The spotlight bathed Bo and Ran in a pool of dazzling light. Every eye in the hall would be on them, yet she only had eyes for one person in the room.
A moment of sheer terror seized her, that she might not be able to move, then the music started and instinct and adrenaline kicked in. She remembered all those nights on the terrace. All the practice. Starting. Stopping. Laughing. Swearing. Tripping over their feet. Trying again and again.
‘You can do it, Bo,’ he mouthed, his eyes bright with the same excitement as hers.
‘Santa bring my baby back to me.’
They were off.
Rock step, back step, change hands, turn … finally, gloriously, they were dancing together, knowing instinctively what the other was going to do before they even did it.
It was such a great track. So playful, pacy and foot-tapping with Elvis’s smoky voice and the Jordanaires’ backing vocals, Elvis pleading for his girl to come home for Christmas. The other dancers were a blur of colour and light around them but Bo could hear whoops and cheers as Hubert lifted Sally. The audience were singing along, clapping and tapping their feet. The whole hall vibrated to the joyful rhythm of people coming together to perform, to dance and sing and share the experience.
‘Oh!’
Ran tripped over his feet, stumbled, almost fell.
Bo steadied him with her hand, and he regained his footing. ‘Keep going!’ she murmured, guiding him into the next turn.
‘Santa bring my baby back to me …’
Elvis had ended on a high note and Bo was soaring too.
Ran held her hand tightly, and the audience erupted.
They took a bow, basking in the cheers and clapping as Hubert thanked everyone for coming and the lights went on. They were still holding hands, breathing heavily, unable to tear their eyes away from each other.
‘I c-can’t b-believe we just did that,’ he said. ‘In front of everyone in Falford. And I almost went flat on my arse!’ he said, laughing.
‘But you didn’t.’
‘Thanks to you. Bo, about my trip to London, please listen to me …’ Ran began.
‘Wow, you two! That was amazing!’ Sally bounded up, slapping Ran on the back.
They both turned to her, letting go.
‘I got through it,’ Ran said.
‘And you enjoyed it! Don’t say you didn’t. We could tell!’
Bo forced a smile at Sally’s teasing while longing to get Ran on his own.
‘Yeah, I’ll admit it was great but that was down to my partner.’
Sally arched an eyebrow. ‘Wow. Look, we’ll clear up here and then we can all have a party. It’s Christmas!’
Sally flew off, congratulating the other Flingers while the audience streamed out of the hall.
‘Let’s skip the after-show party,’ Ran said. ‘Please come to the cottage with me. I’ve a lot I want to say to you. If you’ll hear me out.’
Bo hesitated.
‘It’s not bad news, Bo. At least I hope you won’t think it is. Please give me a chance?’
After that dance, how could she refuse? Then again, a dance wasn’t a relationship. Sexual chemistry wasn’t everything – if Hamish had taught her anything, it was that sexual chemistry was not nearly enough.
‘OK. I’ll come and hear what you have to say.’
His shoulders slumped in relief. ‘I’ll get my kit packed and meet you there?’
Bo went off to have a word with Sally and Angel and tell them she was giving the party a miss to talk to Ran. Neither seemed surprised and she returned to help Ran pack his car with Cade’s help. He set off first and after a few words with Angel, who wished her luck, Bo followed on after him.
Never had the short drive around the twisting creeks seemed so long, but she made it and found the cottage lights on and his van on the drive. The front door was open a crack, presumably for her, so she pushed it open.
Thor was miaowing from the kitchen and his cries and her footsteps echoed strangely on the hallway tiles. He brushed against her legs, curling around them, and she stroked him. ‘Hi, Thor. I’ve missed you. Ran!’ she called. ‘It’s me.’
There was no answer so she walked into the sitting room.
‘Oh my God!’
Now she knew why the cottage had sounded so hollow. The shelves had been stripped bare and every surface, from floor to sofa to table, was covered with cardboard packing boxes full of records. Thor jumped onto one of the boxes, settling down on top of a Chuck Berry album.
Footsteps thumping down the cottage stairs were followed by Ran bursting into the sitting room. He was shirtless and had a towel around his neck. ‘I wanted to jump in the shower before you got here. I’ve had a rough day.’
Bo’s eyes flickered from his naked torso to the empty shelves and boxes. ‘I heard the cottage has been sold. You’re leaving?’
‘You heard right about the sale but I’m not leaving.’
‘What? Then why all these packing cases full of records?’
‘I’ve sold them to a dealer in London,’ he said. ‘I’m waiting for a courier to come and collect them.’
‘The whole lot?’
‘Ninety percent of it. He didn’t want the rest.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The reason I stayed in London – part of it – was that I decided to sell my collection to help fund a deposit on this place. The owners have wanted to sell for a while and they gave me first refusal.’
‘I thought you said they weren’t worth anything?’
‘Like I told you, all the expensive stuff was sold ages ago to repay the debts I’d run up when I lost my job and make sure Phaedra could stay in the flat. I didn’t ask for the flat when we arranged the divorce settlement.’
