Christmas again. Decorations went up in the windows of the village houses. The fairy lights on the huge spruce, situated on the village green by the duck pond, twinkled reassuringly in the darkened evenings.
“I wish I didn’t have to go,” Sophie said as she stood in the hall, a small wheelie case beside her, gray parka on, a red scarf hanging loose around her neck.
“It’ll be good to see your mum.” Karen tried to encourage her.
Sophie pulled a face. “I’ve only just seen her. And there’s sod-all to do up there, it’s right bang in the middle of nowhere. No pub, no shop even. Worse, no mobile signal to speak of. And if this weather keeps up it’ll be knackeringly cold.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, God, I hope I don’t get snowed in . . .”
“It’s only for a few days.” Karen laughed, reaching to kiss the girl goodbye.
“Will you be OK on your own?”
“Of course. I’ve had three invitations to Christmas lunch already, and I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg.” Karen didn’t add that she had no intention of going to any of them. She liked Christmas normally, and Harry had always thrown himself into the festivities with an almost childlike zeal. But Harry wasn’t here now. The thought brought a pang of nostalgia for her husband, for the companionship, the friends, most of whom had faded away over the year as Karen made no effort to engage with them.
Sophie laughed. “Yeah, that’s the upside of village life, you’re never alone . . . and the downside, of course.”
“Listen, you’d better get off.”
They said goodbye, Karen and Largo watching from the door as Sophie drove off into the wet morning mist.
“Just you and me now,” Karen told the dog, ruffling the hair behind his ears.
*
Christmas morning dawned. Karen had, as she’d intended, excused herself from all the invitations to lunch. If Patrick had asked her, she might have felt more enthusiastic—she could be herself with the old actor—but he and Volkan had taken off to Mauritius ’till after the new year.
It’s just another day, she told herself, deciding to read and walk and watch bad TV, avoid any people in the village, go to bed early, pretend she was not so alone. She texted Sophie Christmas wishes, with little hope that the girl would get them, given the lack of mobile signal in the Cumbrian hills. Then she texted Mike, who was spending the day with his daughter and the “thug.” She would call Johnny later.
But as she lay there, summoning the energy to get up and get dressed, suddenly there was a burning imperative to do something quite different with the day. And before she had time to consider it more carefully, she had showered, dressed, eaten a slice of toast and marmalade, gulped a cup of black coffee and jumped into the car—with the dog—setting the satnav for Hastings. Instinct told her that William would be there today, at the soup kitchen, making Christmas lunch for the homeless people, along with Sue and his friend Alistair. She was as certain as she’d ever been about anything in her whole life.
The roads were empty this early in the day. Later, no doubt, there would be scores of families setting off to visit relatives, but now there was an almost eerie absence of cars and people as she passed through the gray, windswept Sussex towns, the strung lights and trees bright in the dull winter morning. She felt like some lone adventurer off on a quest. And she was as excited and nervous as if it were a real quest.
This was what she had been waiting for. Today I will see him, she kept telling herself. Today I will talk to him, find out once and for all.
Find out what, she wasn’t sure, but she was sure that things would be instantly clarified as soon as she looked into his eyes again. There was no part of her that worried William wouldn’t be where he was supposed to be.
Parking the car near the church, she arrived just after eleven. Light was spilling through the stained-glass windows and she could hear the rumble of the organ, the sound of raised voices singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” Suddenly nervous, she sat in the car for a while, not knowing how she would explain her presence to Sue, not least if Alistair wasn’t expected today. For all she knew he had gone to Mauritius too, taking William with him.
Pull yourself together, she told herself firmly. You’ve come all this way, don’t fall at the last fence. Steeling herself, she got out of the car and knocked on the door to the annex before she lost her nerve.
Another woman answered the door. Very thin and very tall, she wore a jumper with a reindeer on the front and a red Christmas hat with a white trim and bobble over her short gray hair.
“Happy Christmas,” she said, before Karen had time to speak. “We aren’t open for another hour or so. If you could come back after twelve thirty.” Her smile was slightly forced, her accent with a hint of something European, Karen thought.
“Umm . . . I haven’t come for the lunch,” Karen said, amused she was being taken for a homeless person.
“Sorry, I just assumed . . .” The woman looked embarrassed.
“I was hoping to see Alistair Fisher . . . are you expecting him later?”
“Alistair? Yes, he’ll be round after the service,” the woman said, stepping back from the doorway. “Come in and wait if you like.”
