Not that Tristan showed any sign of feeling that tension, of course. When she’d met with him and Arthur to thrash out her contract, he’d acted as though nothing had changed between them. Affable and polite, he’d excused himself while she and Arthur talked numbers and tweaked a couple of the clauses in the draft contract offer, returning afterwards to argue robustly with her about her suggestion they limit the number of guests to a dozen. They’d compromised on fifteen in the end, giving him the flexibility to offer some single spaces for people who might be spending Christmas alone, but who didn’t want to be by themselves.
Agreeing the programme of activities had proven much simpler. Arthur had offered to host a welcome cocktail party in the great hall on the first night, and Morgana was on board with the afternoon tea suggestion for a quiet day between Christmas and New Year. Though they would be arriving too late for the winter fete, the illuminated walk would still be in situ, so they’d pencilled in an evening for that, including a bonfire at the stone circle to toast marshmallows and drink brandy-laced hot chocolate. Christmas Eve dinner would be an extravagant buffet to be followed by Midnight Mass in the village church for those who wanted to attend. A traditional turkey roast dinner with all the family was the main feature for Christmas Day, with stockings full of little luxuries to be placed at the foot of each guest bed the night before and the option for a group present opening under the tree Jess was planning for the great hall. They’d agreed to leave some days unorganised so people could relax and enjoy the castle and its estate at their leisure, with an option to pre-book events happening in the local area.
The only awkward moment had been when Jess had suggested a black-tie masquerade ball followed by a private firework display to usher in the new year. As she’d watched Arthur and Tristan exchange a look she knew she’d put her foot in it somehow, but wasn’t sure how. ‘I know a company who can design a display which doesn’t require an on-site technician. They’re very reliable, and we used them several times at Beaman and Tanner events and always got great feedback. And it doesn’t have to be a masquerade ball, but I thought it might be fun to get a big box of craft supplies and let people have a go at making their own over the preceding week.’
‘It’s not that …’ Tristan paused to scrub a hand over his face. ‘Arthur, Iggy and I did a private send off for Dad last New Year’s Eve.’
‘Oh. And you think it will be too upsetting? I can understand if you want to keep the evening free to do something private. I wasn’t suggesting the family had to attend the ball, and I can manage the fireworks, myself, I’ve done it before.’
‘It’s the fireworks that are the issue.’ Arthur gave her a sad smile. ‘We had Dad’s ashes incorporated into some rockets by a specialist company and sent him off with a bang so to speak.’
Jess didn’t know what to say to that. She hadn’t realised such a thing was even possible. ‘I see,’ was about all she could manage.
Tristan glanced at his brother. ‘The guests will be expecting something on New Year’s Eve.’ When Arthur did respond, he turned to Jess. ‘Leave it with us, okay?’
‘Sure.’ The ball would be fine on its own, and if she got some of those indoor sparklers and really went to town on decorations, no one would miss the fireworks. Hopefully.
The events list went up on the castle’s website without mentioning fireworks, and Jess had to admit Tristan had created a stunning landing page for the house party. The teaser photos they’d chosen included a montage of the most spectacular plants in the orangery, a leather armchair they’d dragged into the library and placed strategically against a backdrop of book-lined shelves, and the dining room table looking resplendent with a full china dinner service laid out. They’d also added a couple of staged images of one of the bedrooms, including the roll top bath full of steaming water with a scattering of rose petals floating on the surface, and a tuxedo and a breathtaking sequined gown in shades of bronze and gold laid out on a bed made up with crisp cotton linens. The gown had been provided by Morgana after overhearing her discussing ideas for the website with Tristan over dinner, and Jess was simply dying for a glimpse into the older woman’s wardrobe to see what other delights might be lurking in its cedarwood scented depths.
All in all, Jess thought as she stared out of the window of her sitting room-cum-study and reflected on her first month at Bluebell Castle, things were going better than she could’ve hoped for. Now, if she could only ignore the Tristan-shaped elephant in the room. The heat in his eyes when he’d declared his feelings that night, the depth of sincerity in his words had made that impossible. She’d always been aware of him on a visceral level from the very first day when he’d sat beside her at the office induction and her fingers had tingled for ages after they’d shaken hands. The intervening years and the first happy years of her marriage had quashed that awareness, but now it had come roaring back to life. Whenever she saw him, nerves and anticipation fizzed in her belly. The scent of that amber aftershave he favoured seemed to linger in the air in unexpected places, waiting to catch her unawares and drive whatever thoughts she had right out of her head for a moment. But it was his voice that really undid her, the deep, even timbre bringing the hairs on her arms to tingling attention. And, God, the way he laughed, an unguarded roll of humour which never failed to make her want to join in, even as it sent her wobbly around the knees. Though her head said ‘no’, and not just no, but ‘hell no’, her body and perhaps even a traitorous little piece of her heart said, ‘hmm’, and ‘what if’, and ‘maybe …’ It was driving her to distraction.
Realising she’d been daydreaming about him for a good ten minutes, Jess gave herself a shake and turned her attention back to the nine sheets of paper she’d stuck to the wall above her desk, with a polaroid image of each of the rooms pinned to their top corners. Four of the doubles had a red asterisk inked in the opposite corner to indicate a confirmed booking.
