Christmas Eve morning, Sophie woke to discover a text from Jonah thanking her for the anonymous hamper. She wouldn’t reply. Wouldn’t even think about replying. And there was no way she was going to tell Sam about it. Enough was enough and Christmas Eve was a day not to be marred by anxieties. It didn’t occur to her to wonder how Jonah had acquired her new mobile number. She glanced at the alarm and was horrified that it was after nine, but just as she was about to panic that she might be alone in the house, Sam nudged open the bedroom door to bring her Laura and a mug of tea. He manoeuvred himself and Laura into bed beside her. ‘So, what are we doing today? Not shopping, I beg you.’
‘It’s all done. I just want to be here.’
‘In bed?’
She peered at him over the top of her mug. ‘Some of the time.’
Katie was now in residence until the New Year. Sophie decamped downstairs to help her wrap, which she enjoyed, her only concern being that it was quite clear Katie had spent more money on Jesse than she’d spent on Sam. Later, with Christmas Eve lunch enjoyed, Sophie dragged Sam upstairs and persuaded Laura to take her afternoon nap:
…I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Sam flicked pages. Sophie interrupted his search. ‘What’s a panic room, exactly?’
He turned to face her. ‘Amazing!’
‘What?’
‘Your non-sequiturs. I make passionate love to you, I read you the outpourings of adoration of Mrs Barrett Browning and the only response I get is for you to ask me “what’s a panic room?”. Well, for your information, it’s a reinforced room with no outside walls, which you lock from the inside. And it has everything you need to survive an attack by a marauding tribe of madwomen. Jesse built his early on in the days when he and Sandi used to smoke a lot of weed. He uses it to store Christmas decorations when it’s not Christmas.’
‘Is it like a nuclear bunker?’
‘Hardly. It vents out to the roof, so any passing megacuries would have no problem working their way down there. Why do you ask? Are you planning something?’
‘I just remembered Jesse mentioning it.’
‘I’ll get him to show you it.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We’d better get organised. Barbara’s due to arrive and Katie needs support.’
‘Why?’
‘Jesse says she’s scared Barbara will think she’s trying to step into Sandi’s shoes.’
‘Is it likely Barbara will think that?’
‘Not in the least.’
Christmas Eve supper was cleared away, Laura was put into her snowman sleepsuit and everyone gathered around the fire to hear Sam read The Night Before Christmas followed by the boys singing their school Nativity songs. Sophie watched the sparkle in Barbara’s eyes as she listened to her grandsons sing. She wished her mother could have known grandchildren but Josie and Francis had decided to have cows instead of children and her mother had died before Laura was born. Sam interrupted her thoughts. ‘Shall I take her up?’
Sophie said no, she’d do it. In truth, she wanted to be on her own for a while to feel sad about her mother and she didn’t want the misery to spill out and spoil the evening. So, she carried Laura up to her room, set the baby monitor then took a moment to just clear her head. She wandered into their lounge and over to the huge panoramic window that looked out over the gardens around Jesse’s beautiful house. From where she was standing she could see above the trees towards the front entrance, see the lights of the cars passing by on the road, their passengers on their way towards their own versions of Christmas Eve.
‘We were wondering where you’d got to.’ Sam was standing behind her.
She turned to smile. ‘I was just thinking how different my life is this Christmas.’
‘Different in a good way?’
She put her arms around him. Kissed his chin. ‘In a very good way.’ She went to step away but he held on to her, pushed her hair behind her shoulder, kissed her neck… then he let her go. ‘We’d better leave this for later. Or people will start to talk.’ He took her hand. ‘Come on, Jesse wants to make an announcement.’
‘About what?’
‘God knows. He’s probably given the turkey to the poor.’
A jug of vodka snowball was waiting as Sam and Sophie stepped into the room. Sam pulled Sophie over to a sofa. ‘What have we missed?’
Katie filled Sophie’s glass. ‘It seems that Jesse is about to move in mysterious ways. Would you boys like some more chocolate milk?’
