I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,24

up an hour earlier in the mornings just to hate him a bit more each day.

‘You’ve been trying to divorce for five years?’

‘It feels much longer, let me tell you.’

‘How long were you together before you broke up?’

‘Ten crazy, mixed-up years.’ A decade-long breathless fairground ride. No wonder she felt sick when she got off it.

‘What made you split?’ asked Mary.

There was a question. Small niggles that grew into big arguments, all the opposites that initially drew them together finally driving them apart. Her past indelibly staining their future. Plus that one big hurdle that neither of them could clear.

‘Oh, too much to talk about now, it would take all night. Sleep well, Mary,’ said Bridge, shutting the conversation down, politely but firmly. She didn’t want to think about where it had started to go wrong. Because it hurt too much.

* * *

‘Are you warm enough, Charlie?’ asked Robin, tucking the quilt around him.

‘Snug as a bug,’ said Charlie. ‘What a lovely comfortable bed.’

‘I’d booked a waterbed for us in Aviemore.’

‘Ugh no, I’d have been seasick,’ said Charlie with a schoolboy chortle.

‘Silly old fool. Goodnight. Sweet dreams.’

They settled into sleep mode then Charlie piped up.

‘Robin, before you nod off, please talk to me.’

‘What about?’

‘You know what.’

Robin turned over. ‘No, Charlie. Not tonight. Go to sleep, it’s been a hard day, I’m done in.’

‘Five minutes, that’s all I’m ask—’

‘I’m already asleep,’ said Robin.

Christmas Eve

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Chapter 9

‘Dear God in heaven,’ were the words that woke Charlie up. Robin was standing by the window, in his complimentary robe. He stood by windows a lot. Even when they were at home, he stood by the French windows and watched the magpies and sparrows, the chaffinches and collared doves, took joy in them skipping onto the bird table, bathing in the large stone fountain they had in their garden. Charlie had a photo framed and hanging in his office that he’d taken of Robin years ago in that position, when he didn’t have so many lines weighing down his brow, when he smiled more, when he didn’t have worries that weren’t going to go away.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Remember last night when we said we’d wake up to green fields and clear roads?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, we haven’t. We’ve woken up in bloody Narnia.’

Charlie heaved himself out of bed and over to the window. Robin wasn’t joking. And it was still falling in soft flakes. A bleak midwinter, snow on snow, snow on snow.

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Charlie.

‘Do you think we have a choice, Charles? We’ll have to stay put. Maybe – hopefully – drive up to Scotland tonight or even first thing in the morning if the roads clear.’ It was a very big ‘if’ if this scene was anything to go by.

‘I’m ready for some breakfast, are you?’ said Charlie. ‘I’m ravenous.’

‘You eat more than a starving horse.’

‘I could murder one of those mince pies.’

‘Cholesterol, Charlie!’

‘I hope there isn’t a box of All Bran in any of the cupboards. I’m sick of the sight of it. I’ve eaten so much of it, I’m starting to crunch when I move.’

Robin opened up his mouth to extol the values of bran then surrendered at the sight of Charlie’s petulantly curled lip. ‘Let’s go and find something else to satisfy your appetite then. Chop-chop, Captain,’ he said.

* * *

Jack was already downstairs, building up a fire. The lounge was chilly because the huge iron radiators weren’t kicking out much heat. They needed either bleeding or bashing with a mallet, that was evident.

‘Morning,’ Charlie greeted him cheerfully. ‘Sleep well, did you, Jack?’

‘Yes, I did actually. Like the proverbial log,’ came the reply.

‘You sound surprised by that,’ Charlie said, with a little laugh.

‘I don’t normally sleep well in strange beds,’ explained Jack. Usually because he was in a hotel either the night before or after a meeting and his mind was spinning. Here, he had no access to a phone line or emails; cut off from the world of business, cut off from the world of everything, his brain had taken the rare opportunity to power down properly and it had rested.

‘Did you two?’ Jack bounced the question back to Charlie and Robin.

‘We did.’ Charlie answered for both of them. ‘Out like a light.’

‘And the shower’s good as well,’ Robin added to that. ‘Who would have thought such a little head could power out water like that? I feel positively pummelled.’

‘Yes, it was better than I expected,’ said Jack, who’d had much the same