Page 36 of Winter Magic at Hollybrae Castle

‘My ankle?’

Ollie gives my hand a sharp tug and I look up at him and his eyes widen, and I realise what he’s trying to say. ‘Oh, yes, right, my ankle. It’s… er… all better now!’ I say breezily, despite not knowing what I’d apparently done to it.

‘Oh, goodness me, yes, and your leg last year,’ Michelle adds. ‘You’re a brave woman to choose heels like that.’

‘My leg…’

‘When you broke it,’ Ollie fills in. ‘Falling off that horse when we took Maisie riding.’

‘Yep, well, I’ve always been a quick healer. So quick I’d almost forgotten!’ Again, the peal of laughter is overkill and I stop abruptly, which probably makes me sound even more possessed.

Eventually, someone else comes in and the bosses and wives go to greet them, leaving us alone to go over to the makeshift bar that’s been set up and get a glass of sparkling water each. I stand next to him, my arm through his, looking around at all these people that Ollie must know, listening to ‘Fairytale of New York’ that’s coming through the speakers, and I feel like we’re playing characters tonight. Oliver and Lucy. Two different people than who we really are. Is that something Ollie is doing every day at work too?

I’m intending to stay close to him all night, and from the way his hand is clinging onto mine, he doesn’t intend us to get separated either, but it isn’t long before Halston insists he say hello to some very important client or other.

I move to go with him, but Michelle swoops in with a buffet plate of mini tartlets in her hand. ‘Is there anything worse than business talk at a party? Come and have some nibbles and fill us in on all the gossip! Honestly, you can take the men out of the office but you can never prise the office away from the men!’

She slips her arm through mine to pull me over to the buffet, and Ollie’s already being dragged towards the other side of the room, and he looks back with a powerless grimace.

This feels like a situation that has all the potential to go horribly wrong, but at the same time, I can’t make a scene about being surgically attached to my supposed husband all evening because then they really will suspect something.

‘So are you better now?’

‘Better?’ I munch on cheese straw distractedly.

‘That sounded like a nasty time you had with smallpox. However did you pick it up?’

I promptly choke on the cheese straw. ‘Oh, I, um… Just unlucky, I guess.’

Couldn’t he even have told them something that exists in this century? Smallpox has been eradicated for decades. No one has it any more.

Even as I think it, I can imagine Ollie being put on the spot and scrambling for one excuse after another, at every company event that his wife was supposed to be at, and I feel a bit bad for him. It’s easy to laugh about someone getting themselves into this situation, but this is a pretence he’s been keeping up for years, and given how everyone has openly expressed their doubts about my existence, he was clearly not without suspicion.

Orla joins us again. ‘Yes, it really is good to see you looking so healthy. You’re always so beset by health issues. That brush with kidney stones sounded particularly dreadful and gosh, it took you ages to get over, didn’t it?’

‘It did rather!’ I trill. Kidney stones too? I must be the unhealthiest wife on the planet.

‘Between that and the arthritis flare-ups, I don’t know how you manage it! Although, at least Oliver says you’re taking extra fibre to relieve the constipation problems now!’

It’s no good. I was trying to hold it back, but I snort into my sparkling water. I have to go along with whatever excuses he’s made, but I resolve to buy him a medical encyclopaedia before I leave so he can at least make excuses that sound semi-plausible.

‘Ooh, sorry, that was too embarrassing, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t be allowed to talk about medical issues after my second glass!’ She holds her champagne flute up with a giggle.

‘It’s fine.’ I raise my own glass in response. ‘Didn’t realise he’d shared quite so much about my health history, that’s all.’

‘We’re all glad he’s got someone like you after all he’s been through.’ Michelle drops her arm around my shoulders. ‘He really is the loveliest boy – you’re very lucky.’

I look across the room and catch his eye and he gives me a wink that makes my insides bubble like the sparkling water in my glass. ‘I know.’

‘Aww!’ Orla has caught the look between us. ‘Young love! What I wouldn’t give to still have that with my husband after all these years! Remind us how long you’ve been married, Luce?’

‘Five years,’ I say, grateful for Rory’s coaching over the weekend. ‘But we’ve been together for much longer – about thirteen years now.’

Michelle clasps her hands to her chest. ‘And it’s like you’re still in the throes of new love!’

‘Although you must struggle to see each other with how much Oliver works and how much you travel for work. Maybe that’s how you keep things fresh between you?’ Michelle bites the end off a cocktail sausage.

I travel for work? I’m on dangerous ground here because Ollie hasn’t mentioned anything about what he’s told them his wife does for a living and I have no idea what to say. I’m hoping they won’t press any further.