Holly, Jack suspected, liked a plan. Which suited him just fine. In his experience, plans quite often fell apart at the first hurdle, but trying to get anything started without one was a recipe for disaster in itself.
‘Well, let’s think. We want to give her a proper Christmas, right?’
‘And ourselves, too,’ Holly added, with a small smile. ‘I mean, it’s for all four of us, right? So that none of us has to spend Christmas alone.’
‘Good point,’ Jack conceded. It was about all of them. And right now, in the moment, he wanted it to be perfect for Holly. Never mind the others. If he could give this lovely, lonely woman a perfect Christmas, he’d feel he’d done his duty at Maple Drive. Maybe then he could move on, with no regrets.
Or maybe, just maybe, he might even find a reason to stay.
‘So, where would you start, if you were putting together your perfect Christmas?’ he asked.
Holly tilted her head again, considering, and Jack took a moment to appreciate the long, white line of her neck, and the sparkly pins that held her wavy blonde hair away from her face. She was so beautiful, it was hard to imagine any man walking away from her willingly.
Clearly her ex was an idiot.
And right then, watching her dream up her perfect Christmas, Jack decided that he wouldn’t be an idiot too. If Holly gave him an indication that she wanted him to hang around Maple Drive a little longer, well, he’d do it. If there was a chance that Holly could be more than just Christmas for him, if there was even the smallest possibility that she could be the future and the family he was looking for, he had to take it.
If it didn’t work out, then he could move on later. There were always other places, other jobs, other streets. He had nothing else tying him to Maple Drive.
But his boss had been right. He couldn’t give up before he gave Maple Drive – and Holly – a proper chance.
‘Decorations,’ Holly said, at last, answering the question Jack had almost forgotten he’s asked. ‘I’d start with decorations.’
Kathleen, Christmas, planning … that was what they were talking about. Not the possibility of romance.
Jack hauled his errant brain back to the conversation at hand. ‘Well, your house is looking pretty thoroughly decorated. And I’m not sure how we’d get into Kathleen’s house to decorate without her noticing. So maybe we should move down the list.’
But Holly shook her head. ‘We might not be able to decorate inside her house …’ she said, leaving it dangling for him to catch on.
‘Icicles,’ he said, remembering the lights she’d taken down from the outside of the house. ‘Of course.’
‘Oh, I’ve got much more than just icicles here.’ Holly placed a hand on a large stack of delivery boxes beside her. What was in them? And, more to the point, why hadn’t he delivered them? ‘Special delivery one-day courier service from my favourite online Christmas decoration store,’ Holly explained. ‘I’ve got enough here to light up the entire street.’
‘Mrs Templeton will have a heart attack,’ Jack pointed out.
‘I don’t know,’ Holly replied, thoughtfully. ‘I mean, she seemed almost human, looking through the time capsule this afternoon. And besides, her big problem with my lights was that no one else in the street had any up, so they stood out.’
‘But if everyone has lights up …’ Well, then the whole street would look a hell of a lot more festive. And the huge smile on Holly’s face told him that it would be worth it.
Apparently, he was spending his Christmas Eve decorating Maple Drive. Strangely, he didn’t mind one bit.
And if Claude was still out there on Maple Drive, putting up lights might help them find him.
‘It’s all clear,’ Perdita whispered through the cat flap. ‘They’re doing something with boxes.’
I gave her a second to stand back, then launched myself at the cat flap. Apparently, the lack of food I’d consumed in the last day or so – since my last, lovely piece of gingerbread – had streamlined my impressive physique. I slipped through the cat flap a lot easier than I had the day before, anyway.
Holly’s kitchen was lit up from within, with strings of lights of every colour spread out across the kitchen table, and into the hallway. I could hear Jack and Holly talking in the other room, and glanced between the sound source and Perdita’s food bowl. Priorities, priorities. Food, or avoiding the pound?
Put like that, it was simple.
I dived for the food bowl, wolfing down as much cat food as I could stand in the shortest amount of time, then spun back round to Perdita. ‘So, where do I hide?’
