A Winter Flame (25 page)

You haven’t a clue, Miss Douglas. You haven’t a clue what people want or need because you are too out of touch with everything.
His words bounced into her skull to kick her
whilst she was down. He was right, she was a mess.

She sipped at her coffee and heard shouting and laughter from outside. The men were working 24/7 on the park to get it ready. Everyone was pulling together so hard but there was always a lot of
jollity around, most of it at Effin’s comic profanities. She remembered the one and only time she and Jonathan had been to a theme park. She refused to go on the big rides, so Jonathan had
joined her on the spinning teacups and pretended to be terrified. They’d hardly had time to do many things: one short holiday, one visit to a theme park . . .

‘He’s gone for good – dead, ash, dust, worm food. What, are you waiting for him to rise like bloody Lazarus? It’s pathetic. You’re a laughing
stock.’

Is that what people thought about her – that she was some sort of modern-day Miss Haversham?

She felt tears gather behind her eyes and reached for the newspaper on the edge of Jacques’ table to divert her thoughts, which was a bad idea. The front page was taken up with a picture
of yesterday’s funeral of the young female soldier who lived in Ketherwood.

The coffin bore a teardrop wreath of white roses.

‘Town Mourns Brave Sharon’ was the headline.

There was a picture of her boyfriend, a young bald-headed man with a tattoo on his neck of Sharon’s name. His head looked at odds with the smart suit he was wearing and
the long-stemmed white rose that he was carrying. Eve recognized that lost look in his eyes, which the photographer had captured perfectly. He and Sharon had planned out a whole future which had
crumbled instantly. He would have no direction, he would crave oblivion. All the things of life would hold no interest or colour for him. He would feel like he was standing still in the middle of a
motorway with cars zooming around him.

She closed the paper hurriedly and tossed it back on Jacques’ desk. Today had been a totally shit day. She scanned through her emails and replied to one from the
Yorkshire Post
about drumming up some publicity. Then the front door burst open and one of the Polish workers tumbled in.

‘Is Captain here?’

‘No, I don’t know where he is. What’s the matter?’

‘It’s be-cause,’ said the young Pole.

‘Because what?’

‘No,’ and he started to do a mime. ‘Bee-course.’ He was stamping on the ground with one foot.

What the chuff?

Now he was gesturing that something was very tall and had a huge nose. Then he started thumping his chest. ‘BEEE-COURSE. SEEK.’

‘Show me,’ said Eve, before she snapped. ‘I follow you.’

He seemed to understand her pathetic attempt at pidgin English and charged out of the Portakabin, checking she was behind him. He turned left into the dark enchanted forest just as the train was
chuffing up the track.

‘It’s all mended. Want a lift?’ called Thomas. ‘Goes as slow as an old snail now.’

‘I don’t know where I’m supposed to be going,’ said Eve.

‘Oy, Josef. Want a lift?’ said Thomas to the young Pole. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘BEE-COURSE. SEEK.’

‘Get on, then.’

The language divide obviously didn’t exist between the Poles and the Welsh.

‘Did you understand that?’ said Eve in disbelief.

‘He said that the big horse is sick.’

‘Oh no,’ said Eve. Not this. Not Christopher. Not today. Not any day. He was a lovely old fellow.

‘Has anyone rung the vet?’ asked Eve, getting a blank look from Josef.

‘Has anyone rung the vet?’ Thomas repeated to him.

‘
Nie
,’ Josef replied to him.

‘How the bloody hell can he understand you and not me? I’m saying the same thing.’ huffed Eve. ‘And why is this damned train so slow?’

‘It’s mended,’ said Thomas.

‘Well unmend it,’ grumped Eve. ‘This speed is pants.’

As they came to the end of the track, Eve recognized the big-coated figure of Jacques in the near distance, talking down his phone and pacing from side to side. He’d had a shave and a very
short haircut, she saw as they got even closer. She felt strangely reassured that he was there. He would take command, as he had when Holly was giving birth. Whatever was wrong with the old horse
would be sorted. Then she neared the side of the paddock and saw Christopher, laid out on his side, panting, legs giving an occasional twitch. A few of the elves were standing by the fence, the old
one who walked with a limp was wiping his eyes with an enormous hankie. Tim was on the floor, cradling the big lad’s head.

