‘Fine. But I just can’t bear to see you giving up on happiness so easily.’ Mum folded her arms over her dark wool coat, and looked pointedly out of the passenger side window.
‘I’m not…’ I started, but then Max shifted in his seat and I gave up entirely. I didn’t want to have the conversation about everything I’d lost in my marriage, anyway. I was more than aware, thanks.
And, even if I couldn’t talk to Mum about it, I knew how much I’d gained, too. Mum wouldn’t understand – she’d loved one man her whole life, and never thought of looking for someone new after Dad died. But seeing Darren walk off into the sunset with his bit on the side… I’m not saying it didn’t make me furious. Of course it did. But it had also opened my eyes to the possibility of a different sort of future to the one I’d always imagined myself living.
But right now, that future was still years away, a worry for another day. Something to think about once Max was settled again, maybe when he left for university. Once everything was final and stable and we’d worked out this new way of existing, now our family lived in two separate houses and communicated almost exclusively by email, or through lawyers.
Right now, all I could worry about was getting through Christmas at Rosewood.
‘What do you think they’ll be like?’ I asked, hoping to change the subject from my broken family to Edward’s new one. In the eighteen months they’d been dating, we hadn’t even met Saskia – let alone her relations. It was understandable, I supposed, given that they’d spent the last year and a half working pretty much non-stop. But still, the idea of spending Christmas with strangers was odd.
As I checked my mirror again before turning into what I hoped was the driveway, I caught a glimpse of the presents stacked up on top of our suitcases in the boot – scarves, bubble bath sets, coffee table books – the sort of generic gifts you buy for people you don’t really know.
Except – and this was the weirdest part by far – it felt like we did know them. Not because Edward had talked about Saskia’s family a lot, although he had. But because Mum and I – along with the half of the country who weren’t waiting to receive it as a Christmas present – had already read The Rosewood Journals. The Journals were what had brought Edward and Saskia together – a detailed memoir of the life and times of Nathaniel Drury, literary genius and Saskia’s grandfather. Nathaniel had hired my brother, a noted biographer, to help him put together the book from his old journals, notebooks and papers. But when he’d died halfway through the project, he’d left the notebooks for Saskia and Edward to work on together. They’d fallen in love, published the book, and were already hitting the literary charts with the hardcover edition. The resulting international book tour had been Edward’s excuse for not visiting for the last six months.
Nathaniel Drury and his wife Isabelle had been notorious for over fifty years. I guess everyone wanted to find out their secrets.
But it did mean that Mum and I were now in the rather uncomfortable position of meeting for the first time people whose lives and histories we’d already read – not to mention their most intimate secrets. What were we supposed to do? Pretend we didn’t know? Except that would mean ignoring all of Edward and Saskia’s hard work…
‘I’m sure they’ll be lovely,’ Mum said, diplomatically.
‘Right.’ I’m sure they were very nice people, really. ‘And should we… do you think we should tell them we’ve read the book? I mean, in the interests of full disclosure?’ It felt almost cruel not to, like we had an unfair advantage over them.
Of course, I had no idea how much Edward had told them about us. Maybe they all knew my secrets already, too. At least, the ones that Edward knew. Which, given that he was three years younger than me, was thankfully not all that many of them.
‘Maybe we just don’t mention it until they do,’ Mum suggested, after a thoughtful pause. ‘I mean, really, Freya. What are the chances that they’ll really want to discuss it at all anyway?’
‘Good point.’ If I were them, I would be hoping that no one would mention the damn book. In fact, I’d never have let it be written or published in the first place.
But then, Edward said that Rosewood had a way of drawing secrets out of you.
I hoped that the three days we were staying wouldn’t be long enough for the house – or its inhabitants – to steal any of mine.
Three days. The most important three days of the year, and we were spending them away from home, away from our family and everything that was familiar. How was I going to make this Christmas – his first without his dad – special for my son? Since Darren had walked out, I’d felt the overwhelming pressure to be more than just Mum and Dad to Max – I felt like I had to be some sort of magician who took away all worries and made everything perfect all the time.
Something I was failing at miserably, incidentally.
Outside, the snow was growing almost imperceptibly heavier. The fields and paths around us were covered now, too. Well, if it could keep it up overnight, maybe there was one tradition Max and I could still enact – our First Snow tradition.
I mentally crossed my fingers and hoped for a properly white Christmas. Maybe I’d see if Bing Crosby was on the radio anywhere…
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Max asked, looking up from his tablet for the first time since we went through the McDonald’s drive-through, an hour and a half earlier.
‘We are,’ I said, as the ridiculously long driveway twisted again and the house itself appeared from behind the trees.
It was even more beautiful than on the cover of the Journals. Golden brick in the Georgian style with lights glowing from every window even in the winter gloom. The smattering of bright white snow on the roof lifted it from extraordinary to magical. It made me want to explore – to identify all the rooms I’d read about, to find the Rose Garden and maybe see its resident ghost, even to walk in the woods that Nathaniel had written about in so many of his books.
Okay, I admit it. I’m a Drury fan. But really, who isn’t?
The front door opened as I pulled on the handbrake, and Edward appeared at the top of the steps, his arm around a pretty brunette, looking totally at home. Maybe he was. For the longest time, we’d worried that Edward would never find the place he belonged and manage to settle down. Now, here he was, at home in one of England’s most famous houses, in love and happy – just as my own life seemed to be falling apart.
I couldn’t be bitter though. Edward deserved this happiness.
I just hoped that I would find it again one day, too. Eventually.
‘You’re here!’ he called, as I clambered out of the car, Max following behind me tablet still in hand. Edward rushed around to help Mum out the other side, as I slammed my door after me and looked up at Rosewood.
Somehow, it was even more imposing without the windscreen between us. Suddenly I could understand how a house could find out secrets. This house, I sensed, could do anything.
‘Freya! It’s so lovely to meet you.’ Saskia stepped forward to give me a cautious hug – the sort you give family who you’ve never met before. The same sort of hug Darren and I exchanged for the last year or two of our marriage. She had tiny snowflakes on her eyelashes, and she blinked them away as she moved away again. ‘Edward’s told me so much about you.’
Like how my husband walked out on me after thirteen years of marriage, I supposed. And how my mother was scared I was going to fall apart without him and be unhappy forever. Maybe even how Max was getting into trouble at school for the first time, and everyone knew it was because of the divorce. That it was my fault for letting my husband go. For not trying harder to keep him. For not giving him a second chance when he asked for it, two weeks after he left.
‘You too,’ I said, trying to smile. It was only fair, I guess.