The Twelve Dates of Christmas Page 5

  “How would you know?” said Laura. “You might have left a string of weeping men behind you.”

  Kate shivered. The draft in the stairwell was becoming an icy breeze.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said. “My body’s going stiff.”

  “Get Pete to warm you up!” said Laura.

  “That won’t be happening again,” said Kate.

  “Couldn’t you just give him a snog to pass the time?”

  “Laura!”

  “What?” said Laura. “Warble out a couple of Bonnie Tyler numbers, play a bit of tonsil hockey with Pete, and then get an early night.”

  Kate left the karaoke bar after a spectacular rendition of “Proud Mary” and managed not to snog Pete, although he seemed to be underneath mistletoe every time she saw him.

  The taxi pulled up outside Josie’s building and even from the ground Kate could see the orange flickering glow of candlelight at Josie’s windows.

  Josie was the first proper friend Kate had made in London, when she’d come back from traveling. Kate had found a job in a little greasy-spoon café in Camden, the wages from which just covered the rent on the tiny studio apartment above it.

  Kate had earned her living making mugs of tea and cooking fry-ups and spent her evenings upstairs, working on her linocut designs. She bought packs of plain fabric tote bags at wholesale and printed her designs onto them.

  Kate got to know the regular customers at the café, in particular Josie. Josie had a stall in the market, where she sold Indian print scarves, tie-dye skirts, and velvet jackets and smelled permanently of smoky incense.

  Josie had offered to sell some of Kate’s tote bags in her stall. They sold well and, soon, with Josie’s encouragement, Kate began to paint her designs directly onto fabric: patterns and colors inspired by her travels, on silk scarves and squares mounted onto stiff card for greeting cards, to be sold alongside her bags.

  As with so many things in life, coincidence played its hand, in the form of a Liberty buyer wandering through Camden Market on the hunt for a lunchtime burrito, who happened across Josie’s stall and was instantly struck by Kate’s designs. It was the start of her beloved career and a lifetime love affair with Liberty.

  The sweet scent of smoky incense wafted up through the communal hall and then rolled over Kate like a sea fog of yellow scent when Josie greeted her at the door, wearing a tie-dye caftan.

  “Happy winter solstice season!” said Josie. “You’re just in time to help with the tree.”

  Kate was dragged into the small flat, handed a mug of organic mulled cider, and set to work.

  Josie’s Christmas tree was made from a series of long twigs fastened horizontally to a tall, gnarled branch that rose up out of a large clay pot. There was a wicker basket on the floor filled with small scraps of fabric, which Josie and Kate painstakingly tied to the tree until the branches fluttered with multicolored scraps, like a kaleidoscope of butterflies.

  “Maybe you’re not cut out to stay with one man,” said Josie. “You’re a free spirit! Embrace it!”

  “I have embraced it,” said Kate. “Now I’d like to embrace a lasting relationship.”

  “Come back to London,” said Josie. “I could introduce you to the new Camden crowd. I’ll bet I could have you hooked up in a heartbeat.”

  “Someone recently told me a bigger pool doesn’t mean a better swim,” said Kate.

  “Was he the one who cried all through your date until you got him back with his ex?” asked Josie.

  “That’s not the point,” said Kate.

  “Come back to London,” said Josie. “This is where it all happens.”

  “You ought to come to Blexford,” said Kate. “You’d be surprised at how much happens there.”

  “Oh dear,” said Josie, taking a long drag on her cigarette “It’s happened just as I feared. You’ve gone back to being a country mouse.”

  Kate shared the spare room in Josie’s flat with her stock for the Christmas rush; boxes of scented soy candles and chunky knit rainbow scarves and hats jockeyed for space with carved wooden elephants, velvet jackets, and the small single bed where Kate slept under a patchwork eiderdown.

  Josie left with a cheery wave a little after five a.m. She liked to have her stall open early to catch opportunist Christmas shoppers on their morning commute. Kate left soon after, her clothes and hair infused with the scent of patchouli and her head muggy from too much organic cider.

