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  For Luke, who is up there riding horses, walking dogs, driving his Mercedes, eating steak and chips, looking dapper, pulling the ladies, being a regular lad, making everyone laugh and breathing deep lungfuls of heavenly air.

  23 December

  He who does not have Christmas in his heart

  will never find it under a tree

  Chapter 1

  Bridge Winterman, of course, blamed the weather on her husband. But then, they had been so used to fighting that he was in pole position to be held responsible for everything that went wrong, and she knew that he afforded her the same negative importance in his life. When she took a breath, and with it inhaled some sense, she did concede that Luke was probably less at fault than the idiot meteorologists who had failed to forecast the whole country would be plunged into a nuclear winter. How could they do that in this day and age with all the highfalutin technology at their disposal? Then again, in 1987, two years after she’d been born, one particular well-known weatherman had assured the British public that the rumour of a hurricane heading towards the UK was utter nonsense. A few hours later, the worst storm in three centuries began to batter the southern half of the country and more or less decimated it, so this wasn’t exactly a one-off situation.

  Bridge cut out peripheral thoughts of infamous weathermen and Luke to concentrate on driving. All she could see through the windscreen was a sheet of white and those snowflakes flying towards her were starting to have a hypnotic effect on her. But stopping wasn’t an option, not when she was only five miles from her destination.

  She’d suggested the meeting should take place at a country house hotel, near enough to the A1 but at the same time off the beaten track. She wasn’t sure if she’d picked the venue because it was grand enough to be a suitable place to begin the end of their divorce proceedings, or because of its awkward-to-get-to location. Either way, Bridge would be coming home from the Borders after spending three days viewing derelict properties for sale, Luke was at a convention on the east coast, and the hotel would be equidistant between them on the 23rd, the planets perfectly aligned for once in their busy schedules. The meeting would be brief, five minutes tops; just enough time for them each to sign a piece of paper, then swap them over to return to their respective solicitors. Then Bridge could go back to Derby and Luke could head home over the Pennines and they could both enjoy a merry Christmas. Job done.

  The ‘negotiations’ to end their marriage cleanly had not gone smoothly so far. For almost five years they had spat and fought with each other to exit their union, raged over the phone, pinged off both frosty and heated emails full of recriminations, demanded statements, information, accounts, reports. At least neither of them was stupid enough to have employed solicitors to do the bulk of the battling for them or they would have been bankrupt long ago. But handling it all personally had long since taken its toll and now they were burnt out with it. The letters of intent had been Luke’s idea. ‘Look, Bridge, you have Ben in your life now and I have Carmen so let’s just end this for their sakes as well as ours and move on,’ he’d said in an email. ‘Get your solicitor to draft something to the effect that you agree to a no-fault divorce and then sign it. I’ll get my solicitor to do the same for me and then we’ll exchange them. If it makes you feel more secure, we’ll do it face to face so there’s no room for any more nonsense.’

  She’d said yes. Even though she didn’t want to see him. And also, she did.

  ‘What the f—?’ She curbed the expletive as her eye took a screen grab of the satnav, which was now saying she had sixteen miles to travel; how the hell could it have shot up from reporting five after her car had barely crawled a hundred yards? There was absolutely no way that Bridge could go another sixteen miles in this, and five wasn’t looking good either. It appeared as if a god were emptying giant boxes of Persil over the earth. She was a competent driver but there was a breeze of anxiety blowing into her confidence now, making it flap as surely as the sign at the side of the road in the near distance was doing.

  ‘Hey, Siri,’ she said to her phone.

  ‘What’s up?’ Siri answered.

  ‘Where the buggery bollocks am I?’

  Siri’s answer, to her surprise, was not, In the middle of nowhere, love. Two hours away from dying of hypothermia, so that’ll teach you for not driving a sensible car, but a reasoned and encouraging, ‘You are on the A7501, south-west of Whitby.’

  ‘Where’s the nearest town?’

