One Christmas Morning & One Summer's Afternoon

  Laura explained the connection.

  ‘That’s the most virginal girl in Fittlescombe? I truly must get my act together and move here.’

  Laura laughed. ‘That’s the girl who was stupid enough to accept the starring role in a production full of live cattle and snotty primary-school children. And this is the girl who was stupid enough to agree to write and direct it.’ She pressed a hand to her chest. ‘I must have been out of my mind.’

  ‘I hear you’re going to the Furlings Hunt Ball.’

  Gabe Baxter had walked up to Laura’s table and interrupted her meal without so much as an ‘excuse me’. From the look on his face it was clear that his comment about the ball was an accusation rather than an observation.

  ‘That’s right,’ Laura said defensively, putting down her knife and fork. ‘Why, is there a problem with that?’

  ‘A problem? Why would there be a problem?’

  ‘I have no idea. Perhaps you weren’t invited and you’re irritated that I was. Is that it?’

  Gabe laughed loudly. ‘Please. I wouldn’t go to that love-in for show-offs and posers if you paid me. Who’s your boyfriend, by the way?’

  He nodded rudely at Daniel, a snide smirk plastered across his handsome face.

  ‘Boyfriend? I should be so lucky,’ said Daniel, languidly extending his hand but not getting up. It was a power play, albeit a subtle one, and Laura loved him for it. ‘Daniel Smart. I’m an old friend of Laura’s. And you are?’

  ‘Gabe Baxter.’ It was unspoken, but Gabe seemed suddenly to be on the back foot.

  ‘Gabe plays Joseph,’ Laura explained. ‘When he’s not playing the fool.’

  ‘Lady Muck here doesn’t approve of a bit of fun,’ said Gabe. ‘This is Fittlescombe, not the BBC or the Oxford Bloody Footlights.’

  ‘Actually, the Footlights are a Cambridge society,’ said Daniel. Laura could have kissed him. There was just a hint of amusement in his voice, but it was enough to make Gabe’s cheeks colour. ‘Laura’s a brilliant director. A brilliant writer, too. You lot are lucky to have her.’

  It was said light-heartedly, and with a broad smile that made it impossible for Gabe to disagree without sounding churlish.

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe. Enjoy your supper.’

  I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to get the better of him, thought Laura. And Daniel does it in a sentence and a half.

  ‘He seems a bit chippy,’ said Daniel, tucking into his delicious butterscotch-soaked sponge. ‘What was that business about the ball? Have you two fallen out?’

  Laura rolled her eyes. ‘We don’t know each other well enough to “fall out”. But he’s an arse. And you just made him look like one. So, thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ They clinked wine glasses. Daniel’s hand lightly brushed Laura’s and she felt her libido switching back on like floodlights in a stadium. She was so buzzed, she was surprised the rest of the pub couldn’t hear her humming. ‘You’re not off the hook, you know,’ said Daniel. ‘I still want to know what’s been happening in your life. Why you left London to hide out here.’

  ‘I’m not hiding,’ lied Laura.

  Daniel paid the bill. Up at the bar, Gabe Baxter had pulled Lisa James onto his lap and was whispering filthy nothings into her ear. Laura didn’t want to watch them, but it was hard not to. Everything Gabe Baxter did was designed for an audience. He simply had to be the centre of attention.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ said Daniel. ‘Leave the Holy Family to it.’

  * * *

  After the noise and bustle of The Fox, Briar Cottage felt eerily quiet. Only Peggy’s asthmatic snores broke the silence.

  ‘You must be exhausted,’ Laura babbled nervously. ‘Would you like a cup of hot chocolate before bed or should I—’

  Daniel stopped her with a kiss so forceful she toppled back onto the sofa. The next thing she knew he was on top of her, kissing her passionately and with a fervour she hadn’t experienced since … well, not for a long time. He smelled of wine and butterscotch and aftershave and sweat. The most delicious smell in the world. Laura felt a jolt of desire so powerful it made her gasp. Then, inexplicably, she blurted out, ‘I had a miscarriage. I was pregnant and he dumped me and I got fired and then I lost the baby. That’s why I came here.’

