The Unexpected Holiday Gift (13 page)

‘Do you really think you can pull it off?' If Merry managed it, then Clara would still have Christmas with her daughter. It might not be perfect, but it would be pretty wonderful all the same.

For the first time ever, Clara cared a whole lot less about perfect. She just wanted to be with Ivy for Christmas. Whatever day they decided that was.

‘I can do it,' Merry promised her. ‘Just leave it with me. Now, do you want to speak to Ivy?'

‘Please. And Merry...'

‘She can't know about Jacob. I know.'

Clara waited until she heard her daughter's high-pitched voice coming closer, feeling her heart tighten with every second.

‘Mummy?'

‘Hi, sweetheart. Everything okay there?' Clara tried her best to sound light-hearted. She knew from past experience that Ivy would pick up on any slight tension in her voice.

‘It's brilliant here. Auntie Merry and I went shopping and we bought you—' Clara heard a shushing noise from the background ‘—something I'm not allowed to tell you about yet. And then we went for hot chocolates.'

‘Sounds wonderful. I wish I could be there.'

‘Are you coming home soon?' Ivy asked. ‘It's really, really snowy out there.'

‘I know. And I'm afraid the snow is very deep where I am too. It's half way up the door!' She made it a joke, even though it meant that no taxi would drive to the castle in this, and she had no means of escape. The most important thing was that Ivy continued to believe this was all one big, fun adventure.

Ivy let loose a peal of laughter. ‘How are you going to get home?'

‘Well, it looks like I might have to wait for the snowploughs to clear the roads.' Now came the tricky bit.

‘Will you be home before Santa comes?'

‘Actually,' she said, dropping her voice to a secretive whisper, ‘I just heard—Father Christmas is snowed in too!'

‘Nooo...' Ivy breathed, amazed.

‘Yes. So he's postponing Christmas! I can't remember the last time that happened!' Because it never had. But Ivy didn't know that yet.

‘Does that mean he won't be bringing my presents?' Ivy asked, obviously anxious.

‘Of course he will! You've been such a good girl this year, he wouldn't not bring you presents. It just means that he might have to come tomorrow night instead of tonight. And I'm sure I'll be back by then.' If she and Jacob hadn't killed each other before Boxing Day.

‘What are we going to do tomorrow then?' Ivy sounded confused but hadn't expressed any disbelief yet. Clara took that as a good sign.

‘Have a practice Christmas, of course!' She injected as much fun as she could into the words. ‘You and Auntie Merry can practise opening a few presents, eating Christmas dinner, pulling crackers, wearing the hats and telling the jokes...all the usual things. Then, when I get home, we can do it all again for real, once Santa has been!'

‘So I get two Christmases this year?'

Clara let out a small sigh of relief at the excitement in her daughter's voice. ‘Exactly!'

‘Brilliant!' There was a clunk, the familiar sound of Ivy dropping the phone as she got bored and wandered off. In the distance, Clara heard her excited chatter. ‘Auntie Merry! I get two Christmases this year! Did you know? Santa's stuck too!'

Clara waited, listening to the plans for the Christmas she was missing, and wiped a rogue tear from her cheek. She didn't have time to break down now, not with Jacob here.

Although, until those snowploughs made it up here, she had nothing
but
time.

Eventually, Merry came back on the line. ‘Okay?'

‘Seems to be.' Clara sniffed. ‘Tell her I love her, yeah? And you'll be okay tucking her in? You know she likes to sleep with—'

‘Blue Ted,' Merry finished for her. ‘I know. I've babysat for her a hundred times. We'll be fine.'

‘I know you will. I just wish I was there.'

‘And you will be. Really soon,' Merry said soothingly. ‘Now get off the line so I can phone whoever is in charge of snowploughs around here and work out how to postpone Christmas.'

‘Thank you, Merry.'

‘For you, anything. Go and make your ex-husband and the father of your child miserable. That should cheer you up.'