  ‘I couldn’t find any matching places.’

  ‘Where’s the nearest village?’

  ‘I couldn’t find any matching places.’

  Bridge growled impatiently. ‘Siri, I know you’re a thing that lives in a phone but help me out here. Where’s the nearest farm, stable, shelter…’

  ‘The closest one I see is Figgy Hollow in two miles to your left.’

  Well that’s more like it, thought Bridge, drawing level with the flapping sign and making out the words ‘Figgy Hollow’ and a left-pointing arrow backing up what Siri said. She would be stupid if she didn’t go there and stay put until this infernal snow cleared, even if Figgy Hollow was one of those places inhabited by strange country folk who bred werewolves and married close relatives. There was bound to be a church and, in the absence of a hotel or a pub or something, she’d throw herself upon its mercy like Esmeralda seeking sanctuary in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  ‘Make a U-turn where—’

  ‘Oh shut up, you annoying unreliable tart,’ Bridge spoke over the satnav voice as she swung a left. She had lost all confidence in her after getting the mileage wrong. ‘I’m ignoring you in favour of Siri so save your breath.’

  The road was narrow, deserted; she kept crawling forwards until she was rewarded by the sight of buildings, which drew a weary sigh of relief from her: a small church, some cottages, the roofs thickly iced with snow and – deep joy – the Figgy Hollow Inn. She projected herself forwards in time ten minutes, sitting in front of a log fire defrosting the outside of her while a large brandy warmed up her insides.

  The ignition on her Porsche cut out as soon as she braked near the ‘car park’ sign; it might as well have held up a limp hand and said, ‘No more, I need to rest.’ It was like a racehorse of the car world, lovely to look at, fine on a familiar course but throw in some hardship and it became a proper wet blanket. Bridge slipped on her suit jacket, opened the car door, trading the cosy warmth for a blast of Arctic wind and hurried across to the front door of the inn, only to find that it was locked. Oh, bloody marvellous, she said to herself, noticing that in the window stood a square of cardboard with the words, ‘Open for pre-booked reservations only. Christmas Day fully booked’ written on it. But one thing was for sure, she couldn’t sit here for two days waiting for someone to open up.

  She peered in the window, hoping to see a cleaner vacuuming around or a barman polishing tables, but there was no one. She rapped on the glass in a vain attempt to summon somebody who might be hidden out of view – a cellarman perhaps, having a crafty indoor cigarette. No response. She banged hard on the door with the side of her fist. Still nothing. Pulling her jacket tight around her she stepped, but mostly slid, in her snow-unfriendly Jimmy Choo boots around the side of the building, almost falling over a large iron ring attach
ed to a cellar access door in the ground, hidden by snow. She bent and pulled it, but it was firmly secured from the inside. There was a shed full of logs opposite and at the back of the property she found another door with an iron grille over it and a long, narrow window to its right. She tapped as hard as she dared on the glass, hoping against hope that someone was lurking in the back half of the building, but really she knew she was on the road to nowhere with all her efforts; the place felt empty as well as looked it.

  There was always the church, she supposed, making her way to it across the car park and the single-track road, traversing a short bridge that stood over a deep, thin ribbon of stream, slipping and sliding with none of the grace of Jayne Torvill. She tried the great arched door, twisting the rusted ring, then engaged in a bit more banging with various parts of her hand to absolutely no avail. So on it was, to the row of six adjacent cottages; she peered through the small window of the first of them, but it was too dark, the glass too dirty to see through. A knock on the door yielded the same result as every other knock she’d tried in the past fifteen minutes. She repeated the process with the remaining five houses – nothing; summer holiday cottages no doubt, abandoned until the start of the season. She returned to her best – well, only – option of shelter; the inn. And if she couldn’t find a way into it, she’d have to make one and risk the consequences. Better to be prosecuted for breaking and entering than be found frozen to her steering wheel, she reasoned.

