about all this than you do and can you please ring the dry-cleaner and ask if my suit is ready to be picked up.’
‘Yep, that really is patronising,’ said Luke, nodding.
Jack cringed. ‘Then vegan scones hit the market, were an absolute wow, and our head of product development said we should follow suit. We could have led, not followed, if I’d listened to Mary. But we weren’t too late, thank the lord, and they were a massive hit… and I gave product development the credit for the idea.’
‘Ouch,’ said Luke.
‘It gets better – or rather, worse. The vegan scones weren’t good enough at first and it was Mary, not the bakery team, who told me we needed to revisit the recipe. And she suggested we use red cheese instead of white so the cheese scones would look more obviously “cheesy” and she suggested we make luxury short-life ranges exclusive to high-end stores. All of these were brilliant ideas.’
‘All of these brilliant ideas from the mind of a young woman who shouldn’t be thinking outside her box?’ Luke suggested to him. Jack couldn’t bear to see himself mirrored in those words.
‘And there’s more…’
‘You’re kidding,’ said Luke, which didn’t help.
‘I wasn’t as sympathetic as I could… should have been when her father died. I asked the same woman who bought the presents to enquire when Mary would be returning to work. I did tell her to say there was no rush, but it appears she left out that part of the email.’
‘Bitch is too kind a word, I think.’
‘Yes, quite. Then last year my own father died and Mary was… was kindness itself. Held the fort while I was off.’ He gave the front of his head a rub of angst. ‘I’ve just had the most awful, uncomfortable game of Buckaroo with her.’
Luke snorted, tried not to laugh, covered it up as a cough.
‘I said all the wrong things. I can’t even repeat what I said about that bloody diary.’ A growl of frustration. ‘Anyway, after our conversation last night I decided to take the bull by the horns and I went into Mary’s room and I wrote in the diary that I’d like to take her out to dinner.’
‘Blimey,’ said Luke, knocked back by that. ‘I’m impressed.’ And he was. Hardly the most direct approach, but for Jack it was leaps and bounds.
‘Luke, over the past few days, I’ve felt as if I’m viewing Mary through other people’s eyes. Everyone likes her and respects her here, don’t they? And she’s such a lovely person. Why have I seen her and yet not seen her before?’
‘You’re seeing her now,’ said Luke, opening up a sack and starting to throw logs into it. ‘Better late than never.’
‘I don’t want to be my father. I never realised until I came here how much I was like him. I don’t want to be that man.’
‘Then don’t be him,’ said Luke. ‘Simple as that.’
‘I want what you have with Carmen and what Bridge has with her new man. I want to be as loved-up as Charlie and Robin. I want someone to smile at me the way they smile at each other.’
‘Yep, it’s good. It’s worth having,’ said Luke and smiled at the thought of what he had with Carmen.
‘I almost kissed Mary yesterday, you know, after we were carol-singing. I looked at her in that huge coat and those ridiculous wellingtons and I wanted to pick her up and plant my lips on hers.’
‘Then maybe you should have, Jack,’ said Luke.
‘I don’t know what she feels about me.’
‘I don’t either,’ replied Luke. It wasn’t his place to make it easy for him. Jack needed to learn first-hand from Charlie’s life hack that he should meet the requirements of his requirements. Everyone deserved as much.
Chapter 30
When Jack and Luke got back in, there was no one around.
‘We’re up here, looking at pictures,’ called Robin from upstairs.
Jack and Luke took off their coats and wellies, piled up a few logs at the side of the fire to season them and joined the others. They were checking out the photos framed and hung on the walls. Not only photos though as there were also yellowing pages taken from an old book, the title of which could be seen in small ornate lettering at the top.
‘Hiffftory of Figgy Hollow of Yorkfffyer,’ Mary struggled while reading aloud.
‘Be careful putting “f”s where “s”s should be,’ Robin warned her. ‘You can get yourself into all sorts of trouble.’
‘It sounds like it’s been