  Kate had to admit there was a certain magic to the early-morning city bustle: the roar of cars and buses and the air electrified with the sheer determination of human energy. But as the train left London behind and the landscape became studded once more with shivering forests and a miscellany of dark green and brown scrubby fields, Kate knew Josie was right: she was no longer a city mouse.

  Blexford was still mostly functioning behind closed curtains when Kate arrived back in the village, hot beneath her layers from the walk up the hill. She saw Matt getting the café ready for opening and banged on the window, pressing her face against the cold glass in a variety of unflattering expressions until he let her in.

  “You smell like a fire in a perfume factory,” said Matt.

  “I stayed at Josie’s last night,” said Kate, and yawned.

  The coffee machine began to make noises like it was ready to start work, and Kate took up her perch at the counter.

  “So, did you hear any more from the weeping vegan?” Matt asked as he heaped froth into Kate’s takeaway cappuccino.

  Kate narrowed her eyes; Laura must have told him. She made a mental note to poke her finger in Laura’s cake before she gave it to her tomorrow.

  “Not yet,” said Kate. “But I’m sure I’ll get an invite to their wedding.”

  “Only you could go on a date and end up fixing him up with his ex,” said Matt.

  “Shut up and give me my coffee,” said Kate.

  Matt handed over the cup.

  “Never mind, it’s number three tonight, isn’t it?” said Matt. “You know what they say: third time’s a charm!”

  “Let’s hope so,” said Kate. “Or I’ll be asking for a refund.”

  “You can’t have expected them all to be Mr. Right,” said Matt.

  “I’d settle for Mr. Turns Up and Doesn’t Cry.”

  “It’s only a matter of time,” said Matt. “You’re an intelligent, talented—”

  “Don’t patronize me,” said Kate.

  “Slightly-better-than-average-looking woman,” Matt finished.

  “Slightly better than average,” said Kate. “Cheers!”

  “You told me not to patronize you,” said Matt, holding his hands up.

  “Yeah, but slightly better than average?”

  “All right, then,” said Matt. “You are beautiful, Kate, and these men should be dropping at your feet.”

  “Now you’re just being stupid,” said Kate.

  “I give up,” said Matt. “You know what your problem is?”

  “Oh, do tell,” said Kate. “I would love for you to tell me what my problems are!”

  “You’re spiky,” said Matt.

  “Spiky?” repeated Kate.

  “Yes,” he said. “You prickle when someone tries to pay you a compliment, but you equally prickle when someone understates your worth. Spiky.”

  “Perhaps it’s only you who makes me spiky,” said Kate.

  Matt laughed. “Perhaps it is.”

  Kate riffled through her bag looking for gloves.

  “Don’t worry about paying,” said Matt. “It’s on the house.”

  “I wasn’t going to pay anyway,” said Kate. She pulled on her gloves and swept out of the café as gracefully as one can wearing a multicolored bobble hat over the top of skanky bed hair.

  “Good luck with victim number three!” shouted Matt aft
er her. Kate flipped him the bird with her free hand and heard him laughing as she walked away.

  “Charming!” said Barry, who was leaning against the café’s wall with a hammer in hand. Kate flushed.

  “That was for Matt,” she said by way of an explanation.

  “Obviously,” said Barry.

  Barry was a bear of a man, as broad as he was tall, with a mass of long gray hair that matched his grizzled beard. He’d been a roadie back in the day and had bought the pub after an infamous guitarist from the seventies left him a sizable chunk of cash in his will.

  “When’s the next date?” asked Barry.

  “Does everyone know about my dates?” asked Kate.

  “Yes,” said Barry.

  Kate nodded. It figured. Nothing got past the Blexford residents.

  “It’s tonight, actually,” said Kate.

  “Not gonna make this one cry, are you?” Barry asked with a smirk.

  Kate narrowed her eyes.

  “I’ll try not to, Barry,” she said.

  Barry bent down to Kate’s height; his blue eyes twinkled beneath a draft-excluding monobrow.

  “Any of these fellas gives you any trouble, you send ’em round the Duke’s Head,” he said.

