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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Copyright © Charlotte Phillips 2017

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Charlotte Phillips asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008272760

Ebook Edition © December 2017 ISBN: 9780008272753

Version: 2017-11-13

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For Sam, Lib & Gem, with lots of love.

Chapter 1

Clearing out Gran’s attic had seemed pretty straightforward right up until the point at which Lucy Jackson fell through the floor.

Okay, so there was the amount of stuff. Turned out there was a simple reason why Gran had kept such a tidy home that had nothing to do with housekeeping skills of a bygone age. It was because there was seventy-odd years’ worth of clutter filling the bloody roof. Stack after stack of boxes, an old clothing rail hung with dust covers, black bin liners bulging with who-knew-what, odd bits of furniture. From Lucy’s vantage point, currently waist deep in a hole in the attic floor, she could see a pile of photographs spilling from a nearby box, the topmost one of a smiling toddler in the arms of a skinny young woman in shorts and a halterneck top. They shared the same honey-coloured curly hair. Typical. There must be a few hundred pictures in this loft, and she had that one in her sightline, like what she really needed right now was a reminder of her mother, currently AWOL somewhere in the Mediterranean while Gran was struggling in hospital. Despite the jaw-dropping size of the tat pile, which spoke of a serious hoarder, it had, right up until ten minutes ago, been just a simple matter of transferring it all from the top of the house to the bottom.

If it hadn’t been for the box.

Even in the dim light from the one dusty bulb, it had looked expensive. A wooden box with a curved lid, the kind of box that might organise a jewellery collection, the kind of box that Gran would surely have given pride of place in her bedroom instead of shoving it away up here out of sight. It had been sitting all by itself in the furthest cobweb-filled corner, in a place where the sturdy attic floorboards ended and where the thin board between the wooden joists looked as if it might not hold the weight of a thirty-year-old who was half a stone short of reaching her target weight but who had abandoned dieting because Christmas, with all its cheese and crackers, was only a few weeks away. She had taken a tentative step towards the box, and added her weight slowly. She had stretched her arm out, and her fingertips tantalisingly brushed the lid, drawing soft lines in the dust that coated its polished surface. There had been a small creak, but nothing serious, it was obviously going to hold, so she relaxed and lunged forward.

The room disappeared from view in a cloud of dust and plaster as she plummeted through the attic floor with a yell and a splintering crash.

As the dust cleared, she could see the box, still sitting smugly just out of reach in the dusty corner. While she was now stuck waist deep in the floor. Unless she could muster up some kind of help she would most likely still be here come teatime. Gran had been in hospital for a week, and Rod wouldn’t miss her for hours yet, not until he arrived home from work on the dot of seven and wondered where – her mind automatically scrolled through their weekly meal plan – the chicken stir-fry was.

What the hell was she doing thinking about food? She must be in shock. Mentally slapping herself, she suddenly remembered Gran’s handyman, last seen half an hour ago through the window as she climbed past it on her way up the loft ladder, outside shoring up the garden fence. Not her first choice of rescuer. With a build like Tom Hardy and a trail of adoring girlfriends in his wake, Jack Marchant was perfect for admiring from afar while smugly knowing you’d bet on the safe and dependable option who would never break your heart. Gran was forever gossiping about Jack’s latest conquests. Having bet on the safe option however, didn’t make it palatable to look a total numpty in front of the hot option, and so she did a quick mental run-through of all her other choices, of which there really were none. The joist she was leaning on gave a warning creak, and, discarding her pride, she gathered all her strength together, took a deep, dusty breath, and yelled at the top of her voice.

‘HELP!’

She waited and listened. Absolutely nothing. Nothing but another creaky, splintering sound as she shifted her weight a little against the joist. The unpleasant fact crossed her mind that she could probably shout as long and as hard as she wanted to, but she might still be stuck fast for hours. She opened her mouth to yell again, this time adding in some real top-of-the-lungs volume, just as Jack Marchant’s head and shoulders appeared through the loft hatch. He had tousled dark hair, strong cheekbones, and eyes that crinkled a little at the corners, as if there was the slightest amusing thing about her current situation. It was too late to stop the yell, and he screwed his face up as it echoed through the attic. Even her own ears rang with the force of it.

‘I’m not sure they heard that in Central London,’ he said, pulling himself up easily and sitting on the edge of the hatch.

She made an apologetic face.

‘Sorry. I went for full volume because I thought I’d be stuck here for ever.’ Her face felt hot underneath its coating of plaster dust. He looked as if he’d walked off a film set, with his tool belt and his work-shirted broad shoulders, and she suddenly felt very stupid, buried in the floor. ‘I didn’t expect anyone to turn up in the first two minutes. What are you, a superhero?’

He winked at her.

‘I could be.’

For goodness’ sake.

‘I also do gardens and building care. I just save the world in my spare time.’

She stared at him, and he grinned back at her.

‘I came in from the garden to fix that dodgy window in the kitchen, so I could hear you crashing through the floor.’

He made it sound as if she were a baby elephant.

‘You need to keep your feet on the joists, or make sure you stay on the boards at that end.’ He jerked a thumb to the other end of the loft where the lifetime’s worth of clutter was piled up.

‘I know that,’ she said, nettled. ‘I’m not a complete idiot. There’s a box over there in the corner, balanced on that joist. I was trying to snag that. I honestly thought that if I was careful there wouldn’t be a problem.’

‘Without the boards put across, these places just aren’t made to bear that kind of weight.’

Losing patience with the general implications that she was heavy, which he was doing absolutely nothing to dispel, she made another futile attempt to pull herself up, struggling to free her legs. Bits of wood and plaster splintered and chipped, and something gave underneath her, making her squawk in fright.

