Christmas at Strand House: A gorgeously uplifting festive romance!

‘Salmon in next,’ Lissy said. ‘Then there’s the salad to throw together and the potatoes to boil. Shouldn’t be long now until we’re all sat down. My stomach’s beginning to rumble and I dare say Janey at least will be wanting something to eat – something to sort her blood sugar levels after her shock. I was going to set the table in the dining room but I’m thinking maybe in here, around the island, might be best. Less formal. What do you think?’

Xander thought Lissy was sounding slightly anxious now. Worried perhaps that she wasn’t being the perfect hostess or something. From where he stood, Xander thought she looked pretty perfect to him with her long, slim nose, full lips, and flawless skin. Lissy had a slight Mediterranean look about her and somewhere in the depths of his mind Xander remembered Claire saying once that Lissy’s great grandmother had been Italian. Yes, that was the look – Sophia Loren in her younger days.

‘I think eating here would be best. I’m hardly dressed for formal dining. However, before you throw me out for having the wrong kind of clothes, I have brought new chinos and my very best Paul Smith shirt to wear on Christmas Day.’

‘I’m not going to throw you out,’ Lissy said so quietly Xander only just caught her words. ‘I’m glad you’re here. Really glad. Okay?’

‘Very okay,’ Xander croaked out. Something was happening here between him and Lissy, he could feel it. He cleared his throat, pushing back an emotion he wasn’t sure of. That getting to know a new woman feeling? He hadn’t felt that in a long time. ‘I’ll set the cutlery out while you see to the rest of it, shall I?’

‘Please. Christmassy napkins are in the end drawer of the island. Any ones will do. There’s loads in there.’

Xander was glad of something to do as he rifled through the end drawer that did, as Lissy had said, have loads of napkins in there, because what he really wanted to do at that moment was put his arms around Lissy, bury his head in her hair. The slightly tipsy dance they’d shared at his wedding came back to him. The feeling he’d had then that the chemistry between them could lead to other things, was threatening to overwhelm him now. Not that there was anything to stop him letting it take hold now, was there? He so wanted to kiss Lissy.

Too soon, man, too soon.

Xander mentally brought himself to his senses and got on with the job in hand. He settled on some napkins that had black and grey fir trees on a white background. Those should do. They matched the black and white of the kitchen floor tiles. Almost.

‘Right,’ Lissy said. ‘That’s the salmon in.’ She opened the fridge and pulled out the chiller basket, brimming with salad stuff. Then she lit the gas under the potatoes. ‘I’m going to have to shift if we’re going to sit down to eat this before midnight.’

‘Right,’ Xander said, although he wouldn’t have minded being alone with Lissy a bit longer. Until midnight. And after. And …

‘Going back to what we were talking about earlier,’ Lissy said, turning from the stove to look at him. ‘I wrote to Claire’s parents as soon as you told me what had happened, and then again after the funeral. They didn’t respond. I found that sad and I admit to being a bit put out because Claire had been in my life since I was six years old, as had they. But then I gave it some thought and I can’t imagine anything in the whole world that’s worse than losing a child, and I haven’t got any to lose. But I know a couple of people who have been in that living nightmare of a scenario and it looks like the scariest, saddest place.’

‘Did you want children?’ Xander asked. ‘From your marriage? No, scratch that, that question is way out of order. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be. The short answer is I wouldn’t have minded children, but Cooper wasn’t keen. Maybe having them with Cooper wasn’t the right thing for me?’ Lissy shrugged in an I-don’t-know sort of way. Her eyes had widened as though she was asking his opinion on whether children with Cooper would have been a bad idea.

‘Now that you’ve split, maybe not,’ was all Xander could think of to say.

‘I think you’re right,’ Lissy said. ‘I’m a child of a broken marriage and it still hurts like hell so … anyway I went on the pill – which is probably too much information!’

All information received and stored, Xander thought, but didn’t say.

