The Present: The must-read Christmas romance of the year!

She held the second box aloft before he could take it.

‘I am perfectly capable of hefting a few boxes about,’ she said. ‘I do not need your superhero powers today.’

‘You piss about with basic common sense safety rules often enough, and you will break something, probably your own head. Simple fact,’ he said, exasperated. ‘And it is not going to happen on my watch. Stop arguing, and give it here.’

He held her obstinate gaze until she gave in with an eye roll and handed over the second box.

‘It’s just a couple of bits,’ she called after him as he negotiated the loft ladder in half the time and none of the danger.

‘Where do you want these?’

‘Just in the kitchen, please. I’ll get on with the next lot.’

Exactly what he was afraid of. He dumped the stuff on the ground floor in record time and arrived back in the attic just as she was poking about next to a teetering stack of boxes and junk.

‘Look, anything you want shifting, just ask will you? That mountain of stuff is one wrong move away from burying you.’

She looked up at him in surprise, obviously lost in thought, and he tried to disconnect his brain from the thought that, for some reason, on her, scruffy looked alluring. She was dressed for the dust today, no expensive jeans in sight by the look of it. Her wavy hair was caught up in a ponytail from which it was already escaping. She wore a faded pink T-shirt, jeans with paint marks on them, and an ancient pair of Converse.

‘Okay,’ she said, looking the mountain of stuff up and down. ‘Thanks. I hadn’t really thought of a good way to dismantle all this.’

‘No kidding.’

‘I’m trying to find something that will give me a lead on the Christmas decs. There must be something, right? So far I’ve found a ton of teenage photos of me – STRAIGHT in the bin. Old clothes. A load of old saucepans. Nothing from anywhere near as far back as the decorations. The thing is, I’m going one box at a time here, and I haven’t a clue what I’m really looking for.’ She flipped the top open on the nearest box and peered inside. ‘I could still be here next bloody Christmas at this rate.’

She glanced up at him, and somehow managed to combine a smile with a frown. For no good reason, he decided on impulse that the attic floor could wait an hour. What the hell, he had time on his hands, and an hour was hardly going to affect his usual policy of getting the work done so he could make his good next escape. He still had a week before he needed to get ready for his next excursion. Snowboarding in Austria.

‘Sounds to me like you need a system,’ he said. He leaned past her and took the highest box down from the next row, the one that had been most on the brink of falling on her head, and put it down next to her. Slit the top open with his Stanley knife, and turned back to lift down the next one.

‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘Have a quick check what’s in them, and if it looks like it might be in the ballpark, we investigate further. If it’s nothing, then you can deal with it later. I’ll just shift the boxes around and we can narrow it down between us. And if it happens to be your baby photos, I’ll just have a coffee break while I check through them.’

She laughed.

‘I’m surprised Gran hasn’t already subjected you to them over coffee.’

‘Actually, she has. You had a great line going in crazy hair.’

He dodged sideways as she threw an old cushion at his head. It landed on the floor behind him and sent up a cloud of dust.

Fifteen minutes later, and things had speeded up considerably.

‘How come you do this kind of work?’ she asked, pulling a couple of garish orange table mats out of a box. ‘Bloody hell, look at these. Like a seventies’ acid trip.’

As she checked and dismissed them, he stacked boxes to the side of the loft hatch, and every so often took a few at a time downstairs to free up space.

‘House and garden maintenance? Because it can be picked up and put down, and I can make money doing it wherever I happen to be,’ he said.

‘I was kind of expecting something more like “I like working outside, and the creative side is great”,’ she said.

He shrugged.

‘It maybe was that when I started out. The garden design was more of a thing back then. Things change over time; you know how it is.’

The initial satisfaction of building up a successful business from scratch, doing the work he loved, had gone into a nosedive when Sean died, from which it had never really recovered. She was looking directly at him now, sitting cross-legged next to the most recently discarded box. A lock of hair had escaped from her ponytail, and as he watched she blew it out of her face. He avoided her gaze. He had absolutely no desire to get into his work-life balance, with her, or anyone else.

‘Most people say, because I had a talent for it at school,’ she persisted. ‘Or because carried on from when I was doing a summer job, or because I like working with my hands and running my own business.’

