Holly's Christmas Gift Read online

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  The News Building

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

  Copyright © Alexandra Brown 2018

  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

  Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com

  Alexandra Brown asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008206697

  Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008206710

  Version: 2018-03-19

  Dedication

  For all of you, my magnificent readers,

  with luck & love xxx

  Epigraph

  ‘If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain’

  DOLLY PARTON

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  The Wish Recipes

  About the Author

  Keep Reading …

  Also by Alex Brown

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Tindledale 1976

  As the hot evening air furled around their bare bodies hidden among the medley of wild flowers in the meadow, the two young lovers lingered for one last kiss before parting and hurriedly pulling their clothes back on.

  ‘We can’t carry on like this,’ the man murmured, catching a frond of the woman’s wavy blonde hair and twiddling it between his fingers. Nuzzling the side of her neck, he drew in the sweet, sultry scent of her new Blasé perfume, knowing that, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t seem to resist her. And it had been this way since the very first time he had caught sight of her, when he’d started at the senior school in nearby Market Briar. Thirteen years old and pulsing with teenage boy hormones, he had fallen for her beguiling ways, the teasing, lingering looks, letting him think he was in with a chance, when all the while he never was. Not really. He knew that now. But that had made him want her all the more, so when she had eventually given him a kiss behind the old abandoned caravan in the Tindledale Station car park, he had thought he’d died and gone to heaven … and he had been kept dangling, trapped in the never-ending cycle of lust and loathing ever since. Simply unable to resist coming back for more whenever she wished.

  ‘Why not?’ she pouted and pulled her hair away from his fingers before pushing it back over her shoulders. After slipping her clogs on, she dashed over to the layby to retrieve a packet of Player’s cigarettes from the glove box of a coffee-coloured Ford Cortina.

  ‘You know why …’ he started, swiftly swiping the Afghan coat that they had been lying on out of the grass and going after her, vowing to call it a day. He lifted her wrist and traced his thumb over the big, shiny engagement ring on her finger. ‘You’re getting married.’

  She snatched her hand away and flipped open the Zippo lighter, sucking on the cigarette until the tip sizzled and glowed flame red. ‘And you’re not! So stop worrying.’

  She made a circle shape in the air with the cigarette before blowing a couple of smoke rings into his face. ‘We’re having fun, aren’t we?’ She handed him the cigarette and he managed a couple of puffs before she gestured to get it back.

  ‘Sure,’ he shrugged, slinging the coat onto the back seat of the car before pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his flared jeans. ‘But—’

  ‘No buts! Come on, why spoil the moment?’ They stood in silence, side by side, resting their backs against the car doors as they took in the view. Tindledale. The little village they had both grown up in. ‘Help me with this,’ she instructed, lifting her hair and indicating for him to fasten the buttons at the back of her floaty blouse. ‘I deserve a bit of fun. And you … my love,’ she paused and gave him a lingering look, ‘are far too nice. That’s your problem! Always has been,’ she laughed, almost mockingly.

  And as the golden glow of the sun dipped down on the horizon, framing the fields full of strawberries, sheep, cows, apple, pear and plum trees, he knew that it was time to face the truth. She was about to marry someone else and he needed to tell her straight. He had to, because he couldn’t carry on feeling this way. It was wrong. And he needed to be free. Free to find someone else. Someone to love, properly, and not in secret, feeling brimful of shame and confusion.

  Chapter One

  Present day

  Sam Morgan pulled over into the muddy gap beside a five-bar gate that led into the fields behind Tindledale Station and switched off the engine of his tank-like old Land Rover. He undid his seat belt and tried to relax as he sat in silence, watching a plump robin perched on the gate, its stout crimson breast in stark contrast to the virginal white of the spring evening frost. Sam was sure he’d read somewhere, years ago, that robins signified ‘new beginnings’ … well, he sure hoped that was true. He wound down the window and inhaled, drinking in the surroundings, as if drawing strength from the familiarity of the sycamore trees that led down to the train track. The place where he had always come to think, right back from when he was just a young boy.

  Peering into the rear-view mirror, he pushed a hand through his messy dark hair and then pulled his lower eyelids down to inspect his conker-brown eyes, which were bloodshot and dry after the ten-hour flight from Singapore. But it was going to be worth it – a new job, a year-long contract, which he hoped would be more than enough time to fix things. He would be right here, redeveloping the Blackwood Farm Estate. He’d have less responsibility than he was used to, but it meant being back home in Tindledale. And it would be the perfect opportunity to put everything right with his family. His daughter, Holly, would be fourteen soon. Her birthday was just around the corner, so he really wanted to do that … more than anything.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket, making him jump. Since when did Tindledale have full mobile coverage? Things sure have changed since I was last home. He couldn’t believe it was almost
a year. Why on earth had he left it so long? On seeing that it was Dolly, his gran, he pressed the button to take the call.