‘Stay still for heaven’s sake,’ he said. ‘The whole thing could go at any moment.’

He stood up quickly, and balanced on the joists, his head bent to avoid the ceiling.

‘If you’re trying to get me to stay calm, you need to work harder,’ she squeaked.

‘Just don’t bloody move, and you’ll be fine,’ he said, moving carefully, keeping his feet on the cross-joints.

‘Do you think you can get me out of here?’ She could hear the edge of panic in her voice. ‘It’s Jack, isn’t it?’

He nodded.

‘’Course I can. Just let me work out how best to do it.’

‘I’m Lucy.’

‘I know,’ he said. He walked around her, effortlessly sizing up the situation. She looked up at him from the floor feeling totally foolish. ‘Your gran talks about you all the time.’

Oh, just bloody great. She hadn’t considered that gossip worked both ways. Lucy could just imagine Gran making him a brew and forcing home-made cake on him while she held up his work, chatting non-stop about her granddaughter. She closed her eyes briefly. She badly needed to get her head around the idea of Gran no longer being formidable and full of energy. Her soldier-on façade had been so effective that Lucy had continued to think of her as managing perfectly well for far too long. This most recent fall had made that glaringly clear.

‘I’ve seen you around, obviously,’ she said.

Obviously. He was pretty hard to miss, with his super-fit physique and jeans-and-work-boots combo. As he worked in the daytime and Lucy was generally around more in the evenings, there hadn’t been much opportunity to say much more than a quick hello, but she’d been increasingly aware of his presence over the last year or two. Another sign that Gran, a keen gardener herself, was doing less while he was doing more. Another sign that Lucy should have stepped in earlier.

‘Grab onto me and I’ll haul you up,’ he said, at last, bracing his feet on the joists and leaning forward. Before she could suggest any alternative, possibly one that didn’t involve him being in her personal space, he slid one muscular arm around her waist and snapped away bits of broken wood with his free hand. Her face was pressed briefly into the soft fabric of his shirt. He smelled of wood and furniture oil and warm skin. She clutched at his shoulder as he started to pull her. If he happened to let go now she would go straight through the floor.

‘I’m not going to let you fall, okay?’

There were splintering and scraping sounds as he pulled her up, and then suddenly she was blissfully free of the floor. He placed her down carefully, making sure she put her feet on the joists. She noticed he didn’t rush to take his arm away, supporting her as she found her footing.

‘Are you hurt?’

The right leg of her jeans had a long and ragged rip in it, and her knee throbbed a bit. He crouched and examined her leg gently.

‘Well, there’s my pride …’ she said.

He looked up at her and gave a half-smile, which to a different girl in different circumstances might have been heart-melting, but in her case could only be interpreted as sympathetic. There was dust in her hair, dirt smeared on her clothes, and he’d just seen her at possibly her most undignified.

‘You’ve got quite a graze there,’ he said, standing up. ‘It’ll need sorting out. Let’s get you downstairs.’

‘So you do medical treatment too?’ she said, batting his arm away as he tried to help her across the attic and back to the hatch. ‘I can do it, I’m fine.’

‘I’m a superhero,’ he said. ‘I do everything.’

‘In that case, would you mind grabbing that box without falling through the ceiling?’ She nodded at the wooden box, still nestled safely in the corner among the cobwebs.

No way was she was going through this humiliating experience and still not have the box to show for it.

Jack watched as she negotiated the loft ladder and then walked downstairs, clearly trying to give the impression that she was completely unscathed when the graze on that leg must hurt like a bastard. She clearly had no clue how close she’d come to breaking her bloody neck. The crash had sounded as if half the roof had fallen in. He stood by until she hobbled into the kitchen, by which point he could no longer help himself.

‘Sit down, will you?’ he said, exasperated, taking her firmly by the shoulders and pulling out the nearest chair with his foot. ‘That leg obviously needs looking at, and you’re fooling no one with the gritted teeth.’

She frowned up at him, but didn’t argue. He pulled out a second chair and lifted her foot onto it. Half the right leg of her jeans was hanging off and he could see a bleeding scrape underneath.

‘I can either cut these off or rip them,’ he said.

‘That’s a bit brutal, they’re my favourite jeans,’ she protested. ‘Isn’t saving them an option?’

He held up the enormous ragged flap of denim that was practically hanging by a thread.

‘Seriously?’

She made a huffing noise and sat back, resigned, while he grabbed the Stanley knife out of his tool belt and cut the fabric away. Her shin was one long graze, fortunately not too deep.

‘Where does Olive keep her first-aid stuff?’

She pointed at the high corner cupboard. He found antiseptic wipes and dressings, and she held her hand out for them impatiently.

‘I don’t have time for this, I’ve got tons to do,’ she grumbled as she scrubbed the wound with an antiseptic wipe. ‘That attic up there is like something from “Hoarders: Buried Alive”. I’ve got four weeks off work to sort the house out, and as if that isn’t enough, there’s bloody Christmas to organise.’

Since he didn’t do Christmas, not any more, he couldn’t really relate to that as a major problem to be reckoned with.

‘I was sorry to hear the house is going,’ he said, watching her stick an inadequate plaster haphazardly over the graze. He was, too. Not all of his customers were as long-term or as friendly as Olive Jackson. This had been an easy gig, close enough to his house to fit around his other commitments, happily flexible if he needed to move workdays around at the last minute.

‘We haven’t put it on the market yet,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’

He crossed the kitchen and filled the kettle. Grabbed a couple of cups from the hooks above the sink.

‘Got a list of jobs sent my way last week from someone called Rod,’ he said. ‘Getting the place to look “shipshape for sale”, I think was how he put it.’

He caught her closing her eyes briefly.