He stopped work for a moment and sat down on one of the joists.

‘My father is a carpenter,’ he said, ‘so I kind of fell into that trade because of him. I wasn’t crazy on school, and I loved watching him work when I was a little kid. He used to take me out with him on jobs in the school holidays. It kind of slotted into place when I finished school, I went out with him, learned on the job. And the garden stuff is like a natural add-on to building fences and decking and sheds. I did like being outside, you’re right, and for a while I was really flying with the regular hours, I built the business way up, I had more work than I could cope with.’

‘For a while?’ she said. ‘What about now?’

She had gone back to sorting through some old junky-looking ornaments now, not looking at him. The business had been the last thing on his mind since Sean had gone. Beyond the fact that it funded the distraction he needed, his interest in it was pretty low.

‘Now it’s more about what I do in my own time. I’m not going to lie on my deathbed thinking: I wish I’d fixed a few more fences. Not when every day could be my last. So I work from one trip to the next. I’ve got a few local clients like Olive, and I have a guy who covers for me when I’m away. And I pick up other work ad hoc. I can do that anywhere I go, people always want house maintenance work doing, it’s a good source of instant cash if you get stuck.’

‘You mean you work to pay for your holidays?’ she said. ‘That’s no big deal, we all do that.’

Not to the degree that he did.

‘When I finish one trip, I think that’s it for a while, but before I know it I just get restless and start looking for the next thing, the next place, or whatever. I work for a bit, and then get away again.’

Get away really was the right description. The distraction just never lasted long enough.

‘And what kinds of places do you go to?’

Anywhere that doesn’t make me look back and make comparisons.

He pulled down a couple of black bin liners and added them to the to-be-checked stack next to Lucy.

‘Just new places. I don’t usually go back to places I’ve been before. I do some sports stuff, marathon running, diving. Stuff like that.’

‘And you go with friends?’

Sean flashed into his head. The need to get her off this subject.

‘Yeah, sometimes. Anything yet?’

‘Nothing yet,’ she said. ‘Maybe there isn’t anything, and all this will have been a waste of time.’ She sighed. ‘And I’ve got a to-do list for Christmas that would have Mary Berry in tears.’

She opened the next box and pulled out a stack of postcards.

‘Travel isn’t really my thing,’ she said conversationally.

He hadn’t counted on this. Hadn’t counted on small talk. He didn’t answer. Didn’t want to encourage her to probe him for his life story. She was a journalist, incessant questions were probably part of her actual psyche.

‘I like being at home too much,’ she went on. ‘Having a base, you know. Family.’ She glanced up at him and he nodded noncommittally. ‘I mean, constant itchy-footed travel is fine as long as you don’t have responsibilities or ties.’

‘Responsibilities can hold you back, to be fair,’ he said. ‘You only get one life, right? I just kind of realised that I didn’t want to waste too much of it on work.’

She stopped what she was doing and looked at him, and he was sure he caught an eye roll.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Nothing,’ she replied, closing the box and pushing it to one side. ‘Just that I totally get it now.’

‘Get what?’

‘Why I’ve seen you out in town maybe half a dozen times in the last six months, in that wine bar on the high street or whatever, and not once have I seen you with the same girl. And why Gran used to say all your relationships are five-minute wonders.’

She looked at him with mock disapproval, so he winked at her.

‘They’re actually more of a five-hour wonder,’ he said. ‘On occasion, an all-night wonder.’

This time the eye roll was massively exaggerated.

‘For goodness’ sake. There is more to life than living minute-to-minute,’ she said. ‘Having goals to work towards, proper security, knowing what the future holds, building a family.’

‘But all the time the future might not hold anything at all,’ he said. ‘You ever think about that? Ever think about just doing whatever fun thing you want to in the moment just because you can? It could all be over tomorrow, and any amount of planning ahead doesn’t change that basic fact. And when it is, I will have the comfort of knowing that I lived every second to the fullest that I could, and I didn’t waste a moment more on work than I needed to.’

‘Well, if you want to clock off for the day, don’t let me stop you,’ she said. ‘I mean I’m really grateful for your help, but this stuff isn’t part of your job description, is it?’

‘I wasn’t actually seeing this as work,’ he said. ‘The quest for a school photo of you has real comedy appeal.’

