Page 109 of The Christmas Letter

One Year Later

Chapter Thirty-five

Holly scrabbled around in her room for her keys, finally finding them on the windowsill, next to the decorative candle her mum had put out. It was the same room she’d had as a teenager – same single bed, different bedsheets. Down the hall, Lily and Steve were staying in Lily’s old room, while Jack had had to settle for the sofa bed. All of them, spending the week before Christmas together, under one roof. And then, on Boxing Day, off to Jack’s family.

Holly had to admit, she was pretty excited to give Mia and Theo their presents – she couldn’t wait to see Mia’s expression. She and Mia had bonded over art, and Holly was doing her best to encourage Mia to paint, something she was actually pretty good at. Jack had lamented the fact that Holly and Mia had bonded so instantly, when it had taken him a full year to win her around, but Holly knew he was pleased really.

She glanced up at the painting she’d hung above her bed. It had pride of place at home – a two-bed terraced house not far from Jack’s family, where she and Jack now lived together – but she’d wanted to bring it here with her, for Christmas. She’d pretended it was because she’d wanted to show her parents and sister, but really it was because it felt like a piece of Emma, and she hadn’t wanted to leave it behind.

The painting Emma had given her and Jack. Back at home – at their home – there was another one. Emma hadn’t finished the second painting she’d wanted to do for them before she passed away. But they’d bought the painting from the café – the original rainforest one. The one with Mirabelle’s signature, rather than Emma’s.

This one, though, the one Emma had finally owned up to . . . this was the one Holly couldn’t bear to part with. Especially as it was Emma who had given her the courage to really start pursuing her art again. Thanks to her encouragement, Holly had already been featured in two exhibitions, and she was slowly but surely starting to sell her art. She was even getting commissions, from people who wanted something specific, and she had her own website and everything.

But Emma wasn’t around to see that anymore. She’d died earlier that year, back in March. She’d gone in her sleep, in the hospice, and it had been as painless as you could hope for, according to the nurse. Holly still found it difficult to believe she was gone – after only a year of knowing her, she’d cemented herself in Holly’s life – in her heart – so fully, that it didn’t feel like she could have dropped out of it as suddenly as she’d dropped in. Some people you know for a lifetime, but they never really make an imprint on your soul – and some people, you only have to know for an instant, to know they will be part of you for ever. And Emma, of course, could be nothing but the latter.

She knew Jack still struggled with the loss too. She’d heard many more Emma stories in the last year, the ones he could remember from his childhood, and she delighted in every one. They were both still trying to accept what had happened – but they were also giving each other time – and support – to find their own way through the grief.

Holly had been worried, once, that Emma dying would be too much for Jack, that he’d push Holly away, that it would cause a fracture between them. But she’d been wrong – if anything, it had bound them more closely together.

After grabbing her keys, Holly found the other thing she’d come up to her room for – a letter – and ran back down the stairs. Their mum had gone all out with the Christmas decorations this year, so there was red tinsel wrapped around the white stair banister, and Holly could smell burnt orange as she reached the hallway, a product of her mum’s ‘Christmas orange hot chocolate’ experiment.

‘Holly!’ Her mum’s voice sounded from the kitchen. ‘While you’re out, could you pick up some milk? We don’t have enough for the cauliflower cheese tomorrow.’ No doubt because she’d used it all up for the hot chocolate.

Jack came into the hallway at that moment, looking a little shifty. ‘Ah, your mum says—’

‘I heard, Mum!’

‘Well, answer then!’

Jack looked at the letter in her hand, and his expression turned a little odd. ‘That’s the Dear Stranger letter, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hang on.’ He turned to start up the stairs himself.

‘Jack, what?’

‘Don’t leave, ok? Two seconds.’ He jogged the rest of the way up to the second floor, to her room, where he was keeping his suitcase.

Holly stood in the hallway, waiting like a lemon, just as Lily and Steve came in through the front door, letting in a gust of cold wind with them.

‘How’d it go?’ Holly demanded immediately.

Lily smiled. ‘Well, I think. We’ll know more soon.’

Holly nodded. Lily and Steve had come back from a meeting with the adoption agency. It was a long, agonising process, but they were on the road, and Holly was full of admiration for how her big sister was handling it.

Jack came bounding down the stairs just as Lily and Steve headed to the kitchen to fill their parents in.

‘What’s that?’ Holly asked, nodding to a letter in Jack’s hand.

‘This,’ Jack said, with a meaningful pause, ‘is something Emma wanted me to give you, around this time – and ideally if I caught you sneaking off to send a Dear Stranger letter.’

‘A) I’m not sneaking, and B) it’s—’

He kissed her quickly on the lips to stop her talking.

‘Right,’ she agreed. ‘Not the point.’