A pile of clippings she’d cut from various catalogues and magazines littered her desk. She’d discovered over the years that she worked better with physical images she could mix and shuffle around until she found the perfect design combination. Picking up a picture of a set of bedding covered in delicate cherry blossoms, she stuck it on one of the suites she had in mind for a single guest. She was just adding a masculine alternative of deep navy and pale blue stripes when a knock at the door was followed immediately by a buoyant looking Tristan.
Ignoring her, he made a beeline for the large playpen in the corner where Isaac was sprawled on his belly watching episodes of In the Night Garden on a loop and swooped down to pick him up. ‘Guess how many bookings we’ve taken overnight, sunshine,’ Tristan said to Isaac as he lifted him high over his head. ‘Go on, guess how many.’
‘Tris, Tris, Tris!’ Isaac crowed, stretching out his chubby little hands towards Tristan who drew him in for a cuddle.
‘That’s right, you clever little sausage, it’s three!’
Forgetting all the angst he’d been causing her, Jess spun around in her seat to face him. ‘Three! Seriously? That’s brilliant.’
Perching on the corner of her desk, heedless of the mess he was making of her pile of cut outs, Tristan jogged Isaac up and down on one knee. ‘Only two more to go and we’ve got ourselves a full house.’
‘Singles or doubles?’ She asked, reaching for her red marker.
‘Two singles and a double. I’ve sent confirmation emails, including your preferences questionnaire.’ In order to try and offer a truly tailored experience, Jess had drawn up a list of questions to send out with each booking, including dietary requirements, favourite drinks and foods, reading and other entertainment. ‘And,’ Tristan continued. ‘I’ve already received deposits in the bank from two of them and a promise the third will pay this evening when they’re home. The singles are both female, and the couple are empty nesters looking for a distraction as it’s going to be the first Christmas when none of their children are coming home. They sent a lovely, chatty reply and I’m s
ure we’ll get lots more useful info from them when they return your questionnaire.’
‘Great,’ she muttered as she inked three more red asterisks on her working wall.
‘Well, you could sound a bit more enthusiastic about it. I thought that was the kind of stuff you wanted to know about the guests.’
Sinking back into her chair with a sigh, she held out her arms to Isaac and tucked him onto her lap for a comforting cuddle. Not that he was the one in need of any comfort, but Tristan’s comment about empty nesters had reminded her of something she’d been avoiding. Namely what she was going to do about Christmas with her own family. Though she’d told her parents exactly what her temporary role at the castle entailed, she hadn’t made it explicitly clear that she would be busy over the whole of the holiday period. There was also the tricky situation of Steve to tackle. Naturally, he would want to see the boys, but quite how they were going to manage that when he lived in student digs two hundred and fifty miles away she had no idea. ‘Sorry, I was thinking about Steve,’ she said without thinking.
‘Right, okay. Well, I leave you to it.’ Posture as stiff as his words, Tristan rose and marched from the room before she had chance to call him back and explain her offhand comment.
As the door clicked shut behind him, regret sparked into anger. Why should she feel the need to apologise to Tristan for the mere mention of her ex’s name? How on earth did he think they might have any kind of future together if he bristled anytime she spoke about Steve. Did he expect her to pretend the past six years hadn’t happened? That her children were some fatherless miracle visited upon her from up on high? Besides, he had no right to behave like this; it wasn’t as if she’d made any promises in return.
The unfairness of that popped the little bubble of anger. She’d made no promises, sure, but she also hadn’t set him straight. Every day that passed without her being honest with him and telling him there was no chance of a future between them, she was stoking his hopes. She would have to set him straight – and the sooner the better. Whatever lingering crush she might have on him were the foolish dreams of a naïve girl. Life wasn’t fairy tales and happy ever afters, and for her to even contemplate starting a new relationship when she was still hurting from the failure of her marriage was beyond stupid. ‘Out of the frying pan, into the fire’, or so the saying went. No thanks. ‘Once bitten, twice shy’ needed to be her motto for the foreseeable future. And Tristan wasn’t the only one she needed to be straight with. She needed to sort out with Steve when and how he was going to see the boys, and also make sure her parents were aware she wouldn’t be around for Christmas.
Standing to place Isaac back in his playpen she winced at the thought of her mother’s reaction. If Jess thought things were frosty between the two of them now, she needed to brace for the arctic conditions to come.
The matter of access came to a head a lot sooner than she’d anticipated when she wandered into the boys’ bedroom later that evening as their scheduled Skype chat with their father was winding up. ‘Say good night to Daddy, Eli. It’s almost your bedtime.’ She busied herself with folding and putting away the clean laundry in the washing basket Mrs W had brought up earlier as Elijah and Steve exchanged silly kissing noises and said good night to each other. Isaac had already crashed out and she paused to slide his sleep-heavy body under the quilt and settle his head on the pillow.
As she reached for the tablet to turn it off, Steve surprised her by saying. ‘Hey, Jess? Can we have a quick chat?’