  Daniel stopped and looked at her for a moment, cupping her face in his hands. ‘Poor darling,’ he said softly. Without another word he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to her bedroom, laying her down gently on the bed.

  ‘Do you want to be alone? I can sleep in the spare room if—’

  ‘No,’ said Laura forcefully. ‘I want this. I didn’t know if I ever would again, after John. But I do.’

  Kissing her cheek, neck and collarbone, moving slowly down her body, Daniel murmured. ‘It was the same for me, after Rachel. I was the one who fucked it up, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Christ, you’re beautiful.’

  After that it was all a wonderful, erotic, semi-drunken blur. Daniel peeled off Laura’s clothes slowly, but slipped out of his own with the instant ease of a snake shedding its skin. Moments later he was inside her, his body stronger and more powerful than she’d imagined it, his erection gratifyingly large and as solid as oak. Daniel was twenty years younger than John Bingham and it showed. Laura had forgotten sex could be so fast and frenzied, so animalistic and hungry and … quick. Just as she was letting go and really getting into her stride, Daniel came, his fingers digging into her buttocks and pulling her hard against him as he yelled out in pleasure.

  She hadn’t come close to an orgasm herself, but she didn’t care. It felt incredible to be desired again, as if she’d been walking around in leg irons and someone – Daniel Smart – had broken the chains.

  Wordlessly she curled up in his arms and they both fell into a deep, sated sleep.

  CHAPTER THREE

  November turned to December, and one of the coldest winters Fittlescombe had seen in a decade. Every morning, village children ran to their bedroom windows, hoping for the much-anticipated snow. Instead they saw a landscape frozen solid, sparkling white with frost like a newly glittered Christmas card. The days were short but dazzlingly bright, a pale winter sun lighting up a cloudless, crisp, sapphire-blue sky. And at night the deep winter blackness was lit by a carpet of stars so perfectly clear it was like sleeping beneath the ceiling of one’s own, private planetarium.

  For Laura Tiverton, it was the vivid colours of the countryside that most lifted her spirits. The holly leaves and pine trees seemed almost to glow green against the frosted white background of the frozen chalk hills. Berries and robins’ breasts seemed redder and the sky bluer than she could ever remember them. In the mornings, Laura would try to write by the fire, but the idyllic view outside her study window never failed to distract her, calling to her like a lover, tempting her from her work. Of course, the fact that she had a real lover probably had a lot to do with her revived spirits. Although still not officially an item (he wasn’t technically divorced yet), she and Daniel now spoke to each other daily and Daniel had spent all but one weekend since their first night together holed up with Laura at Briar Cottage. They made love, went for long walks and talked a lot about writing – Daniel’s writing, mostly. He’d recently finished another quite brilliant play, a comedy, that he was in the process of editing and that would soon be making its West End debut. Laura, meanwhile, had a half-written teleplay full of plot holes gathering dust on her PC. If it was slightly soul-crushing, sleeping with someone so very obviously more talented and successful than she was, the excitement of being in a relationship again more than made up for it. Laura told herself that she would knuckle down to work properly after Christmas, once the Nativity play was over.

  With only three weeks to go, play rehearsals were now every afternoon. From one till three, Laura worked with the St Hilda’s Primary School children, whose carols and poems would make up the first part of the performance. And, between three and six, the adults came to rehearse, with differ
ent actors called on different days to work around people’s various job schedules.

  Last weekend, Laura had been forced to call a daytime rehearsal on Sunday after church, thanks to so many people missing their weekday slots. Daniel had been a good sport and come along to help, but Gabe Baxter had been so incredibly rude – doing mincing impressions of Daniel whenever his back was turned and flat-out ignoring his stage directions – that Laura had vowed never to bring Daniel again.

  ‘Do you have to be such a prick all the time?’ she said when she confronted Gabe angrily the next day. Generally, she had adopted a policy of ignoring her tormentor, hoping that eventually Gabe would tire of harassing her and find another sport to amuse himself with. So far, sadly, he showed no signs.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said laconically, not looking up from his newspaper.

  ‘Give me that.’ To Gabe’s amazement, Laura snatched the paper out of his hand. ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. What is your problem with Daniel?’