Clara gave a watery chuckle. Merry had all of the best ideas.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

J
ACOB
STARED
AT
THE
bottle of brandy. It stared back. Well, probably it didn't but he'd drunk a good quarter of it now so it felt as if it might.

‘So...your latest solution to the snow issue is getting drunk?' Clara's voice from the doorway made him spin round—too fast, as it turned out. It took a good thirty seconds for the rest of the room to catch up.

‘I called Heather,' he informed her. ‘Before the brandy.'

‘Are they all okay?' Sitting down across the table from him, she poured herself a small measure into a clean tumbler. She'd never been a big drinker, he remembered. Apparently being snowbound in a castle with him was driving her to it.

‘Fine. They're actually in a hotel in Inverness at the moment. They're hoping to travel up tomorrow morning, meet us here if the snow has cleared enough.' So his father would be spending his last Christmas driving on treacherous Scottish roads, trying to save his only son from his own stupidity. Just the way he wanted it, Jacob was sure.

Time for another brandy.

Clara moved the bottle out of his reach as he moved across the table to grab it. ‘You're a terrible drinker, Jacob. You're plastered after about two pints.'

‘I might have changed.' As he said the words, he thought of all the ways he had changed, or might have changed since she'd left. Drinking wasn't one of them but she didn't know that.

‘Apparently not.' The certainty in her voice told him she wasn't just talking about alcohol. ‘But anyway. Here's to a perfect Christmas.' Clara raised her glass and took a long swallow. ‘Somehow I don't think you're going to be giving me a top recommendation after this.'

‘I don't blame you for the snow, Clara,' he said. For many other things, sure. But not the snow.

‘But I bet you're blaming yourself, aren't you?' Her eyes were too knowing, and she saw too deep. He glanced away the moment her gaze met his. How did she always manage to do that? Pick up on his biggest insecurity and dig right in to it?

‘I was the one who wanted Christmas in the Highlands. The part of Britain voted most likely to get snow at Christmas.' It was his fault. His failure.

‘And I was the one who brought you to a castle on top of a hill,' Clara countered. ‘Place least likely to get its roads gritted, or cleared by the snowploughs first.'

‘It's what I asked for.'

‘What if I told you I had an ulterior motive for bringing you here?' Clara asked.

Suddenly, Jacob's mind filled with exotic scenarios. Had she brought him here purposefully to punish him? Or, more likely, to tell him about his daughter... ‘What ulterior motive?'

‘I'd booked this place for another client.' Clara took another sip of brandy, her eyes warily peering over the rim of the glass, watching to see how he'd react. ‘They pulled out and left me liable for the reservation fee, thanks to a contract screw-up. Holding your Christmas here meant I wasn't out of pocket after all.'

‘I see.' It wasn't what he'd expected but part of him had to admire her business sense. ‘So it really
is
your fault that we're snowed in and stranded in a castle at the top of a hill.'

‘Hey, you asked for a white Christmas.'

Jacob couldn't help it; the laughter burst out of him before he could think. Somehow, tossing the blame for their predicament back and forth had defused some of the awful tension that had been growing between them since they'd arrived. After a moment Clara joined in, giggling into her brandy. Jacob marvelled at her. For once, she looked just like the Clara he remembered. The woman who, he knew now, had fought back against a childhood that could have left her bitter and cruel and instead had chosen to find joy in the world. He'd been scared that being married to him had taken that away from her.

He'd always thought her capacity for joy the most beautiful thing about her.

‘I'm sorry,' she said once she'd calmed down again. ‘Believe me, I really never intended for this to happen.'

‘Oh, I believe you,' Jacob said with a half-smile. ‘After all, you've made it very clear you'd rather be anywhere else than here with me.'

‘Not anywhere.' She gave him an odd look, one he couldn't quite interpret. ‘I just...I'm supposed to be elsewhere tonight. That's all.'

‘With Ivy.' It was the child-sized elephant in the room.