‘Rod’s my partner,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided to move Gran in with us.’

He noticed that Rod, whoever he was, apparently wasn’t included in that decision.

‘Obviously care services don’t come cheap, and we’ve had to talk through all the options, but …’ She glanced around the room and out of the window at the frost-covered walled garden, and didn’t finish. He followed her gaze. The house was a beautiful 1930’s detached place in Canterbury. The kind of place they didn’t build any more. Rambling, full of memories and character, with big bay windows, and a mature garden that had been loved for years.

‘But selling it doesn’t come easy?’ he finished for her.

She nodded.

‘I spent a lot of my childhood here,’ she said. ‘I lived with Gran and Grandad on and off right through my teens, only moved out properly about five years ago.’ She nodded towards the kitchen door, held open by a wooden doorstop. ‘On that doorframe over there, my grandad marked my height every year until I stopped growing.’

‘I know. It’s on my maintenance list to paint over it.’

She fell silent at that, and he immediately regretted telling her.

‘There must be other options to selling,’ he said, trying to take a positive spin instead. ‘I mean, I know Olive is getting a bit frail, but her mind isn’t, if you know what I mean.’

‘I know exactly what you mean.’

‘I got the impression she intended only to leave this place in a box. Her words, actually.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Leg-dressing finished, she put her foot down on the floor and leaned forward to pick up a sheaf of leaflets from the corner of the table. ‘She’s been putting up a fight for months. She had a couple of minor falls a while ago, just cuts and bruises, you know.’ She held the leaflets up. ‘This was her latest attempt to fob me off. Stairlifts. Like a stairlift is the bloody elixir of life. The stairs are the least of her problems. She needs to be able to get around everywhere else, never mind the stairs. There’s the outdoor steps. The uneven floors. The tiles in the bathroom are a slip hazard. This whole place is an accident waiting to happen.’ She paused. ‘Except that it already has.’

She looked strained, and he felt a pang of sympathy. The email had mentioned that Olive had fallen and was in hospital, but that was the limit of it. He put a cup of tea in front of her and grabbed the milk from the fridge.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

He nodded.

‘How is she?’

She added a spoonful of sugar to her teacup and stirred.

‘Well, she fell in the hallway onto her right side and broke her arm and a couple of fingers. She’s really badly bruised.’ She bit her lip. ‘They thought she might have broken a hip, but thank goodness she hadn’t. The worst part of all is that she hit her head. She’s not been able to talk very much yet. She’s just so tired and frail.’

‘That’s awful.’

She took a deep decisive breath.

‘The house sale is the right thing. My stupid sentimentality about some bloody doorframe does not affect that decision. She’s going to need someone on hand 24-7. Plus there’s the massive garden, and the house needs tons of upkeep.’

‘What I’m here for,’ he remarked. Admittedly he had to factor his other life into that statement, but with pretty regular trips away he was careful to schedule his work around his travels, and he had a local kid who covered basic garden upkeep if he was away for longer than a few days at a time. ‘And I’ve been keeping tabs on Olive over the last few months. My place is only five minutes away, and I programmed my number into her speed dial.’

She laughed.

‘I’m not sure Gran knows what speed dial even is.’

He grinned at her over the rim of his coffee cup. In that moment of laughter, the stress had disappeared from her face. She was very pretty, he decided, in an unkempt kind of a way, with her messy waves of dark blonde hair, and wide brown eyes. A thin film of grey plaster dust clung to her skin, and, as he watched, she unknowingly rubbed her forehead and smudged it.

‘She does now,’ he said. ‘I put your number in too. And her hairdresser, she asked specifically for that one.’

She was staring at him as if he was some new and interesting life form.

‘Seriously?’

He nodded.

‘Of course, she’s only ever used it to ring me up when I’m feet away in the garden to tell me to come in and eat my bodyweight in cake. She falls in the hallway and I don’t hear a bloody thing from her.’

‘That’s because I was here, thank goodness. It was pure luck; I’d only happened to call in because I had an interview just down the road. Otherwise she could have been there for hours.’ She ran a hand distractedly through her dusty hair. ‘I can’t even go there in my head. What could have happened.’ She smiled at him gratefully. ‘That’s a really kind thing to have done though. Thank you.’

He raised his coffee cup in acknowledgment, feeling mildly awkward.

‘You’re welcome. Anything else I can do, just shout. Only like, maybe not loud enough to wake the dead next time.’

She smiled.

‘You’re a writer, aren’t you? On a newspaper. Olive told me.’

‘Local press,’ she said, in between fast sips of tea. Everything she did had an urgency about it, as if she didn’t have a moment to waste.

‘What’s the rush?’ he said. ‘The place isn’t even on the market yet. I mean, I might be missing the point, but if she’s moving in with you when she comes out of hospital, does it really matter if it takes a few months to sort this place out?

‘Rod wants to get it on the market as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘Once Gran comes out of hospital, which I really hope is in time for Christmas, she’s going to need me a lot, and I won’t have time to sort through all this stuff. There are people you can pay to come in and do it all for you, house clearance, it’s called. Rod suggested it, but I don’t want just anyone going through her things. I mean, don’t get me wrong, probably 90 per cent of the stuff up in that attic is just fit for the tip, but there might be things that are important to her, that she will want to keep.’ She paused. ‘That I will want to keep.’

That one sentence made it clear that sorting through this place was as much about her coming to terms with letting Gran go as it was about the house, and he could understand that need well enough. Before he knew what he was doing he was offering.