Other than a hello and goodbye when he spoke to the children, most of their current communication was via quick emails, confirming convenient times for him to Skype, sorting out the last of the bills which had come through from the old house, that kind of thing. They kept it short and brisk, polite but careful to avoid slipping into the old patterns of conversation which had been second nature during their marriage. ‘Okay,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Can I call you back once I’ve got them down?’
‘Of course, speak soon.’
It didn’t take long to get Elijah into bed, and she gave a little prayer of thanks to the technology gods as she found a story for him to listen to quietly on the tablet and turned off all the lights apart from the little night light that cast stars onto the ceiling. She took a few more minutes to make herself a cup of tea, then curled up in the armchair in her sitting room and clicked the Skype app on her phone.
‘Everything all right?’ She asked by way of greeting as Steve’s image filled the screen. He looked tired from what she could see of his face in the dim light cast by the lamp on his desk.
‘Busy. And my brain hurts. I don’t remember university being this tough the first time around.’
‘That’s because you spent most of it getting pissed in the student bar,’ she said, with a smile.
‘Yeah.’ He scrubbed a hand over his already messy hair. ‘God, how did we cope burning the candle at both ends like that and still make it to lectures?’
‘Not all of us were party animals.’ Jess had spent her first year too worried about failing to go to more than the odd party and found herself hiding in the corner of the few she did attend. Everyone had seemed so much more confident than her, so full of certainty about everything from their career ambitions to their politics while she’d still felt like an unmoulded lump of clay.
She’d finally begun to get into the swing of uni life in her second year when, Marcus had been admitted to hospital for the first time, so out of his head on drugs and drink he’d been close to a fatal overdose. As she’d raced down the motorway in her little second-hand Fiesta, she hadn’t realised it would be the first of many such desperate dashes home. Any taste for a party lifestyle had been shocked out of her at the sight of him strapped to a gurney, her white-faced parents perched on a pair of uncomfortable plastic chairs beside his bed.
‘By the time I make it through the required reading, all I’m fit for is a cup of tea and my bed.’ Steve’s rueful grin chased away the ghosts of the past and she managed a little chuckle.
‘Poor old man. Now what did you want to talk to me about?’
Slumping back in his chair, Steve reached for a can of Diet Coke and took a long mouthful. ‘My mum’s been on at me about when she can see the kids.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yeah. She’s been talking to your mum and they’ve clearly been winding each other up. You know what they get like.’
She did, indeed. Friends since they’d been at primary school, the two women saw each other almost every day, and spoke on the phone on the rare days they didn’t. The move by both sets of parents to the same small village in Somerset had been their idea, and they’d often said they felt more like sisters than best friends. Jess and Steve had grown up enduring endless comments about how it was ideal they’d had a boy and a girl so their children could get married one day. When that prediction had come to pass, their mothers had been ecstatic, neither woman capable of comprehending that Jess and Steve had been running away from them rather than towards each other. They thought it was some kind of master plan, a love story written in the stars, and other such nonsense. Jess got the impression from Steve that his mother wasn’t any nearer to accepting the finality of their split any more than her mum was. Both were in for a serious disappointment.
Filled with trepidation about where the conversation was leading, she took a careful sip of her tea. ‘Dare I ask?’
‘They’ve got it into their heads that the eight of us should spend half-term together at Centre Parcs.’
‘What?’ Jess bolted up in her chair, spilling tea on her lap and almost knocking her phone off the arm rest. Yanking a tissue from a box on the table, she blotted the tea stain on her leggings. ‘Please tell me you’re kidding, that’s the week after next.’
‘Hey now, don’t shoot the messenger,’ Steve said, holding up his hands, palms facing the screen. ‘I’m not exactly thrilled about the idea. I’ve got a massive project due in the first week of the new term, but they seem
dead set on it. Mum sent me a load of links about the one at Sherwood Forest which looks to be about an hour and half from you.’ He paused, then pulled a face. ‘They’ve already booked and paid for a four-bedroom luxury lodge.’
‘Without speaking to either of us first? Christ, they are unbelievable!’ Even as she said it, she knew it was all too believable. Once they got something into their heads, Wendy Wilson and Isla Ripley were an unstoppable force. The fact neither of their husbands ever showed much inclination to thwart their plans only added fuel to their fire. ‘How come this is the first I’m hearing about it?’
‘I guess I’m the advance party, and Wendy will be on the phone to you in the morning.’ Steve raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Parents, who’d bloody have them?’
Hold on a minute. ‘Advance party? Don’t tell me you’re going along with this madcap scheme of theirs.’
‘Well, it would be nice to spend some time with the boys, even if the timing isn’t brilliant’ Steve admitted. ‘I really miss them.’
Jess closed her eyes. They really missed him too, for all they got to chat to him, it didn’t make up for physical contact. Oh, bloody hell, she was going to have to go along with it too, wasn’t she? ‘I’ve got so much work to do, I can’t come for a whole week.’ She hugged her knees close to her chest and propped her chin on them, feeling suddenly chilly. ‘And we can’t play happy families and pretend nothing’s changed, no matter how much either one of them might wish us to.’
The Bluebell Castle Collection Page 59