‘I think it’s his heart,’ he said with a voice full of trembles. ‘He just keeled over. Is the vet on his way, Captain?’

‘On his way,’ called Jacques, clicking off his phone. ‘All we can do is keep Christopher as comfortable as possible.’

Eve rushed inside the paddock and bent on the ground beside Tim and stroked Christopher’s huge white cheek.

Tears were coursing down Tim’s face and dropping onto Christopher’s mane. ‘I gave him a right good brush this morning as well. He loves that.’

Eve felt Jacques towering behind her.

Then Christopher’s eyes dropped shut as if the stroking was sending him to sleep and Tim felt an increased weight on his leg. ‘Oh no,’ he yelled. ‘Don’t you dare
bloody die on me, you little sod.’

But there was no rise and fall in Christopher’s flanks any more. Jacques dropped to his haunches and placed his hand on Christopher’s jaw where the pulse would be. There was
nothing.

‘He’s gone,’ was all he said, and a sad eruption of grief overwhelmed them all. Tim was sobbing, some of the builders were shaking their heads, one of the younger elf-ladies
was handing out tissues from her handbag. Eve wasn’t even aware that she was crying until she saw the splashes land on Christopher’s cheek.

The ponies were protesting, shut away in the stable. One of them sounded as if it was trying to kick the door in.

‘Go home, Tim,’ said Jacques gently. ‘I’ll wait for the vet.’

‘Can we bury him here?’ asked Tim, sounding like a small boy wanting to bury a hamster rather than a grown man with a horse.

Jacques looked to Eve.

‘Yes, of course, he belongs here,’ said Eve. ‘I promise you we’ll do that.’

Tim, not caring what anyone thought, bent over and kissed the horse on his head, stroking him, saying goodbye. Then Effin helped him up and walked with him, his comforting hand on Tim’s
shoulder, and the others drifted away, all except for Jacques and Eve, who was still stroking Christopher’s mane.

‘You can go home. I’ll stay with him till the vet gets here,’ said Jacques. ‘I’ll cover him for tonight and Tim and I will bury him tomorrow.’

Eve nodded and leaned over to give the old horse a kiss too. He smelt of stables and the mud he liked to roll in. He smelt of hay and happy times.

Jacques surprised her by placing his hand on her elbow to help her up.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘No worries,’ he replied, as if it was an automatic, gallant gesture rather than one he had chosen to make.

They heard a car rumble down the service road.

‘That’ll be the vet,’ said Eve.

‘I’ll take you back on the train, missus,’ called Thomas.

Just as Eve was about to board, Jacques called to her.

‘Her name was Catherine. She was a sergeant from Devon and she was shot twelve hours after landing in Afghanistan on her first duty. We were together for nine months.’

‘Pardon?’ said Eve.

‘You know,’ he said.

Then the vet braked sharply into the space between them and Eve climbed on the train to take the interminably slow service back to the front gates, wondering what the hell Jacques had been
talking about. An ex-girlfriend, obviously, but why was any of that Eve’s business?

Her house felt especially cold when she walked into it. Large and cold and weighted with loneliness. She walked in the dark to her office to the patiently burning flame and
wondered if Christopher had made it up
there
yet. Did animals go to heaven? She didn’t think her Aunt Evelyn would want to go there if she wasn’t going to be reunited with Fancy
and Kringles. A medium she had once been to told her that spirits often hung around until after the funeral before ‘making their way upstairs’. Mind you, that medium had also told her
that she’d meet a man in a uniform and live happily ever after. ‘He’ll have an accident, but don’t worry, he’ll cope with it,’ the daft old cow had said. And
because of that, when those men in suits arrived on her doorstep, she couldn’t take it in: that Jonathan’s accident was a fatal one. Were all mediums fake? They couldn’t be,
surely? She had watched programmes on the television when mediums had delivered details to their audiences that they couldn’t possibly have known. So they had to be communicating with the
dead, right? Eve had been to a couple of different mediums after Jonathan died, but they’d told her a load of codswallop. ‘He sends his love.’ ‘He says he doesn’t want
you to be unhappy.’ Nothing specific that would identify him, like ‘This guy says he wishes he were biting that bit on your ear that always makes you giggle.’ Or ‘I have
someone here who wants to know if you’ve finally changed that broken light fitting in the downstairs toilet?’