‘I can help you with anything you want over the next day or so. I know I’ve got this to-do list anyway, but that’s mainly painting, sorting out any wood that’s rotten or needs replacing, that kind of thing. I’m going to be around. I can help you bring stuff down from the loft if you like, help sort through the shed—’

‘Oh, bloody hell, I’d forgotten the shed!’ she said, clapping a hand against her forehead. ‘I bet that’s full of stuff too. Grandad’s been gone ten years, and it was his hangout. I don’t think I’ve ever known Gran go in there since.’

‘It’s not too bad,’ he lied, knowing perfectly well it was stacked with boxes of tools, gardening rubbish, and old golf clubs that dated back years, but not wanting to add to the stress. He brought his own tools and equipment on the van, so rarely needed to venture in there.

To distract her, he picked the wooden box up from the corner of the worktop where he’d dumped it on the way into the room. It was covered in dust, rectangular, and fairly shallow, with a curved wooden lid that hinged at the back. It looked like the kind of wooden box that might contain an engraved plate, or perhaps a set of cutlery, or crystal glasses.

‘Want to check this out then, before you rush off and crash back through the attic?’ he said, setting it down in front of her. ‘Since it nearly cost you your leg.’

The box! She had almost forgotten it. She sat up. A chat to Jack, and now the stress of the clear-out felt vaguely more manageable. At least she knew she had some muscle she could call on if push came to shove and she ran out of time hefting stuff down from the attic. She blew the dust off the lid in a sneeze-worthy cloud, then followed it with a swipe of her hand, revealing highly polished wood, the colour and mellow glow of a conker. A carved border of holly sprigs edged the lid. Her stomach gave a tiny twist of excitement, and she automatically took a deep breath as she opened it, not having the faintest idea what might be inside. This must be a taste (though on a much more minor scale, obviously) of how it felt when someone gave you a box that could only contain a ring. She could only guess at that feeling, not having received a proposal from Rod yet. That particular event was earmarked in their general life plan to take place after and not before he achieved partnership at his accountancy firm. Partnership itself was targeted at thirty-five, so she probably had a couple more years to wait, although there was always the possibility of it being moved forward if events happened earlier than expected. The wait didn’t matter. The certainty was enough.

The inside of the box was divided up into twelve squares, and in each square nestled a paper- wrapped package. All except for one square in the middle, that one was empty. Tucked inside the lid was a blank envelope, cream coloured, the edges dog-eared and creased as if it had been opened many times. She carefully extracted a thin sheet of paper, smoothed it out.

‘It’s a letter,’ she said, frowning. It was handwritten in faded black ink, a sloping script. She read aloud:

On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me …

That’s how the song goes, and you, Olive, are my true love. Words can’t describe how much it pains me to be called away now, when all I want is to spend every minute of every day with you, my darling.

I am not leaving you though, not really, and to prove to you that even though the world we are in today is full of uncertainties and horrors, I am yours.

For every day of these twelve days of Christmas, I am sending you a present, a part of me, to keep with you for ever, whatever may happen. Look out for their arrival, and know how loved you are. How I am thinking of you this Christmas and for all the days of my life.

J

Curiosity flying now, she scooped one of the packages out with her fingertips. The paper wrapping was tissue thin, perhaps ivory at one point, but now a little yellowed with age. She unpeeled the layers carefully and stared. Lying in her palm was a tiny, elaborately decorated pale green glass ball with two tiny painted birds perched on the top. She could tell just from the smoky opaqueness of the glass and the muted tones of the paint that it was old. A loop of thin, faded gold ribbon was attached to the top. The holly inlay on the lid made sudden sense.

‘It’s a Christmas decoration,’ she said, glancing up at Jack. ‘For the tree. At least I think that’s what it is. I’ve never seen this box before. I mean, I’ve spent probably twenty out of thirty Christmases in this house, and I’ve never once seen it. It’s beautiful. Why on earth was it shoved away up in the attic?’

She turned the box around to show him.

‘What’s this?’ He pulled a slip of paper from the pile of tissue wrapping. It had the same faded black slanted handwriting. He gave it to her.

‘It’s a note,’ she said, putting the glass ball down very carefully on the table and smoothing the piece of paper out flat. ‘“Olive. Remember that sunrise when the new day was ours, how we listened to the birdsong. We are stronger than any time or distance.” That’s gorgeous. What do you think it means?’

‘There’s a date there,’ he said, pointing to the corner of the paper.

She followed his gaze. ‘Twenty-fourth December 1944,’ she read, and looked up at Jack, her mind working. ‘During the war.’ She flapped a hand at him and kicked the chair out opposite her. ‘Come and help me. Unwrap another.’ House clearance and cut leg were completely forgotten in her curiosity. That all-encompassing determination to investigate the living daylights out of this that she rarely felt these days, because working on a local paper meant she didn’t often get to cover anything more interesting than duck races and local fetes.

She lifted another package from the box, and peeled back the paper layers. Jack sat down at the table and did the same. This time a tiny wooden drum sat in the palm of her hand, its faded paint red, gold, and green.

‘This one’s from December the thirteenth, 1944,’ she said, checking the date. She could hear the excitement in her voice. ‘Listen to this, “On this first day of Christmas, do not settle for what is within reach, my Olive. I carry you with me in my heart on this day and every day, no matter how far away I am. I will return. Believe in me.”’

Her heart twisted in her chest. Oh, the bloody delicious romance of it.

‘Look at this one.’

Jack held up a delicate green glass pear, perfect in every way, right down to the tiny painted leaf and stalk on the top. She took it from him and held it up to the light. It twisted this way and that, suspended from the ribbon. The glass was thin and flawless.

He picked up the drum and turned it in his fingers.

‘The carving on this is really perfect,’ he said, frowning. ‘“This first day of Christmas”. These are based on the song, aren’t they? That’s what the letter is talking about. That song where you count down to the pear tree at the end. That must be the pear. And there was some line or other about drummers drumming, right?’

