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After they’d finished opening their stockings, Laurel made hot chocolate and put the cinnamon buns she’d prepped the night before into the Rayburn, so soon the whole cottage was filled with the spicy, yeasty scent. They ate the rolls and sipped their hot chocolate while still in their pyjamas, gazing out at the snow-covered sheep paddock between Bayview Cottage and Archie’s farmhouse
. The snow hadn’t even started to melt yet, despite the sun rising over the fields to the east, the sky a perfect, pure blue.
After breakfast, they both showered and dressed, and Laurel started getting dinner ready while Zac tried to beat the world record on his new Rubik’s cube. They’d agreed to wait to open presents until Archie came over, although Laurel felt apprehensive about it all.
She wasn’t sure he really would come, or if she should give him the presents she’d bought, which felt too intimate now that he’d kissed her and she’d backed off. Still, Zac wanted to wait for Archie, and so for his sake as much as her own she wrapped Archie’s presents and put them under the tree with the others.
By three o’clock Laurel was starting to feel antsy. When they’d initially discussed it, Archie had said Christmas dinner at the nursing home would finish by half past two, and he’d come right after.
Christmas dinner—Archie’s second—was simmering and bubbling away, ready to be served by four o’clock. The presents, in their sparkly, festive paper, looked accusingly at her from under the little, lopsided tree. Zac had figured out the Rubik’s cube and moved on to flicking through the “Four Thousand Facts You Need to Know” book Laurel had hoped he might like, which he seemed to, judging from the random facts he threw her way as she morosely prodded the carrots boiling away on top of the Rayburn.
“Did you know that in 2009, a search for the Loch Ness monster located 100,000 golf balls under the water?”
“And no monster? Goodness, that’s a lot of golf balls.”
Zac buried his nose back in his book. “And you can zip wire from Spain to Portugal.”
“Wow.”
Zac put his book down. “When is Archie coming?”
Laurel felt as if her heart were twisting within her. What if she’d set Zac up for hurt yet again, another adult disappointing him? No dad, a mum in rehab, an aunt who had never been around. No wonder he’d bonded with Archie. But what if Archie didn’t come… because of her? What if this was all her stupid fault?
And then, like another miracle, there was a tap-tap-tap on the door, and Zac went to answer it, and then Archie was coming in with a gust of cold air, his cheeks reddened by the wind, his hair sticking up the way it always did, despite his obvious attempts to tame it.
“Happy Christmas!” He clapped a hand on Zac’s shoulder and smiled at Laurel from across the room. This one reached his eyes, and it was as if there had never been anything between them at all, and for a reason she couldn’t fathom that made Laurel feel sadder than ever.
“Happy Christmas,” she answered with a smile of her own. She didn’t know if it reached her eyes or not. “You didn’t have to bring anything…”
“Of course I did.”
There was a lemon drizzle cake, homemade of course, a bottle of whisky liqueur, a box of gourmet chocolates, and a set of six Christmas crackers with whistles inside. Plus a bag of wrapped presents that Archie deposited beneath the tree before returning to the kitchen with a smile, his hands in his pockets.
He’d cleaned up nicely, Laurel noticed, again. He wore a pair of battered but serviceable cords in Christmas green and a maroon jumper that had only one hole in the elbow that Laurel didn’t think he’d noticed.
“You’re so kind to bring all this,” she murmured, meaning it utterly.
“Thank you for having me.”
“You’ve already had one Christmas dinner,” she continued with a little laugh. “I’m not sure you want another…”
Archie patted his trim stomach. “Always room for more.”
“Let’s open presents first,” Zac interjected, and Laurel glanced at Archie for affirmation.
“Sounds good to me.”
They assembled in the little sitting room, made cosier with the Christmas lights on the tree and the fire burning down to embers in the grate.
Archie threw another log on it and stirred up the glowing embers, sending a few flames soaring higher. Zac threw himself on the sofa and Laurel stood in the doorway, taking it all in, her heart so full it almost felt painful. How had they got to this moment, the three of them, celebrating Christmas together?
Here was the miracle. Here was the magic. Her heart felt as if it might burst.
“Who’s going to go first?” Zac asked, and Laurel took a deep breath as she came in to sit on one end of the sagging sofa, while Archie took a seat in the chair opposite.
“You can go first, Zac,” she said.
Zac clearly had got the hang of this Christmas thing, for he reached for the biggest box with his name on it and started tearing paper. Laurel exchanged a wry, laughing look with Archie as Zac finished with the paper and opened the box.
