At some point soon she was going to have to sit her little girl down and tell her that Santa couldn’t deliver a daddy. Otherwise Christmas morning was going to be a disappointment.
Trying to console herself with the thought that there must be something else that Lizzie would like for Christmas, Bryony realised that Jack had stopped the car.
‘Ready to unload this tree?’ He glanced behind him and winced. ‘I can’t believe you chose a tree that big.’
Lizzie pulled the headphones off her ears and giggled. ‘It wasn’t Mummy, it was you, Jack.’
‘Me?’ He looked horrified as he jumped out of the car with athletic grace and turned to lift the little girl out. ‘I chose that?’
Lizzie was laughing. ‘You know you did.’
‘Well, we’d better get it in your house, then.’
Laughing and grumbling, Jack dragged the tree inside the house and proceeded to secure it in a bucket with his usual calm efficiency.
Bryony gazed upwards and shook her head in disbelief. ‘It’s bent at the top.’
‘It’s perfect,’ Lizzie sighed, and Jack nodded solemnly.
‘Perfect.’
Bryony rolled her eyes, forced to accept that she was outnumbered. ‘OK. Well, we’ve got it now, so let’s decorate it.’
They spent the rest of the afternoon draping the tree with lights and baubles until it sparkled festively. Lizzie produced a pink fairy to go on top of the tree and Jack lifted her so that she
could position it herself.
Then Jack went into the garden and cut boughs of holly from the tree and they decorated the fireplace.
Bryony produced mince pies and they sat on the carpet, admiring their decorations and enjoying the atmosphere.
Bryony smiled as she looked around her. ‘I feel Christmassy.’
‘That’s because of the size of the tree,’ Jack told her, his handsome face serious as he bit into a mince pie. ‘Any smaller and you wouldn’t be feeling the way you’re feeling now.’
But watching him and Lizzie fighting over the last mince pie, Bryony realised that the warm Christmassy feeling that she had in the pit of her stomach had nothing to do with the tree and everything to do with the three of them being together. They felt like a family.
But they weren’t a family.
Jack didn’t want to be part of a family.
Watching Lizzie climbing all over him, dropping crumbs over his trousers and the carpet, Bryony wondered if he realised that he actually was part of a family.
Whether he liked it or not, he was a huge part of her life. And she couldn’t imagine it any other way, even if ultimately she found a daddy for Lizzie. And just thinking of how she was going to tell Lizzie that Santa hadn’t managed to produce a daddy on Christmas Day filled her with overwhelming depression.
Suddenly needing to be on her own, Bryony stood up. ‘I need to get ready. Toby’s picking me up at seven,’ she said brightly, ‘and I don’t want to smell like a Christmas tree.’
She half expected Jack to say something about her going out with Toby. After all, he’d been less than enthusiastic about her other attempts to date men. But he just smiled at her and carried on playing with Lizzie.
Feeling deflated and not really understanding why, Bryony ran herself a deep bath and lay in a nest of scented bubbles for half an hour, telling herself that she was going to have a really great evening with Toby.
She was going to wear the black dress again.
And it was nothing to do with Jack’s comments about her having good legs, she told herself firmly as she dried herself and dressed carefully. It was just that the dress suited her and she knew that Toby was planning to take her somewhere special.
She spent time on her make-up and pinned her hair on top of her head in a style that she felt suited the dress.
Finally satisfied, she walked out of her bedroom and into the kitchen, where Jack was making Lizzie tea and playing a game of ‘guess the animal’.