Page 44 of The Cotswolds Christmas Fair

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s beautiful. You made me—’

‘Beautiful. Because you are.’ His eyes travelled over her face. ‘All I did was draw what I see.’

This time she kissed him, glad of the dark corner of the bar they sat in, giving some privacy as he responded passionately. When they broke off, he took her hand and kissed it.

‘We’ll see each other again, right?’

She nodded.

‘Soon?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘Soon.’

Chapter Nineteen

He didn’t message.

He had said he’d message, and when he didn’t, Jen had texted him.

Lovely night. Looking forward to doing it again x

Bold, for her, and she spent the next two days looking at it, checking it had sent, wondering why he hadn’t responded, and typing then deleting more messages.

Helping Ted with the Christmas fair turned out to be a welcome distraction. Not that she told him that. She met him at the end of the school day – Amy had been invited to Lottie’s for dinner and George was sleeping. Julia’s cold had turned out to be a nasty one, so she’d been laid up in bed and Jen had been on childcare duties pretty much full-time. It wasn’t a chore to look after her niece and nephew, but she’d been busy, so she was grateful for this small window of time.

‘Right,’ she said, sitting on one of the little chairs in his classroom and sipping the coffee he’d made. ‘What do you need? I’m a busy woman.’ She glanced at her phone. Nothing from Anthony.

Ted raised his eyebrows, but being too smart to contradict his new recruit, didn’t argue. ‘Well, I’ve got quite a bit of it sorted now, the local farm park have said they’ll bring reindeer and Andrew is going to be Santa, obviously, so—’

‘Why is that obvious?’

He looked at her as though she was speaking a foreign language. ‘Well, he’s always Santa. I wasn’t even here last Christmas and I knew that.’

He grinned and shook his head.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Fine. So what still needs doing?’

‘The band – I heard about one that do kids’ parties but I can’t find them and now everything’s booked up that close to Christmas, and I need to get decorations organised, and catering, and activities, and I wanted a tableau of the nativity, you know, with a donkey and sheep and people dressed up as—’

‘Hey.’ Jen frowned, placing her hand on his arm. ‘It’s OK. Take a breath.’

‘I – sorry.’ He sighed and leaned his elbows on the table, resting his head in his hands. ‘I just – it’s got to be good. I want to do the kids proud, and apparently last year Wood End had fireworks and one of the parents has some connection so they had this famous actor come to open it and everyone’s still talking about it, but we don’t really have the budget to compete with all—’

‘Ted,’ she said gently, leaning so that her face was close to his. He peered at her through his fingers. ‘It’s OK. I’m sure whatever you do will be great. And I’m here to help you now.’ She smiled as confidently as she could. She still thought that the children would be perfectly happy with a few balloons and a cake stall, but this didn’t feel like the right time to say so.

He sighed and nodded, lifting his head from his hands. Jen stroked his back as he hunched over the table, remembering all the times at college when the stress of deadlines or exams or teaching observations had sent him spiralling. She was always the one who could talk him down.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thank you for helping me.’

‘Of course. That’s what friends are for.’ She smiled. ‘You leave the children’s party or disco or whatever to me, I’ll get that—’

‘Band,’ he said. ‘It’s a band, they do . . .’

She shook her head, laughing. ‘Yeah, band, whatever. Wow.’ She took his face in her hands, staring at him solemnly. ‘I really think you need to knock the afternoon coffee on the head. You are overcaffeinated, this is—’

‘Oh, is this—Am I interrupting?’

The voice came from the door, and Jen turned to see a blonde woman standing there. Sarah. There was a look of uncertainty in her eyes as she stared at them.