  ‘I don’t have a problem with Daniel. Other than the fact that he’s got bugger all to do with this play and should keep his nose out of it.’

  ‘Oh, grow up!’ snapped Laura. ‘He was trying to help.’

  ‘Well he failed, then, didn’t he? It’s bad enough having you as a director, never mind your stuck-up, “I’m a big-shot West End playwright” boyfriend showing up to get his ego massaged.’

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk about egos,’ Laura shot back. ‘And what, exactly, is so wrong with having me as your director?’

  ‘Never mind,’ grumbled Gabe.

  ‘Actually, I do mind. Your attitude is affecting the rest of the cast; it’s affecting everybody. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t direct this play, other than the fact that you don’t like me.’

  ‘You’re an outsider,’ said Gabe, snatching back his newspaper. ‘All right? You rent a cottage for a few poxy months and you think that makes you Queen of bloody Fittlescombe.’

  It was so breathtakingly childish, Laura almost laughed. But one look at Gabe’s face made her change her mind.

  ‘I don’t think I’m Queen of anything,’ she said. ‘Harry Hotham asked for a volunteer and I obliged.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re very obliging to Mr Hotham,’ Gabe taunted.

  Ignoring the innuendo, Laura said, ‘You should know I don’t bully easily, Mr Baxter. I have no intention of stepping aside just to appease your prejudices.’

  ‘D’you use big words like that in bed with Danny Boy? I’ll bet that’s what gets him off. “Oh baby, say it again! Get out your thesaurus, you know I love it.”’

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ Laura said contemptuously.

  ‘And you’re blind. He’s a fake and a poseur. You don’t need an Oxford degree to see that, love. Now are we gonna rehearse or not? Because I’ve got a farm to run.’

  * * *

  It was a Friday morning, two weeks before Christmas, and the village was alive with excitement. Fittlescombe’s festive celebrations had been condensed this year into a single long weekend, with the Furlings Hunt Ball on the Friday night, the Nativity play on the Saturday afternoon of Christmas Eve and Christmas itself falling on a Sunday. Everyone from the postman to the vicar had a part to play, and the sense of goodwill and village camaraderie was contagious.

  When Laura stopped into the paper shop for her morning copy of The Times, the talk was all of the hunt ball.

  ‘Mrs Worsley was in here the other morning ordering place cards for the dinner. There’s going to be over three hundred guests this year. Three hundred!’

  ‘Did you hear that Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s thrown over her duke for a footballer? He plays for Chelsea apparently.’

  ‘Poor Mr Flint-Hamilton.’

  ‘Thank goodness his wife’s not alive to see it.’

  ‘You’ll never guess who Lucy Norton saw in the chemist’s last Thursday. Keira Thingummy-bob.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know. The pouty one from Love Actually. Banoffee pie? The annoying one.’

  ‘Keira Knightley?’

  ‘That’s it. Apparently she’s rented Bartley Mill Barn for a month! She’s coming to the ball for sure, and she’s bound to bring all her Hollywood friends. You don’t rent a barn that big unless you’ve got guests.’

  Laura half tuned into the gossip as she waited in the queue. What with being so busy with the play, and all the excitement over Daniel, she’d barely thought about the hunt ball. Her invitation included a ‘plus one’, but the ball was the night before Christmas Eve, and she worried it might look too pushy to ask Daniel to an event on Christmas weekend. He had children, after all, and would doubtless want to spend the holiday with them. Besides, nothing had been said about Christmas plans. He and Laura had only been together (if you could call it that) for a month.

  Still, it was a smart event. I’ll need something to wear, thought Laura. She was going up to London that night to see Daniel. It was his birthday and he’d asked her up to town for dinner and a show, which she took as a positive sign. Perhaps she could squeeze in some shopping while she was there and look for a dress. That way, the subject of the Furlings Hunt Ball would come up naturally.

  ‘That’s a pound.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The Times.’ Mrs Preedy, the shopkeeper, smiled at Laura kindly. ‘It’s a pound. You’re miles away, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Laura fumbled in her purse for the coin.

  ‘No need to apologize, my love. If I were your age and spending every day rehearsing with Gabe Baxter, I’d spend a lot of time daydreaming too!’