  ‘Hello Sam, love. How are you getting on?’ she asked, in her familiar country accent.

  ‘I’m almost home, Gran, shan’t be much longer.’ He glanced at the clock on the dashboard and quickly calculated that he’d arrived at the airport over three hours earlier, which was when he had called her to say that the plane had landed safely.

  She had insisted he let her know immediately when he touched down. Dolly didn’t trust aeroplanes, having only ever been on one in her lifetime, and it had taken two attempts to land on the tiny holiday island of Mykonos before reaching terra firma. Dolly had never forgotten it, and had vowed to stay in the village ever since, or travel to faraway places only by coach. So it was the least he could do to put her mind at rest, especially as she and her second husband, Colin – a coach driver she had met on one of those trips to a faraway place – had kindly offered Sam their spare bedroom to stay in for the duration of his new contract, if need be. But it had taken ages to find the long-term parking place near the airport, and then even longer to defrost the lock on the driver’s door so he could actually get in to his car, which had been standing outside in all weathers since he’d last been home to Tindledale. And the parking bill had been astronomical, almost as much as the ancient old Land Rover was worth. But it served him right, Sam figured, he really should have come home sooner.

  ‘Oh well, that’s very good now,’ Dolly chuckled kindly. ‘We’re really looking forward to seeing you, son … I’ve got your favourite cottage pie with a cheesy mash topping keeping warm inside Beryl, all ready for your dinner when you get here.’

  Sam grinned, fondly remembering the extended name of his gran’s buttercup-yellow Aga, Beryl the Peril, on account of her being quite temperamental, often needing a tweak to get going, making her perilously unreliable at times. One Christmas, when he was a boy, they had eaten their turkey dinner with all the trimmings at nine o’clock in the evening, thanks to Beryl conking out at the crucial moment. They’d had to take the tinfoil-covered turkey in its tray round to the neighbours next door to cook in their conventional oven. And Dolly had been devastated. Christmas dinner was always at one sharpish in her house, and quite a magnificent affair … except that year.

  ‘I can’t wait. Thanks, Gran.’ Sam smiled fondly, momentarily feeling like that twelve-year-old boy again and, given that he was pushing forty-two, there sure was a certain comfort in that.

  ‘Right you are. Cheerio, Sam,’ she said, and then added, ‘and don’t go haring off down those lanes. It’s been very wet this spring and then chilly in the evening, so they become coated in frost. Take your time, the pie will wait.’ And, after a big intake of breath, followed by an even bigger sigh, she was gone.

  Using the elbow part of his jacket sleeve, Sam wiped away a circle of condensation from the windscreen, big enough to look out across the lush, undulating fields leading all the way down to the valley. The valley he knew like the back of his hand, having grown up right here. Number Three Keepers Cottages. A neat row of tiny two-up two-down converted old workers’ homes, situated at the top of the unmade lane near the orchards, and not far from the woods. Violet Wood, they used to call it, on account of all the purple flowers that covered the ground in springtime. Where he would play and fish for pike and trout on the banks of the stream with his younger brother, Patrick, and the rest of the boys from the village – Matt (he was the village farrier now) and his older brother, Jack. Not forgetting his good pal, Cooper (who now had the butcher’s shop in the High Street), plus a load of other kids who always turned up in the school summer holidays. It was idyllic. And a shame in a way that life couldn’t stay like that for always. Sam often wondered why it all had to be so complicated.

  Talking of which … his thoughts turned away from the past, where he had avoided the implosion of his marriage rather than dealing with it and trying to do something, and to the reason he had finally returned to Tindledale after so long away. His wife, Chrissie. Well, his soon-to-be ex-wife, if she had meant what she said when they had spoken on the phone that time. ‘Right now, divorce feels like an inevitable eventuality for us, Sam,’ she had told him, frankly.

  That conversation had been soon after he hadn’t made it back home for Christmas. There had been a last-minute near-catastrophe at work, when their largest investor had almost pulled out, and Sam and his team had spent anxious weeks trying to keep the project on track. He was the architectural engineer for a Pan-Asian company, building a prestigious chain of new hotels in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. He’d cancelled his long weekend home, and knew that both Chrissie and Holly had been devastated. Chrissie had told him it was the final straw the last time they had spoken on the phone.

