How to Find Love in a Book Shop(97)
‘He was the most brilliant present chooser.’
‘Thank you for finding it, Emilia. Thank you for bringing it to me.’
‘It’s what Dad would have wanted me to do.’
Sarah folded it back up and tucked it back into the tissue just as Ralph appeared in the doorway.
‘Sausage rolls, darling? Everyone’s ravenous. They need something to soak up all the booze.’
Emilia turned around with a smile and Sarah picked up the tray. ‘Just coming.’
The two of them walked out together into the mêlée, then drifted apart amongst the throngs. They would always have a tie, because of their secret, but it didn’t need to be vocalised. They knew they would be there for each other, if they ever wanted to share a moment’s reflection, or memory, and they would give each other comfort.
It was an unusual situation, thought Emilia, but then – what was usual? The whole point of life was you couldn’t ever be sure what would happen next. Sometimes what happened was good, sometimes not, but there were always surprises. She smiled to herself as she scoped the room, and spotted Marlowe standing by the fire, chatting up a pair of sprightly elderly ladies who were surveying him as a pair of foxes might a chicken who’d escaped its coop.
‘Oh look!’ someone cried. ‘It’s starting to snow!’
Everyone rushed to the windows and gazed out at the almost luminescent snowflakes twirling round in the golden glow of the garden lamps. Faster and faster they fell, tiny ballerinas in the spotlight.
‘Do you think we should go?’ Emilia asked Marlowe. ‘We don’t want to get snowed in.’
‘Let’s,’ said Marlowe. ‘I feel as if I might be eaten alive any minute.’
They slipped away as discreetly as they could – endless goodbyes and Christmas wishes would only hold up the jollity. Marlowe started up the car and turned on the heater, then drove carefully through the blizzard, windscreen wipers at the double. The carol service from King’s College Cambridge played on the stereo. It was as if they were in cosy bubble, tucked away from the outside world.
‘A white Christmas,’ sighed Emilia, as the landscape around them transformed into a winter wonderland. Their first, she smiled to herself, and thought about waking up in his cottage the next morning, and the stocking she had filled for him hanging by his fireplace.
As they came into Peasebrook, Marlowe stopped the car just on the hump of the bridge and Emilia looked at Nightingale Books, the light from the windows still glowing inside, the roof already covered in white, and in her mind she said ‘Merry Christmas, Dad,’ and then the car rumbled down the other side of the bridge and up the high street into the oncoming snow.