  Thanks to a delinquent spell as a teen, Bridge was deft with a lock and a screwdriver, and she always carried a toolbox with her in the car. A dysfunctional, unorganised upbringing had led her to find solace and stability in being prepared for most eventualities, although that did not extend to her having her waterproof coat and snow-worthy wellies with her today. They were currently sitting in the back of the sturdy four-by-four she would have driven if a) she hadn’t been intent on trying to show Luke Palfreyman that she was more than a match for him in the financial stakes and b) the weathermen of the UK hadn’t been such inept pillocks.

  She swung open the boot, hoisted out the metal box stored in the compartment under the mat and pulled out a flat-blade screwdriver, her breaking-in implement of choice. If this didn’t work, she’d smash a window and gain entry that way, but she was pretty confident in her abilities, and rightly so; even after all these years, she still had the touch. A couple of artful prods and twists in the keyhole and there was a satisfying click. She gave the door a heavy push to open it and a rush of air came out at her with a sigh, as if it had been trapped and was thankful for its freedom.

  She called hello, apology cued in her mouth just in case she’d been mistaken and there was someone within after all, but, not surprisingly, there was only silence and darkness to greet her.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Is that the fastest the wipers will go? I can’t see the road and if I can’t, you can’t, which fills me full of confidence,’ said Charlie, for once not the happiest of passengers.

  ‘Yes, it is the fastest they will go, Charles,’ replied Robin, a pronounced and annoyed space between each word. Plus he only ever called Charlie ‘Charles’ when he was in a heightened state of emotion.

  ‘I’m only saying—’

  ‘Do you want to drive?’ Robin snapped. ‘I can stop the car and we can swap places. Or rather you can drive and I’ll get a taxi because your driving is bound to see at least one of us off before our time.’ He took a deep breath in an effort to deflate his rising temper. ‘Please sit back and let me handle the wheel and all the other instruments.’ He huffed, then restarted the argument. ‘The cheek of you, Charles Glaser. How long have I been your chauffeur? How many crashes have I had? Speeding tickets, parking fines? Not one. I wish this car had an ejector seat sometimes. I’d press it and gladly see you blasted into orbit.’

  A charged silence hung in the air for a few seconds and then both men burst out laughing. Life had always been too short for serious disagreements between them, but gentle squabbling was part of their relationship’s DNA and had been for the last thirty-two years. Thou shalt bicker to thy heart’s content was written into their constitutional ten commandments, along with Thou shalt not hold grudges and Thou shalt compromise wherever possible.

  ‘I can’t see a thing,’ conceded Robin. ‘This is total madness.’

  ‘Who’d have known this was going to happen?’ said Charlie.

  ‘The bloody meteorologists should have,’ replied Robin with more than a touch of impatience. ‘It’s the 1987 debacle all over again. How come they can send people to the moon but they can’t predict this?’ He threw one hand up, and then quickly replaced it on the wheel as the car threatened a rogue skid.

  Charlie cleared his throat before speaking next. ‘It’s probably not the time to tell you that there’s none in Scotland.’

  ‘None of what?’

  ‘Snow.’

  Robin’s grip of the steering wheel increased as if he was holding on to something that might stop him falling off the edge of the world. He really hoped he’d heard Charlie wrong.

  ‘Please tell me you’re joking.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Robin’s neck started to mottle red, Charlie noticed. This usually signified his partner was about to enter meltdown mode.

  ‘And when were you going to let me in on this particular nugget of information, Charles? When we got up to Aviemore and noticed everyone in bikinis?’

  ‘I don’t mind about the snow, it didn’t matter anyway.’

  Robin knew that was a lie. ‘It was the most important thing of all, Charlie.’

  ‘It’s forecasted though. For the new year apparently.’

  ‘Yes and the whole of England was “forecasted” to be mild and dry for Christmas. They obviously couldn’t forecast a puddle if they were stood in it. Are all the weathermen on acid trips?’

