Page 41 of Winter Magic at Hollybrae Castle

‘It’s not her wedding ring,’ he says quickly. ‘It’s a ring I bought her years ago, but she often complained about swollen fingers so it ended up being too small. She wore it on a chain around her neck every December instead, but I think it will fit your fingers. She’d want you to have it and I want you to have it. She’d love you – she’d be so happy to see someone bringing Christmas back into this place.’

He opens the box and I gasp. Inside, on a bed of red velvet, is the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen. It’s a white-gold band with delicate holly wrapping around it, the leaves made of embedded emeralds and the berries formed by clusters of tiny rubies.

‘I knew you’d like it.’ He can read the emotions on my face without me saying a word as he lifts the ring from the box. ‘I feel like I should get down on one knee.’

I go to take it from him, but instead he murmurs, ‘Let me.’

He slips the band onto my ring finger with a featherlight touch, and I only realise I’ve closed my eyes when I have to open them again.

Ollie uses his grip on my hand to tug me closer and leans down to brush his lips across my cheek, and then quickly stands back up and scrubs a hand over his face like he’s questioning what he was thinking in doing that.

‘Sorry,’ he mutters, and I shake my head because he has nothing to apologise for.

I spread my hand out in front of me and admire the ring. It’s a perfect fit, like it was made for that finger. The stones catch the light and glint up at me, and the weight of it is a comforting reminder of what we’re doing here, and maybe a timely reminder of why he shouldn’t be kissing my cheek, and any mistletoe kiss that did happen was a show for the onlookers and nothing more.

‘Right.’ Ollie puts some distance between us and claps his hands together. ‘How can I help? I can get away with not doing any extra work tonight and I’ve been dying to get involved in this. Tell me what to do and put me to work as your wee helper elf.’

‘Actually, you have your own decorating to do tonight,’ I say cryptically.

‘I do?’

I jerk my head to the left, indicating the way towards his little living room, and he gives me a confused look but goes to see what I’m talking about.

‘That’s the “somewhere else” for the secret tree?’ He comes back with his mouth open in surprise. ‘I don’t need a tree in there, Lu. No guests are going to be in there, it’s just for me and you.’

‘Yep, and when was the last time you had a Christmas at home?’

He lifts his shoulders in a long shrug. ‘Before I joined Galligan & Brenton, and before that, I’d escape to Nancy and Hamish’s cottage and do my best to ignore Christmas entirely.’

‘Exactly. You deserve a tree. You deserve a part of Christmas that’s just for you – not about impressing people from work or playing a part. Just you, as someone whose Christmases changed completely fifteen years ago, you deserve to see that there can be joy in it again.’

He looks like he’s getting emotional and I’m starting to build a picture of why. Deserve. I don’t think Ollie feels like he deserves to be happy because he’s here when others… aren’t.

I reach out and give his hand a squeeze, and he grasps my fingers between his, lifts my hand to his mouth and brushes his lips across the back of it, and then shakes himself out of the reverie.

‘Part of the fun of December is decorating the tree yourself,’ I say quickly, trying not to think about the smouldering mark that feels like it’s been imprinted into the back of my hand. ‘Believe me, it’s not the same when they just show up pre-decorated.’

‘By myself?’

‘It’s your tree. The other trees will be done with utmost guest-impressing precision, but that one is just for you.’

‘Then I want my pretend wife to decorate it with me. Can you spare the time?’

I like how thoughtful he is to ask, and given the prospect of decorating a tree with Ollie, I will find time, come what may, especially when he says, ‘There’s a tub of Quality Street screaming to be opened.’

There will be time to do the garlands. There will be time to wrap the baluster posts in red ribbon. As per Rory and Maisie’s instructions, the big tree in the entrance hall is still undecorated, with the promise that they’re coming back this weekend to do it for us, despite the fact that it’s about eight foot high and no one under the age of twelve is going up that far on a ladder. I know that this coming week, I’ll need to focus on the castle exterior, but when someone like Ollie asks me to decorate a tree with him, there is no possible answer but yes.

* * *

‘Despite your hatred of tinsel, you got me tinsel.’ Ollie rifles through the boxes I’ve left beside the tree in the living room, and gathers up a handful to inhale the metallic scent.

‘I don’t hate tinsel. I don’t hate anything that makes you smile like that.’

On cue, his smile gets even wider as he rummages through the other boxes I’ve got out of the storage room, the things that have survived so many years of being shut away, because I thought he’d appreciate decorations he probably remembers from childhood.

A Christmas tree is always better if it’s a joyful hotchpotch of decorations that hold memories, chosen because they sparked wonder and carefully tucked away every January, and this is reminding me of what I love about Christmas too. These days, I decorate perfect trees to fit a perfect theme, to make people admire how perfectly symmetrical they are and how each decoration is perfectly proportioned, and to make customers think that if they come into our shop and buy our products, their Christmas tree can look as perfect as the one in the window too, but Christmas is about more than perfectly decorated trees. It’s a feeling – a collection of dreams and memories.

‘I used to love these things when I was a bairn.’ Ollie picks up a box of wooden snowmen while I wrap a string of multi-coloured lights around the branches, looking lost in thought as he takes the lid off. ‘I’d play with these for hours before I’d let my mum put them on the tree. I’d make up stories about where they’d been all year, and then say goodbye to each one individually as Mum put them away after Christmas. Thank you for finding these. I would never…’ He swallows hard. ‘I would never have found the courage to face this stuff. Thank you for making me brave enough this year.’