Karen thanked her and went to fetch Largo from the car. She left him pottering about in the main room, which contained a large tree in the corner with multi-colored lights, the six tables laid with red paper cloths and decorated with baby gold and silver tinsel trees, a pyramid of crackers at each end. The kitchen was hot and steamy, fragrant with mouth-watering smells of roasting bird, the central island covered with three large baking trays of potatoes and various smaller ones containing ranks of chipolatas and extra stuffing waiting to go in the oven.
The radio was playing “Deck The Halls,” volume high, and Sue was singing along in a croaky voice as she chopped a vast pile of carrots on the draining board. She turned as Karen came in. “Oh, hello,” she said, knife poised. “Karen, isn’t it?”
“Well remembered.” Karen felt the eyes of the two women on her and knew she had to offer an explanation.
“Happy Christmas,” Sue said, coughing. “Sorry, got a bit of a chesty thing going on.”
“And to you. I . . . er, I thought maybe Alistair would be here today . . . and your friend said he was coming later . . . I could help while I wait.”
Sue grinned. “That would be marvelous. This is Ursula, by the way.”
Neither woman queried Karen’s presence. But then they were used to dealing with a transient community and perhaps didn’t think it particularly odd that she should turn up out of the blue, on Christmas morning, to see someone whom Sue, at least, was aware Karen barely knew.
Karen was delegated to take over the carrot-chopping, while Sue got on with the bread sauce, Ursula taking the enormous turkey out of the oven to baste, and clucking as the steam misted up her glasses. For a while all was quiet, just the radio belting out Christmas favorites as the women worked.
“The service should be over in a minute,” Sue said, looking at her watch. “We’ll need to get those sausages in soon.”
“I have nowhere to put them until I take the turkey out,” Ursula said.
“Is it nearly ready?”
“Another twenty-two minutes.”
Sue laughed, blowing out her cheeks, which were bright red from the heat. “Very precise, Ursula. Thank God for the microwave, otherwise we’d have six puddings steaming on the stove and nowhere to put anything else. Don’t know how we’d have coped.”
Karen was relieved to be in the stuffy, congested kitchen redolent of so many past Christmas lunches, with people she didn’t know, the radio making conversation unnecessary. It stopped her thinking too much about William. But every few seconds she would glance toward the door, waiting, her nerves jangling with anticipation. With her back to the room, however, as she mixed a ton of custard powder with milk to a smooth, yellow paste in a Pyrex bowl, she did not hear William’s mentor arrive. She was only aware that he was in the kitchen when she heard Sue greet him enthusiastically. She turned just as Alistair Fisher noticed her.
His expression was almost shocked. “Karen . . .”
“She’s been helping us out,” Sue said. “It’s been a godsend, having an extra pair of hands.”
“Good,” Alistair said, taking off his brown tweed overcoat and hanging it on one of the hooks behind the door with the other coats. “Glad you could be here, Karen,” he added, as if he had been expecting her all along.
She didn’t know what to say, so she just smiled and got on with the custard.
There would be no time to talk privately to him in the hectic run-up to lunch, and anyway, it wasn’t Fisher she had come to see. Where was William? Had she got it wrong after all? She was aching to ask the man, but instead she worked alongside him and the two women, putting the finishing touches to the turkey meal.
Later, when both she and Alistair were in the main room, carrying through the trays of roast potatoes, she began to speak, to ask him where William was.
But he interrupted her. “It’s wonderful that the Church can give everyone a proper celebration at Christmas,” he said, turning away, back to the kitchen.
*
Karen counted nineteen men and two women around the tables. Plates piled high, they were tucking into the dinner with gusto, many of them with a paper hat perched on their heads, not talking much, just listening to the radio. Largo was a big hit, making his way around the tables to be patted and made a fuss of, accepting tidbits from anyone offering.
Sue, Ursula, Alistair and Karen sat together at one end of the table by the kitchen. All of them were hot and exhausted, but so happy to have pulled it off and be able to relax for a minute with their own lunch, before the next stage of the meal had to be dealt with.
“I think we did pretty well,” Sue said, her gold cone hat skewed on the back of her head, the string digging into her double chin.
“You did brilliantly,” Karen agreed, glancing over at Alistair, still waiting for him to make some comment on her being there, which he seemed determined not to do.
Would he warn William not to come? She hadn’t seen him making a call since he’d arrived, but he could have done. Her previous conviction about William was slowly waning as the hours ticked by. It was only just after two thirty, but if he were intending to help with the lunch he would have been here hours ago.
