21. Twenty-One

21

PRESENT

I t starts snowing again on the way home from the auction; big old flakes that cover the windscreen of Elliot’s hire car within seconds, and leave me crossing my fingers and hoping he knows how to drive in this weather.

“I can’t believe this,” says Elliot for what must be at least the fifth time since we got back into the car. “Seriously, can you believe the same woman we’ve been trying to find all this time is the person who made our snow globe? Just imagine her making it … maybe showing it to Luke, and then all these years later, his great-grandson happens to be the one to find it on some market stall? It’s crazy.”

He slaps one hand down on the steering wheel, just to underline his point.

“It’s pretty wild,” I agree, trying not to think about the way he keeps talking about us as if we’re still a ‘we’. “If you’d put it into your book, I’d have put a big red line through it and told you coincidences like that just don’t happen in real life. Wait: are you going to put it into your book? The next one, I mean? Oh, my God, you are, aren’t you?”

I clap my hand over my mouth, pantomiming shock, and Elliot’s hands tighten on the wheel, his shoulders rigid with sudden tension.

“I don’t know what I’m going to put into the next book,” he says at last. “Seriously. If I did, I wouldn’t have my agent hounding me for ideas every few minutes. Or it feels like that, anyway.”

He slams the brakes on to avoid a snow plow that’s just pulled out of a side road in front of us, and I take advantage of the distraction to carefully arrange my face into a more neutral expression than the one it instantly assumed at the mention of his successful-author problems.

Excuse me if I don’t feel too sorry for the man rumored to have been given one of the biggest advances in his publisher’s history.

“That’s not why I asked you to come with me today, though,” he goes on, pulling in behind the tractor, which is now moving painfully slowly along the little country road. “I wasn’t looking for inspiration, or trying to persuade you to help me again. I got the message about that yesterday. Loud and clear. I was just genuinely excited when I realized there might be a connection between Evie and our snow globe. I thought — well, I hoped — you might be too. Or that you might be interested, at least.”

This time I’m definitely going to object to the casual reference to “our” snow globe; but then I remember how I lied to him about not knowing what happened to it, and I quickly close my mouth on the words.

“I was interested,” I tell him reluctantly. “I am interested. It’s just —”

I’m saved the trouble of figuring out exactly how to finish that sentence by Elliot, who swears loudly as a spray of snow hits the windscreen, thrown up by the snowplow in front of us.

“Um, are you okay over there?” I ask, as the hire car veers dangerously close to the center of the road before righting itself. “You have driven in snow before, haven’t you?”

“Of course I haven’t driven in snow, Holly,” he replies, speaking through gritted teeth. “I’m from Florida. And the last time I was here in the snow, the roads were cleared before I got on them. I’ve driven in torrential rain and hurricane-force winds, though. It’s the same thing.”

“I’m not sure it is, really,” I begin, stopping when I see the look on his face. “D’you want me to drive?” I offer reluctantly, not sure I’d do much better, really — especially considering that it only seems to snow when he’s here; so, once in a decade, basically. It’s not like I have a huge amount of experience with driving in the stuff either.

“No, it’s fine,” he insists, frowning as another solid wall of snow hits the windscreen. “It’s totally fine. I’m in complete control here.”

I stifle a giggle as he attempts to indicate to pass the snowplow, and turns the hazard lights on instead.

“Maybe we should pull over?” I suggest. “Just for a few minutes, to let this thing get far enough ahead that it’s not going to be constantly trying to bury us all the way home?”

“I told you, it’s fine,” he repeats, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

The snow on the windscreen gets thicker, the wiper blades struggling to clear it.

“Elliot, just pull over,” I say firmly, feeling the car start to drift to the center of the road again. “I don’t think this is going to stop anytime soon. Look!”

Up ahead, the sky is pure white, appearing almost to merge into the road, making the surrounding countryside look surreal and other-worldly. It’s not just snowing any more; it’s a full-on blizzard, and I feel a twinge of apprehension as I think of the narrow, hilly little road we’ll have to navigate to get back to the village.

“Still, I guess it’ll give you more material for your book if we get stuck out here,” I say when Elliot continues driving. “So, at least that’s something.”

“Okay,” Elliot says, his jaw tight with some suppressed emotion. “That’s it.”

I look on incredulously as he slams on the brakes, before jamming the car into reverse and starting to execute a three-point turn — only it ends up being more of a 15-point turn thanks to the narrowness of the road and his inability to steer on the slippery surface.

“Um, I was just joking,” I say. “You know, trying to break the tension? You don’t have to take me at my word and try to throw us into the middle of some thriller plot, you know.”

Elliot curses again as the car’s wheels spin under us.

