The Little Village Christmas: The #1 Christmas bestseller returns with the most heartwarming romance of 2018

Knuckles whitening around her phone, Jodie began to bluster, brown eyes furious. ‘Honestly, Alexia, I can’t imagine why you’d bring up such a random question now, when we’ve got this to worry about. He lives in Manor Road in Bettsbrough, but I’ve only been a couple of times and I didn’t exactly note down the door number.’

Alexia glanced at Gabe. He gazed gravely back, compassion in the depths of his eyes. She tried again. ‘The police want to know. Someone has taken this money. Shane isn’t answering his phone so they need to find him—’

‘What?’ Jodie physically jumped away from Alexia. ‘Are you accusing my boyfriend? The bank accounts have been hacked. Obviously! It happens all the time. It’s random! Don’t you dare—!’

Gabe interrupted, voice soft. ‘But slates and doors, fireplaces and tiles … how could a hacker remove those?’

Jodie stared at him dumbly, horror written on her face.

Alexia swallowed painfully. ‘Has Shane had access to your Internet banking app, Jodes?’

With a wail, Jodie leapt up and fled from the room.

Alexia covered her eyes. Could this day get any worse?

That night, Alexia tossed and turned long after Jodie had shut herself in her room and Gabe had gone home. Though she was exhausted, her gritty eyes refused to stay closed and her brain wouldn’t sleep. It flipped from anxiety to disbelief to guilt. She was one of the people the village had trusted with the money they’d raised. And now the money was gone.

With a need to do something constructive, she sat up and switched on the light, then balanced her laptop on her legs to type an exhaustive list of what had been stripped out of The Angel. Together with the ‘before’ and ‘during’ photos she’d taken of the building, the list would go to the police, and to every reclamation yard she knew of in Cambridgeshire.

As she laboured on in the still hours, the phrase ‘All the money’s gone’ echoed through her mind, last heard fifteen years ago in her mother’s horrified whisper. They hadn’t needed the police on that occasion. The culprit had been well known to them. Alexia’s dad, Cliff, had run up debts faster than Heather, Alexia’s mum, could pay them off.

To prevent his credit card companies taking the family home Alexia had had to stop attending uni and let her mum use her student loan. A debt Alexia was still repaying as Heather wasn’t well-off and Clifford was on to a whole new lot of debts, probably. Unless his current wife had him well in hand.

Her parents’ marriage hadn’t made it past the crisis and Alexia and Reuben had been more relieved than distraught when Clifford had moved out. They’d all suffered by being hitched to the same financial wagon as him but at least he’d accepted Heather’s rejection, just at he’d later accepted Grandpop leaving his cottage to Alexia and Reuben, philosophically acknowledging his total lack of money management. It was an endless mystification to his children that he could apparently see the truth yet never mend his ways.

Alexia and Reuben heard from him mainly on birthdays and at Christmas now.

Last night had felt like a return to the old financial nightmare and as Alexia grimly tapped at her keyboard she made a series of fruitless wishes.

That Jodie had never met Shane. Jodie might have been resolute in refusing to join the dots of the money and goods disappearing at the same time as Shane and Tim, but Alexia didn’t believe in that kind of coincidence.

That Alexia had never agreed to Shane and Tim being the main contractors at The Angel. But once they’d shown her their work was good enough she’d decided to give them a chance. It hadn’t occurred to her to ask for evidence of their honesty.

If she had access to unlimited wishing wells, fairy godmothers and wishbones, top of her wishiest wishlist would be the wish that she hadn’t spent Saturday night in Ben’s bed. On his rug. In his bath.

She so wished that.

But he’d seemed likeable in his offbeat way – what was it he’d called himself? An oddball? – and she’d been attracted to his dishevelled good looks and slightly brooding air. The tenderness he’d exhibited with Barney had made her feel all warm and fuzzy, as had his vulnerability over his divorce and bashful confession that he’d forgotten how the seduction game went – though he’d pretty quickly got the hang of it again.

Alexia had been a prize fool. Carefree with singledom, she’d seen no reason for caution. She’d never before indulged in a one-night stand but, hey, they were adults.