The first chance Karen had to talk to Fisher without being overheard was when Sue delegated them to organize the tea. Alistair was piling mugs on to a tray as Karen waited for the two kettles to boil, the large white teapot and an equally large brown one standing by. She was furious with him. He must know she wasn’t here on some philanthropic mission; he could have taken her aside hours ago and told her what she needed to know.
“So is William coming today?”
Fisher stopped what he was doing and looked at her. He didn’t reply at once, just seemed to be turning things over in his mind.
“This is awkward for me, Karen—” he said, then stopped.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake! I just want to know if he’ll be here today. I’m not asking you to betray your country, Alistair, just tell me if I can expect William to walk through that door. Or am I wasting my time?”
“I honestly don’t know if he’ll come or not.”
“But he said he might?”
Fisher nodded reluctantly.
She let out an exasperated sigh. “See? That wasn’t so hard. What do you think I’m going to do, exactly? Come at him with a meat cleaver? Anyway, it’s none of your business, you aren’t the guardian of William’s soul. Or mine.” She turned back to the kettles.
Her heart was thumping with indignation, her breath short in her throat. The man was infuriating with his smugly protective attitude toward William. It’s as if he’s an anxious parent, she thought, her hand quivering as she picked up one of the kettles.
There was silence behind her.
Then Fisher said, “You make me sound like some Svengali. I’m not, as you seem to think, controlling William in any way. He’s perfectly capable of making his own mind up about what goes on in his life.”
“So are you worried he’ll think this is a set-up? That you told me he’d be here and he’ll feel betrayed?”
She hadn’t realized she was raising her voice, but Ursula, who was just coming into the kitchen, looked quickly from her to Fisher.
“Everything OK in here?”
“Fine, tea’s nearly ready,” Karen said briskly, pouring the boiling water in a steady stream on to the tea bags in the bottom of the pots.
A few minutes later she and Fisher were alone in the kitchen once more.
“Listen, Karen. We seem to have got off on the wrong foot, you and me. But we’re both on the same side. We both care a great deal about Will . . .” He paused, smiled at her. “Can we be friends?”
Karen pursed her lips. “I’m too annoyed with you at the moment, but I’ll think about it.”
Which made Alistair laugh, his face lighting up with real delight. Karen could see his charm suddenly and held out her hand.
*
The afternoon wore on, seamlessly morphing from turkey to pud to tea and Christmas cake—courtesy of Ursula—to cracker-pulling and more tea. The men were in no hurry to leave, the wild wind and rain that had sprung up during the day no incentive for someone with only a dismal hostel to go to.
Karen helped with the washing-up—not as bad as it might have been because of the paper plates and plastic cutlery and glasses—then sat amongst the men and listened to their stories. They were of all ages: some obviously had mental health or substance abuse problems, their twitchy anxiety and inability to relate painful to watch; some seemed bewildered as to how they had got themselves into this state; others were almost comfortable with who they were. But there was a good deal of humor and very little whining about their lot.
She had long since given up on William Haskell when he finally walked through the door of the church annex. And for a second she wondered if it was really him. He had lost weight, his dark hair was longer and wild from the wind outside, and he was dressed in jeans, heavy black work boots and a gray cable jumper. He looked younger. It was as if he had literally stripped off his old life to reveal a different human being beneath.
He didn’t notice her at first as he greeted some of the men at the tables—they clearly knew him and were pleased to see him. Fisher got up, his face tight with concern, and began to make his way across the room. But before he had reached his friend, William’s gaze, scanning the hall, lighted on Karen.
She held her breath.
He looked stunned, did a double take, a small frown appearing as he bit his lip, turned to listen to what Fisher was telling him. Karen couldn’t hear what he was saying, couldn’t hear anything anymore, in fact. The hum of chat, the scraping of chairs, the laughter, the wind rattling the flimsy roof covering had faded to zero. It was just her and William in this cocoon of silence. The room could have been empty for all she was aware. Then he was making his way toward her.
She got up slowly. “Hi, William.”
He took a deep breath. “Karen . . .”
William’s expression was unreadable, but the softness in his eyes as he looked at her was enough.
“I suppose you thought you’d escaped me,” she said, smiling up at him.
He smiled too now. “I suppose I did,” he said, but was prevented from saying any more as Sue came up to give him a hug and wish him Happy Christmas.