  Robin growled like a frustrated bear, then his attention was snatched away by the satnav, which picked that moment to freeze. ‘Oh great, that’s all I need.’ He stabbed at it with a demanding index finger, spoke nicely to it then swore at it but nothing would coax it to work.

  ‘Charlie, get maps up on your phone. Look for the nearest town, pub, hotel, anything.’

  Charlie tried, but maps couldn’t seem to pick up where they were as a starting point. ‘This is the trouble with modern technology,’ he said. ‘It works until it doesn’t.’

  ‘Very profound, my love and so helpful.’

  ‘You can’t go wrong with a paper map. I would have known where we were if you hadn’t thrown the road atlas away.’

  ‘It was years out of date, Charlie. It showed the M1 as a mud path.’

  ‘Oh, very funny.’

  Robin braked and felt the car struggle for purchase on the road. There was no way he could drive up to Aviemore in this, it wasn’t safe.

  ‘Mad fools and Englishmen,’ he said, not quite under his breath.

  ‘That’s midday sun. And it’s dogs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, and it’s by Noel Coward.’

  ‘Mad fools and bloody Englishmen go out in the bloody snow two days before bloody Christmas, heading for the bloody highlands of bloody Scotland and that’s by Robin bloody Raymond.’ Robin’s neck was now completely red.

  ‘Shh, having a fit won’t get us anywhere sooner,’ said Charlie, attempting to pour some oil on Robin’s troubled waters. ‘What’s that over there?’ He squinted at something in the distance. ‘You know, I think it’s a sign.’

  ‘What? Like a burning bush?’ replied Robin dryly.

  ‘A wooden signpost I mean, as well you know. Drive on a touch.’

  For a man six months short of his eightieth birthday, Charlie had eyes like a hawk.

  Robin pressed down the accelerator softly, crawled forwards: ‘Oh yeah, I see it now, what does it say?’

  Charlie opened the window and snow flew in so he read quickly and closed it again.

&n
bsp; ‘It said Figgy Hollow, half a mile and a right arrow.’

  ‘What’s that? A village?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said Charlie. ‘And I know these parts like the back of my hand.’

  ‘It’s a no-brainer, we’ll have to go there then.’ Robin just hoped the car would make it and not choke, splutter and stop as if they were in an old horror film, leaving them stranded at the mercy of some Yeti-like creature. ‘Someone’s bound to take pity on us and invite us in for some soup. Practise looking old and vulnerable.’

  ‘I am old and vulnerable. Figgy Hollow here we come then,’ said Charlie, annoying Robin even more by making it sound as if they were about to embark on a jolly adventure with the Famous Five and lashings of ginger beer.

  * * *

  Mary Padgett tried to concentrate on the road and not on her boss talking on the phone in that way he had when he was trying to hang on to his temper. She flashed a look at him in the rear-view mirror. Driving gave her the perfect excuse to glance at him every few seconds and she doubted she’d ever get tired of the sight. Jack Butterly was ten years her senior, just developing silvery sprinkles in his dark, cropped hair, and crinkles around his gorgeous grey eyes. He seemed to grow more handsome with each year that passed, as she seemed to grow more invisible. She loved her boss. Loved him with all her heart and not in an ‘I like working for him’ way, but an ‘I wish he’d lock the door, shove me on his desk and have his wicked way with me’ way, which is why she offered to drive him to a hotel in the north-east when Jack’s chauffeur Fred went off sick with his back – again.

  Jack had been trying for months to fix up a meeting with the head of the Chikafuji Bakery company in Japan and the only time in the calendar Mr Chikafuji and Jack were both free was the early morning of Christmas Eve. Despite being very keen to hook up and make beautiful bun business together, Mr Chikafuji had been more difficult than a greased eel to pin down, so Jack wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to meet with him when he was over on a flying visit to the UK. Mary seized her chance to spend an evening in a gorgeous country house four-star hotel with Jack Butterly, an opportunity that looked set to crumble into dust, from what the fragments of conversation she’d overheard had intimated.