It had felt like a triumph every time she’d made him smile. He hadn’t looked at her then as if he didn’t know who she was. It had been a special connection! It had! Though new and exciting, they’d seemed to know each other in the private world they’d created in his cottage in the woods. It had even led her to assume there would prove to be a perfectly good reason for him leaving before she woke.

That should have been a clue to what kind of man he was, because who did that?

Benedict Hardaker. That was the name he’d provided to the police officer. His relationship to Gabe Piercy must be on his mother’s side. Fancy him being related at all to lovely warm Gabe, familiar to everyone as he clippity-clopped through the village with his blue cart and little black pony, Snobby.

Benedict gitty shitty Hardaker, she typed into her list after 4 Victorian toilet cisterns, black, thumping the keys so hard it made her fingertips burn. Then she went back and deleted the words with slow, deliberate taps. Gone. She wished he’d go as easily from Middledip, or at least crawl back into his lair in the woods so she never had to see him again.

It was light by the time she’d finished so she gave up on sleep, freshened up under the shower and trailed downstairs to make a huge mug of tea.

She tried to put some hours in on her real job, the interior decorating she actually charged for and which paid the bills, but couldn’t concentrate. She should be putting the finishing touches to the scheme of works for a basement kitchen-diner conversion with utility room and shower room, the old ground-floor kitchen being knocked through to the sitting room to make ‘a generous living space’. She’d thought it would be the last substantial job she’d schedule before leaving the village, but now she wondered if what had happened to The Angel would put her new role with Elton back a bit.

In any event, her heart wasn’t in it today. She grabbed the key to The Angel’s temporary front door, which Dion had dropped off, picked up her jacket and went out.

She found The Angel dreaming under a sun that glowed through the merest suggestion of September mist and paused outside. The front view was misleadingly intact. The thieves had been smart enough to resist even the beautiful moulded brickwork between the windows so their crime wouldn’t be immediately obvious. She supposed she ought to be grateful for small mercies instead of standing in the road, her heart a tonne weight. Now she was here she found it hard to go inside and confront again the indignity the gracious old building had suffered.

She reversed her route and crossed back to Main Road, ignoring her own home and taking instead the track that led to Gabe’s.

Gabe was feeding his chickens and collecting eggs, a waistcoat over a shirt that used to have a collar. He took one look at her and said, ‘Want to take Snobby a couple of carrots for me? He’s a good listener.’

Alexia laughed. ‘Do I look woebegone enough to need Snobby’s listening ear?’ But she took three carrots from the feed store by the back door and set off for the paddock. Snobby, black all over, his long mane blowing in his eyes, looked like the pony equivalent of an emo. Planted in the middle of the field he regarded her unmovingly until she waved his snack and he knew it was worth the trip to the gate to meet her. He arrived with his neck extended and his mouth already open.

‘Life sucks,’ she told him, holding a piece of carrot in her palm and feeling his velvet muzzle shiver over her skin as he hoovered it up. ‘And I think it’s going to get a lot suckier.’ Breaking the carrots into the smallest pieces she could, she fed the thick-coated pony slowly, running her free hand down his smooth neck, letting his coarse mane slither soothingly between her fingers as she told him her woes. Snobby’s ears flicked back and forth as if paying close attention. Until the carrot supply dried up, then he tossed his head out of her reach and ambled back into the middle of the field to graze.

Alexia sniffed. ‘So now you’ve had what you want, you don’t want to know me? Reminds me of someone else I know.’ She stayed for a while, deriving comfort in Snobby’s serenity as he tipped up one hoof to rest his leg, tail streaming in the quickening breeze.

At length she headed back, finding Gabe still in the chicken run. He passed her a rake. ‘And how’s Snobby?’

She surveyed what had once been grass before the chickens got at it. ‘Behaving like a man.’

Gabe grunted as he scraped the chicken litter from the hen house into a bucket while Alexia raked up chicken droppings, wishing she could rake up the poo in her life and discard it as easily. Then she took the bucket out to Gabe’s compost heap while he dusted disinfectant powder around the hen house and added fresh bedding.

Accepting her help unquestioningly as he moved through his morning’s chores, Gabe didn’t ask Alexia why she was there. It wasn’t because he didn’t care, she knew. Gabe just had an uncanny knack for letting people be.