‘That was generous.’
‘I owed it to her for the way I’d lived the high life in the past … but she’s decided to move out of the flat herself and accepted a new job with a practice outside the city.’
‘So, you’re not moving back in with her?’ Bo said, unable to believe that the scenario she’d dreaded wasn’t happening after all.
‘Absolutely not.’ Ran gestured to her to sit down. He sat by her on the sofa, his hair still damp from the shower.
‘I’m staying here, buying this cottage,’ he went on. ‘I’ve got some savings but not quite enough, so I visited a dealer friend and he said he’d take most of the rest of my collection. Luckily, I’d catalogued them. I didn’t have much else to do when I first came here, hiding away from everyone.’ He gave a rueful smile.
‘I can believe that and you do – did – have a big collection.’
‘There are over two thousand … most worth less than a tenner as I thought. I never expected that some would fetch so much. Prices have rocketed lately. There was a special edition Beatles EP in a cardboard box that a builder friend found in a skip and gave to me. I hadn’t even had a chance to look in the box. I’ve told him about it but he’s minted and he said I need it more than him.’
Bo looked around her at the empty shelves. ‘Even so, it’s so sad you’re getting rid of your music.’ She meant it.
‘I’ve more important things to spend my money on.’
‘But your DJing …’ she said, unable to believe he’d got rid of his precious collection so he could stay in Falford.
‘I only DJ for Flingers and I still have a tiny handful of the records that I really can’t bear to part with. The ones that truly mean something to me. This cottage – Falford – suits the person I am now, not the one I once tried to be.’
He lifted her hand and held it in his, yet she still wasn’t quite sure.
‘So, you went to see your solicitor and to sell the records. You could have told me.’
‘I wanted to give you certainty: a fait accompli. You deserve nothing less. I was already sure I was coming back to Cornwall to stay, though I wasn’t a hundred percent how I was going to do it. I didn’t know if the record sale would raise enough for the deposit, even though I’d agreed to the purchase price. I thought I’d have to borrow some money from my parents and I didn’t want to do that and the sale of this place couldn’t go through until I could prove I have the funds.’
‘Ran. I have to level with you. I’m surprised Phaedra agreed to let you come back.’
‘She didn’t want me to, and I’ll level with you too,’ he said. ‘She told me she was having genuine second thoughts about the divorce and I tried to make her understand that it didn’t make any difference and that I only agreed to go back to London one more time to help her pack up the apartment and to sell the records and help her realise that I didn’t want to go backwards. She thought I’d change my mind when I got “home”.’ He mimed inverted commas around the word.
Bo swallowed a lump in her throat. She’d been convinced Phaedra’s powers of persuasion would win the day; now she knew she should have given Ran more of her trust.
‘I’m so glad you didn’t.’
He pulled her into his arms. ‘I never would have changed my mind and, in the end, I was misled even about her genuinely wanting to get back with me. I came back from seeing my dealer friend to find her boyfriend – ex-boyfriend – rowing with her in the apartment.’ He winced. ‘It didn’t end well.’
Bo touched his cheek, feeling the tender skin. ‘Is that where you got the bruise? I’d thought you’d been in a car accident.’
‘No. The guy was getting heavy with her when I came home and thought he was an intruder so I tackled him.’
‘Wow. That is heavy.’
Ran closed his hand around her fingers and lowered her hand, keeping it in his.
‘Phaedra seemed to enjoy the drama but only because she’d been left in the lurch by the boyfriend and enjoyed having me come to her rescue.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘It turns out that she was only here because they were meant to go away for Christmas and he’d let her down. She was upset and desperate when she turned up in Cornwall.’ He sighed again. ‘He’d dumped her and her pride was hurt.’
‘I know how that feels …’
‘Me too, and I do feel sorry for her, but we have separate lives now. I was literally about to leave the flat to come to Cornwall very late on Thursday night but she was in a terrible state and begged me to stay. I was genuinely worried she might do something serious so I had to stay and make sure she would be OK. I managed to get her sister to look after her.’
Bo almost felt sorry for Phaedra. ‘Did she?’
‘She managed to come over early on Friday morning but by then the snow was covering the streets of London and it was absolute gridlock. The police were advising people not to travel. You see, I’d had this big idea of whizzing down here like a knight on a white charger, knocking on your door and explaining everything face to face, but it all went wrong.’
Bo laughed. ‘I don’t need a knight!’
‘I know. I’m an idiot. Anyway, once I did get away, the journey went from bad to worse. Much worse. The snow created chaos and I crawled most of the way from London. I’d decided to finally call you and explain myself, even though I wanted to do it in person, but then I ran out of fuel in a blizzard on Bodmin Moor.’
‘Oh, Ran!’
‘I’m a complete prat. I’d been so worked up and the van was using so much fuel, crawling along with the heaters on, that I hadn’t noticed the gauge. Eventually, I had to walk three miles in the snow to find a can of diesel from a service station. I couldn’t charge the phone until I was on my way again.’
