‘Happy birthday for tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ she said after a pause. ‘Goodnight, then.’
‘Goodnight.’ He bent down and picked up her scarf and gave it to her.
‘Thank you.’ Evie took it and started to feel in all her pockets. ‘What did I do with my key?’
‘You were holding it when we…’
She nodded. ‘Yep. Maybe I dropped it.’
Dan pulled his phone out of his pocket and switched the torch on and they both crouched down.
‘It isn’t here,’ he said eventually. He looked closely at Evie. She had her lips clamped together like she was trying not to laugh. ‘What?’
‘I think it might be…’ She stood up and covered her face with her hands. ‘I think it might be inside your clothes somewhere.’
‘Oh.’ Dan stood up too. ‘Um, okay. Well, I’ll just check.’
In the end, he found it tucked between the top of his jeans and trunks waistbands. Evie still had her lips pressed together when he handed it to her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and then she started giggling. How was this the first time that he’d ever noticed the dimple on the right-hand side of her mouth?
He laughed back at her.God, he wanted to kiss her again. And a lot more.
And now she wasn’t laughing any more and nor was he.
They stood and looked at each other, Evie smiling a little, and Dan’s lips, he was pretty sure, mirroring the curve of hers.
Time to go.
‘Goodnight,’ he said. He needed to say something light, to break the tension. ‘Only eight years to go until our wedding day.’ Maybe notthebest weak joke to have made, actually, given the circumstances.
Evie nodded, put her key in the door, turned it, opened the door and said, ‘Already planning my wedding dress. Night,’ before slipping inside.
Lucie and Sasha were still up when he got back to the house.
‘I went for a walk,’ he said. ‘After I saw Evie home.’
‘Right,’ said Sasha, like he was being weird. Yep, he was acting like someone who had something to be guilty about, over-explaining things.
‘Goodnight, then,’ he said. Any other evening it would have been nice to share a nightcap with Lucie and Sasha in the absence of the rest of their family, but right now wasn’t the moment for it.
As he passed the sitting room on his way to bed, he heard his mother speaking. Hissing, actually. He caught the wordsherandattractive. His father’s reply was indistinct but he had a very snappish tone to his voice. Dan took a deep breath and got himself up the stairs, fast, to his childhood bedroom, to lie awake for hours feeling angry with his father and sad for his mother, like he’d done too many nights in the past. This was why he didn’t come home much any more.
* * *
Two and a half days later, Dan crunched across the snowy green with the rest of his family. Evie had been right about the white Christmas. It had snowed properly yesterday, Christmas Day, and again this morning.
Since he’d started at university, Dan had always been relieved to get to Boxing Day, because it meant that he could leave the next day without comment. He just had this walk and one more family meal this evening to get out of the way, and that was it; he’d be off first thing in the morning.
‘Helloooo.’ Mrs Bird from the corner house was doing huge whole-arm waves at them. ‘How wonderful to see you all together. Let me take a photo of you. Wait, wait, wait where you are.’ She stepped outside her front door, wobbled, saved herself on the doorframe, and said, ‘I might just get my stick.’
‘Be careful.’ Dan’s father jogged over to her, ever the perfect gentleman, externally, anyway. ‘You don’t want to fall on ice and have to have another hip operation.’
The six of them stood for the photo, in front of the tree in the middle of the green, arranged by Mrs Bird with Dan’s parents in the middle, Lucie and Sasha on either side of them, and Dan and his older brother Max on the ends. Portrait of a perfect family.
‘What a wonderful picture you make,’ said Mrs Bird. She waved her camera at them. ‘Would you like a copy of the photo?’