It wasn’t until they stopped for elevenses of homemade mint tea with Eccles cakes, consumed leaning companionably on Snobby’s gate, that he enquired whether Ben had spoken to her again. Snobby rested his head on Gabe’s arm because Gabe was the one person he’d come to without a bribe.

‘Nope.’ She sipped her steaming drink and stroked Snobby. ‘Looks like his coat’s thickening for winter already.’

He nodded. ‘Probably it will be a hard one.’ He sighed, making Snobby sigh back. ‘Alexia, I’m not excusing Ben’s clumsiness but he has had a dreadfully shitty thing happen to him. He pretends he’s coping but I can’t tell you how unBen-like it is to isolate himself in the woods.’ He gave Alexia a nudge to encourage her to look at him. To read the sincerity in his brown eyes. ‘All the people he loved most let him down. He’s full of anger and he doesn’t know how to let it out. I think I understand why he was so maladroit yesterday and then didn’t seem able to retrieve the situation. It was like he was a boiler with a tiny crack. The steam that escaped was under pressure.’

Alexia put down her Eccles cake as she relived the stomach-plummeting feeling of being made to feel like a criminal by the man whose body she’d caressed. ‘Are you talking about his divorce?’

Gabe hesitated. ‘It’s a hard thing to face, not being able to keep your wife. But there’s so much more to Ben’s situation than that.’ He finished the final bite of Eccles cake before continuing. ‘I’ve always had a special relationship with Ben. I see him as a bit of a kindred spirit. For most of my life I tried to conform. I let my parents influence me into joining the bank, a very stuffy institution in those days, just because I was good at maths. I tried to give my wife the kind of marriage she wanted, with dinner parties and a modern box of a house. I was thrilled when the bank gave me the opportunity to retire early but she was horrified that I wanted to get an allotment and animals. I wasn’t trying to winkle her out of her precious six-bed detached in Orton. I would have carried on with all that nonsense if she’d given me a bit of understanding, but she wanted me to fritter away my days on bridge parties and coop myself up on cruises. We had the most extravagant rows about it.’

His laugh held an echo of an old relief. ‘When we finally gave up on the marriage, I came here to the simple outdoor life I’d always wanted and my wife was happy with that as long as she got the lion’s share of the money in the divorce settlement. Ben was the only one of my family who seemed to understand, who glowed as he explored every inch of the place, asking question after question. The rest of our family looked down their noses and said they were wearing unsuitable shoes.

‘In time, it was me who supported Ben’s wish to study arboriculture instead of whatever boring subject my sister Penny had earmarked for him. Because I recognised a square peg in a round hole when I saw one.’

Despite herself, Alexia was interested. She still tried not to show that her interest extended to Ben, though. ‘Do you think of your wife much?’

He gave her a wink. ‘I called my pony Snobby, didn’t I?’ With a last squeeze of her hand he rose. ‘Shall we pick those beans?’

Before they could, his phone began to ring and he slid it from his pocket. As he listened, the laughter died from his face. Presently he said, ‘Hold on a moment. Alexia Kennedy is with me. I’ll ask her.’ He took the phone from his ear. ‘A detective constable from Bettsbrough Police. Would we like to go in and make our statements this afternoon?’

The sun went behind a cloud as reality made itself felt again. Alexia sighed. ‘I suppose. Let’s go together. Get a time and I’ll pick you up, because I don’t suppose the police station has a hitching rail for Snobby.’

Chapter Five

Ben remembered Alexia telling him she lived in Main Road, but not the number of the house. As he didn’t particularly want to ask Gabe in case it provoked another lecture, he asked at the village shop.

‘Number forty-four, blue door,’ the well-upholstered lady behind the counter responded promptly. ‘Caught your eye, has she?’

‘Um, thanks.’ Put off by such outright nosiness he hurried out before she could invade his privacy further.

When he located Number 44 he realised it stood quite close to the entrance to Gabe’s track. He must have passed it dozens of times. Squaring his shoulders, he strode up the path and rapped with the black doorknocker.

The door was opened by Jodie, wearing a tatty cardigan and a half-hopeful expression. ‘Oh. Hello,’ they said in unison, each sounding disappointed to behold the other.

‘Is Alexia here?’ Ben felt on edge. Last he’d heard, Jodie’s boyfriend had been proving difficult to contact just when a lot of people wanted to speak to him urgently.

