Once Upon a Christmas Night...
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Annie Claydon
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18
Chapter One
GREG SHAW OPENED the door of the doctors’ common room, not bothering to switch on the light, and slung himself into a chair. All he wanted was sleep. He could have done with a few days off in between returning from America and resuming his job, but what you wanted wasn’t always what you got. A day to get over the jet lag, unpack and restock the larder hadn’t been enough and he’d had to satisfy himself with doing none of those things with any degree of completeness.
He should go home. Catch some sleep before he was due back on shift again tomorrow. He tried to work up enough enthusiasm to propel himself into action by promising himself a hot shower and a cooked meal, but the relief of sitting here alone outweighed all of that at the moment. In the darkness, he was hardly aware of the fact that his eyes were closing.
* * *
‘Is it always so hot in here?’ Jessie Saunders picked her way down the steep concrete steps, which seemed to lead directly into a sauna.
‘No idea. Apparently the quickest way through is via the boiler room.’ Reena was having to shout now, to make herself heard over the din. ‘Watch out for that handrail, it wobbles terribly.’
‘So it’s fair to assume that Health and Safety haven’t been down here recently.’
‘Probably not.’ Reena shot her a grin and led the way through to the far door, which gave way to a cooler, quieter corridor. ‘The hospital records should be through there.’
The records room, as the notice on the door grandly announced, turned out to be a long, low-ceilinged vault, filled with row upon row of shelves. Reena felt in the pocket of her coat and consulted a piece of paper. ‘Right, so the early stuff’s over there in the far corner.’ She pulled a large, old-fashioned key from her pocket and indicated a heavy metal door.
‘What’s that? I didn’t know we had dungeons in the basement.’
‘It’s an old walk-in safe. It’s cool and dry so they keep the earlier documents in there. I had to promise Administration that we’d wedge the door open and keep the key with us at all times.’
‘And they know we’re down here this late?’ There was no reason for the basement to feel any darker or spookier now than it would have done at lunchtime. Somehow it did.
‘I said we were going to have a look after work. They might have thought that was five-thirty.’ Reena unlocked the door, pulling it back with an effort and wedging it firmly.
Jess shrugged, pulling a couple of pairs of surgical gloves from her pocket. ‘Gloves?’
‘Definitely.’
The boxes of papers stacked inside might be caked with dust, but they were stored in some sort of order. The year 1813 was located and the boxes pulled out into the cramped space outside the door.
‘Oh, you’ll never guess who I saw coming out of the canteen today.’ Reena was carefully sifting through the contents of the oldest storage box, trying not to disturb too much dust.
‘No, I don’t think I will.’
‘Give it a go, at least. Great smile.’
‘The tooth fairy?’
‘Ha-ha. Think taller. Darker and not wearing a tutu.’ Reena rolled her eyes when Jess gave her a blank look. ‘Your ex-boss.’
‘You mean...’ It would be disingenuous to pretend that she didn’t know who Reena meant. ‘Greg? He’s back?’
Breathing would be good right now, but Jess’s lungs seemed to have temporarily forgotten how. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the large ledger in front of her so they couldn’t betray her shock.
‘Yeah. Wherever he’s been for the last eight months, he’s been getting some sun. He’s looking good.’
Greg always looked good. Jess wondered whether Reena had any more substantive information and how she was going to ask for it without sounding too interested. ‘So how is he?’
‘I didn’t see him to speak to, he was moving too fast for that.’ Reena tossed her head and laughed. ‘You know Greg. He’s a busy kind of guy.’ She turned her attention back to the half empty storage box.
He was back. He’d probably had two or three girlfriends since Jess had seen him last and had almost certainly forgotten all about That Kiss. Just the way she should have done.
‘This looks promising... Jess?’
‘Uh?’
‘I think this is exactly what we’re looking for.’
‘Yeah?’ Jess straightened, shrugging off the brief scrap of memory, which seemed to have lodged itself right in the centre of her consciousness. ‘Let’s have a look.’
* * *
Greg drifted into what passed for wakefulness in time to hear the clock in the small courtyard outside the common-room window chiming out midnight. Silence fell, and he sat up straight, easing his shoulders to iron out a few of the kinks. There was a scraping outside in the corridor, a dull thud and... If he didn’t know better he would have said that the clatter was the sound of chains.
Leave it out. After eight months, spent jetting around America and Australia, with some of the sunnier parts of Europe thrown in, London in early November seemed claustrophobic, full of shadows. But it was home. He’d longed to be back home, and now here he was. Feeling just as empty and unsure as he had for the last ten months.