‘That's right.'

‘She must be...four now?' Even simple mental arithmetic was proving tricky. ‘Is she okay? With Merry?'

Clara raised her eyebrows. ‘Suddenly concerned for the child you didn't know existed an hour ago? The one you made it rather clear you don't want in your life?'

‘I didn't say that.' His reaction might have strongly hinted at it but he hadn't actually said the words. ‘And you're worried about her. I'm just worried about you.'

‘Don't.' Clara sighed. ‘Ivy's having the best slumber party ever with one of her favourite people in the world and, thanks to a story about Santa getting snowed in, is potentially having two Christmases this year, if we don't get out of here in time. She might be missing me but she's fine.'

She was a good deal better than Clara was, by the sound of things.

Jacob reached across, took the bottle of brandy and poured a small measure into both of their glasses. ‘Since we're stuck here...we should talk about it. Her, I mean.' Clara pulled a face. ‘We're never going to get a better opportunity than this,' he pointed out.

‘I know. And you deserve to know everything. I realised this week...it wasn't just that we didn't talk when we were married. We didn't let each other in enough to see the real people behind the lust.' She waved her glass in the air as she spoke. ‘We thought we had this epic connection, this unprecedented love. But we never really knew the true heart of each other. We never opened up enough for that.'

Jacob stared down at the honey-coloured liquid in his glass. She was right, much as he hated to admit it. He'd wanted to believe that he could be a success as a husband, that he could be what she needed, so he'd only let her see the parts of him that fitted his vision of what that meant—working hard, taking responsibility, earning status, being a success. Everything his father had always done.

He'd hidden away the other parts, the bits of him he wanted to pretend didn't exist. All the parts that made his family ashamed of him.

Would it have made a difference if he'd shown them to Clara? Or would they just have made her leave him sooner?

‘I always knew,' he said slowly, ‘that something was different the last time you left. I just never guessed it could be this. I always thought that it was me and that I'd let you down. And I had, I know. But that's not why you didn't come back to try again. That was because...'

Clara finished the thought for him. ‘Ivy mattered more.'

‘And that's why I could never have children.' Jacob gave her a wonky smile then tilted his glass to drain the last few drops. ‘I never did seem to grasp the concept of other people mattering more.'

‘What do you mean?' Clara asked, frowning. ‘Do you want me to tell you you're selfish? Because you are a workaholic who often forgets there's a life outside the office...or at least you used to be. I think this Perfect Christmas project of yours shows that you're definitely capable of thinking of others when you want to.'

Jacob's mind raced with warnings to himself. With all the things he'd never told Clara—all his failures, the acts and mistakes that would strip away any respect she'd ever had for him.

Why tell her now? Except it was his last chance. The last opportunity he might ever have to explain himself to her and to make her understand the sort of husband he'd been and why.

Should he tell her? He gazed into her eyes and saw a slight spark there. Was he imagining the connection that still existed between them? The thread that drew them together, even after all these years?

Would the truth be the thing that finally broke it? Or maybe—just maybe—could it draw her in to him again?

‘I made a mistake once,' he started.

‘Just the once? Jacob, I've made hundreds.' She was joking, of course, because she couldn't know yet that this wasn't a laughing matter. Not for him and not for his family.

‘Only once that counts,' he said and something in his tone must have got through to her because she settled down in her chair, her expression suddenly serious.

‘What happened?'

‘My parents... They left me in charge of Heather one evening while they were at a friends' Christmas party. I was sixteen. She was six. I resented it. I wanted to be out with my friends and instead I was stuck in, babysitting.' Across the table, Clara's eyes were wide as she waited, even though she had to know that the story ended as well as it could. Heather was still with them.

Just.

‘I was messing around in the kitchen,' he went on, hating the very memory. He could still smell the scent of the Christmas tree in the hallway, the mulled wine spices in the pan on the stove. ‘I was experimenting. I used to think I wanted to be a scientist, did I ever tell you that?'