Jodie shook her head.

‘Right.’ He tried to prompt her. ‘Any idea when she might be home?’

Jodie just shook her head again.

Good manners made Ben thank her, though he wasn’t sure what for. He turned and wandered up the track to Gabe’s but found the house locked up.

While he decided on his next move he watched the chickens pecking peaceably, placing each clawed foot as if fussy what they trod in. Though the autumn sun fell on his shoulders there was no real warmth to it. It made him wish he’d spent some of the summer at Gabe’s place instead of letting Gabe come to him while Ben did the hermit thing in the woods.

Shaking himself free of such pointless regrets he tried Gabe’s phone. No answer. He strode back to the shop, where he’d left his pick-up, and drove around the corner to The Angel. He might as well do something useful.

He carried his kit around to the back of the property where the yellowing grass was up around his thighs and neglected shrubs had linked arms as if to keep humans out. His target was an old apple tree with a decided lean. The bare branches on one side and the shelf fungus on its trunk told Ben there wouldn’t be a good end to its story so Gabe had agreed it had to go.

Hardhat, visor and ear defenders in place, he paced around, treading down the grass and deciding on the best place to drop the tree. Then he turned to the wall of shrubs, alternately using his saw and his hedge cutter until he’d cut a path through them. He dragged aside the resultant heap of brush to go through the chipper later.

He turned back to inspect the tree. It would be unsafe for him to get up into it to reduce the crown before felling, so, after a check of the blade and chain, he started up his chainsaw to lop what he could reach from the ground without it falling on him. Guided by his even strokes the glistening blade sliced through the wood in a fountain of chippings as the motor wailed yeeeeOOwwwwww. He cut up the branches as they fell, clearing the brush and stacking the timber.

Then he pulled back the grass and weeds to get a good look at the base of the trunk. He eyed the line on which he wanted the tree to fall then returned his chainsaw and ear defenders to the truck and picked up his axe.

Hefting it, he mentally marked out his target then began to chop, first a pilot cut on the side the tree would fall, then settling in to cut slightly higher on the opposite side, his swinging axe eating methodically through the trunk. Despite gloves, his palms stung and his shoulders ached, but somehow the regular blows gave him satisfaction.

He paused to shrug off his jacket and wipe the sweat from under his visor, checking that his line of fall was still good. That was when he realised he had an audience.

A woman who reminded him of Betty Boop was standing back, watching. He pulled off his hardhat and visor. ‘Alexia!’

The deep blue jacket and skirt she wore with heeled shoes made her look more grown-up than the jeans and T-shirt he’d so far seen her in. And out of. She tilted her head. ‘You’re using an axe when you have a chainsaw in your truck because …?’

He glanced back at the tree, only a few strokes away from succumbing, the cream and brown heartwood exposed. ‘I wasn’t prepared to wield the chainsaw on a trunk with no one around to get help if I got into trouble. Anyway, it seems fitting that such an old tree meets its end by hand.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You looked like you were beating it to death.’

Face heating up, he felt as if she saw right through him. But he pushed the thought aside, wanting to make the most of their return to conversation rather than frozen silences. ‘I really need you to let me properly apologise—’

‘It’s OK.’ Her expression didn’t change.

‘It wasn’t OK! I was incredibly crass, doing a vanishing act while you were asleep then sounding as if I was accusing you of having something to do with what’s gone missing. I’ve hardly slept for wondering what you must have felt.’ Hardly sleeping wasn’t new, but he’d passed a bad night even by his standards. ‘You must have something to say.’

She stared. Finally she nodded. ‘I’m glad we didn’t have condoms.’ Then she turned and vanished around the corner of The Angel.

He stared after her, insulted, as he knew he was meant to be.

Turning back to the apple tree he pulled on his hardhat and visor and weighed the axe in his hands before swinging the glinting glade once more. Ten strokes and the tree creaked and whined. He stood back and watched as it seemed to fall in slow motion, landing with a thump that travelled up from the earth and into his legs.

It lay exactly where he’d planned. At least he was good at something.

Chapter Six

Alexia let herself into her house and found Jodie once again lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling while Family Guy blared out from the TV.

