After that it was all a wonderful, erotic, semi-drunken blur. Daniel peeled off Laura’s clothes slowly, but slipped out of his own with the instant ease of a snake shedding its skin. Moments later he was inside her, his body stronger and more powerful than she’d imagined it, his erection gratifyingly large and as solid as oak. Daniel was twenty years younger than John Bingham and it showed. Laura had forgotten sex could be so fast and frenzied, so animalistic and hungry and … quick. Just as she was letting go and really getting into her stride, Daniel came, his fingers digging into her buttocks and pulling her hard against him as he yelled out in pleasure.
She hadn’t come close to an orgasm herself, but she didn’t care. It felt incredible to be desired again, as if she’d been walking around in leg irons and someone – Daniel Smart – had broken the chains.
Wordlessly she curled up in his arms and they both fell into a deep, sated sleep.
November turned to December, and one of the coldest winters Fittlescombe had seen in a decade. Every morning, village children ran to their bedroom windows, hoping for the much-anticipated snow. Instead they saw a landscape frozen solid, sparkling white with frost like a newly glittered Christmas card. The days were short but dazzlingly bright, a pale winter sun lighting up a cloudless, crisp, sapphire-blue sky. And at night the deep winter blackness was lit by a carpet of stars so perfectly clear it was like sleeping beneath the ceiling of one’s own, private planetarium.
For Laura Tiverton, it was the vivid colours of the countryside that most lifted her spirits. The holly leaves and pine trees seemed almost to glow green against the frosted white background of the frozen chalk hills. Berries and robins’ breasts seemed redder and the sky bluer than she could ever remember them. In the mornings, Laura would try to write by the fire, but the idyllic view outside her study window never failed to distract her, calling to her like a lover, tempting her from her work. Of course, the fact that she had a real lover probably had a lot to do with her revived spirits. Although still not officially an item (he wasn’t technically divorced yet), she and Daniel now spoke to each other daily and Daniel had spent all but one weekend since their first night together holed up with Laura at Briar Cottage. They made love, went for long walks and talked a lot about writing – Daniel’s writing, mostly. He’d recently finished another quite brilliant play, a comedy, that he was in the process of editing and that would soon be making its West End debut. Laura, meanwhile, had a half-written teleplay full of plot holes gathering dust on her PC. If it was slightly soul-crushing, sleeping with someone so very obviously more talented and successful than she was, the excitement of being in a relationship again more than made up for it. Laura told herself that she would knuckle down to work properly after Christmas, once the Nativity play was over.
With only three weeks to go, play rehearsals were now every afternoon. From one till three, Laura worked with the St Hilda’s Primary School children, whose carols and poems would make up the first part of the performance. And, between three and six, the adults came to rehearse, with different actors called on different days to work around people’s various job schedules.
Last weekend, Laura had been forced to call a daytime rehearsal on Sunday after church, thanks to so many people missing their weekday slots. Daniel had been a good sport and come along to help, but Gabe Baxter had been so incredibly rude – doing mincing impressions of Daniel whenever his back was turned and flat-out ignoring his stage directions – that Laura had vowed never to bring Daniel again.
‘Do you have to be such a prick all the time?’ she said when she confronted Gabe angrily the next day. Generally, she had adopted a policy of ignoring her tormentor, hoping that eventually Gabe would tire of harassing her and find another sport to amuse himself with. So far, sadly, he showed no signs.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said laconically, not looking up from his newspaper.
‘Give me that.’ To Gabe’s amazement, Laura snatched the paper out of his hand. ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. What is your problem with Daniel?’
‘I don’t have a problem with Daniel. Other than the fact that he’s got bugger all to do with this play and should keep his nose out of it.’
‘Oh, grow up!’ snapped Laura. ‘He was trying to help.’
‘Well he failed, then, didn’t he? It’s bad enough having you as a director, never mind your stuck-up, “I’m a big-shot West End playwright” boyfriend showing up to get his ego massaged.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk about egos,’ Laura shot back. ‘And what, exactly, is so wrong with having me as your director?’
‘Never mind,’ grumbled Gabe.
‘Actually, I do mind. Your attitude is affecting the rest of the cast; it’s affecting everybody. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t direct this play, other than the fact that you don’t like me.’
‘You’re an outsider,’ said Gabe, snatching back his newspaper. ‘All right? You rent a cottage for a few poxy months and you think that makes you Queen of bloody Fittlescombe.’
It was so breathtakingly childish, Laura almost laughed. But one look at Gabe’s face made her change her mind.
‘I don’t think I’m Queen of anything,’ she said. ‘Harry Hotham asked for a volunteer and I obliged.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’re very obliging to Mr Hotham,’ Gabe taunted.
Ignoring the innuendo, Laura said, ‘You should know I don’t bully easily, Mr Baxter. I have no intention of stepping aside just to appease your prejudices.’
‘D’you use big words like that in bed with Danny Boy? I’ll bet that’s what gets him off. “Oh baby, say it again! Get out your thesaurus, you know I love it.”’
‘You’re pathetic,’ Laura said contemptuously.
‘And you’re blind. He’s a fake and a poseur. You don’t need an Oxford degree to see that, love. Now are we gonna rehearse or not? Because I’ve got a farm to run.’
* * *
It was a Friday morning, two weeks before Christmas, and the village was alive with excitement. Fittlescombe’s festive celebrations had been condensed this year into a single long weekend, with the Furlings Hunt Ball on the Friday night, the Nativity play on the Saturday afternoon of Christmas Eve and Christmas itself falling on a Sunday. Everyone from the postman to the vicar had a part to play, and the sense of goodwill and village camaraderie was contagious.
When Laura stopped into the paper shop for her morning copy of The Times, the talk was all of the hunt ball.
‘Mrs Worsley was in here the other morning ordering place cards for the dinner. There’s going to be over three hundred guests this year. Three hundred!’
‘Did you hear that Tatiana Flint-Hamilton’s thrown over her duke for a footballer? He plays for Chelsea apparently.’
‘Poor Mr Flint-Hamilton.’
‘Thank goodness his wife’s not alive to see it.’
‘You’ll never guess who Lucy Norton saw in the chemist’s last Thursday. Keira Thingummy-bob.’
‘Who?’
‘You know. The pouty one from Love Actually. Banoffee pie? The annoying one.’
‘Keira Knightley?’
‘That’s it. Apparently she’s rented Bartley Mill Barn for a month! She’s coming to the ball for sure, and she’s