*
They were shutting the hall at seven and the men slowly shuffled out into the night. The storm had passed and it had stopped raining. Small groups still lingered outside the hall, smoking and chatting, reluctant to move on. The kitchen was back to its pristine state, pots and pans stacked on the shelves, the meager remains of the meal packed into foil parcels and handed out to the men for later.
Karen didn’t know what to do. There had been no chance to speak to William as various people claimed him in the hour before the hall closed. She wasn’t even sure if William would want to talk to her. Perhaps he would just go off into the night, disappear again—guarded by his friend, Alistair, of course—and refuse to communicate with her.
But as she said goodbye to the two women, got into her coat, extracted Largo from the clutches of a burly, bearded man with a Polish accent who had become the dog’s new best friend, William was suddenly at her side.
“Are you going home now?” he asked.
Karen looked at him. “I was, but I’m pretty tired. I might stay here tonight, go back in the morning.”
She saw him hesitate. “Well, if . . . if you have time and want to talk . . .”
“Of course I want to talk,” she said softly.
“Alistair . . .”
“I don’t want to talk with him there,” she said.
Will nodded. “No, I understand . . . but there isn’t really anywhere to go on Christmas Day except a noisy pub.”
“It’s stopped raining. We could just walk down to the beach.”
His face cleared. “The beach, good idea. There’s bound to be at least one café open along the front.”
Alistair came up, eyebrows raised as he looked from one to the other. “Is there a plan?”
“We’re going for a walk,” William said. “I’ll see you later.”
Fisher nodded and smiled at Karen, held his hand out as he said goodbye. “I hope I’m forgiven,” he said.
“Almost,” she said.
*
The promenade was dim, except for the swaying strings of colored Christmas lights hanging between the lamp posts, with the arcade and most of the cafés closed up. There were few people about on such a rough night, most of them probably comatose in front of The Sound of Music. The wind was still buffeting the shore, the black sea roiling over the beach in high, foamy lines.
For a while they stood in silence together, watching. They hadn’t said a word on their walk down to the seafront. The café they found was badly lit and empty except for a group of five teenagers—two boys and three girls—at the back, cans of Coke and Fanta and two white polystyrene containers of chips open on the table. The girl behind the counter, earphones in, cheap Santa hat pulled down over her pasty face, took their order for tea. They sat in the steamed-up window. Karen would almost have preferred the silence to continue. She decided to let him speak first.
“It’s good to see you,” was all he said, only glancing briefly up at her.
She nodded and silence fell again, only interrupted by the girl bringing two white mugs of tea and setting them down on the pale laminated table.
“I suppose you want some answers,” he said when she had gone.
She nodded, waited.
“Where to start . . .” He took a deep breath, looking down at his mug as he began to talk in a hesitant voice. “I suppose it was like the perfect storm. You, Rachel leaving home, the possibility of being promoted, Janey finding out. I haven’t been happy for a long time now, as I’m sure you realized.” He paused, cleared his throat. “Not just my marriage, but my work too. I’m not cut out to be a vicar, Karen—” He stopped again. “I passionately believe in God—I hope that will never change—but I can’t be the one to persuade other people to stick to the Anglican doctrine.”
“I didn’t know you were unhappy in your marriage.”
William shrugged. “No . . . well, we tried our best to make it work. Janey’s a good person, but she wasn’t cut out to be a vicar’s wife any more than I was to be a vicar. She hated it from the start, never understood why I’d made the change from a good career in advertising. And I admit, it is quite a burden on a wife—she has to be part of the whole Church package, like it or not.” He paused. “In the light of what’s happened, maybe she knew me better than I knew myself.”
“She put up a good show of liking it.”
“Yeah, in public. But at home she was miserable. Rachel was just about the only thing that kept us together.”
“When she confronted me about you, she seemed so keen on the bishop thing. As if she really wanted you to be one. Said I’d ruin your life if I messed that up.”
“I think she thought that any change would be better than staying a vicar’s wife. At least bishops have status, bishops’ wives don’t have to do all the community stuff. But even the thought of being a bishop helped to focus my mind, made me realize what I didn’t want.”
There was silence between them as they both contemplated the ruins of William’s marriage and career.
“She told Sheila you hadn’t warned her you were leaving till the morning you did. Then you just walked out. She said she didn’t even know where you were going. Everyone in the village thinks you’re a monster for doing that.”