“Please tell me we’re not at the start of a movie right now,” I say pleadingly. “Please tell me I’m not the one who dies first, because she wore the wrong shoes for the snow.”

I glance down at my leather boots, chosen this morning because they make my legs look longer, and because Paris deems them to be almost acceptable. Not chosen for their usefulness in the snow, needless to say; and I’ve already had one footwear-related incident this week — I’d really prefer not to have another.

Elliot pauses in the act of wrestling with the steering wheel, and his dark blue eyes lock onto mine.

“No, Holly,” he says. “I’m not kidnapping you, and we’re not in a thriller movie. I’m trying to get us off this road and back to my rental, so we can talk. I think it’s time we had this out once and for all; don’t you?”

The Airbnb Elliot’s staying in turns out to be just off the road we were traveling on, and about half-a-mile back, which explains his decision to take us there, rather than trying to drive the rest of the way into town in the blizzard.

What’s slightly less clear to me as we bump our way down the short driveway is what, exactly, he’s hoping to achieve by us ‘having it out’, as he puts it. It’s not like I’m going to forgive him for leaving me the way he did; or for using me as material for the dislikeable ‘heroine’ of his book, either. No, I absolutely will not be accepting any apologies about that.

Not even if he begs me.

Which I’m secretly hoping he will, if we’re being totally honest.

No, I’m just going to be polite but distant, and show absolutely no interest whatsoever in —

“Oh my God, look at this place!”

The words burst out of me as Elliot brings the car to a stop in front of a long, low building, which looks a lot like a box with windows. Even the roof is made of windows; it’s one of those sloping ones that’s made almost entirely of glass, and there’s another wall of glass which takes up almost one whole wall of the single story building, allowing the light to flood in. Once we’re inside the gigantic, open-plan living area, which has a dining table on one side and a sofa on the other, I see that the house looks out onto a snow-covered valley, all rolling hills and frosty treetops.

“Wow, look at this,” I say, wandering over to a desk which has a laptop sitting open on top of it, and a row of black and white photos of the local area on the wall behind. “It’s Bramblebury, years ago. And this one’s…”

I stop in mid-sentence, realizing I’m looking at a photo of the village pond with its surface coated in thick ice. It must be from the same year Elliot and I skated on it; it has to be, in fact, because the pond hasn’t iced over again since then. But here it is, frozen in time; maybe even on the same day I dropped my phone on its surface and Elliot told me he loved me.

But Elliot lied. The ice melted. Everything changed; which makes this particular ghost of Christmas past feel a bit like a slap to the face.

“Um, is this your new book” I ask, turning my attention to the laptop instead, to get the memory of that night out of my head.

“No,” says Elliot, stepping up behind me and snapping it shut. “No, that’s just some emails I need to answer. Do you want something to eat? Drink? There’s a complicated-looking coffee machine in the kitchen. And something that looks like an old-fashioned stove.”

“An Aga,” I confirm, seeing the corner of it through the open door that leads out of the huge living area we’re standing in. “I’ve always wanted one. Elliot, this place is amazing.”

He shrugs modestly.

“It’s not mine,” he replies, smiling nevertheless. “I can’t take any credit for it.”

“No, but you can take credit for writing the book that paid for it, I guess,” I say, thinking out loud. “My books don’t even make enough to pay for the Aga.”

“Your books?” Elliot replies, his forehead creasing in confusion. “I thought there was just one book? The one you’re working on now?”

“Umm. About that,” I begin, feeling guilty, but not really knowing why. It’s not like I owe him an explanation of my life, after all. “I’ve been doing a bit of ghostwriting on the side. Quite a lot, actually. So I’ve written quite a few books. Just none you’d ever have heard of.”

“Really?” He looks surprisingly interested in this. “What kind of books?”

“Non-fiction ones,” I admit, not wanting to tell him any of the titles. “Except this current one. It’s a novel. It’s my first novel.”

I feel absurdly proud saying this, even though I know it’s not strictly true, because it’ll technically be Vivienne’s twenty-third novel — or whatever number she’s up to now.

It’s still my first, though; and I’m going to allow myself a brief moment of pride in it.

“It’s my first ghostwritten novel,” I clarify for Elliot’s benefit. “It won’t have my name on it, obviously, but it’s my plot, and my characters. And my writing, obviously.”

“That doesn’t seem very fair, somehow,” says Elliot. He puts Evie’s box, which he’s carried carefully in from the car, onto a glass topped coffee table near the window, then sits down on a long, L-shaped sofa. He gestures for me to come and join him, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be leaving here anytime soon, so I cross the room and take a seat at the opposite end of the ‘L’, as far away from Elliot as possible.