She searched her mind and realised she could only remember bits and pieces of the song, although she definitely had memories of Gran playing it on the piano. The rickety old piano at the side of the sitting room just down the hall. She was all thumbs in her eagerness to unwrap the rest. There was a gold painted glass egg, an ornate swan. A black-and-white painted cow, perfect in every detail right down to its tiny horns. Each decoration came with its own love note, each one more heart-melting than the last.

‘I need to do a web search on the song,’ she said, picking up her smartphone. ‘Maybe the egg is for the geese-a-laying, and I definitely remember there being swans in there somewhere. Not sure about the cow, to be perfectly honest …’ She waved the phone high above her head. ‘No bloody Wi-Fi, is there,’ she said, to his questioning expression. ‘And the signal’s really patchy around here … right, here we go. Twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping …’ He held up tiny carved panpipes. ‘Maids a-milking!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s the cow. Thank goodness, it was going to drive me mad.’

‘So some of them are a bit cryptic …’ He held up four entwined carved feathers ‘… I mean, I’m guessing this is four calling birds, right? But it definitely fits. It’s a set of Christmas decorations, based on the song. The twelve days of Christmas. They must be very old, and I’d say pre-1939, because it would have been impossible to pick up something like this during the war.’

‘Then there should be twelve, shouldn’t there?’ she said, looking at the empty slot in the middle of the box. There’s one missing.’ She ran her gaze quickly over the collection, holding her phone screen next to her, ticking lines from the song off in her head. ‘Five gold rings. That’s the missing one. What a shame. I wonder if it’s up in the attic somewhere in that mess of stuff. I’ll have to keep looking.’

‘Not right now you won’t, not until I’ve made sure the floor is safe,’ he said immediately.

‘And I’ll have to try and ask Gran about them when I visit,’ she said. ‘If she’s awake this time, that is.’ She hadn’t been conscious much at all yet. In many ways it had been the hardest thing to cope with, seeing Gran robbed of all her vivacity, so impossibly frail and unresponsive. ‘They’re obviously hers, her name is Olive. But she’s never mentioned them to me. I’ve definitely never seen them before: I would have remembered. And you saw them, they were just shoved in a corner up in the attic, covered in dust. No one’s opened this box in years. They were obviously just forgotten about.’

She looked down at the collection of beautiful love notes. How could anyone forget them?

Jack shrugged.

‘It’s been over seventy years, to be fair,’ he said. ‘Do you think they are from your grandad? Maybe they were a present from him to your gran.’

She looked down at the collection on the table and frowned. She simply could not imagine the openness of feeling in those notes coming from her stoic and straight-down-the-line grandfather.

‘I do know Gran and Grandad met before the war, even though they didn’t marry until much later. Gran was quite old by the standards of the time when she had my mum. But even so, I’m just not sure he was that kind of man,’ she said. ‘He didn’t do romantic gestures, not that I know of. He was a very ordered kind of person, very straightforward, play by the rules. Never late, always thought decisions through before making them, not impulsive. It’s one of things I liked best about him. You always know where you are with someone like that.’

He might not have been given to shows of affection, but if you wanted steadiness and absolute reliability, he was your man. He had been the perfect foil for a child whose mother was given to disappearing at the drop of a hat.

‘I want to ask Gran about them,’ she said, ‘but she’s only awake for moments at a time. She’s really not well. I don’t want to push a shedload of questions on her.’

‘It’s okay, you can ask her when she’s better,’ Jack said. ‘I’m sure she’ll pull round, just give it a bit of time.’

She toyed with the tiny drum decoration. It was perfectly detailed, beautiful. This set must have cost a fortune, and where could anyone buy things like this with a war on? Questions upon questions. She made herself wrap the drum back up, being careful to add the correct note before she placed it gently back in its place in the box. It seemed important to keep the set intact, the sentiments in the right order.

‘You have a point,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It’s been over seventy years, right? What’s the rush?’

Except there was a rush. Deep inside her. The urge to get to the bottom of the mystery nagged at her mind, and she had to force herself back to thinking about her present-day situation, which featured a Christmas to-do list that would require a team of full-time elves to pull off. The best she could hope for was flying through the holiday by the seat of her Christmas pants without any major disasters.

‘I really ought to get on,’ Jack said. He stood up, and she suddenly remembered that he was paid to do a job, and she was commandeering his time to piss about with antiques and family history from half a century ago. He was probably bored as hell and too polite to say so.

She shook her head, vaguely exasperated with herself. She stood up too. Her leg throbbed, but she ignored it.

‘Of course. I’m really sorry, I’ve probably cost you loads of time. The last thing you need is a shedload of someone else’s sentimental family history.’

‘Yeah, because fixing that window frame’s got a real pull that’s hard to resist,’ he said.

He smiled at her. Despite the fact it was the middle of winter, he had the kind of tan that spoke of an outdoor lifestyle, and his dark grey eyes creased a little at the corners. As if his strong physique wasn’t enough, he had the aftershave model looks to back it up. In that moment she could completely see where Gran’s gossip about his turbulent new-girl-every-five-minutes love life was rooted.

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Really. Like I said, I’m around for a day or two if you need any help, or if you get trapped under something heavy.’

She told herself firmly that the appeal of having him on hand to help was entirely to do with his ability to heave a box into a skip, and definitely not how he might look while he did it.

Chapter 2

‘What the hell happened to you?’

Rod walked into the kitchen on the dot of seven, put his keys in the dish on the dresser, and stopped in the act of kissing Lucy’s cheek when he caught sight of her leg. She glanced down at the supersized sticking plaster she’d used to re-dress the graze on her shin. She’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt after a monumental shower to get rid of all the plaster dust.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I just scraped it getting some stuff out of Gran’s loft. No biggie.’

