? Her gran could have had the chance of another life, on another continent. Had she wanted to go to the US? What had stopped her? Had she suffered from any of the doubts and confusion that she herself was feeling right now?

  She looked back at her gran, who was running her fingers over the sleeve of her coat. ‘I wish you could tell me, Gran.’ Tears were threatening to spill down her cheeks. ‘I really need some advice. I need you to tell me what I should do.’

  ‘What a lovely colour,’ her gran said suddenly, before sitting back in her chair. ‘Did you bring tea?’ she asked.

  Cassidy gave Tillie’s hand a squeeze. ‘I’ll go and get you some tea, Gran,’ she said, standing up and heading over to the kitchen. She’d been here often enough to know where everything was kept.

  The girl in the kitchen gave her a nod and handed over a teapot and two cups. She glanced at her watch. ‘I thought it was about that time for your gran. I was just about to bring this over.’ She smiled as Cassidy lifted up the tray, before reaching over and touching the shoulder of her coat. ‘What a beautiful coat, Cassidy. It’s a really nice style. It suits you.’

  Cassidy blushed. ‘Thank you. I found it the other day.’ She nodded over her shoulder. ‘It was Gran’s.’

  ‘Really? I’m surprised. It looks brand new.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘I bet she cut up a storm in that coat a few years ago.’

  Cassidy’s felt her shoulders sag. ‘I don’t know, Karen. Truth is, I never saw my gran wear this coat. But I found a picture of her in it and she looked amazing.’

  ‘I bet she did.’ Karen gave her a smile. ‘You know, Cassidy, I know it’s hard seeing your gran like this, but you’ve got to remember that she’s happy here. Although she’s frail, her physical health is good for someone her age and most days she seems really content.’

  Cassidy nodded gratefully. ‘I know, Karen.’ She looked over to where her gran was sitting, staring out the window again. ‘I just wish I could have the old her back sometimes—even for just a few minutes.’

  Karen gave her arm a squeeze. ‘I know, honey.’

  Cassidy carried the tea tray over and waited a few minutes before pouring a cup for her gran. She was fussy about her tea—not too weak, not too strong, with just the right amount of milk.

  Cassidy kept chatting as she sat next to her. It didn’t matter to her that her gran didn’t understand or acknowledge what she was saying. It felt better just telling her things. In the last year she’d found that just knowing she’d told her gran something could make her feel a million times better—sometimes even help her work things out in her head.

  ‘I’ve met a nice Australian man. He’s a doctor who’s working with me right now.’ Her gran nodded and smiled. Often it seemed as if she liked to hear the music and tone of Cassidy’s voice. ‘The only thing is, he has a little girl who is missing right now. He really wants to find her. And when he does...’ she took a deep breath ‘...he’ll go.’

  The words sounded so painful when she said them out loud.

  And for a second they stopped her in her tracks.

  What would she do if Brad just upped and disappeared? How would she feel if she could never see him again?

  It didn’t take long for the little part of her she didn’t like to creep into her brain again. Chances were Melody might never be found. Brad might decide to stay in Scotland for a while longer.

  She felt a wave of heat wash over her like a comfort blanket. That would be perfect. Maybe she could consider a trip to Australia? That wouldn’t be so hard. It was a beautiful country and it might even be interesting to see the differences in nursing in another country.

  She looked outside at the frosty weather. Her gran had started singing under her breath. A sweet lullaby that she used to sing to Cassidy as a child. Memories came flooding back, of dark nights in front of the fire cuddled up on Gran’s couch.

  Part of the issue for Cassidy was that she loved the Scottish winters and cold weather. As a pale-skinned Scot, she’d never been a fan of the blazing-hot sunshine. And even when she’d gone on holiday, she hadn’t lain beside the pool for a fortnight; she’d needed to be up and about doing things.

  Most people she knew would love the opportunity to live in a warmer climate but Cassidy had never even considered it. Not for a second.

  Could she really start to consider something like that now?

  Everything was making her head spin. Her relationship with Brad was becoming serious. She really needed to sit down and talk to him again.

  She looked at her gran, who was sipping her tea delicately, trying to hear the words she thought her gran might say in her head.

  She could imagine the elderly lady telling her not to be so pathetic. To make up her mind about what she wanted and to go get it. She could also sense the old-fashioned disapproval her gran might have about the fact Brad had a child with someone else. A child he wasn’t being allowed to fulfil his parental duties towards. Her gran would certainly have had something to say about that.

  But would she have been suspicious like some of Brad’s colleagues in Australia? Or would she have been sympathetic towards him?

  Cassidy just wasn’t sure. And finding the letters and photographs made her even less sure. She’d thought she’d known everything about her gran. Turned out she hadn’t. And now she’d no way of picking up those lost strands of her life.