‘Jonathan, I’m begging you to send me a sign,’ said Eve. ‘I need it so much. Today’s been just pants. I wish you were here.’ She picked up his old jumper that
she kept on her office chair and raised it to her nose, inhaling the smell which wasn’t of him any more, even though she had never washed it. Kevin Hall would be doing the same to a coat or a
pillowcase imbued with Sharon Wilkinson’s scent, no doubt. He would try and cling on to every last vestige of his darling that remained on the real earth, and would lose a little more of her
each day.

Then she knew what Jacques had been talking about just before the vet’s car drew up. And she wanted to sink to the ground with shame.

Eve was surprised that she had managed to sleep a wink, what with all the stuff that was whirring around in her head like an over-stuffed washing machine that threatened to
blow the door off. But sleep she did because she came-to with the shrill, annoying alarm piercing a dream that she couldn’t remember in detail, only that it was something to do with her
grandmother driving a train. Before her lay a day where she had to go into work and face a man who
knew
she had been in his house and seen that uniform hanging up in his wardrobe. And
piecing together all the clues, it could only have come from Phoebe. She recalled how he had turned to ice after taking Phoebe to the carousel. God only knows what the little red-haired girl had
said to him. There was nothing to do but face it head on and get the apology out of the way. She dressed quickly, threw an instant espresso down her throat, and locked up the house. She both hoped
he was and hoped he wasn’t in the Portakabin when she arrived at Winterworld.

He was there. Fiddling with the portable heater. There was a full pot of fresh coffee, its warm, cosy smell permeating the office space. He stole a look behind him at Eve, gave her the briefest
of nods by way of a greeting, and then returned to attending the calor gas fire.

After taking a long fortifying breath she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’ He didn’t look behind him.

‘You know,’ she said.

She watched him stop what he was doing for a moment, then carry on.

‘You’ll have the office to yourself this morning. I’m going to help bury Christopher. The vet says it was more than likely his heart that gave up on him.’

‘That’s very sad,’ said Eve, taking off her coat and hanging it up on the peg. ‘Maybe we could take in another horse. You know, give an old one a retirement home, rescue
one from the knacker’s yard, like Aunt Evelyn did.’

His shoulders jerked as if they had been surprised by a laugh, but he still didn’t turn around.

‘I’m sure Tim would appreciate that suggestion.’

‘I’ve also been thinking,’ said Eve, still quietly, still shamed. ‘What if we renamed the train ‘The Nutcracker Express’ and made it a faster, rickety ride.
Not as mad as it was, but a little less boring than the mended version.’

‘Sounds good,’ Jacques was nodding. Then he straightened his long legs and zipped up his coat. ‘Do you want to tell Effin, or shall I?’

‘I’ll do it,’ replied Eve, feeling dreadfully awkward with him now. She wanted to ask him what Phoebe had said – God only knows what childish slant she had put on things;
she didn’t like to think where the Topshop connection came into it.
Please God, don’t let her have heard the bit about him being a cross-dresser.
But whatever her little
fox-haired god-daughter had let slip, she had managed to make it crystal clear to him that Eve had been snooping in his wardrobe and really, it didn’t get more incriminating than that.

‘I’ll see you later,’ said Jacques. And as he went out, the cold air swirled into the office and caused Eve to shiver right down to her bones.

Auntie Susan lifted her mood half an hour later.

‘I’ve just had a visit from Pav. He came to invite me to the surprise wedding,’ she gushed down the phone.