  Kate smiled.

  “Thanks, Barry,” she said.

  * * *

  • • • • •

  Barry strode off and Kate was alone in the village square. It was just past eight a.m. Now was the lull. The early birds had been out already for their newspapers, and soon front doors would be slamming and children would be skipping and scootering and cycling to school, with their parents running along behind them, bundled down with lunchboxes and backpacks. But for now, it was quiet.

  Kate collected some pinecones and dropped them into an old tote bag she kept rolled up in her coat pocket for just such an occasion. Some she would drop into the hearth in her bedroom fireplace and some would be tied into Christmas garlands, along with cinnamon sticks and dried orange slices—which were currently finishing off in the airing cupboard—to be hung from the windows and the kitchen dresser.

  She also needed to clear her head. She had designs to work on and a date tonight that she was less than enthused about. And the look of utter contentment on Sarah’s face the other night in the snow was still tugging at her insides. Why was that?

  Kate tried to remember herself being that happy; she was sure she must have been, certainly at the beginning with Dan and those first few weeks with Rhys. But for her, contentment waned quite quickly to become a faint questioning, which bloomed into nagging doubt and ultimately wholehearted assuredness that it wasn’t right. Laura called it self-sabotage. Kate called it gut instinct.

  “You can’t give up at the first hurdle,” said Laura, when Kate had ended her brief affair with James after he got mayonnaise on his upper lip while eating a burger. “That wasn’t even a hurdle,” Laura went on. “You dumped him for a small lip indiscretion!”

  “It wasn’t working anyway,” said Kate.

  “You didn’t give it a chance,” Laura objected. “You pressed the self-destruct button prematurely. This is a classic case of your self-sabotage.”

  “I disagree,” said Kate. “A man is like an optional extra; you should only take one on when it is beneficial to do so. It’s like refraining from the fourth plate at the all-you-can-eat curry buffet. Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean you have to have it.”

  * * *

  • • • • •

  As she wandered home the snow had all but disappeared, small patches surviving only in the darkest recesses beneath the hedgerows. The weather had warmed by a few degrees and the silver frosts had turned leaf-strewn paths to mush and grass verges to bog.

  Kate sucked the coffee froth through the hole in the lid, and the hot liquid followed it. She smiled to herself; the first coffee of the day was a joy unlike any other. She walked, swinging her bag of pinecones and stopping occasionally to pick up an amber or russet leaf, not yet withered to brown by the cold.

  It was ten o’clock by the time she reached home. A wicker basket filled with carrots, parsnips, and a celeriac with alien tentacles sat on the kitchen table; her dad must have been up early too.

  Part of the large garden was a devoted vegetable plot that Mac had nurtured since Kate could remember. Although he had his own garden at the cottage, he still came up to work the garden at the old house. Year round they were never short of vegetables. And when they had a glut the neighbors benefited too.

  Kate grabbed her Polaroid camera and snapped the basket. She pinned the photograph to her ideas board. She shuffled out of her coat and hat, dropped her overnight rucksack and bag of pinecones in the corner of the kitchen, and grabbed a pencil and her sketchbook.

  The feather-fronded carrot tops curled shyly around one another as their orange bodies kinked and curved with the pale parsnips that shared their bed. The celeriac sprouted leggy roots through its armored skin like one of H. G. Wells’s monsters.

  Hours later she was still drawing; pencil lines had been joined by washes of color and detail in black fine-line pen. Sketches were strewn about the table: flashes of green vibrant against shades of calm stone and amber. This was how a fabric design was born. Anything could inspire it. Just when she thought she’d no spark in her today, a basket of bent, muddy vegetables had come to the rescue.

  Absent-mindedly she grabbed her coffee cup and swigged.

  “Eurgh!” she exclaimed. Kate was not a fan of cold coffee, not unless it came with ice and a shot of Baileys at least. She got up and went to the cupboard, grabbing a coffee pod, and fired up the coffee machine. She realized she was still wearing her boots; she was just in the middle of wrestling them off when the phone rang. It was Laura.