“It’s a lot more common than you’d think,” I tell him, sinking into the squashy cushions. “Ghostwriting. You’d be surprised how many authors have a bit of help from people like me. Well, I mean, you probably wouldn’t be surprised, would you?”

Elliot’s face instantly clouds over.

“I just meant you wouldn’t be surprised because you’re part of the industry, “ I add quickly. “Not because … because …”

“Because my one and only book exists purely because of you?” he says, his voice ominously quiet. “Because you’re the one who came up with the plot line that everyone loved? Because you helped me with those early chapters I showed you, when I was just fumbling along in the dark, not knowing where I was going with it? Because I took our relationship and turned it into a story? Is that what you were thinking?”

For the first time ever, I find myself wishing Levi was here, to jump in and take the focus away from me, like he always does. But there’s just me and Elliot, which means it’s up to me to answer him.

“No,” I reply evenly. “That’s not what I was thinking, actually. I really did just mean that you obviously know more about the publishing world than most people. But … well, it is true, isn’t it? You did do all of those things? Or am I wrong?”

I hold my breath, hoping he’s going to tell me I am. Because, honestly, I’d love to be wrong about all of this; just like I’d love to wake up tomorrow morning and discover this was all a bad dream, and I’m 24 again, and in love with a man who loves me back.

Instead, Elliot gets up and starts pacing back and forth in front of the window. Actually pacing . Like Ebenezer Scrooge trying to figure out why all these ghosts are suddenly tormenting him.

“I know that’s what it looks like,” he says, turning to face me at last. “And I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong. But that’s not what I was trying to do, Holly. It’s not what I meant.”

“So… it all just happened by accident?” I reply. “You just accidentally wrote the book, and it completely by chance ended up having a character in it who’s almost exactly like me? Other than the thing with the doctor, obviously. And the bird. And, well, all the shouting she does. I’m not a shouter, Elliot. I hardly ever shout.”

“You’re … kind of shouting now?” Elliot replies cautiously.

“You said you were going to make up a story for Evie and Luke, because we couldn’t find out what the real one was,” I point out. “But instead you just used us ; you basically superimposed me onto Evie, and made me your story. Can you blame me for shouting?”

I attempt to sit up straighter on the sofa in a bid to assert myself, but the cushions are too soft for that, so I end up perching on the edge of it instead, like a budgie.

“I don’t blame you,” Elliot says in a new, harder tone. “But I’m not going to pretend I totally understand you, either. Not any more. Because, ever since I came back here, you’ve been acting like I did you some huge wrong, and all I did was write a book. That’s it. Nothing more.”

A dozen or more objections to this come rushing to my lips, each one jostling the others as it tries to get there first. Before I can pick a winner, though, Elliot jumps back in.

“You didn’t ghostwrite my novel, Holly,” he says wearily, “But you haunted it all the same. You haunted me . And you’re there in every single page. Every last word. I owe it all to you. All of it. And I know you think I did it because I didn’t care about your feelings, or because I was just using you or whatever, but I didn’t. I swear to you. The book was never supposed to hurt you. It wasn’t supposed to be an attack. It was supposed to be a love letter.”

I teeter dangerously on the edge of my sofa-perch, feeling like all the air’s been taken out of my lungs.

“A love letter? The Snow Globe ?” I say, just to confirm we’re talking about the same book here. “To me ?”

“Yes, to you,” Elliot replies, amused. “Who else would I have written a love letter to? Sandra at The Rose?”

“That would actually be slightly more believable than you writing one to me,” I retort. “Especially one that wasn’t true. And it wasn’t, was it? The story you told wasn’t even true.”

My voice is starting to sound croaky now, which is a sure sign I’m about to cry; and I am not about to let Elliot Sinclair see me cry, so I jump up from the sofa — well, it’s more like an odd kind of bounce, really, but hopefully he won’t have noticed — and reach for my coat.

There’s absolutely no plan in my head beyond getting out of this room before I burst into tears and embarrass myself even more than I already have. I have no idea how I’m going to get home in the middle of a blizzard. Or what I’m going to do once I get there. All I know is I don’t want to be here anymore, so I pull on my coat and whirl around to face the door, ready for my big exit.

Only it doesn’t quite work out like that.

Because the thick winter coat is both longer and swishier than I’d given it credit for. And, as I turn around in the space between the sofa and the coffee table, the hem whips out and hits something. Something fragile and old, which falls to the tiled floor with a sickening crash that seems to go on and on, even though it only takes a fraction of a second to fall; a fraction of second, in which Evie Snow’s box hits the floor of a luxury Airbnb that she couldn’t even have imagined existing, and breaks into a million pieces.