William’s face tightened. “It wasn’t like that. Things . . . I didn’t deal with it well . . . but we both knew the writing was on the wall as far as our marriage was concerned.” He looked down. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Karen was puzzled. “Why was Janey so upset about me, then? She was acting like someone who wanted to save her marriage, not someone who had accepted it was all over. She did everything in her power to put me off, including saying you were serially unfaithful.”
“That was before—” He stopped. “Before things got really bad.”
Karen frowned. She believed what he was saying, but he seemed to be holding something back.
“But I assure you there were never any other women before you. A couple of women maybe were keener on me, as their vicar, than they should have been. But there was nothing more to it, I promise.”
William leaned back in his chair, his hands around his mug of tea, which he had hardly touched.
“And that’s the thing, Karen. What we had . . . I’m not sure it was real.”
She felt her stomach tighten. “Wasn’t real?”
“I wasn’t me . . . I was playing the vicar. Well, not playing it exactly. I meant it, or at least tried to mean it, but I was struggling every second of every day. I told you before, that day on the hill, but you didn’t believe me, that you were in love with the person you thought I was. A man of integrity, a good man, a man of God . . .” He paused. “I’m not that person.”
“You think I’m so shallow I’d fall for just an image?”
“Not an ‘image,’ but a package. You fell in love with a vicar, Karen.”
“Stop saying that. I get it. But I didn’t, you’re wrong. I fell in love with you, William. I didn’t give a toss if you were a vicar or a beach bum. It was you I loved.”
She spoke about her love in the past tense, she realized. And she asked herself now if there was any truth in what William was saying. She had met him at a vulnerable time in her life, he had saved her from guilt and despair. Was it, in fact, the counselor, the priest whom she had loved?
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Karen’s mind was boiling up like the sea outside, the whole fabric of her dreams suddenly threatened.
“So you’re saying you were never in love with me.” She didn’t make it a question.
There was a long moment of silence, stretching out her words until they reached breaking point.
“I was always in love with you,” he said, finally, his voice hardly above a whisper. The depth of his sincerity brought tears to her eyes. “From the first minute I set eyes on you.”
“Will . . .”
He shook his head vigorously. “But that isn’t the point. I lied to you, I led you up the garden path. The fact is, you have no idea who I am, Karen, who William Haskell is. You can’t, because I myself have no idea who I am right now either.”
She could see the tears in his eyes too.
“And anyway, all that’s in the past,” he went on. “Things have changed so much.”
“So you’re saying that although you loved me, you don’t love me anymore, now that you’re someone else?” She almost wanted to laugh, what he was saying was so tortuous, so ridiculous.
Her heart had contracted to the smallest, hardest stone when he insisted their love was a mirage, but then, seconds later, had soared like a bird escaping a cage as he admitted the exact opposite. And it was his confession of love that she heard, the rest just flimflam, stupid, so much white noise.
“I’m not talking about my feelings, I’m talking about yours,” he said.
“That isn’t for you to decide.”
He sighed, as if the discussion were too much for him. As it was becoming for her too. Did he have to make it so complicated?
“Listen, all I’m saying is that my life is chaos. Everything that I had has gone. I have no career, no home, no family, no money, no . . .” He let out a long sigh. “I literally don’t know which way is up at the moment. If it weren’t for Alistair . . .”
Silence.
“You remember that night at the beach, don’t you?” she said.
He nodded. “Of course I do.”
“That was as real to me as anything I’ve experienced in my whole life.”
Another silence.
“But it was a different time. It’s not now, Karen,” he said.
His lack of acknowledgment about their time together made Karen begin to doubt whether it had meant anything to him or not. Nor did she understand what he was getting at, this stubborn insistence that he was another person. It didn’t make sense.
“So this new life of yours . . . it obviously doesn’t include me.”
It seemed like an age before he replied, “It’s not that simple.”
And there was something in the way he spoke that stopped her from asking William what he meant.
“I’d better go . . . I have to find somewhere to stay.” She got up, her heart thumping furiously. “I feel as if we’ve been here before. I say I love you and you say I don’t. I could have saved us both the trouble of repeating ourselves.”
William got up too, put his hands on her arms. “Karen, please. Don’t be angry with me. I have nothing to offer you . . . really, nothing, you have to believe me.”
“You could have just told me so, months ago. You could have sent a ‘Dear John’ text telling me it was over. It would have been the decent thing to do.”
He looked into her eyes as they stood there, and she could see a desperate pain.
“I should have done that,” he said quietly as she wrenched herself free and slammed her way out of the café, running along the front like a demented woman, her heart bleeding and in tatters as if she had been stabbed.