Ruby nodded. ‘Do you think he’ll sound English when he comes back?’
‘I don’t know,’ Cleo replied. ‘He might do. People at home think I sound American now.’
Jacob giggled at this.
‘What do you sell in your store?’ Ruby’s inquisitiveness didn’t wane. She’d covered the topic of accents, now it was time for something else.
‘I run a knitting store and we sell yarns, haberdashery – needles, bags, buttons and that sort of thing – and a few items of clothing at special times of the year.’
‘Like what?’ Ruby asked as the line moved up further. It was almost their turn to decorate an ornament.
‘Well, at this time of the year I have a few Christmas sweaters and I also like to make and sell Christmas stockings, which are always popular.’
‘Daddy, can we go to Cleo’s store for a new stocking?’ Ruby asked. She turned to Cleo. ‘Mine has a hole in it,’ she explained.
‘We’ll see, Ruby.’ Dylan looked at Cleo. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but she was still here hanging out with them. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? He wondered whether she was as pleased to see him as he was to see her, or perhaps she was thinking Prue should be the one standing here with them.
‘Our turn!’ Jacob yelped as they reached the start of the line.
Dylan held him back and calmed him.
‘He gets overexcited,’ Ruby told her.
Cleo smiled. ‘It’s a wonderful time of year, my favourite. I get excited too.’
The stallholder explained what choices they had. There were clothespin skier ornaments to make, or you could choose to assemble a Christmas drum, or paint a bauble. But as soon as Jacob saw the polar bear ornaments hanging up, Dylan knew what his son would go for.
‘He saw a polar bear at the zoo last year and he’s obsessed by them,’ Dylan told Cleo as the stallholder took Jacob over to the small table where all the craft accessories were set up beneath a canopy. They’d been lucky with the weather so far today. It was cold and they were all bundled up in coats, scarves and gloves, but it wasn’t too cold to take off your gloves and join in. Jacob needed a bit of guidance, and Dylan helped him wrap white yarn around a Styrofoam ball to make the face of the bear. He helped his son trace ear shapes onto white felt and a smaller shape onto off-white felt, and when he turned around to see if Ruby had made up her mind, Cleo had already taken her over to another table where they were working together on something else.
He turned back to Jacob, grinning. It appeared Cleo wanted to hang out with them as much as he wanted her to.
Jacob took charge of pushing the greening pin into the top of the ball once they’d stuck the eyes onto the polar bear, and Dylan helped thread through a length of festive red ribbon for hanging.
‘What are you making, Ruby?’ As the stallholder carefully put Jacob’s creation into a brown paper bag, Dylan stood so close to Cleo the cold breeze wafted the meadowy smell of her hair his way.
‘It’s a skier.’ Ruby held the wooden clothes pin aloft. It’d been painted with scarlet red, Ruby’s favourite colour, and had two white ice-pop sticks for the skis, a big white pom-pom hat, and a small, hand-drawn face. ‘Cleo helped me use special painter’s tape to get the edges of the scarlet colour perfect.’
He looked at Cleo and this time she met his gaze. ‘You’ve both done a brilliant job.’ When their gazes locked a second too long, he said, ‘Who’s for hot chocolate?’ to which both kids nodded enthusiastically.
‘Can we leave this and come back?’ he asked the stallholder. Ruby’s ornament would need to dry before they could put it in a bag and they’d come and get it before they left.
Ruby and Jacob led the way to the hot chocolate stall, guided by the sign as well as the smell snaking into the air and down through the Christmas market, and Cleo and Dylan followed behind.
‘They’re lovely kids.’ Cleo’s blonde, wavy hair sat beneath a pearl-coloured hat with a bobble on top and when she looked at him her blue eyes were as friendly as he remembered from the first night they met.
‘Thank you. I like them.’
She grinned. ‘How old is Ruby?’
‘Six. Seems older, right?’
‘Just a little. She reminds me of myself when I was younger, headstrong, confident.’
‘You’re not those things any more?’
Cleo shrugged. ‘I suppose I am.’ She hesitated but then, ‘Can I ask where their mom is today?’
Dylan breathed in the mingled scent of churros from the stall nearby, cookies and gingerbread from opposite, the rich allure of chocolate as they made their way to the stall where his kids were waiting. ‘We’re divorced, Cleo.’