An exasperated laugh. She looked around her, pretending to search for something else to throw at him.

He hauled another box across to her while he pondered how lovely her laugh sounded. She looked up at him from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, a half-smile still on her face.

‘I didn’t mean to sound critical,’ she said. ‘If I did, I mean. About the responsibility thing. It’s up to you what you do with your life, and if you don’t have responsibilities then hey, good luck to you.’ She slid her fingers under the cardboard flap of the box. ‘It just reminded me for a second of someone I know who’s free spirited travel-wise, and they could do with being a bit more organised and up to speed with their family responsibilities for a change.’

Clearly not her boyfriend. The email he’d had from the guy had smacked of responsibility and organisation of exactly the kind he avoided like the plague.

‘My mother,’ she supplied. ‘She doesn’t really do reliable. Reliable doesn’t really sit well with travelling abroad pursuing a delusional singing career.’ She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t bother me, I’m well past caring. I just think she could rock up and spend a bit of time with Gran, especially now.’

‘I’ve not met her,’ he said.

‘You wouldn’t have. Not unless you happened to like hanging out in jazz bars at holiday hotspots in the Med. Hang on …’

She’d been rummaging through a box while talking, and suddenly pulled out a stack of papers, tied together with an ageing ribbon.

‘I think I might have found something.’

She tugged at the ribbon until it fell loose, and she flipped quickly through the papers.

‘They’re the right time frame,’ she said. ‘Letters and postcards by the look of it.’

Her face was alight with excitement. She stood up and hefted the box into her arms.

‘I can’t see properly in this light, I’m going to take it down to the kitchen and have a better look.’

He stood up next to her and grabbed the box out of her hands before she could protest.

‘No you’re not. I’ll bring it down. You can make the coffee.’

In the kitchen, Lucy unpacked the box carefully. A collection of papers. Some old black-and-white photographs. She picked one up. How small it was. A young woman with her hair tied up in a scarf sitting on a fence, smiling and shielding her eyes against the sun.

‘Look,’ she said, moving close to Jack. She was suddenly aware of how tall he was as he leaned in to check the photo out. ‘That’s Gran, right?’

‘It’s definitely her,’ he agreed. ‘The exact same grin. Where is she, some kind of farm?’

There were chickens pecking at the foot of the fence, tufts of grass.

‘I haven’t a clue.’

She turned the photo over.

‘Cheshunt 1944,’ she read aloud.

‘Hertfordshire,’ Jack said. ‘She must have been living in Hertfordshire.’

‘She’s lived here in Canterbury for as long as I can remember. Her whole married life in this house. My mum was born in the living room, right through there.’ She nodded through the open kitchen door and down the hallway. ‘And I’m sure Gran grew up around here. She’s one of those people who’ve lived in the same area their whole life.’

She could absolutely see the appeal of that.

She flipped slowly through the papers in the box. Old letters, a few postcards. And then a folded piece of yellowing typewritten paper. She picked it out and unfolded it carefully, and in an instant she understood. The farm picture, Gran in overalls with her hair tied up, chickens all over the place. Women’s Land Army, it said at the top in capital letters. It was addressed to Olive Bratton, at an address in Canterbury that Lucy didn’t recognise, but which she supposed must have been Gran’s childhood home.

‘I have pleasure in enclosing your full Land Army uniform,’ she read aloud. ‘Then there’s a list of stuff … dungarees, breeches, gumboots.’ She stared down at it in amazement. ‘Jack, she was a Land Girl in the Second World War. How did I never know this?’

Chapter 3

‘Gran?’

She might have only been hospital visiting for a couple of weeks, but Lucy had already perfected the hospital stage whisper. It was an essential skill. Loud enough to rouse Gran, but not so loud that any of the other five occupants of the room might feel the need to butt in. It was obviously incredibly boring to be stuck in hospital unless you had a condition like Gran that meant maximum sleep, but on the first morning, after being subjected to an hour-long complaint about her ungrateful non-visiting kids by the lady in the corner, Lucy had quickly learned to keep her eyes on the patient who belonged to her.

Gran’s eyes fluttered open, and there was no telling how long that would last, so Lucy stormed madly ahead with the chatter.