‘Anyway,’ Lissy went on when Xander didn’t respond to that comment, ‘my practice is hyper-busy, so it was perhaps a blessing in a way that children didn’t happen for us. I don’t know how I’d have coped running a business and looking after children. And this conversation is getting a bit deep as Christmas conversations go! Shall we change the subject?’

‘Knitting?’ Xander joked. ‘Twelve-box sudokus? Neither of which I do, by the way.’

‘Phew!’ Lissy laughed. ‘Something else we have in common.’

‘I’m feeling a bit spare part,’ Xander said, quietly thrilled that he and Lissy seemed to be laying their cards in front of one another as it were. Trading information. Getting to know one another just a little bit more. ‘Anything else I can do to help?’

‘There is. Could you get four large glasses and four small out of the cupboard and give them a buff up with this?’

Lissy reached for another tea towel and threw it towards him.

Xander found the glasses and began polishing vigorously. Neither spoke for a few minutes, each getting on with their respective tasks. But Xander found he didn’t like the silence. He needed to hear Lissy’s voice again.

‘I often wish Claire and I had had children,’ he said. ‘I’d have something of her now around me always. A little girl that looked like her and a little boy I could have done boys’ stuff with. But she …’

‘I know, Xand,’ Lissy said. ‘She said. All the tests and everything. I’m sorry …’ Lissy’s voice trailed away as though she’d decided she’d said too much.

Of course Claire would have told Lissy about the tests they’d both had when children just didn’t happen for them. Women talked about stuff like that – more than men did. He swallowed hard. Well, he was a man and he was talking now. He had to know so he had to ask?

‘Did Claire tell you that after so many tests we began to wonder if we were on the payroll at the hospital, the only option for us was egg donation?’

‘Yes,’ Lissy said.

‘And that Claire didn’t want to go down that road?’

‘Yes,’ Lissy said again.

‘She said the child would be mine but would never be hers and I said that that was rubbish because she would be carrying it for nine months and it would absorb the foods she ate and what she drank and feel her heart beating next to it.’ Xander had to stop speaking because he was almost choking with emotion now.

‘I know,’ Lissy said. She reached out a hand to touch him gently on the arm. ‘Look, Xand, I’m really sorry that you’re hearing all this now but in a way it’s a relief for me that you know that I knew because, well … I don’t like secrets, and that was a big one I was carrying. I was sad for Claire but now I’m feeling really sad for you as well. We tend not to think how it is for the men.’

‘Thanks,’ Xander said. ‘We didn’t argue much, Claire and me, but we did debate that one long and hard. In the end I decided it had to be Claire’s decision.’

‘I know,’ Lissy said sadly.

‘We slept apart for the first time in our marriage that night and … oh God, we were going to change the subject and now …’

‘I know that, too,’ Lissy said. ‘Claire called me that last morning …’

‘When?’ Xander interrupted. A thought had just struck him – had she been talking on her mobile to Lissy when the accident had happened?

‘About nine o’clock. She was putting fuel in the car and talking to me at the same time. I could hear the pump whirring, and traffic noise. Does that put your mind at rest?’

She knew what he’d been thinking, didn’t she? How heartwarming a thought that was.

‘What did she say?’ Xander asked.

‘What you’ve just said, and that she was going to give it some more thought, read up on egg donation and see if there was a way she could accept it.’

‘You’re not just saying that?’ Xander asked. ‘To make me feel better about it?’

‘No. Why would I?’

‘Sorry. Scratch that. Heart’s on my sleeve at the moment.’

‘Best place sometimes,’ Lissy said. ‘We all know where we are then, don’t we?’

And where are we? Xander wondered. You and me, Lissy? Were they ready yet to start a relationship that goes from being friends because Claire was Lissy’s friend, to something more?

‘You okay?’ Lissy asked.

‘Yeah, yeah. Fine. Well, getting there. Thanks, you know, for your understanding and being so honest. We’ve cleared the air a bit, haven’t we?’

‘We have. I don’t know if we’d have had this conversation if poor Janey hadn’t had the terrible shock she had and opened up about her truths, so …’