Page 107 of The Holiday Cottage

She didn’t want to think about going back, not with the lights from the Christmas market sparkling around her and Miles looking at her as if she was the only person there.

She wanted to freeze the moment and make it last forever.

She bought the stuffed alpaca for Ava, and on impulse bought the same for Iris.

“I need to find a gift for Patrick. Any ideas?” She glanced around, lacking in inspiration. “I had no idea Christmas shopping was so mentally exhausting. This will be my first Christmas with them. I want to get them something really special.”

“I think having you there will make it really special. I’m pretty sure gifts won’t matter.”

“They matter to me. I want to get it right.”

“If I can’t buy someone a woolly hat, I buy them food. That way they can either eat it, or give it to someone else to eat. How about chocolates? Iris loves chocolate. I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to help him. Wait a minute—I’ll message Lissa and see if she has any ideas. She’s known Patrick forever.” He pulled his phone out and sent a message to his sister, and they strolled past a few more stalls as she looked for something special.

The problem was that she didn’t know them that well yet.

She was pondering a pair of cashmere gloves for Dorothy when Lissa replied.

Miles scanned the message. “She says to go to the bookshop and ask Paul and Rick. Patrick loves books, that’s true. It’s a good idea. I should have thought of it, and the fact that I didn’t is just one of the many reasons I won’t be applying to be Santa anytime soon. We’ll head to the bookshop when we’ve finished with the market.”

“Paul and Rick? You really do know everyone.”

“Lissa has a really tight group of friends from childhood and they’re good at staying in touch. Patrick and Sara you know, obviously. Then there’s Paul and Rick, and also Shona. She’s a florist. Lives in Cheltenham and spends her life doing posh weddings. We had a drunken kiss on my eighteenth birthday, but don’t ever tell my sister that.”

His frankness made her smile and she thought how nice it was that they were all knitted together, their lives intertwined and overlapping, their history shared and stored.

She bought the cashmere gloves, and at the next stall she chose some art materials for Ava and Iris.

She added a box of Belgian truffles as a thank-you to Dorothy for inviting her for Christmas and bought large chocolate Santas for the children.

“Does Sara mind them having chocolate?”

“At Christmas, anything goes. Given that you’ve never really done any Christmas shopping before, you seem to be mastering the art pretty quickly.” Miles grabbed her purchases before she could drop them. “We’re going to need to offload some of these at the car soon.”

“What about you? Aren’t you going to do any shopping? Are you buying something for Lissa, or is she getting a hat too?”

“Cheese.”

“Excuse me?”

“My sister loves cheese, particularly French cheese. That’s what I buy her.”

The Christmas market turned out to be a memorable and magical experience. She sampled fudge and chocolate and carried on buying gifts until Miles called a halt to it on the grounds that they couldn’t carry any more.

They headed to the bookstore, where Paul and Rick sold her a book they assured her Patrick would love, and then they headed to the pub, an old fourteenth-century coaching inn complete with beamed ceilings, stone floors and a roaring log fire.

The place was crowded, but the owner managed to find Miles a prime table near the fire, muttering something about him never buying a drink for himself again after what he’d done for the Hendersons’ prize cattle the previous summer.

She was fast discovering that he was something of a hero in his local community.

“We should have asked to have those presents gift wrapped.” He settled next to her and stretched out his legs. “It would have saved you a job.”

“I didn’t want them gift wrapped. I’m going to wrap them myself when we get home. It’s all part of the Christmas experience. You don’t wrap your own?”

“If you’d ever seen my wrapping, you wouldn’t be asking that question.”

She hung her coat on the back of the chair. “I’ve been watching videos on how to wrap a present perfectly.”

“You don’t think you’re taking this a little too seriously?”

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