Page 88 of The Secret Holiday Kiss

‘I’m great. The treasure hunt is amazing, but—’

‘No spoilers!’ they said in unison, because Sophie and Harry were going to do it the following day.

Daisy grinned, but Sophie’s smile was softer. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? It’s been a lot.’

Daisy ran her finger along the wood grain in the table. She’d lit the candle, the flickering light calming, its sweet cinnamon smell scenting the entire room. ‘Do you think Avery needs time away from me?’

Sophie rested her chin on her hand. ‘Why do you say that?’

She sighed. ‘I think he didn’t want to tell me what was going on because he felt ashamed: that he’d fallen into the scammers’ trap and didn’t know how to get out of it. And I …’

‘Saved him?’ Sophie finished.

‘I phoned Mo, and he knew what to do about it,’ Daisy corrected. She hadn’t saved Avery. ‘He was so grateful, he didn’t seem embarrassed last night, and we …’ She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. She’d got a lot closer to Sophie over the last few weeks, but not that close.

‘It’s feeling a bit intense?’

‘Are you a mind reader?’ Daisy asked with a laugh.

Sophie sipped her hot chocolate, wiped cream off her top lip. ‘I am not. But I have noticed things.’

Daisy gestured at her to continue, even though she was bracing herself for whatever her sister-in-law was about to say.

‘I’ve noticed how you are around each other, and how you’ve changed since you’ve been here. You’re … softer.’

‘You mean I’m not as scary as I was?’ Daisy asked with a laugh.

‘You’ve never been scary,’ Sophie told her. ‘You just always seem so sure of what you’re doing, what you want.’

‘Well, feel free to help me out, because right now I have no clue.’ She pressed her lips together, because she was on the verge of telling her sister-in-law about the treasure hunt, the paint, all the little messages she’d found, but she was worried Sophie would say they didn’t mean anything. She wanted to stay in her bubble of hope, but also …

‘OK.’ Sophie sat up straight, rising to Daisy’s challenge. ‘You seem happy. I know it’s not my place – that before this November I’d met you precisely once, for three days, and it was my wedding so I was caught up in other things – but I stand by it. You seem so much happier than when you got here, and I think Avery has a lot to do with that.’

Daisy nodded. ‘He does. But it’s not just him. It’s … everything. I left Mistingham when I was eighteen because I was miserable. I went to London, and in my mind this village became a terrible place that was bleak and dark, where I could only ever be lonely.

‘Then I got back here in November, and it’s …’ She laughed, ‘It’s nothing like that. I let my grief change it. For over twenty years. Now I’m reeling. Left is right and up is down and Christmas is … that’s still Christmas, but now I—’

‘You want it to be part of your life again?’ Sophie suggested. ‘We’d love it if you visited more. So much. Harry would be over the moon, even if he expressed it in a low-key, slightly grumpy way, and I’d love it if we were close.’

Daisy swallowed. It had been an emotional couple of days. ‘I would love that too.’

‘And Avery’s got legs and a van – if you wanted to keep things going in the new year.’

‘Legs and a van? With assets like that I would be crazy to let him go.’ She grinned, happy to latch onto a moment of lightness.

Sophie rolled her eyes. ‘You know what I mean. The world is a much smaller place these days.’

‘It is, for sure.’ And Daisy was a jet-setter. Or she had been, so frequent trips between London and Mistingham would be nothing in the scheme of things, and she could continue to help Lars with his Norfolk café empire. But the Thames wasn’t the sea, and the bustle of Regent Street and Covent Garden didn’t, if she was being honest, hold a candle to the quaint charm of Perpendicular Street.

And, if she could run a business with international clients from a base in London, then she could do it from Norfolk. The world was a smaller place, with so many easy ways to communicate, and the blueprint Daisy had of her future was shifting more with every passing day.

But she couldn’t tell anyone. She wasn’t sure of it herself, yet. She had a feeling, but feelings weren’t concrete, and they didn’t last, and she needed to make some actual plans, do some investigating, before she decided anything.

She changed the subject to the ball, the final tasks they needed to complete, and put big things like The Future to the back of her mind.

The next day was Sunday, and Daisy wanted to be out in the fresh air, amongst people enjoying the treasure hunt, soaking up the Christmas atmosphere even though she couldn’t take part again because she knew all the answers and had already submitted her sheet. She decided to walk in via the coast path, because the sea had always been her companion when she needed to think. She strode across the parkland as the sun was coming up, and was soon joined by Felix, wearing a yellow and green jumper with pink stars.

‘Did Birdie find some luminous wool?’ Daisy stroked between the goat’s ears. ‘Are you from the 1980s?’ She remembered the trend for day-glo T-shirts and Bermuda shorts when she was in primary school, and this jumper took her right back there.