  The women behind Laura in the queue all laughed loudly. It was infuriating the way that three-quarters of the village seemed to view Gabe as Fittlescombe’s answer to Ryan Reynolds. No wonder the man’s ego was so big.

  Blushing, Laura paid for her paper. ‘Believe me, Mrs Preedy, Gabriel Baxter couldn’t be further from my mind.’

  ‘Whatever you say, love.’ The shopkeeper winked. ‘Whatever you say.’

  * * *

  Rehearsals that afternoon went better than expected. The schoolchildren did a first run-through of their candlelit procession from the school to the church, where the play itself would take place. Laura had confidently expected at least one child’s hair to catch fire, à la Michael Jackson, but in fact everything went smoothly. Better yet, the reception infants had finally learned the words to all three versus of ‘We Three Kings’, and had sung something loosely approximating to a tune.

  ‘It’s coming together, isn’t it?’ Laura said excitedly to Harry Hotham, who seemed almost as amazed as she was that his pupils had made such strides. Wearing a beautifully cut wool suit with a yellow silk cravat, his greying hair slicked back, St Hilda’s headmaster had clearly made an effort this afternoon. He reminded Laura of a 1950s English film star – David Niven, perhaps. She prayed his smart get-up wasn’t for her benefit.

  ‘All thanks to you, my dear.’ Harry smiled wolfishly. ‘Now listen, what are your plans this weekend? Can I tempt you to dinner in Chichester? There’s a new chef at Chez Henri who’s supposed to be the best on the South Coast.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have plans.’ Laura struggled to hide her relief. ‘I’m going up to London tonight to stay with, er, a friend.’

  ‘Ah. The playwright. Smart, isn’t it? Lucky fellow,’ Harry Hotham said amiably. There was no such thing as a secret in Fittlescombe. ‘Still, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.’

  At home with your wife? Laura felt like saying. But she held her tongue. After all, she was hardly in a position to judge people for having affairs, not after the wreckage she’d caused by dating John Bingham.

  The adults’ rehearsal went equally well. Lisa James was sick, no doubt exhausted by Gabe Baxter’s insatiable demands, so Laura had to stand in as Mary, reading all Lisa’s lines. She’d naturally assumed that Gabe would capitalize on this turn of events and play her up even more than usu
al. In fact, he was remarkably subdued; a little distant, perhaps, but he made it through the shepherds’ scene without a single snide aside or smart-alec remark at Laura’s expense. He’d even learned his lines.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ Laura told him when they broke for tea and hot mince pies, a Nativity play rehearsal ritual. ‘If you’re that good on the night, we’ll bring the house down.’

  ‘I’m always that good on the night.’ He fixed her with the moss-green eyes that had so captivated the rest of Fittlescombe’s womenfolk. Laura felt suddenly naked.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit hard on you.’

  ‘If?’ Laura spluttered.

  Gabe frowned. ‘I’m apologizing. Don’t interrupt.’

  ‘Sorry. Go on.’

  ‘Actually, that’s it. If you want we could have a drink tonight, bury the hatchet and all that.’

  Laura looked at him suspiciously. Was this some sort of setup? Some sort of joke? He seemed sincere. The awkward shuffle of the feet, the clumsy way with words. Daniel was a master of communication, firing off witticisms and insights like a champion archer shooting arrows. Gabe Baxter was the opposite, a farmer from the top of his blond head to the soles of his muddy work boots. He certainly wasn’t stupid. The annoying truth was that he’d run rings around Laura ever since they’d started this play; he was an expert manipulator. But Gabe was a man’s man. Verbal communication was not his strong suit.

  Laura decided she might as well meet him halfway. ‘That would have been lovely, but I’m afraid I can’t tonight. I’m going up to London later for the weekend.’

  Gabe’s face instantly darkened. ‘To see Daniel, I suppose.’ He spat out the name like a mouthful of rotten meat.

  ‘Yes, to see Daniel.’ Laura stiffened. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Gabe turned away, helping himself to another two mince pies and mumbling ‘none o’ my business’ through a mouthful of crumbs.

  Laura was so frustrated she could have hit something, preferably Gabe’s broad back, now turned towards her beneath his thick, hole-ridden Aran sweater.