Page 31 of The Christmas Letter

‘No, I know what you mean.’ And he only knew the half of it.

He sat back in his chair. ‘So how was the play?’

Holly took a sip of her drink. ‘Oh, it was great. Well, I thought it was great, but some of the students didn’t agree. There may have been one or two comments on how they could have done a better job than the actors on stage.’

Jack laughed softly. ‘And could they have?’

‘No idea, really. You’d have to ask my friend Abi – she’s their drama teacher. But to hazard a guess, I’d say no. Especially as they’re all sixteen . . .’

‘Ah, the confidence of a sixteen-year-old.’

Holly smiled. ‘I remember it well.’ She’d thought she’d had it all sorted, back then. Yes, there had been the arguments with her parents, the impossible hormones, the stress over whether her crush at the time would text her back, but really, she’d been full of hope and a certainty that things would just work out. She knew she wanted to become an artist, and she felt sure she’d get there, that it was only a matter of time.

Jack gave a rueful headshake. ‘I don’t. My teenage years were not kind to me.’

Holly raised her eyebrows. ‘I doubt that very much.’

‘It’s true. I was the only one not with a girlfriend at sixteen – or, at least, the only one not bragging about having a girlfriend, real or fake.’

Holly laughed. ‘And you didn’t consider making up an imaginary girlfriend, just to fit in?’

‘Oh, I considered it. I had her name picked out and everything. Francesca,’ he added, when Holly gave him a questioning look.

‘Francesca, hey?’

‘Yeah, and she was a looker, I’ll tell you.’

‘I’m sure.’

There was a brief pause, in which Holly had time to remember why she was here – not to talk about imaginary girlfriends, but to talk about Emma. She took a gulp of her drink, felt Jack watching her.

He cleared his throat, and the sound was a little strained – like he’d picked up something in her body language. ‘Ah, so, if you could hop on a plane right now where would you go?’

Holly raised her eyebrows at the abrupt change of subject.

‘What?’ Jack asked innocently. ‘Ok, fine, I may have googled good conversation starters before you came in.’

Holly couldn’t help laughing again. ‘Always do that before a date, do you?’ Damn it, she’d said date. She didn’t mean date – it had slipped out.

He didn’t seem to notice, though. ‘Well, it’s been a while,’ he muttered, barely audible – so much so that she wasn’t sure she was meant to have heard. He picked up his beer, gestured with it. ‘Plane, go.’

‘Umm . . . São Paulo, probably.’

‘Curveball, love it.’

Holly cocked her head, felt her hair spill to the side. ‘Why, what did you expect?’

‘To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out what to expect from you.’

‘I suppose that’s reasonable, given you’ve known me for approximately ten minutes in total.’

‘Or three and a bit years, depending on how you look at it.’ It was a jokey tone, but there was something deeper in his eyes, something that sent licks of flame across her skin. And those eyes: they looked a darker brown than usual in the dim lighting, perhaps because his face was half in shadow, the other half bathed in flickering candlelight. She could see it in that moment – the sculpture. Two sides of the same man. She didn’t know him nearly well enough to be making the assumption that there was that light and shade in him, but that wasn’t really the point. She could imagine it, the way the sculpture would come to life, the story it would tell. And resting on the table, her fingertips pulsed, like they wished there was clay here, now.

‘So why São Paulo?’ Jack’s voice, the normality of it, made her jolt.

‘Ah.’ She forced herself back to the bar – to the real man here, and not the clay version she was conjuring up in her mind. ‘There’s a good art scene.’

‘Really?’