‘So I bought you a Hello magazine,’ she said brightly, holding it up above the bed. ‘What have we got? The standard fare on the royals, some soap actress banging on about her brand new figure, and wait for it …’ she flipped through and whipped the pages open ‘… GEORGE CLOONEY!’

Gran’s lip twitched. Disappointment tightened Lucy’s throat. George could normally be counted on for a broad grin at the very least. Would she ever come back, that Gran who loved gossip; Coronation Street addict; baker of cakes; charity shop enthusiast? Holding up one side of a conversation was actually quite draining, and Lucy launched into reading Clooney’s exploits aloud, glad of the conversation filler and hating herself for being glad of it. Closing the magazine, she looked down at the bag by her feet.

‘Gran, I’ve been having a bit of a sort-out at the house.’

Understatement of the year, but she was carefully hedging around the house sale because despite all the plans she and Rod had discussed, they had yet to get Gran properly onside with the idea of moving out.

‘You’re going to come and stay with me and Rod for a bit. As soon as you’re well enough, I’m taking you home.’

She squeezed Gran’s hand gently, waiting in vain for a squeeze back. Nothing. How frail she was. Just skin and bone really. Taking a breath, she let go of her hand and reached instead for her bag.

‘So, I was just getting things straight, and look what I found in the attic.’

She placed the box gently in Gran’s lap. Propped up on pillows, Gran looked down at it, and the effect was instant. Her eyes widened, her mouth fell open. With obvious effort she lifted her hand and ran it over the box, tracing the carving gently with her fingertip. It was the first time in days that she’d found the strength to do much. Her mouth worked.

Lucy leaned in.

‘Gran, it’s okay. I’ve seen the decorations, they’re so beautiful. And the letter and the notes.’ She unpacked one as she spoke and placed a tiny carved ballerina in Gran’s fingers. ‘This one is for Nine ladies dancing. That’s right, isn’t it? Jack and I worked out they’re based on the Christmas song.’

Gran was staring at the little figure in wonder.

‘Were they presents from Grandpa?’ Lucy prompted gently.

Her gran shook her head slowly. Not from Grandpa, then. It hadn’t seemed the kind of gesture he would make.

‘I can see from the date that you were sent them during the war. Gran, why didn’t you tell me you were a Land Girl? It’s such an amazing thing, and you never once mentioned it.’

Gran was trying to speak now, trying to heave herself up on the pillow, and obviously struggling. Her face was the colour of putty. Lucy patted her hand in alarm.

‘It’s okay. You mustn’t overdo it. You can tell me all about them when you’re better.’

‘Horston Green,’ Gran managed at last. She lay back on the pillows, clearly tired.

What exactly did that mean? Was it a person? A place? Lucy stroked Gran’s hair and gently took the ballerina figurine from her fingers. It was obvious that there was no way she could pester Gran for information about this, it was all far too stressful, and she needed complete rest. She would have to come up with another way to investigate.

She turned her phone back on as she ran down the hospital steps towards her car and it kicked in instantly with a rush of noisy alerts. A text from Rod reminding her to go to Gran’s house and take delivery of a skip, just bloody great. As if she needed another reminder of how little clearing out she’d actually done, now she would have an empty skip sitting smugly on the driveway every time she went outside.

As if that wasn’t enough, her phone pinged into action again to inform her that Rod had amended their joint social calendar by adding two more guests to the drinks party they were throwing on Saturday night for his bosses, and for which she had not so much as bought a bag of peanuts thus far. She stared down at the phone with gritted teeth for a moment. Her life was spiralling out of control. Then she glanced back at the hospital, and none of these Christmas logistics seemed important at all.

Gran’s face when she’d reached out and touched the ballerina decoration … Right now Rod and Lucy’s bloody joint Christmas social schedule could go screw itself. It was the most animated and positive Gran had been since the fall, and Lucy had every intention of finding a way to make that happen again.

What she really needed was some ways to save time.

‘I need a solution to a drinks and nibbles party that will make me look like Nigella Lawson with zero actual culinary input, on a minuscule budget, by Saturday,’ Lucy said.

‘Just a small favour, then?’

