Page 108 of The Holiday Cottage

“No. It’s my first proper family Christmas. I want it to be just like the movies.” She laughed and then felt her phone buzz. She took it out of her pocket and the joy from the day faded.

Miles watched her. “Your mother?”

“Yes. She’s called a couple of times, but I haven’t answered her calls or called her back. Last time I saw her she told me to get out of her life, so that’s what I’m doing. Except it’s not that easy.” She rejected the call and put her phone back in her bag. “Part of me wants to speak to her and get some answers.”

Over the past week she’d told him all of it, revealing far more than she had to Dorothy and Sara. It was easier, somehow, to talk to someone who wasn’t directly emotionally involved. Or maybe it was just that Miles was easy to talk to.

“Would answers help?” He spoke quietly and she looked at him for a moment, wondering how he always knew the right question to ask.

“Probably not. No. Whatever she says, nothing is going to change the past.”

“Maybe it’s not answers you want. Maybe it’s an apology.”

She took a sip of her drink and thought about it. “Yes. But I know I wouldn’t get one. I feel so angry with her.” She blurted the words out and felt his hand cover hers.

“That’s understandable.”

“Not only because of the things she said last time I saw her, but because she made a choice for me that she never should have made. And maybe that was acceptable when I was a baby, although I don’t understand that part at all because if she hated being a mother so much, if I was really the worst thing that had ever happened to her as she told me that night, then why didn’t she just leave me with Dorothy and Sara? That makes no sense. But the part that makes me really angry is that she lied about them for my whole life. She spent years stoking my resentment toward them, telling me they’d abandoned her. She didn’t want them in her life and she made that decision for both of us, and that’s what I’m finding hard to deal with. Even that last time I saw her, she didn’t tell me the truth.”

He kept his hand on hers. “It sounds as if she’s the master of emotional manipulation. I can’t imagine how upsetting that episode in the hospital must have been.”

Imogen thought back to the hurt she’d felt that night. She’d felt totally alone. She could have lost her job. “It was bad. But it’s funny how life works out, isn’t it? I kept beating myself up for going to the hospital that night, but if I hadn’t gone, then I wouldn’t have messed up my job, and if I hadn’t messed up my job, Rosalind wouldn’t have insisted I take a month off. If I hadn’t had a month off, I wouldn’t be here now. I never would have met my real family. Isn’t that ironic?”

He stroked her hand with his thumb. “You don’t think Dorothy would have said something eventually?”

“Maybe. I suppose so.” She frowned. “When I asked her, she just said that she didn’t have a plan. She was taking it day by day.”

“It can’t have been an easy thing to raise with you.”

“No. I can see that now.”

He let go of her hand and reached for his drink. “If Tina isn’t calling you to apologize or wish you a happy Christmas, why is she calling?”

“She probably wants money. That’s the only reason she calls. Anyway, enough of that. We’re having a perfect Christmassy day, and my mother isn’t going to be part of that.” She was determined that she was not going to let her mother spoil the day. She couldn’t control what her mother did, but she could control how she responded to it.

They ate lunch and it was several hours before they could drag themselves away from the warmth of the pub.

She slid her arm through his. “What’s next?”

“Ice-skating.” They headed to the small ice rink that had been set up on the edge of the village and watched for a few minutes while children circumnavigated the rink held by wobbly parents.

Imogen winced as a woman in a blue hat lost her balance and crashed down hard on her bottom. “Ouch.”

“Mmm. Lissa thought this would be romantic,” Miles said. “I’m not sure why. We could both end up in hospital. She probably thought it would give us an excuse to hold hands, but as we’ve been doing that for most of the day, I’m not sure we need to go to those extremes. Unless you’re desperate to show off your ice dance skills, we could move on to our next Christmassy activity.”

“I don’t have any ice dance skills, so moving on sounds good.”

They headed back to the car and he drove away from the village and deep into the countryside.

It was dark by the time he turned into the entrance of a stately home.

“Won’t it be closed?”

“Inside, yes, but we’re not doing a tour of the interior. They have a festive light trail. I believe officially they call it an enchanted trail, so if you don’t feel enchanted I’ll demand a refund. A client of mine mentioned it to me. I thought that if you wanted to feel Christmassy, this is probably the place.”

She was touched by how much thought he’d put into their day, and from the moment she stepped out of the car, she knew this had been a good choice.

He took her hand and they walked past the stands selling hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows and followed a lantern trail through the gardens. They wandered through tunnels of fairy lights and past a lake illuminated by lasers of different colors.

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