  “Hello, traitor,” said Kate.

  “What?”

  “You told Matt about my date,” said Kate. “He’s named him ‘the weeping vegan’!”

  Laura laughed.

  “That is brilliant,” she said.

  “Laura!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Laura. “I didn’t think it was a secret. And anyway, you probably would have told him eventually. You know, when you can see the funny side of it.”

  “I can see the funny side of it,” said Kate. “I just don’t want him laughing about me behind my back.”

  “I don’t think Matt is the type to laugh behind your back,” said Laura.

  Kate sighed.

  “No, neither do I,” she said resignedly. “Not when he can laugh at my face.”

  Kate’s other boot shot off with force and slid along the floor, leaving a mud trail on the wood.

  “Anyway,” said Laura. “Why are we talking about Matt? I didn’t call to talk about Matt. I’ve got about five minutes before Charley wakes up from his nap and Mina realizes I’m not watching CBeebies with her. What and who is tonight’s date?”

  Kate held the phone between ear and shoulder as she cleaned the floor. “It’s ice skating and my date’s name is Anthony.”

  “Ice skating?” screeched Laura. “You?” In the background a baby began to wail. “Why would you choose ice skating?”

  “The alternatives were go-carting or mince pie making,” Kate explained. “I make enough mince pies as it is, and driving the Mini is like go-carting.”

  “And it wouldn’t hurt to be a damsel in distress on the ice,” said Laura sardonically.

  The wailing became more urgent.

  “Oh shit!” said Laura. “Okay, talk fast, tell me about Anthony.”

  “Six foot three, dark brown hair, short but sort of quiffy at the front, brown eyes, fireman, two kids, single father, divorced,” Kate reeled off.

  “No wonder you wanted to ice skate.”

  The wailing was a siren now, shrill and relentless. Kate could hear Laura panting as she ran up the stairs.<
br />
  “And a fireman!” she said. “Mummy’s coming, Charley! Well, he sounds promising. Does he know you can’t stand up on the ice?”

  The wailing was close to the earpiece now; Laura had Charley in her arms. In the distance a little girl’s voice sounded shrilly, “Muuuuummmmy! Where are you?”

  “Oh my God!” said Laura.

  Kate could hear the thud of her feet as she descended the stairs with Charley still yelling in her arms.

  “I’ve got to go,” Laura shouted. “Tell me all about it tomorrow. Love you.”

  The phone went dead and Kate made herself a coffee and set back to work.

  It was true that she couldn’t ice skate. At all. Of the many things she was good at, balance was not one of them; roller skates, ice skates, skateboards, even hopping caused her problems, although since leaving primary school hopping as a requirement to life skills had admittedly waned.

  * * *

  • • • • •

  Kate swigged her fresh coffee and looked over today’s sketches. She had gotten a lot more done than she’d expected. She was tempted to add a little more detail; her fingers itched to deepen the shade along the edge of the celeriac, but she resisted. If she picked up her paintbrush now, she’d be lost for another hour.

  Her phone pinged as she made her way up the stairs to have a shower. Her dad had sent her a photograph of a vegetable soup he’d made. She’d never imagined he’d become so good at being by himself, or so adept in the kitchen. How different things were now.

  Four years, she thought as she lathered shampoo into her hair. In the last four years Laura had had two children and Kate had made senior designer. She had also rekindled a friendship she had thought was lost forever.

  Kate had only been back in Blexford three months when one of the Knitting Sex Kittens was diagnosed with breast cancer—thankfully she recovered, but it rocked the Kittens. The Knitting Sex Kittens were a formidable group of women, all over age sixty and all single, by either design, divorce, or death.

  They were on every committee in the village; in fact, they had started every committee in the village. When they weren’t knitting, they were organizing, and when they weren’t organizing, they were planning. There was nothing these women did not know about Blexford’s goings-on. Nothing! They were like sleeper cells for MI6, planted surreptitiously all over the village, gathering intel from behind patchwork quilts and chunky-knit cardigans.