  ‘If it was this one thing in isolation, Sam, then I might have been able to deal with it. But, on the back of everything else, I just can’t. It’s all the other weekends when you could have come home and didn’t, the phone calls you could have made and didn’t, and the five-minute Skype calls that we’ve had to make do with – or without – most of the time. It’s the culmination of everything …’

  ‘Chrissie, I’m honestly doing my best here. I just want this project to be a success and then it could set us up for the rest of our lives. It could really put me on the map and make a huge difference to all of us.’

  ‘And what about me? And our daughter? What is the point of all that success if we’re not together to share it? It’s meaningless. Empty and lonely.’ Sam could hear the frustration and anger in her voice and roused his own to meet hers.

  ‘I’m doing this for us – for you and for Holly, can’t you see that?’

  ‘No, Sam, that’s not what I see. All I can see is a sad young girl whose heart is broken because her daddy isn’t coming home for Christmas, and a permanently empty space next to mine in bed. The empty space where my husband used to be.’ He heard her voice crack.

  ‘Chrissie, please, it’s just going to be a few more months …’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam, but I can’t take any more of this. As far as I’m concerned our marriage is over. Holly and I have been at the bottom of your priority list for too long and I’ve had enough.’

  Since then, they’d communicated only via email. Sam had called and tried to talk to Chrissie on several occasions, but she had refused to speak to him. He couldn’t quite work out when the reality of it had hit home, but he thought it struck him hardest when a Facebook memory popped up on his timeline and he was confronted with the awful, stark reality that he hadn’t actually seen his daughter for almost a year. The picture had glared out at him accusingly. He, Chrissie and Holly, on top of the Sentosa Sky Tower in Singapore, with Holly pulling faces for her numerous selfies. He’d clicked through some more. He and Holly, their faces contorted in wild excitement on the Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure ride at Universal Studios, while Chrissie had a look of controlled terror. Then his beautiful daughter cuddling a baby elephant on a magical trip to an elephant sanctuary in nearby Malaysia. Sam had welled up with emotion on seeing Holly so absolutely enchanted – the look of pure joy in her eyes was too much to bear; he missed her and blamed himself for shattering her happiness, so had then gone out and got very, very drunk. The next morning, hungover but with more resolve than he had felt in ages, he had called the CEO of the company he worked for and handed in his notice.

  The situation he was now in had unsettled him like nothing ever had before, prompting him to put the feelers out for a job closer to home. The truth was impossible to ignore. He and Chrissie had been drifting apart for a while, long before he ever went away to Singapore.

  Sam had been working hard for years to build his reputation as an architect. He was never the cleverest at school, but he’d been a grafter – it had taken him three years of evening classes, and working all day as a labourer on a building site, to get the exams he had needed before eventually being able to pursue his dream of training
to be an architect. Then, frequently working late into the night to qualify had paid off, and he had got a job in a large practice. Since then he’d steadily worked his way up over the years.

  Ever since he was a boy, he’d loved building stuff, designing it from scratch and seeing it materialise, magnificent and strong, much like his marriage before the cracks set in. His father Rob had bought him his first Meccano set when he was still in short trousers, and the two of them would spend hours over it. Sam had thought that he and Chrissie were as tightly bolted together as his Meccano constructions, but last year, despite the smiles on Facebook, their Singapore trip had only highlighted the fractures that were becoming apparent …

  *

  ‘Wow! This place is awesome!’ Holly had bounced down backwards on the king-sized bed in her dad’s Singapore apartment, pushing her legs and arms out wide into a star shape. ‘This bed is like a giant marshmallow! It’s so soft and squishy.’

  ‘Hey. Don’t get too comfortable, your bedroom is down the hall,’ Sam had laughed, going to scoop her up into a big bear hug.

  ‘But that’s not fair! How come the grown-ups get all the best bits for themselves?’

  ‘Well, you won’t be saying that when you see your bedroom. Let me show you.’ Sam’s apartment was on the twenty-fourth floor of one of the most iconic developments in the city, and the view from each room was stunning. Holly’s room had an inbuilt entertainment centre, which included Apple TV and a karaoke machine, her own en-suite shower room and a mini-fridge, well stocked with chilled water and sugar-free drinks on account of Holly being diabetic. Delighted, Holly had instantly whipped out her phone to ensure she captured every detail for her Instagram account, taking the time to select the perfect filters, before then telling him she needed to give herself an insulin injection.

  ‘Oh, right, of course. Want me to do anything?’ he’d offered.

  Holly shook her head matter-of-factly. ‘Nope.’

  ‘OK, I’ll be outside with Mum.’ He leaned over and gave her a kiss on her head, as she pulled what she needed from her needle case. ‘Love you, darling.’