‘I want a snowball,’ said Benz.
‘That is never going to happen. And you two are twenty minutes to bedtime, that is, if you want the weird bearded man to creep into your room and leave presents.’
Jesse looked at Barbara and rolled his eyes. ‘Katie, sit down for a minute. I’ve been building up to this all day.’ He pulled a small, silver wrapped, ribbon-splattered cube from his pocket and held it towards her. She put down the jug and accepted it.
‘What’s this? It’s not Christmas until tomorrow.’
‘This is not about Christmas,’ he said. ‘It’s about you and me. And the boys.’
Sophie felt Sam take her hand and, together, they watched Katie tug at the silver wrap to release a small white leather box containing a significant diamond solitaire. Time seemed to take a pause. Jesse interrupted the silence. ‘I think it’s the right size.’ Katie stared at him. Everything became awkward. Again, Jesse broke the silence. ‘Well?’
‘It’s a ring.’
‘Yes. An engagement ring.’
‘Jesse, I don’t know what to say.’
‘Well, saying yes would save a whole lot of embarrassment.’
Katie flashed Sophie a grimace of desperation, looked at the ring, turned it in the lights of the Christmas tree. ‘God, I can’t stand that I’m going to say this in front of everybody but, Jesse, you know I love you to pieces. And I love Jake and Benz.’ Her voice started to break. ‘And I could never ever be happier than I’ve been here with the three of you. But…’ She touched her throat with her free hand. ‘But, Jesse, if you’re not happy for things to stay the way they are, then I ought to go now, before things get any more complex.’
Sophie’s desire to interfere was almost suffocating but she managed to stay silent.
Jesse spoke through the anxiety. ‘Why on earth would you say that?’
Katie glanced at the two boys sitting beside one another, staring back at her. ‘Because I can’t risk the same thing… Jesse, if something happens to me, you and the boys will finish up with nothing but heartache all over again.’ She closed the little box and placed it on the coffee table. ‘I can’t let that happen to you.’
The room fell silent. And then, just when life, time and Christmas seemed to have reached an impasse, Benz calmly sliced through the atmosphere, walked over to pick up the box and held it towards Katie. ‘At least this time Jake and I will remember.’
His brother hurried to his side. ‘Katie, please marry Dad. Because we really love you.’
Sophie felt her throat constrict, which was just as well because at least that meant she was unable to speak. There was a lengthy pause and, all credit to Katie, she was the first to recover the power of speech. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and took the ring. ‘If I marry your dad, will you promise to teach me to play Angry Birds?’ She hugged them, looked at Jesse over their heads and mouthed. ‘Are you sure?’
Jesse strode over. ‘Make way, lads. Let’s put it on her finger before she changes her mind.’
Benz and Jake were finally persuaded to their beds with a cocktail of threats and promises, and then the large-scale fetching and stacking of presents began. Sophie collapsed back into her chair and wondered at the vast display of privilege and generosity piled around the tree and, once again, felt her throat closing over. Sam sat down beside her. ‘Jesse never warned me about the proposal. But just in case you suspect that my commitment to you is any less than my brother’s is to Katie, I’d like you to have this.’ He lifted her hand, turned it over and placed his chain and St Christopher into her palm.
‘It’s your good luck.’
‘No, Sophie, you’re my good luck.’ But their romantic exchange was interrupted by Jesse demanding Sam help fill the log basket. So, he kissed Sophie and followed his brother outside. Sophie fastened the chain around her neck and wandered over to join Barbara’s firelight appreciation of Katie’s ring. It must have cost a fortune, but more than that, Jesse must have thought deeply about giving it. And he must have spoken to his boys and Barbara about it because they all seemed to know what was at stake. They all turned as Sam and Jesse came clumping into the room either side of a huge basket of logs. Everyone stepped back to allow them through and, as they staggered past, Sophie could feel the cold radiating off them. ‘It must be freezing out there,’ she said. ‘You’re like ice men.’