Probably best not to mention the gaping hole in Gran’s bedroom ceiling; she’d had quite enough of making a knob of herself in front of people today. Jack had assured her he would fix it in the next couple of days, and Rod could stay none the wiser.

She gave the schedule attached by a magnet to the fridge door an unnecessary check as she opened it, because knowing it was Wednesday was enough to know it was stir-fry night. In the same way that Monday was meat-free, and Friday was a takeaway.

Life ran better when it was organised. If Rod had a personal credo, this would be it. And it was one she wholeheartedly agreed with. There was something extremely reassuring, she had found, about knowing what was happening day to day, and especially longer term. She had known when she met Rod that they were on the same page in that respect. She’d contacted him to see if he would give an interview following the Budget five years ago: his accountancy firm’s take on the effects for local people, that kind of thing. He’d provided her with a projected schedule of costings, a comprehensive overview, and a list of tips for savers that would have got the nod from Martin Lewis. And an offer of dinner that turned into a series of dates that turned into a relationship. His private life was as ordered and planned as his work had been. And she always knew where she was with him. With Rod she had a future that she could count on. He would never disappear on impulse because he fancied a change of scenery.

‘Coming along well at the house, then?’ he said, leaning past her to turn on the extractor hood above the cooker. All mod cons in their new-build rental, nothing like Gran’s inefficient rambling dinosaur of a place. Steam began to curl up from the wok as she added chicken and vegetables to the pan. ‘Good to hear. I called the agent, and if we can get it shipshape we can have the valuation done and it can go on the market as soon as Christmas is out of the way.’

Her stomach gave an involuntary lurch at the thought. What would it feel like to know she was never going to see the old place again? What would it feel like for Gran? She couldn’t expect Rod to feel sentimental. He hadn’t lived there. He hadn’t built dens out of blankets and sticks in the garden in summer. He hadn’t learned to make fairy cakes in the kitchen, which was always warm, no matter what time of the year because of the range cooker. The thought must have shown on her face because Rod put an arm around her shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze.

‘We’ve been over this again and again,’ he said gently.

She moved away from him and grabbed a couple of plates from one of the neat cupboards.

‘I know,’ she said through gritted teeth. She served the stir-fry up grimly.

‘It’s the upheaval,’ he went on soothingly. ‘It’s bound to be unsettling. That’s why we need to really consider all the options.’

She knew where this was going.

‘Really, I think a residential facility might be the best possible thing all round.’

He tucked into his rice and chicken, not looking at her while he ate. Just the terminology he used made it sound like a prison.

‘I am not putting Gran in a home,’ she said. ‘I want her with me.’

‘I’m just saying, let’s not rule anything out. You don’t know yet what her recovery is going to be like. Moving in with us, into established routines … it’s bound to be difficult for everyone. I’m only saying, it might be better all round, to leave the care to the professionals.’

Correctly anticipating her next comment would be argumentative, he reached distractingly for the box at the end of the table and pulled it towards him.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘I found them in Gran’s attic,’ Lucy said. ‘I brought them home to show you.’

He lifted the lid of the box and took out one of the wrapped decorations at random. A perfectly carved and painted top hat. Ten lords a-leaping, she thought automatically.

‘Nice,’ he said indifferently, putting it back and resuming eating.

‘It’s a set of Christmas tree decorations. I think they might be antique.’

‘One missing,’ he remarked, pointing to the space in the middle of the box with a chopstick. ‘Incomplete set, so it won’t be worth much. Honestly, Lucy, just whack all this tat on eBay. Whatever you get for it will be a bonus, the main thing is to crack on and get the place cleared. We need to get the house ready for the family. This is the first year we’ve done the Carmichael Christmas, and we are going to be the best.’

Christmas was the pinnacle of one-upmanship in the Carmichael family. Rod was the middle child of five overachieving siblings. Last Christmas, as run by eldest sister Josephine, had involved a professionally decorated house in St John’s Wood, a champagne breakfast, three different kinds of roast meat, and a children’s entertainer. The year before that, his uber-successful stockbroker brother Don and family had rented a cabin in the Lake District for a no-tech, no-phone-signal, back-to-tradition Christmas that had filled the teenage family members with despair, featuring log fires and mulled wine and carol singing around a piano, and family games and frosty walks in the stunning countryside. This year, Lucy was hostess, and Rod’s expectations set the bar extremely high. She needed enough food to feed hordes of people, there were rooms to get ready, Christmas decorations to put up, a festive day to deliver that would impress or at the very least not disappoint his bloody perfect family.

No pressure.

‘We’ve got the works’ Christmas drinks coming up,’ he carried on, as if what she really needed now was a shedload more stress, ‘and we need to focus and make a decent impression. This promotion would be a big step towards partnership, and decisions will probably be made in the next couple of weeks even if they’re not announced until the New Year. Eye on the prize.’

Her place was at his side during work social functions. The accountancy firm was family run, and Rod liked to fit in with that image, no impression was too much trouble in the path towards partnership. She liked it. She liked being part of a couple. And of course, by implication, his future was also her future. She pulled the box back towards her, and he caught her hand in his. She looked up at him.

‘I know you’re under a lot of stress, honey,’ he said. ‘I’m right behind you, I really am. I just meant that it’s easy to lose sight of your own goals in a situation like this. It’s important for Olive that you and I keep ourselves grounded, so we can support her and stay organised and in control. Especially with Christmas, my family, and all the extra stuff that brings with it.’

‘I know, I know.’

He squeezed her hand, pressing the point.

‘Who knows what could happen if this promotion comes through? With all my family in our home, it would be the perfect time to make special announcements.’