Another clatter. If it wasn’t a chain, it was something that sounded pretty much identical. Greg was suddenly awake, his eyes straining in the darkness, and then clamped shut as white light hit his retinas, burning the outline of a shadowy figure into his mind’s eye.
‘Greg!’
‘What...? Jess?’ He blinked against the light streaming in through the open door and slowly began to make her out. She had on the same red coat that she’d been wearing when he’d seen her last. His mouth went dry. When he’d seen her last...
When he’d seen her last he’d been kissing her. The length of chain, slung over her shoulder and trailing behind her on the floor, was new, and she hadn’t been quite so grimy then either. The temptation to reach out and touch her, pretend she had a smudge on her cheek so that he could wipe it away, was almost irresistible.
She was staring at him as if she’d just seen a ghost. She swallowed hard and seemed to come to her senses. ‘I heard you were back.’
‘Yeah. Only just. I landed yesterday morning, and got a call at lunchtime, saying that they were short-staffed in A and E and could I start work today.’ Guilt trickled down his spine. He probably should have called her. He’d thought about it often enough.
She nodded. No hint in her steady gaze that their kiss figured anywhere in her attitude towards him. ‘Well, it’s nice to see you back. Have you got...things...settled?’
‘Not quite.’ It was never going to be completely settled. ‘For the time being.’ The urge to explain himself was prickling at the back of Greg’s neck, but he had no idea where to start. ‘Jess...’
‘Yes?’
‘What’s with the chains?’
She flushed prettily. Dragged the knitted beret off her head, leaving her honey-coloured hair impossibly rumpled. A little longer than it had been last Christmas, and the style suited her.
‘Ah.’ She started to unwind the length of chain from her neck. ‘It’s for the dressing up. For Christmas.’ She indicated a stack of plastic crates in the corner.
‘You’re going to dress up in chains for Christmas?’ Greg couldn’t help smiling and she shot him a glare in return.
‘No, of course not. Gerry is.’ She finally managed to free herself from the chain, opening one of the crates and dumping it inside.
‘Gerry’s going to dress up in chains for Christmas?’ Gerard Mortimer, the senior cardiac consultant. Greg was sure that there were plenty of things more incongruous in the world, but at the moment he couldn’t bring any of them to mind. ‘Starting when?’
This time her look was ferocious enough to have cut through cold steel. ‘Some of us are dressing up as characters from Dickens’s novels. Gerry’s going to be Jacob Marley’s ghost.’
There were no words to say. Greg began to wonder whether he wasn’t dreaming after all. It wouldn’t have been the first time that Jess had featured in his dreams, but he had to admit that the chains were a new development. Maybe fatigue was lending an edge to his imagination.
‘Are you okay?’ She was staring at him intently.
‘Uh...?’ On the off chance that he was dealing with reality and not a set of unconnected threads from his unconscious mind, he should give an answer of some sort. ‘Yeah, fine. Jet lag. So who are you dressing up as?’ It couldn’t hurt to ask, and Greg found that he was suddenly and irrationally interested.
‘I’m not dressing up. I’m organising everything.’
‘So this Christmas won’t be as chaotic as last...’ He bit his tongue but it was too late. The cat had clawed its way out of the bag and ushered something that looked suspiciously like an elephant into the room.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
She was blushing furiously, refusing to meet his gaze. She remembered. And from the look of things she was no more indifferent to it than he was. Greg could barely suppress his grin.
‘I meant that...the weather will probably be better.’
‘Yes. I expect so. Last year was quite unusual.’ She was backing towards the door now. ‘It’s late. I’d better be getting home.’
‘See you tomorrow?’
‘Yes... Maybe.’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’ The door banged behind her, and Greg settled back into his chair. Just another ten minutes, to settle his jumbled thoughts, then he’d go home.
Last Christmas...
The dream seized Greg with all the colour and immediacy of a memory, which had shadowed him for the last thirty years. The large, opulent room and the child, sitting on a thick, intricately patterned rug on the floor.
He was making something. Without having to look, Greg knew what it was. The Christmas card was for his father, the picture on the front a wishful representation of a family—father, mother and their five-year-old son—under a Christmas tree. It was almost painful to watch his younger self, so absorbed in this task, so careful with the picture and the wording inside the card, because Greg knew what was to come.
The lavishly wrapped presents from America had been no substitute for his father’s arrival, but the child had believed all the excuses that Christmas. It had taken years of broken promises to finally squash Greg’s faith and make him realise that the time his father gave so freely to the company and the people he worked with was doled out like a miser’s shilling to his family.
‘It’s not your fault.’ Greg breathed the words to his younger self, wondering if there was any way he could comfort the boy. Apparently not. His own memories still tasted of the bitterness of dreams that had never been smashed but had just dissolved under the weight of reality.