‘There’s a really thick frost,’ said Sam. ‘I hope Santa’s got his anti-slip boots on. We don’t want him sliding off the roof and landing in the drive.’
‘It was getting that way this afternoon,’ said Barbara. ‘Those poor men working on your gate must have been perished. I don’t know how you managed to get them to come out on Christmas Eve.’
Jesse stepped away from the log basket. ‘What men working on the gate?’
‘There were three of them. I had to toot them out of the way. They said they were servicing your gates, because they’d registered a malfunction. They must have fixed them though, because they opened perfectly.’
Jesse went over and pulled open a tall, flat panel just inside the archway to reveal a concealed system of lights, a wide monitor and a keypad. He typed in a series of numbers and spent a few moments staring at the screen. Sam walked over to join him. ‘Is there anything to suggest a malfunction?’
‘There’s a gap in the video footage for the main entrance. It hasn’t caught Barbara arriving. See there…’ He pointed to the screen. ‘There’s a jump forward in time and it suddenly gets dark.’ Jesse shook his head. ‘I’d better phone.’
‘You’ll be lucky on Christmas Eve,’ said Katie.
Jesse made the call. Somebody answered straight away and from Jesse’s half of the conversation it was clear that no engineers had been dispatched to check the security system and as far as central monitoring was concerned, there had been no interruption of signal that day, although footage was not currently retrievable. When Jesse put down the phone his expression was serious. ‘Nothing. From their end, the system doesn’t appear to have been compromised. No record of on-site maintenance. I’m going to change the codes. They’ll text a confirmation.’ Everyone stood silent as Jesse poked around on the control panel then waited for an incoming text. It arrived.
‘Barbara, can you describe those three guys?’ said Sam.
‘Well, it was getting dark but they were wearing those bright yellow coats. Two of them were big and well-built and the third one was shorter.’
‘What colour hair did they have,’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. They were all wearing Father Christmas hats. I remember that one of the big ones had a beard and the shortest one had really thick black eyebrows. He was the one that was doing all the work. The other two were just watching.’
‘Sam, it’s Jonah!’ All eyes turned towards Sophie.
‘What would Jonah be doing, fiddling around with Jesse’s gate?’ said Katie.
Sam raked his hair. ‘Collecting data to give those two thugs access.’
‘But, Sam,’ said Katie, ‘…how?’
‘I don’t know but…’
‘If there was a way, I’m sure Jonah would find it,’ said Sophie. ‘He once told me that, if he wanted to, he’d be able to penetrate Pentagon security and find the missile codes and start World War III.’
‘But he didn’t, did he?’ said Sam. ‘That’s a load of crap. Nobody can do that. Not even Jonah. And it probably wasn’t Jonah anyway. Loads of people… God, are we safe, Jesse?’
‘I think so.’ He glanced at Sam. ‘You should call… the police.’
‘Yeh. I’m sure there’s a whole battalion of cops just waiting to sort this one out on Christmas Eve.’ He looked at Sophie. ‘I’ll go up and check Laura at the same time.’
‘Shall I come too?’
‘No, stay here. I probably won’t get through to anyone. It’s after ten.’
After more than twenty minutes, Sam stepped back into the room and reported that DI Blake, clearly with no good reason to go home, had listened to his concerns and had assured him that a patrol car would check Greenfields at intervals over the Christmas period. He did not envisage any invasion by gangsters and suggested that Jonah just might not be involved, that the three men might well have been casing the house and that the break in the video footage was probably a glitch in the system. There were sighs of relief, indicating the enormous faith that innocent people place in those who are committed to upholding the law.
Jesse returned to the control panel and set the video footage to stream through the large TV beyond the dining suite, and his guests were slightly reassured by the split-screen images of six uneventful views of the outside of the house. Besides, as Barbara pointed out, it was far too cold for anybody to be up to anything that involved going outside. Katie added that even criminals would be reluctant to work over Christmas.