Perdita narrowed her eyes. ‘Nowhere. Not until you’ve got rid of all the food around your mouth. I’m not having you make a mess of my lovely home.’
Impatiently, I ran my tongue around my face, savouring the last few morsels. ‘Happy?’
‘Barely.’ Perdita stalked towards the kitchen door. ‘Come on.’
I followed, cautiously, but Jack and Holly seemed far more engrossed in their strings of lights than anything else going on this evening. That was good. I hoped Perdita was right, and that the pound would be closed tomorrow. It was early evening now; maybe it was closed already.
But maybe I’d stay out of sight for a little bit longer, just in case.
‘This way,’ Perdita hissed, the ‘s’ on ‘this’ stretched out. She was already half way up the stairs.
Hopping over a string of lights shaped like snowflakes, I made it to the stairs and scurried up them behind her.
Perdita led me to a small room at the front of the house, with a single bed and a small desk under the window. ‘She never uses this room,’ she said, treading lightly on the bed spread. ‘You’ll be safe here.’
Downstairs, I heard doors opening and closing again, and Jack and Holly laughing as they left the house. Where were they going? Jumping up onto the desk, I peered out into the growing darkness, watching them leave. Jack had two large boxes in his arms, and Holly had another. They crossed the road, and knocked on the door at number 9.
‘So, what are you going to do now?’ Perdita asked, and I hopped down back onto the bed. It felt strange to be here, taking refuge with my enemy. But I was grateful to have a roof over my head tonight.
‘I thought I might nap,’ I said, considering my options. ‘Unless you know the whereabouts of that gingerbread house …?’ I added, hopefully.
‘I meant about your family,’ Perdita said, sitting back on her hind paws again, her tail wrapped around her fluffy body. ‘If they come back. What will you do?’
‘When they come back,’ I corrected. ‘They’re definitely coming back.’
‘They haven’t so far.’
‘They had somewhere to be. They were visiting Granny and Grandad.’ At least, that’s what I hoped. France, ferry and chateau still sounded a little too strange and exotic for me. ‘As soon as they’re done they’ll come back, and everything will be back to normal.’ That’s what I had to keep clinging on to.
‘Will it?’ Perdita asked. ‘They abandoned you, Claude. They left you here alone with no food, and nowhere to sleep. If it wasn’t for me you’d still be out there in the cold.’
‘They didn’t mean to. They put me in my crate, I just jumped out … to chase you, actually. This is really all your fault, you know.’
Perdita pressed her front paws against the bed cov
er, and I heard her claws pulling at the threads every time she lifted them. ‘At least I noticed you were still here. At least I’m helping you now. I’m here. They’re not.’
‘They’ll be back,’ I said again. ‘And then we can get back to normal.’ But even as I said the words, I realised what Perdita was getting at. How could things be normal again, after this? Whether they meant to or not, my people had left me alone – and they hadn’t come back. I could understand not realising I wasn’t in the car.
But I couldn’t get past the idea that they hadn’t come back for me.
What did that mean?
‘Now you’re getting it,’ Perdita said, watching me carefully. ‘You know, I can almost see the thoughts going through your head. You’re realising that they didn’t care about you enough to come back, aren’t you? So, I’ll ask you again, what are you going to do next?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, slowly, staring past her at an empty space on the wall. What would I do? They were still my people, even if they’d let me down. But if I couldn’t trust them to take care of me … maybe I would be better at the pound, with a chance of finding a family who could love me the way I’d love them.
Or maybe I should have left Maple Drive as I’d planned. Maybe the family I’d always taken for granted wasn’t mine, after all.
Perhaps it was time to find a new one.
‘I’ll see if I can find you some gingerbread,’ Perdita said, with more sympathy than I expected from her. ‘You look like you need it.’
‘Thanks.’ I watched her go, her padding paws silent on the carpet, then hunkered down on the bed, my head on my paws, my mind full of whirring thoughts and feelings I wasn’t used to.
It used to be so simple. Love your people, get loved in return. That was the way it was meant to be.