Page 120 of All I Want for Christmas

She sipped another spoonful but slightly over-rotated the spoon so that a bit of soup dribbled down her chin.

‘Oh God,’ she muttered. ‘Can’t take me anywhere.’ She went to grab her napkin but he was faster, instinctively reaching over and smudging it away with his thumb, his hand pausing on her face as his eyes locked with hers.

In that single, unguarded moment, she saw his secrets – emotions he usually managed to hide so well shining back at her as if they’d been caught in the sun. It was as if time itself slowed. She had thought all along he had been calling the shots – deciding where the boundaries were; everything on his terms. Only now did she realize the power lay with her.Hewas running fromher, fighting this.

But surely he knew he couldn’t run for ever? She leaned slightly into his hand and felt the pressure from his fingers increase, holding her—

He pulled away, as if only just realizing what he was doing. ‘Darcy.’

‘Max.’

A silence bloomed and this one felt heavier. Loaded.

‘Darcy...’

‘Yes,’ she breathed, hearing how his voice cracked on her name. He heard it too and looked away, as if he’d betrayed himself somehow. He hesitated and she felt her heart pause with him. ‘...There’s something I want to ask you.’

She swallowed as she watched him, waiting. ‘Okay.’

He looked back at her, but she saw that in that moment of reprieve, the shutters had come down again. The sun had gone back behind the clouds.

‘...Do you really think I should get a dog?’

Chapter Twenty-Five

He gave her the tour, the house breathing quietly as they walked through its rooms in socked feet. It felt completely different to his townhouse. That was all moody colours and striking statement pieces but this felt gentler and less self-consciously beautiful. It had the air of inheritance to it, an old soul that had seen much, the worn comfort of a jumper he’d pinched from his father: the fireplaces had coloured tiles, there were finger-wide gaps between the floorboards and some of the sofas needed patching. The curtains in some rooms looked so old, the patterns had been sun-bleached so that only faint shadows remained.

The paintings were different here, too. Fewer large-scale extravagant oils and instead, galleries of quieter, humbler sketches and watercolours. Darcy stopped before a grouping on the stairs. They were botanicals – larkspur, lavender, daffodils. ‘L. Madsen,’ she said, reading the artist’s signature in the corner. She looked up at him on the steps above her but he shook his head, knowing what she was thinking.

‘Lotte.’

‘Oh.’ She wondered how he could be so sure.

She followed him up the stairs. He seemed different here, too; the more he moved into the private areas of the house, it was as if his hard edges were knocked off. He stopped outsidea bedroom, his arms folding over his chest, and she somehow knew this had been his brother’s room. Exposed timbers striped the ceiling; the walls were air force blue, with ticking curtains and old pine furniture. Any artefacts from their childhood had been, seemingly, long since packed away, but there were some photographs on the surfaces, some school sports photos on the walls.

‘Peder’s?’ she asked.

‘This was his,’ he nodded. ‘...All of it.’

She looked at him, picking up his meaning. ‘...The house?’

‘The bulk of the Madsen fortune passed out, a couple of generations back, to our cousins – Frederik’s side. This place was slim pickings compared to what they inherited, but this was all we would have wanted anyway,’ he shrugged. ‘We always loved it here. Our grandmother and father both grew up here, and we spent our summers here until our parents died.’ A small spasm flickered in his jaw. ‘We got sent to live with our aunt, inherited some shares in the company and some honorary positions. I inherited the townhouse and Peder got this...’

His voice trailed off and she knew what he was thinking: that he never should have had both. It wasn’t supposed to have been this way.

She felt his aloneness radiating from him. He had lost everyone he loved. His entire family. She couldn’t begin to imagine how that must feel. She may not see her family on a daily basis but they always messaged and shared memes, laughing, joking and teasing as if they were in the same room. The thought of having no one in the world to care about her, to check in on her...‘Max, I’m so sorry.’

He glanced at her, but it was as if the emotion in her voice was threatening to him – a knife glinting at his throat – and she saw that inscrutable gaze blink back at her. It was like amask he could slip behind, keeping the world at bay. He had already come close to revealing too much at lunch, but instead of drawing them closer, every slip now only seemed to push him further away from her.

She swallowed, recognizing the pattern. He would never let her in. He didn’t want an emotional connection with her, or anyone.

He turned and carried on down the hall, his back to her, pointing out the bedrooms. Darcy trailed after him. The ceilings were reasonably high but they sloped sharply in the gables, making the rooms feel cosier. The views onto the garden were far-reaching as the lawns fell gently away and the sea was visible above the treetops from some of the rooms on the west side. All the beds were pristine, every sheet wrinkle smoothed out as if it was a White Company catalogue. It looked like no one had ever touched them, much less slept in them.

She supposed most of the bedrooms – if not all but his – were now guest rooms. And yet the small table in the big kitchen suggested he didn’t entertain on any large scale here.

‘When was this taken?’ she asked, stopping in front of a pair of large photographs on the wall. Both looked to be weddings held here at the estate, bride and groom surrounded by family, just outside the kitchen doors; one photograph, the older one, was black and white, but the other was in colour and for the first time, she understood what Viggo had been telling her about the Sallys’ talents. In contrast to the starkness outside right now, the garden was a profusion of textures, a riot of colour. It made her want to walk through the grasses, run her hands against the heavy flowerheads...

‘Those are my parents’ and grandparents’ weddings. It was a bit of a tradition getting married here back then.’

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