Page 40 of The Christmas Letter

‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she snapped.

‘Like what?’

‘Like that,’ she said, gesturing at his face. Trying not to look too hard at the contours of that face. ‘That smile. You’re—’

‘You don’t want me to smile?’

Did he mean to do it – to speak like that, in those dark chocolate tones?

‘Not even if I’m having a good time?’ The smile grew, lighting up his face as it did so.

‘You said you wanted to come to see art,’ she said, as firmly as she could.

His eyes swept her face. ‘Sorry. I’m a little distracted.’

She rolled her eyes, making it an overly dramatic gesture, trying to hide how much he was getting to her. Then she shoved lightly at his chest. He backed away immediately, giving her space to step away from the wall, as much because of her push as because a group of three had just entered the room.

Well, that wasn’t embarrassing at all. What would they say, if those strangers knew this was only her and Jack’s second . . . encounter? Because the first, let’s be honest, didn’t count. But the thing was, it didn’t feel like they’d only just met. She felt . . . easy around him, the way she’d only ever had with very few people. It didn’t come around all that often – that instant feeling that this was it, you were going to be friends – and that it was fine that you didn’t have a shared history, because you’d make one. Though that could just be the bloody chance of it all – of bumping into a man in a café, and then, three years later, somehow winding up in his path again. Yes. She was sure it was just that, playing tricks on her mind.

She gave him a sidelong look as he shoved his hands in his pockets and went back to his easy stroll, out of this room and into the last one. What was this all to him? When he’d given her his number in the café all those years ago, what had he been hoping for?

A montage, he’d said, and it was pathetic – pathetic, Holly – that she even remembered that. But what was he hoping for now? It was impossible to tell – and irrelevant, she told herself firmly, because she was not here for him. She was here for Emma. Who she still hadn’t mentioned.

‘What about you?’ she asked, feeling the need to say something. She picked up the previous conversation. ‘Do you love what you do?’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘Not really.’

‘Do you have something you do love?’

He hesitated for a beat too long. ‘Not really.’

‘Come on . . . you can tell me. I won’t laugh.’

But he said nothing.

‘You didn’t always want to do what you do now?’ she prodded – refusing to let it drop, now that she knew there was something to drop.

‘Does any six-year-old in the playground look around at their mates and declare that they want to be a management consultant when they’re older?’

‘No, but most six-year-old dreams are based on no knowledge whatsoever.’ She’d wanted to be an artist, though – for as long as she could remember. And Lily? Lily had wanted to be a mum. She could remember Lily coming home one day – she couldn’t remember when, exactly, but they were both still in primary school. She’d been crying, because the teacher had said being a mother wasn’t a viable career option. Holly could still see their mum’s expression, her lips pressing into a thin line, and she understood more now – understood how that must have stung, because she’d chosen to be a stay-at-home mum, and only later had started working again.

‘I think she meant you can be a mother and be something else,’ their mum had said diplomatically.

‘I want to do what you do, though,’ Lily had said through sobs. ‘You look after us. I want to do that.’

Their mum had smiled, her expression softening as she sat at the kitchen table and pulled Lily onto her lap. ‘It’s stupid, anyway,’ she said. ‘They can’t expect anyone to know what they want to be at this age.’

‘I know,’ Holly piped up, earning a scowl from her sister. She produced a drawing from her bookbag – different coloured birds above a forest of green. ‘Miss Cully said it was the best she’d ever seen in our class,’ she announced grandly.

‘Did she now?’ their mum asked, struggling with a smile. And though Holly had meant to give it to her mum, though she wanted it on the fridge where all the visitors could see it, she held it out to Lily instead. ‘It’s for you,’ she said. ‘Because you like birds.’ And because maybe it would make Lily smile. Lily took it, her eyes drying up as they flickered across the page.

‘I like the blue one,’ she said eventually, and Holly nodded, her job done.

‘Hey, where’d you go?’ Jack asked in the present. Holly glanced up at him. Was it unnerving, that he’d seen her mind drift? Or maybe it was just her face, refusing to allow her any privacy, as per usual.

‘Sorry. But some people want to be management consultants, right?’ she pushed. ‘It’s, like, a big deal – one of those high-flying careers.’

‘Well, yeah. My friend Ed – you met him.’