Clara shook her head. ‘No, you didn't. Like your father, you mean? What changed?'

‘Yeah, like my dad.' That was all he'd wanted: to be like his father. To invent something that changed people's lives for the better. At least he had until that night. ‘And as for what changed...' He swallowed. ‘I sent Heather up to bed early because I didn't want her getting in my way. I was trying some experiment I'd read about—a flame in a bottle thing—when the phone rang. I turned towards it, moving away from the table.' The memory was so clear, as if he was right there all over again. A familiar terror rose in his throat. As if it were happening again and this time he might not be able to stop it...

‘I was far enough away when I heard the explosion. And then I heard Heather scream,' he went on, the lump in his throat growing painfully large. But still he struggled to speak around it. ‘The experiment... The fire should have been contained in the bottle, burning up the methanol. But I screwed it up, somehow. It exploded. And when I turned back... Heather...'

‘Oh, Jacob,' Clara whispered and reached out across the table to take his hand. He squeezed her fingers in gratitude.

‘She'd come downstairs to see what I was doing,' he explained. ‘She was right by the table when it happened. Her arms...'

‘I'd seen the scars,' Clara admitted. ‘I just never thought... She always kept them covered, so I didn't like to ask. I should have.'

‘No, you shouldn't. We don't... Nobody in my family likes to talk about it. We like to pretend it never happened.' Even though there hadn't been a day since when Jacob hadn't thought about it, hadn't wished he'd acted differently. ‘Dad only ever refers to it as our lucky escape. Heather put her arms up to protect herself when the bottle exploded but her pyjamas caught fire. I grabbed a throw blanket and smothered her with it to put the flames out but...' He swallowed. This was the part of the memory that haunted him the most. ‘The fire chief said that she would have been burnt beyond recognition if I'd been a moment slower, if her hair had caught fire. It could have taken her sight too. And she might have...'

Clara's fingers tightened around his. ‘But she didn't. She's fine, Jacob. She's out there right now with your parents, waiting for this snow to clear. She's fine.'

She's alive.
Some mornings, that was the first thing he said to himself. Whenever he worried about the day ahead, about a deal that might go wrong or a business decision he had to make, he just reminded himself that Heather was alive, and he knew anything was possible. But nothing had ever been the same since. His parents had never looked at him the same way. They loved him, he knew. Forgave him even, maybe. But they couldn't love him the same way they had before he'd hurt their baby girl. And they couldn't trust him, not with people.

He'd been lucky—far luckier than anyone had any right to be, his father had said. But Jacob knew he couldn't ever rely on that again. He'd used up his allocation of good luck and all he had left was hard graft and determination.

A determination never to let his family down like that again. A resolution never to put himself in a position where he was responsible for a child again.

He couldn't be trusted. He should always focus on his own dream, his own ambition, instead of another person's welfare. He couldn't take the risk of hurting another kid that way again.

He'd thought that maybe he could manage marriage, as long as it was on his terms. And when he'd met Clara he'd known he had to try.

But in the end he'd only let her down too. He'd neglected her the way he'd neglected Heather that night, but the difference was that Clara had been an adult.

When he'd hurt her, Clara could leave, and she had done exactly that.

And he couldn't ever blame her.

* * *

Clara held Jacob's hand hard and tight, her whole being filled with sympathy and love for that younger version of her husband. A teenage boy who'd been acting exactly like sixteen-year-old boys always would—foolishly—and had almost destroyed his family.

‘It wasn't your fault, Jacob,' she said and his gaze snapped up to meet hers.

‘How can you say that? It was entirely my fault. Every last bit of it.'

The awful thing was, he was right. ‘You were a child.'

‘I was sixteen. Old enough to be responsible, at least in my parents' eyes. I let them down.'

And he'd never forgiven himself, Clara realised. He'd held this failure over himself for years and it had coloured every single thing he'd ever done since.