‘I didn’t get your voice message …’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell you now what I wanted to say. That actions speak louder than words … what I mean is that you deserve nothing less than me showing you I want to stay – how desperately I want to be with you. Phaedra and I have been on different paths for a long time, diverging further and further away from each other. She thought I’d be tempted back by seeing our old life but it only made me realise how much my heart has taken root here.’
‘In Cornwall?’ Bo said.
‘Cornwall is a county. A geographical boundary. A line across a map.’
Bo gasped in mock horror. ‘Don’t let the locals catch you saying that!’
‘I love seeing you smile. I’ve made you frown far too often. I hope I haven’t made you cry.’ He held her face in his.
She turned her face away, not wanting to look at him. ‘Stop this. I refuse to cry over a man ever again.’
‘I know you’ve been let down and you deserve better than Hamish – better than me. But, Bo, I’m ready to try to be the person you deserve. I’m just angry I spent the first six months I was here wishing for the past and the next few trying to let go of it. You were already in my life – I wish I’d let you in sooner.’
‘I wasn’t ready to let you in either. We were both pushing at the door, trying to keep it shut.’
He smiled. ‘It’s a miracle we’re together now.’
‘You don’t think …’ Bo said, then shook her head, laughing at herself. ‘No.’
Ran wasn’t going to let that go. His intense gaze was unwavering. ‘I don’t think what?’
She wrinkled her nose in embarrassment but knew there was no getting out of it. ‘This is ridiculous and you’ll laugh at me but you don’t think that Madame Odette … that her predictions might be coming true, do you? For us, anyway.’
‘Ah, Madame Odette …’ he replied seriously.
‘I sense a sarcastic reply …’
‘No. I’ve wondered the same myself and, also, I think I saw her at the Spectacular tonight.’
‘Me too! I spotted her – or a woman I thought might be her – slipping out of the back row of seats in the interval. I was going to go after her but we were too busy and then later, everything happened.’
‘I thought I saw her too, when I was packing away after our dance. Everyone was putting on their coats to leave and this woman was walking out of the door. She was wearing a headscarf but I glimpsed her face and I knew.’
‘I had the same thought. It must have been her yet we’re still in the dark. Short of asking around if anyone knew her, we might never find out her identity.’
‘No, and perhaps we’re not meant to. Maybe we’re meant to let it go and enjoy our fates,’ he said.
Bo shook her head again. ‘You don’t believe in fate.’
‘Do you?’ he asked.
‘Mmm … perhaps. I haven’t decided. What matters is that I’m happy with the outcome.’ She planted a soft, delicious kiss on his mouth.
It turned into an embrace and a much longer series of kisses, followed by a collapse onto the sofa and the shedding of clothes more rapidly than was wise.
A mug fell off the coffee table onto the floor, causing Thor to let out a yowl and shoot out of the sitting room in horror.
‘I didn’t want him watching anyway …’ Ran said raggedly, unbuttoning Bo’s blouse.
Then, in silence underneath the lamplight, they celebrated Madame Odette’s prediction finally coming true.
Ran was whistling ‘Winter Wonderland’ and making coffee when Bo wandered into the kitchen the following morning. The tiles were cold under her feet, in contrast to the rest of her body, glowing with very recent activity.
She was wearing Ran’s dry robe and very little else.
He turned and gave her an approving nod. ‘I like the new look.’
‘I found it on the bathroom door.’
After feeding Thor, they took coffee and croissants into the sitting room and Bo sat with her bare feet in his lap. The boxes were still there, and the empty shelves seemed even drearier in the grey light of a December morning.
Bo laid her hand on his arm. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
‘I was thinking that this place looks a bit sad. I suppose I ought to get a Christmas tree …’
She was reminded of the evening he’d visited her while she was wrapping presents and the hollow sense she’d felt about decorating her own tree.
‘They sell them at the Country Stores … I think they might have a few left. Angel said Kelvin over-ordered … and I need a few last-minute gifts though I hate to give him my business.’
‘The dealer’s van is coming shortly. When I’ve helped him load the stuff into it, I think we should get out of here and find a tree.’
Despite their misgivings, the Country Stores was close by and, as Bo had hoped, had a few trees left. Ran chose one from outside, carrying it into the main shop. Entering the place gave Bo mixed feelings. It was beautifully decorated for Christmas, which Angel had organised weeks before, of course, though there were far fewer customers as Bo might have expected on the final Saturday before Christmas. Carols were playing from the loudspeakers.
‘Joy to the world …’
They took the tree to the cash desk but before Bo got there she saw two familiar faces chatting by the giftware. Angel saw them too and waved frantically, and her companion, Jenna Boscawen, smiled a greeting.
‘It’s Angel and Jenna,’ Bo said in delight.
Yet Ran didn’t reply.
He was too transfixed by the cash desk where Kelvin was standing with his arms folded and a mutinous glare on his face.
Looming over him, a furious look on her face, in her trademark silk headscarf, was Madame Odette.