Five Winters(34)



“I tell you what,” I said. “Next time I go shopping, I’ll be sure to keep a lookout for both those shades.”

But Olivia hadn’t finished. “Dog Wee White!” she said, giggling.

“Dog wee isn’t white—it’s yellow!” Emily corrected her.

“Thank you, girls. I think that’s enough, don’t you?” I said, finally stepping in. “If you like dogs so much, you can help out at the dog show my company is running next spring.”

Their eyes grew wide with excitement. “Can we, Beth? Really and truly?”

“Yes, of course. You can help to judge the waggiest-tail competition.” I looked at them, mock stern. “Of course, you’ll have to promise to be sensible. No being cheeky. No being rude.”

“We promise. Don’t we, Emily?”

“Good,” I said. “I’m glad to hear it. Now, we’d better paint the nails on your other hands, hadn’t we?”

My heart lifted as I got busy with the nail polish again. For five minutes or so, the girls and I had actually had fun together. Maybe Jaimie was right. Maybe it was just a question of time. Perhaps being more girlie or joking around was the way to break down some of the barriers between me and Jaimie’s daughters.

But before I could start pencilling in a spa break or stand-up comedy gig, the girls ran off to play Pop-Up Pirate!, smearing their nail varnish in the process and forcing Jaimie out to the superstore for nail polish remover when I discovered I hadn’t got any. “Harriet will go crazy when she sees them in that state,” he muttered as he left the house.

While he was gone, the Pop-Up Pirate! game deteriorated into a row, Emily announced she was bored, and Olivia kept rushing to the window to ask when “Auntie Grace” was going to arrive.

Partly to escape, I ventured outside to the woodpile in my unsuitably glamorous dress for logs to keep the wood burner going. It was drizzling, the sky like a wet grey flannel stretched out behind the spindly branches of the grey poplar trees beyond the property. Ghastly Grey, Olivia might have called it. Miserable Murk.

As I stood there, I could hear nothing—absolutely nothing at all. No birdsong, no golfers on the golf course. The idyllic hammock-slumbering days of summer were a distant memory. And suddenly I was overwhelmed with nostalgia for my old neighbourhood. For my garden and my old flat. Had my tenants taken good care of it? They’d promised to do so, but that didn’t mean they had. Their tenancy had just ended, so I would need to go and check the place over before I let it anyway, so I’d soon see.

Staring out at the spindly trees, I pictured myself going down my steps, letting myself in. Would it still feel like home? Or would I feel a bit displaced, the way I did here sometimes?

The sound of Jaimie’s car pulling into the drive reached me, and I shook my head at myself, turning my back on the garden and going into the house.

Jaimie was in the kitchen. He held up a bottle of nail varnish remover and a bag of chocolate chip cookies to show me. “Peace offering,” he said. “Sorry I snapped.”

I shrugged. “No, it’s all right. I should have thought. They’re too young for nail varnish just yet.”

He gave me a little squeeze and moved past me to put the kettle on. “Maybe just a little,” he agreed.

And somehow, hug or not, shared laughter with the girls or not, I felt as if I’d failed. Again.

Mark, Grace, and Rosie arrived promptly at twelve o’clock. Of course they did—Grace was driving. If it had been Rosie behind the wheel, we’d have been given a two-hour window for their arrival, the exact time being determined by when Rosie got up. She was notoriously late for everything, which made it constantly surprising that she had such a high-powered job involving lots of travel. Rosie was to catch a train back to London on Tuesday, just in time for Christmas with her parents at Enfield. She’d already called me a traitor because I wasn’t going there this year, but I could hardly leave Jaimie, as this was his big Christmas with his girls. And besides, after abandoning me for Giorgio the previous year, she didn’t have a leg to stand on anyway.

The girls rushed out the front door the second the car pulled into the drive.

“Auntie Grace! Auntie Grace! Our Christmas tree is even bigger than the one we had last year!”

“Is it really? Good job I’ve brought you lots of presents to put under it. Come here and let me hug you.”

Rosie was emerging from the car, stretching and yawning like a sleepy squirrel. I walked past the girls to hug her.

“Hello, you,” she said, hugging me back.

“Hello, you back. Hi, Mark.”

He bent to kiss me. “Hi, Beth.”

Rosie yawned. “Sorry, I only woke up when we got to Cambridge.”

“She had a bit of a late night last night,” Mark explained. “Wasn’t even dressed when we arrived to pick her up.”

“Well, it is nearly Christmas,” Rosie said. “Some of us like to go out and have a good time at this time of year instead of staying in with Netflix.”

I grinned. God, it was good to hear them bickering.

“I’ve missed this,” I said. “Did you have a good journey?”

“Yes, all fine. Except for when I woke up. I thought there must have been a nuclear disaster or something.”

“She means all the black fields,” Mark explained. “Or at least I think she does.”

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