A Christmas Wedding(43)
When Sara explained that Charlie wanted to oversee the writing of his wife’s book, I was apprehensive. The job was already going to be challenging enough – would he make it even more difficult?
I come to a stop outside a modest, terraced, redbrick house. A narrow, slate-topped veranda stretches across the front, sheltering a charcoal-grey door and a bay window. Apart from a lavender hedge bordering the wall adjacent to the street, the tiny paved area is devoid of plants.
Movement catches my eye at the window, so I quickly walk up the path and knock on the door. There’s not even time to check my reflection in the glass before it opens to reveal who I’m assuming is Charlie.
He looks to be in his early thirties, and is around six foot tall and slim, with green eyes and shaggy dark-blond hair held back from his forehead with a mustard-yellow bandana. He’s wearing a faded orange T-shirt and grey shorts, and his face and limbs are sun-kissed the colour of honey, all the way down to his bare feet.
Wow.
‘Charlie?’ I check hopefully.
‘Hello,’ he replies with a small, reserved smile, holding back the door. ‘Come in.’
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.
‘Tea?’ he offers.
‘Thank you, that’d be great.’ I jolt as the door closes with a clunk. I’m nervous.
Charlie gestures down the hall, indicating that I should lead the way. The television is on in what I presume is the living room, but I don’t look in as I pass, and a moment later we spill out into a galley-style kitchen. It continues onto an extension containing a two-seater sofa backed up against the left wall and a round table at the end.
He fills the kettle and gets out two mugs. ‘How was your journey? Did you drive?’
‘No. Tube from Wembley to Paddington, train to Bodmin, and bus to here.’
‘Sounds harrowing.’
He’s polite and well spoken, but he hasn’t made eye contact with me once since I stepped over his threshold.
A noise sounds out from the direction of the living room.
‘Excuse me,’ he says, exiting the kitchen.
I take a deep breath and force myself to exhale slowly while taking in my surroundings.
The internal walls are exposed and the bricks have been painted with thick, white masonry paint. The worktops are fashioned out of old railway sleepers, sanded and varnished to a dull shine. French doors at the end open up onto the back garden. It’s neat and tidy in here, but it looks like a right tip out there. My attention drifts to the table and the wooden chairs encircling it.
Two chairs.
And one highchair.
That was another thing Sara neglected to mention at our meeting last week.
When Nicole died, she left behind not only an unfinished manuscript and a grief-stricken husband, but a five-week-old baby daughter, as well.
Life can seriously suck.
Charlie is talking in low tones in the living room. Another wave of nerves washes through me.
Babies freak me out. They don’t seem to like me, and I don’t particularly like them. What if I make them cry? What if I make this one cry? If she takes offence at me, Charlie probably will, too, and he may well pull the plug on this idea.
Earlier this week, I met up with Nicole’s editor, Fay. She’s a lovely, warm woman in her late forties and she revealed that the decision to go ahead with the sequel came down to Charlie. He wasn’t at all sure, from what I gather, but he felt a responsibility towards Nicole’s readers and in the end, gave the go-ahead, as long as the job was done well by the right person. I’m still not convinced that I’m the right person, but, after reading Nicole’s book, I’m as keen as anyone to find out what happened next. Even if I have to write it myself.
The prospect is admittedly terrifying, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. If this meeting with Charlie doesn’t go well, there won’t be a bridge to cross.
The kettle boils, so I distract myself by pouring hot water into the mugs. A moment later, Charlie returns.
‘CBeebies only distracts her for so long at her age,’ he says, knowing he doesn’t need to explain his circumstances because I’ve already been made well aware of them. ‘Milk?’
‘Yes, please.’ I move away from the worktop to give him some space. ‘How old is your daughter?’ I ask.
‘Eight and a half months. Sugar?’ He flicks his eyes up to meet mine.
‘No, thanks.’
‘My mum was supposed to be here, but she had an emergency at work,’ he reveals, stirring two teaspoons into his own cup.
‘What does she do?’ I ask.
‘She and my dad run a campsite. They had a burst water main or something.’
‘The campsite on the hill?’
‘No, they’re about an hour away. A couple of mates of mine run the one on the hill. Do you know it?’ Charlie picks up his cup and finally looks at me properly. I thought his eyes were green, but they’re getting on for hazel.
‘Only because my dad mentioned it. He’s stayed there a few times in his campervan,’ I explain.
His daughter cries out again.
‘We’ll go through,’ Charlie says quietly, nodding at the door. I wait until he leads the way.
I see her legs first, bare and chubby and kicking back and forth like nobody’s business. Then the rest of her comes into view – her pastel-coloured babygrow adorned with bunnies, and fine, slightly curly, light-blond hair. She’s strapped into a bouncy chair in front of the television, and Charlie drags the contraption across the wooden floor towards him as he takes a seat on the sofa nearest to the bay window. He pushes on the back of her bouncer to make it move and she giggles.