Amy leaned back in her chair in the corner of the café and ate a spoonful of whipped cream from the top of her hot chocolate. She ran the café, along with her own catering business, which had a zero-tolerance policy on calorie counting and a client list who were completely seduced by her indulgent menus that required minimal last-minute heating up and offered maximum taking of credit. She was the ideal person to have in your corner when you had to impress your boyfriend’s work colleagues with effortless perfect finger food in a time frame that would have Gordon Ramsay in despair. She was also undoubtedly booked to the limits over the Christmas season, but fifteen years of friendship through thick and thin must carry a bit of weight because she hadn’t dismissed the possibility out of hand.

‘I know it’s a big ask,’ Lucy said.

‘How come you need my help?’ Amy said. ‘You’re Miss Domesticity these days, with your new-build terrace and your nights in, and your two holidays a year.’

Fair point, Lucy had to admit. She and Rod had settled into a comfortable routine in the last year or so. She had her days out and about with work, and she was more than happy returning home to a cuppa on the sofa and a box set. With Rod, there were never any nasty surprises. Nights out, dinner parties and the like were planned well in advance. Flying towards Christmas by the seat of her social pants was not something she’d anticipated or that she was relishing. But then she hadn’t anticipated Gran’s accident, had she? Or the associated time-suck of having the sorting of the house added to her four-week Christmas break from work. She deliberately ignored the fact that she would have been much further ahead of the game had she taken Rod’s recommended approach of lob everything that wasn’t nailed down into a skip unless it might be worth selling on eBay.

‘I got a bit side-tracked with the house clearing,’ she said. She pulled the box of decorations out of her bag and put it on the table between them. Just looking at them again fired up her curiosity. ‘I fell through the attic floor trying to grab these. Jack had to pull me out.’ She unwrapped one to show Amy, and held up a glass ball with three hens painted on it, pecking in a farmyard. ‘Three French Hens,’ she said. ‘They all relate to that partridge-in-a-pear-tree Christmas song. Turns out they’re really old. Someone sent them to Gran during the war. Aren’t they gorgeous?’

‘Very pretty.’ Amy flapped a dismissive hand at the box. ‘Never mind them. Who the hell’s Jack?’ She sat forward and planted both elbows on the table, in full-on gossip posture.

‘Gran’s maintenance guy; he does the garden, and he’s there touching the house up so we can put it on the market.’ She pointed at Amy with her coffee spoon. ‘You’d like him. He doesn’t do proper relationships either.’ Amy was too absorbed in her business to maintain any relationship that had something as tiresome as strings attached. ‘He’s into extreme sports, and travels the world jumping off cliffs and stuff. Plus, he looks like Tom Hardy,’ she added, drinking the last of her coffee. ‘Always a bonus.’

‘Blimey, he sounds absolutely perfect,’ Amy said.

Did he? Lucy frowned as she picked her bag up from the floor. Was she the only person in the universe who could see the appeal of sleeping with someone who stayed the night instead of necking off before breakfast?

‘Pull off the drinks party for me, and I’ll introduce you,’ she said. Her massive Christmas to-do list fluttered out of her bag as she put the decorations back into it and fell to the floor beneath the table.

‘What on earth is that?’

Amy snatched the paper up before Lucy could get to it.

‘Order gardening vouchers for Rod’s grandparents,’ she read aloud. ‘Buy dress for Christmas ball. Rod’s DJ dry-cleaning. Clear attic and cupboards at Gran’s. Christmas decorations up. Place cards/seating plan for lunch. Get spare rooms ready for Rod’s family. Cook ahead for Christmas week, portion up and freeze. Christmas potpourri. Are you allowing yourself any time to sleep in the run-up to Christmas?’

‘Yeah, well,’ Lucy said, whipping the list out of Amy’s hands with a flourish. ‘Now you know why corner cutting is my new thing when it comes to Christmas cooking. I’ve got a lot on, what with Rod’s perfect family descending on us for Christmas lunch, Gran being ill, and everything else. Rod’s in line for a promotion at work ahead of time. We’ve got the partners coming over for these pre-Christmas drinks and food. There’re a load of other seasonal things we have to go to. But, then again, I wouldn’t expect you to understand, with your spend-your-Christmas-downtime-at-the-pub attitude. You can just rock up at your mum’s for turkey with all the trimmings, like you always do, and bugger off back to your flat when you get bored.’