Alexia hung her jacket on the doorknob and flopped into an armchair, scooping up the remote to switch off the TV, too heartsick and hollow to worry about niceties. ‘We need to talk.’

Slowly, Jodie turned to look at her. ‘I was watching that.’

Alexia declined to get involved in an argument about what constituted ‘watching’. She suspected that even the most optimistic of girlfriends must by now be seeing the writing on the wall but was unsurprised Jodie was putting off reading it. She wasn’t exactly one of life’s copers. ‘Gabe and I have been to give our statements to Detective Constable Fitzhugh at Bettsbrough police station.’

Jodie’s eyes shimmered with sudden tears.

Compassion triumphing over her own grey mood, Alexia hauled herself up and went to kneel on the floor beside her friend. She softened her voice. ‘Have you been able to reach Shane?’

Jodie shook her head and a tear skated from the corner of her eye.

‘The police have confirmed they’re looking for him, Jodes. I’m so sorry. According to a neighbour’s CCTV his truck made several trips to and from The Angel between eight and ten on Sunday morning. It was fully loaded each time it left. Shane and Tim don’t seem to exist, according to the police national computer, so DC Fitzhugh wants you to see him to provide what details you can. Give him pictures of Shane from your phone, and his truck’s registration number.’

More tears followed the first, plunging down Jodie’s cheeks. ‘I don’t remember his number plate.’ Her mouth stretched around a sob. ‘Shane’s my boyfriend. I’ve been with him for months, he almost lived here—’

‘About that.’ Alexia clasped her aching forehead. ‘You know some of the money in the community account was cleared by cheques paid into a few different accounts?’

Jodie gave the tiniest of nods.

Alexia stroked her friend’s arm through her dressing gown. ‘Gabe and I have an appointment with the bank tomorrow and we’re hoping you’ll come.’ She cleared her throat miserably. ‘The thing is … the cheque numbers relate to the cheque book we keep here so a likely scenario is that …’ About to say as he got so close to you she looked at the misery and pain on her friend’s face and changed it to, ‘as we let him pretty much run tame here, he had access to it.’

Slowly Jodie’s face crumpled. ‘How could he?’

Although she knew Jodie was beseeching her to explain how Shane could treat Jodie that way, Alexia shied away from any discussion that might lead to the conclusion that Jodie had been a mug. ‘The DC said it’s possible Shane’s a confidence trickster. Obviously time’s been invested in pulling together his plan and it probably won’t be the first time he’s done it. By sharing space with you he got access to your laptop, your security gadget from the bank and the cheque book.’

With a howl, Jodie lost what was left of her composure. ‘All the cheque books. My private bank accounts are empty too-oo-oo!’

Shock swept through Alexia. ‘Oh, no! Oh, Jodes. For some reason that hadn’t occurred to me. Have you called the police?’

‘Noooo-oo-oo,’ Jodie bawled, flinging her arms around Alexia and burying her head against her shoulder.

‘Then tell DC Fitzhugh when you go and see him. And you’ll have to notify the bank.’ She slipped her arms around Jodie’s quaking body. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘Yes plea-ea-ease!’

It was some time before Jodie stopped howling. Alexia hugged and patted her and passed her tissues, stunned by the cruelty of her friend’s humiliation. Ben’s disappointing behaviour paled into insignificance when compared with the cynical way Shane had used Jodie.

‘Th-thank you for not being cross,’ Jodie hiccupped eventually.

‘Of course I’m not cross. You’re the sister I never had, remember?’ Alexia referenced the phrase they’d used as teenagers. Jodie, older by two years, had always been ready with teenage wisdom at important moments, such as Alexia’s ‘first time’. At the end the boy goes ‘ruuuhhhhh’ and falls on you but he’ll be OK after a minute.

In their twenties it had been Alexia who’d blossomed, following her star despite not being able to complete university, determined not to stagger from one financial crisis to another like her dad, nor to rely on a man, like her mum. Jodie, less driven, had been content with working in cosy coffee shops popular with customers who liked a chat as well as a well-risen scone.

Alexia had been surprised when Jodie agreed to join with Gabe to run The Angel Community Café. Responsibility didn’t feature large in her comfort zone – in fact it was a prime cause of anxiety for her – but probably Gabe, with his innate good sense and decades of financial experience, had made it seem nice and safe.