He winked at her. She squinted back. Had he just used a plural? Was he hinting that more than promotion could be on the cards?

‘The best thing to do is just get this clearance done and out of the way as quickly as possible,’ he swept on. ‘Like ripping off a plaster. Then we can absolutely do what’s best for Olive.’ He held up a hand as she opened her mouth to protest against yet another predicted mention of care homes. ‘And that includes her moving in with us if that’s truly the best option. We just need to stay objective.’

She felt a rush of love for him, and a spike of excitement at what was surely a hint about popping the question. Wasn’t it? He really was committed to her, he had her best interests at heart, she was just being oversensitive. And he did have a point. Christmas was her favourite part of the year, she had been looking forward to spending time getting the house to look perfect, and all the preparation associated with it. Cooking ahead, making plans. She really hadn’t made the slightest dent in that yet. And if Gran was able to come out of hospital for Christmas – and she really hadn’t given up hope of that – Lucy wanted everything to be perfect for her. She had to keep focused. Gran had to be the priority here, and if she let every bit of history in that attic distract her, she’d still be sorting out the house clearance next bloody Christmas.

‘No need to worry,’ she said. ‘You’re completely right. I’ll storm through the house tomorrow, and then I’m going to visit Gran in hospital and check on her progress, see if I can get some information out of the doctors about when we might be able to bring her home.’

She closed the lid on the box of decorations and shelved her curiosity.

Six hours later, Lucy stared at the bedroom ceiling and tried to ignore her curiosity, which at – she checked the LED display on the bedside clock – two-thirty in the morning, was refusing to be shelved. And since the alternative to getting up and sorting her curiosity out was lying here and elbowing Rod every five minutes to keep his infuriatingly rhythmic snoring at bay, she might as well throw in the towel on sleep and go downstairs.

Sitting bleary-eyed at the kitchen table, she pulled the box of Christmas decorations towards her and unwrapped one, turning it gently in her fingers. A tiny swan. Perfect in every detail. She unfolded the note that was wrapped with it.

Do not settle for less because it is easy. Do not give in to pressure. Wait for me through this hard time and it will be worth any challenge we face.

She frowned. What did that mean? What would Gran be settling for? Or was it a who? Who had sent these to her? The mystery nagged maddeningly. Just where the hell to even start. Wide awake, Lucy grabbed her tablet from the kitchen worktop and did an Internet search on Christmas tree decorations that was rewarded with page after page of pictures of predominantly garden centre tat. Refining the search to World War Two brought up a collection of make-do-and-mend war effort items. Paper chains. Cardboard Christmas lanterns. Jack’s first instinct today had to be right, there was no way the decorations were from that time period. Moving the dates further back, it was obvious they predated the war by some decades. She ran her hand over the smooth cool wood of the box. Whatever they were, they were undoubtedly special. Whoever had sent them to Gran, one a day with a note for twelve days in the run-up to Christmas 1944, they must have cared for her very much.

She racked her brains for the slightest mention of that time in Gran’s life, but came up blank. Gran had simply never talked about it. She ran a finger over the slightly indented holly carving on the lid. How could she just chuck this on eBay without trying to look into it even the tiniest bit? But where to start?

She grabbed a tote bag from the cupboard and eased the box gently into it. The best place to start was most definitely not eBay. The logical thing to do would be to hang on to these for a while. The answer could be just waiting for her in the mountain in Gran’s attic. And technically, she would still be working on the house clearance; she would just have a bit more of a purpose in mind than to just lob the whole lot in a skip.

Jack held his tongue until he could take it no longer.

Since the attic currently sported a hole big enough to stumble through, which then progressed through to a gaping hole in Olive’s master bedroom ceiling, it had overnight shot to the top of the list of cosmetic tweaks he had been tasked with to make this house as saleable as possible. Engaged in cutting boards to size and nailing them across the gap in the attic, it became slowly clear to him that it was simply a matter of time if Lucy carried on the way she was going, before disaster struck a second time in as many days. She had been here even before he arrived this morning, and there was, in his view, a lot more sorting through and reading going on than there was house clearance. Every so often she would finish with the contents of a box or bag, and it would be taken down the loft ladder and presumably spirited away downstairs to be disposed of. If she carried on at this current speed, Olive would still be living here in five years’ time. Then he remembered their conversation yesterday, and wondered if that might actually be the point of the go-slow.

He managed to rein it in until she teetered towards the loft ladder with a box balanced on each arm and a cloth bag looped around her neck. Downing tools, he crossed the attic in a couple of strides. She stopped in surprise.

‘For God’s sake give me one of those boxes,’ he said, taking one from her before she had the chance to protest. ‘In fact, give me both of them before you fall down that ladder.’

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.’

‘I spend all year cooking. Christmas is my day off. I won’t be so much as picking up a wooden spoon.’

‘Gran used to cook when we had Christmas day at her house.’ She thought back to previous years, the house full of decorations, friends dropping in, cooking with Gran in the kitchen. Her throat tightened a little. How different it would be this year. ‘Whereas this year, Christmas is entirely down to me.’

And it had to be perfect. It had to be. It might be Gran’s last. She pushed that hideous thought away before it could take hold.

‘So, can you help me out or what? No pressure.’

Amy grinned.

‘With the corner cutting? Hell yeah, I’ll throw something together. That doesn’t exactly help with the rest of the stuff on that list though, does it? When exactly are you supposed to fit having a good time into this? Christmas is meant to be about having fun, not driving yourself into the ground. Rod needs to lighten up a bit, honey. I mean, is it any surprise you’ve ended up looking to hot gardeners and old tat for diversion?’