  She heaved a sigh and looked out over the garden again. She was going to have to sort this out for herself.

  30 November

  Brad came rushing into the restaurant ten minutes late, with his tie skewed to one side and his top button still undone. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he gasped as he sat down opposite her. ‘There was a last-minute admission just before I left, and Luca was at a cardiac arrest so I couldn’t leave.’

  Cassidy gave him a smile and lifted her glass of wine towards him. ‘No worries, Brad, I started without you.’

  He reached over and pulled the bottle of wine from the cooler at the side of the table and filled his glass. She leaned across the table. ‘Here, let me,’ she said as her deft fingers did up his top button and straightened his tie.

  She didn’t care that he’d been late. His conscientiousness at work was one of the reasons she liked him so much.

  He raised his glass to her. ‘Cheers.’ The glasses clinked together and Cassid
y relaxed back into her chair.

  Brad ducked under the table. ‘Here, I bought you something.’ He handed a plastic bag over to Cassidy.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Did you wrap it yourself?’ she quipped.

  ‘Ha, ha. Just look and see what it is.’

  Cassidy peeked inside the plastic bag and gingerly put her hand inside—all she could see was a mixture of red and green felt. She pulled out her present and felt a mixture of surprise and a tiny bit of disappointment. It was an advent calendar, the fabric kind with pockets for each of the twenty-four days. The kind she’d told Brad she didn’t like.

  She looked over at him and he gave her a beaming smile. ‘I thought in the spirit of making some nice Christmas memories I would try and convert you.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Convert me? Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘You like the paper-type advent calendar. I always had one of these in Australia that my mum made for me. She used to put something in the pockets for only a few days at a time because she knew I would have looked ahead otherwise.’ He touched the first few pockets and she heard a rustling sound. ‘And they’re not all chocolates.’

  She nodded and gave him a smile. ‘So, you’re trying to convert me, are you? Well, I’m willing to give it a go. But how do you plan on filling up the other pockets?’

  There it was. That little twinkle in his eye as he took a sip of his wine. ‘That’s the thing. If you want your calendar filled, you’ll have to keep letting me into your flat. In fact, I’ll need unlimited access.’

  She loved the way his smile stretched from ear to ear. The restaurant was dim, with subdued lighting and flickering candlelight. His eyes seemed even bluer than normal, their colour amplified as they reflected off his pale blue shirt.

  ‘Did you plan this just so you could get into my flat?’

  He shook his head, his face becoming a little more serious. ‘I just think you’ve been a little quiet these past few days. As if something was on your mind.’ His fingers reached across the table and intertwined with hers. ‘I’m just trying to find a way to stay in your life.’

  She felt shocked by the openness and honesty of his words. She kept her gaze stuck on the advent calendar as she tried to think of what to say. Things had been a little unsettled between them.

  ‘I’m just a little unsure of what’s happening between us,’ she started slowly. She lifted her eyes. ‘I like you, Brad.’

  ‘And I like you, too, Cassidy. You know that.’

  He wasn’t making this any easier. It was hard enough, trying to get the words out. His fingers were tracing little circles on the palm of her hand. Just like he did after they’d made love together.

  ‘I’m just worried that I’m getting in too deep and before we know it you’ll be gone.’

  His brow creased. ‘Why would you think that?’

  She pulled her hand away from his. It was too distracting. ‘I don’t know. I just think that I’m from Scotland, you’re from Australia...’ She threw her hands up in frustration, then levelled her gaze at him. ‘I know you don’t want to stay here and I don’t want to move away. So where does that leave us?’

  She could feel tears nestling behind her eyes. That was the last thing she wanted to happen. She didn’t want to cry.

  Her mind was flooded with thoughts of her gran. Truth was, she would never find out what happened between her gran and Peter Johnson. Maybe it had only been a wartime fling, with no substance behind it. Or maybe her gran had given up the chance of a lifetime to go and live abroad with the man who’d made her face sparkle.

  What Cassidy would never know was whether her gran regretted her decisions. If she could go back, would she do something different?

  Was she about to make the same mistake?

  Brad reached back over and took her hand again. ‘Cassidy, I have no idea what’s going to happen. All I know is I love spending time with you and I don’t want it to end. I’ve no idea what will happen in the next few years—I’ve been offered an extension to my job here for another six months, and I’ve decided to take it. You know I’m not going to stop looking for my daughter. Is that what this is all about? Melody?’

  Cassidy shook her head. ‘No, it’s not about Melody.’ Then she hesitated. ‘But I don’t know what to think about all that. At the end of the day, Brad, we could continue to have a relationship for the next few months and then you could get a call one day about Melody and just disappear. I don’t think I could handle that.’