The boy was growing, though, almost before his eyes. Finding his way in the world. A first kiss on a sun-strewn hillside in Italy, where he had been holidaying with his mother’s family. The letter to his father, telling him that he was going to medical school, which had gone unanswered. The party that his mother and stepfather had thrown for him before he’d left home. The hard work, the weary nights and the smile of a woman he’d saved. She’d been the first, and from then on he’d known that this was what he was supposed to do.
Greg was reeling from the vivid clarity of the thoughts and memories flashing in front of him. Faces, dreams. The soft touch of a woman’s skin. Jess. She’d been the last, delicious taste of the life that he’d left behind. Maybe not a perfect life, there had been the usual mistakes, the usual disappointments, but it had been his and he had a singular affection for it.
Finally, the parade of images slowed. Stopped. It was last Christmas, in the dark, deserted courtyard outside the hospital, and Greg could see himself, talking to Jess. Although he couldn’t hear what they were saying, he knew well enough. Knew what was coming, too, and he held his breath, afraid that in some way he might alter history and divert their path away from that sweet outcome.
She must have been as back-breakingly tired as he was, but she still shone. Still wore that red sparkly headband that had brought a little Christmas cheer into an A and E department that had been in a state of siege after a cold snap, accompanied by snow, had filled the waiting room, and a flu bug had thrown the holiday rota into chaos.
Greg saw himself grimace. They’d got to the goodbye. Jess had worked for him for two years, and was leaving soon, to take up a post in Cardiology. It was what she wanted to do and he was pleased for her but even now, ten months later, the sudden feeling of loss stabbed at him.
There it was... Greg watched as his former self leaned forward, a brief kiss on the cheek. Saw her flinch back in surprise as he went to kiss the other cheek, and knew that he’d whispered something about a single kiss not being enough, using his Italian heritage as an excuse for his own craving to feel her skin against his again.
More talk, their bodies seeming to grow closer by the second, and then he’d caught her hand. Pressed her fingers against his lips, smiling when she didn’t draw back. And then Greg had heedlessly trashed the first of the three rules he’d lived by up until that moment. He’d gone ahead and kissed her, despite the fact that Jess was still a member of his team for another week, and he always, whatever the circumstances, kept it strictly professional at work.
‘Think you’re in control of this, don’t you?’
He murmured the warning and his former self took no heed of it. Jess would show him differently, any minute now. Greg watched as she pulled away for a moment and then kissed him back, her hand sliding over the stubble on his jaw and coming to rest on his neck, in the exact place that had suddenly and inexplicably seemed to control the whole of his body.
She’d torn his breath away, taken everything that he was and made it hers. What was the second rule again? Don’t let your love life get out of control? That had dissolved in the wash of pleasure that had been engulfing him, without anything more than a slight pop. This had been uncharted territory. He’d known no more about Jess’s personal life than she had about his, and if that wasn’t out of control he didn’t know what was.
It was Jess who had come to her senses. Down-to-earth, dependable Jess, who had always seemed so immune to his charm.
‘This might not be such a good idea. We work together...’
She’d given him a way out, and he’d stubbornly refused to take it.
‘Not for much longer.’
‘I suppose I won’t be seeing so much of you after next week. When I take up the post in Cardiology.’
There had been a gleam of mischief in her smile.
The third rule had flared and burned in the heat of her touch. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
‘You’ll see me. I’ll find you.’
He had kissed her one last time, just to let her know that he would. And she had clung to him, to let him know just what his welcome would be like when he did.
‘Happy Christmas, Greg.’
‘Happy Christmas, Jess.’
* * *
Greg’s eyes opened and he found himself staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t even looked for her, let alone found her. In the week between Christmas and the New Year the call had come, telling him that his father was gravely ill. Instead of going to Jess’s goodbye drinks, Greg had been on the motorway, on his way to his father’s house. Too late, he’d realised that he’d left no message to tell her why he couldn’t be there.
Days had turned into weeks. Every moment that Greg hadn’t been at work had been spent either on the road or at his father’s bedside. He’d known that he was dying, but somehow it had seemed all wrong when the man who had capitulated to no one gave way to death. Then the will had been read, and Greg’s world had been turned upside down. He’d packed his bags and gone to America to try and sort it all out, knowing that it was too late to seek her out.
Maybe she’d forgiven him. She certainly hadn’t forgotten him. And maybe now he could do what he’d neglected to do before, and had been regretting for the last ten months. Get to know Jess. Find out whether that kiss had been just an aberration, something that had happened which had never been meant to be, or whether it might, just might have been the start of something.