‘I am not looking at the hot gardener,’ she said, exasperated. ‘I am perfectly happy with Rod. I’m not some downtrodden girlfriend, you know. In actual fact, he’s been dropping hints about making it official. I actually like the life I have, the prospects, the plans. Just because you’re happy to cruise rudderless through life doesn’t mean we all have to.’

Unfortunately her phone pinged into life on the table between them at the moment, and Rod’s text asking if she’d remembered the dry-cleaning was perfectly readable upside down.

Amy patted her hand, grinning.

‘I’ll take rudderless, honey,’ she said, nodding at the phone sympathetically.

Gravel crunched under Lucy’s feet as she stood in Gran’s driveway in the mid-afternoon gloom and watched a truck manoeuvre its way back to deposit an empty skip as close to the house as it could get. Even bundled up in her parka with the hood up, the cold bit sharply against her cheeks and nose. The sky was white, with the heavy stillness that sometimes comes in the winter, as if it was full of snow waiting to fall. After a run of wet, rainy Christmases, the TV forecasters were falling over themselves with excitement at the prospect of the first white Christmas in years. She turned at the sound of the side door slamming shut, and watched Jack trudge across the gravel in a shirt and jeans. He didn’t so much as shiver as he came to stand next to her.

‘Do you not feel the cold?’ she said, stamping her feet to try to stop her toes going numb.

‘You forget, I’m superhuman,’ he said. ‘And I finished the ceiling. So if you need to get the estate agent in there’s no danger of them disappearing through the floor when they measure up the attic.’

‘Very funny.’

He looked at her watching the truck driver disconnect the chains from the skip. There was something that felt very wrong about putting an attic full of history into one of those things without a moment’s thought.

‘You’re going ahead then, are you?’ he said. ‘With the clearance?’

She wrapped her arms tightly across her body and held her elbows with her gloved hands.

‘I’m thinking more along the lines of bunging a few things in the skip as I go along with my investigation. I can multitask a perfect family Christmas at home, and do a bit of nosing around on the side.’

‘Investigation?’

‘Into the Christmas decorations we found. I showed them to Gran, and honestly, Jack, you should have seen her. She’s been so weak and frail, it’s all I’ve been able to do to get her to say hello, or say my name. She was so animated when she saw them.’

She was looking up at him now, full of excitement, her eyes shining, her nose and cheeks pink from the cold, He found it hard to look away from her face.

‘Did you ask her about them?’

‘She can’t really talk much at all yet. She did give me a place name, I looked it up. It was a hostel for Land Girls during the war.’

‘The bossing about in the garden definitely makes a lot more sense now I know she was a Land Girl,’ Jack said, nodding at the lorry driver as he approached. ‘She once tried to tell me a better way to mend a fence. I was like, who’s the carpenter in this scenario?’

Lucy smiled sideways at him, and he waited while she signed off the skip paperwork, then walked with her back to the house.

‘Also, whoever sent the decorations, it definitely wasn’t Grandad,’ she said. ‘Can you imagine if I could find out some more about them and be able to tell her about it? It might really help her recovery pick up. What if the person who sent them is still alive? I could track him down.’

‘You’re thinking you could track down and reunite your gran and her wartime friend in three weeks flat, like something off Long Lost Family, while you simultaneously get this house straight, and do all your Christmas stuff?’ he said. ‘You don’t actually think this might actually be a bit of a massive ask?’

‘I can channel Davina McCall if I want to,’ she protested. ‘I do investigate for a living.’ She paused. ‘Well, at least I ask people questions a lot, and attend lots of community events and stuff. It’s not exactly Fleet Street. But I know how to track a story down. And I’m not looking that far ahead, to be honest, I just want to try to find out a bit more, that’s all.’ She closed the side door behind them with a grateful sigh. ‘Wow, standing outside for twenty minutes makes the crappy heating in here seem tropical.’

She pushed the hood down on her parka and unzipped it. Her hair was messed up underneath, and she ran a hand through it, which actually made it worse.

‘I know what you’re saying,’ she said. ‘It just seemed really important to Gran, and whatever I might tell myself, I do know she isn’t going to be around for ever. I feel like I’ve been given a chance to get to know her in a whole new way. I’m not going to pass that up because my back’s against the wall over a few Christmas plans.’

‘Want some help?’

Even as he said the words, he couldn’t quite believe that he was making the offer. What was he thinking? It was the chance thing, of course. The thought of having a chance to find a piece of someone to treasure that you could keep, even after they were gone.

‘I thought you were only around for a day or two? Don’t you have to be sledging down a mountain or something?’ she said.

‘Not for a few more days yet. I’ve got a bit of time on my hands.’

It was true. He did. He couldn’t fathom why heaving tat into a skip held any appeal for him, except that she had looked so grimly determined, standing outside in the freezing cold with her lips almost blue, to run herself into the ground by Christmas all in the interests of hanging on to the past. He could relate to the need to do that better than anyone else.

‘You must have something better to do if you’ve got some time free. I mean, it is Christmas.’

His parents flashed into his mind, the guilt-trip family Christmas visit that he had been telling himself, along with them, he simply couldn’t fit in.

‘I really don’t,’ he said. ‘I can bring stuff down from the attic for you. It will take you for ever on your own, and you’re basically an accident waiting to happen when you’re left to your own devices. I don’t want that on my conscience, and I’m pretty sure Olive would want you to make it out of the house sale alive. Take it or leave it.’

She smiled up at him.

‘Go on, then. I should probably tell you to go and crack on with your Christmas, but I need all the help I can get.’

In the space of a day, the kitchen and hallway ended up looking like the attic. She had succeeded in executing the opposite of house clearance. But there was the odd discovery that was really worth waiting for during the endless trawl through inconsequential receipts and old cracked ornaments, and the buzz of finding even the tiniest thing was becoming a bit addictive.

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