  And there it was, staring him in the face. All the while he was practically telling her she was bullheaded and stubborn, her biggest vulnerability lay on the table between them. Abandonment.

  He’d sensed it in her for a while. When she’d mentioned her ex-fiancé, her parents or her ill grandmother. That fear of being alone.

  He shook his head, the expression on his face pained. ‘Remember, Cassidy, I’ve been on the other side of this fence. I’ve had someone disappear out of my life with no warning. And I know how much it hurts. I would never do that to another human being.’

  She could tell her words had stung, and she hadn’t meant them to. It was just so difficult to describe the mishmash of emotions in her head. Even she couldn’t understand them, so how could she expect Brad to?

  The waiter appeared at their side with some menus, and Cassidy pulled her hand from Brad’s to take one. Her eyes ran up and down the menu quickly before Brad lifted it from her hands.

  ‘Don’t tell me, you’ll have the mushrooms and the chicken.’

  Cassidy groaned. ‘Don’t tell me I’m that predictable.’ She grabbed the menu back and ran her eyes along the text again with a sinking realisation that Brad was right. She did always have the mushrooms and the chicken. The only time she ever deviated was if neither was on the menu.

  He leaned forward, giving her that smile again. ‘Why don’t you surprise us both and pick something totally different? In fact, close your eyes and just point at something and order that.’

  Cassidy shivered. ‘Yuck.’ Even the thought of doing that was too much for her. Imagine if she ended up with something she didn’t like—or never ate? That would be hideous. ‘I can’t do that, Brad, I might get seaweed or fillet steak.’

  His eyes gleamed as he did a pretend shudder. ‘Mmm, and that would be awful, wouldn’t it? Take this as a test, Cassidy.’

  ‘A test for what?’

  He folded his napkin in his lap, as if he was choosing his words carefully. ‘For a thoroughly modern woman, you can be pretty closed-minded about some things.’

  An uncomfortable feeling crept down her spine. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You can have some pretty fixed ideas.’

  Cassidy shook her head. ‘I just know my own mind. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

  He paused. ‘I didn’t say there was. But sometimes you make your mind up about things without looking at the whole picture.’

  Cassidy was feeling rattled now and a little irritated. So much for a romantic dinner. ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  He licked his lips and she saw him take a deep breath. There was something different in his eyes. The normal laid-back look was gone. ‘What I mean, Cassidy, is that you’ve written me—and others—off with no thought or regard for our feelings, just because we live in a different country. Now, if you’d been abroad and stayed there for a while and didn’t enjoy it, it might seem a reasonable conclusion to have come to. But you haven’t. You’ve never done it. You’ve never even tried. And what’s more—you won’t even consider it.’

  He looked frustrated by her, angry even, and she felt a tight feeling spread across her chest. Not even Bobby, her Spanish fiancé, had called her like this. She’d just refused to go with him and that had been that. He hadn’t questioned her reasoning behind her decision. He hadn’t made her question h
er reasoning behind the decision.

  But Brad hadn’t finished. He was on a roll. ‘It’s the same with your menu choices and your Christmas traditions.’ He leaned over and picked up the advent calendar. ‘You say you only like the picture calendars but you’ve never even tried one of these, have you?’ She saw his shoulders sag, tension easing out of them, and the tone of his voice altered.

  ‘All I’m trying to do is get you to look outside your box. To look at the world that surrounds you and open your mind to other ideas, other experiences, other...’ he paused before ending ‘...possibilities.’

  He was holding his breath, waiting to see what she would say. She should stop, she should think and ponder what he was saying to her and why. But Cassidy went with her first instinct. She was mad.

  She flung her napkin on the table. ‘So why are you bothering with me, Brad? You don’t date someone with the idea of changing them. You date someone because you like them the way they are, not the way you want them to be.’ She spat the words at him.

  ‘I’m not trying to change you. I like you, everything about you. But if we have any hope of a future together, you’re going to have to learn to bend a little.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning that I would love to promise to stay with you in Scotland for the next thirty years, but what if I do get that call about my daughter? What if I do need to go to the States? That’s it for us? Just like that—because you won’t even consider any other possibility?’

  He made it all sound so unreasonable. So closed-minded. But inside she didn’t feel like that.

  ‘Or what if I get a great opportunity to work in another country? You won’t even consider coming with me? Because you can’t leave Scotland?’

  ‘But my gran, I can’t leave my gran.’ It was the first thing that sprang to mind. The first brick in her feeble wall of defence.

  Brad shook his head. ‘I’m not asking you to leave your gran, Cassidy. Even though you know she’s somewhere she’s been taken care of. I’m just trying to see if you’ll at least consider the possibility.’