Things were moving fast, much faster than I wanted to admit. Each horrible milestone was a marker on the highway to somewhere no one wants to visit. There was an oxygen canister beside her bed these days, and another in the corner of the lounge. She didn’t need to use them every day, but her reliance on them was definitely increasing. And we were probably single-handedly responsible for a huge spike in the sale of Post-it notes. They were all over the house, reminding Amelia to do hundreds of things she once would never have forgotten. The important ones were written in red:Check there’s water in the kettle before you boil it. Turn off the oven. Make sure the back door is locked.But it was the ones written in blue that broke my heart.Your underwear is in the third drawer of the dresser. You have two sugars in your tea. Clean your teeth before you go to bed.
It had been a relief when we’d finally stopped arguing over our differing viewpoints. I think we both realised we were in danger of ruining the precious time we had left by being so angry with each other.
*
While Nick went downstairs to let Mabel out, I took advantage of the unexpectedly early start and jumped into the shower. There were several hours before everyone arrived for Christmas lunch, but still about a hundred things on my ‘to-do’ list.
‘Everything will be fine,’ Nick had soothed, seemingly forgetting that I rarely cooked anything that didn’t set off every smoke alarm in the house.
‘I just want to make today special,’ I said. Nick knew me well enough to understand my concerns ran deeper than ruining the turkey or running out of Baileys. I wanted everything to be perfect because I was achingly aware that it might be the last Christmas when Amelia was still Amelia and not a stranger with a memory full of holes.
‘We’ll make it unforgettable, I promise,’ he said, pulling me into the circle of his arms. ‘We’ve got this.’
And maybe we had. The house was decorated with enough lights to be visible from space, or so Nick had teased. And yet he’d uncomplainingly spent hours up various ladders, stringing up ‘just one more set of lights’ whenever I asked him to.
In a surprising act of seasonal goodwill, Natalie had agreed that Holly could spend half of the day with us, which meant the world to Nick. I loved seeing him in all his many guises – compassionate vet, supportive friend, tender lover – but it was watching him as a dad that never failed to melt my heart. Sadly, it was a role he was unlikely to play again if Ihadinherited FAD. Although Nick had never once pressured me to take the test, there had been times when my decision not to felt as shaky as a stack of dominoes on the verge of collapsing.
He was waiting for me in the bedroom with a steaming mug of tea and the same excited expression he’d worn on waking me. I took the hot drink gratefully and sipped it while snuggled deep into the folds of my thick towelling robe. A heavy frost had settled overnight on the trees that neighboured the bedroom window, transforming the view into one straight off a Christmas card.
‘Have you finished?’ Nick asked when my mug was still half full. ‘Because I’ve got something I want to give you.’
‘Again?’ I teased with a wicked grin, my eyes going to the tangle of bed sheets.
‘This is arealpresent,’ he said. There was something in his voice that was hard to define. It fell halfway between excitement and nervous anticipation.
‘Don’t you want to wait until everyone gets here?’
Nick shook his head emphatically.
‘Ohhh, it’sthatkind of gift, is it?’ I said, immediately imagining something risqué. ‘Okay, hang on a minute and I’ll just pull some clothes on.’
My hands went to the belt of my robe but his were faster, stopping me from undoing it. ‘You’re fine just as you are.’
Nick was acting weirdly and was clearly in a hurry for us to go downstairs, although I noticedhe’dfound time to pull on jeans and a navy T-shirt. He’d also been busy while I was in the shower. The Christmas playlist I’d compiled was playing softly from every downstairs speaker, and he’d even switched on the lights on the huge Norwegian pine standing in one corner of the lounge.
Five hundred fairy lights beckoned me across the room. There’s something particularly magical about a twinkling Christmas tree in the early dawn light. Ours was positioned beside the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on to the dense woodland behind Nick’s home. It was hard to say which looked more spectacular, the icy boughs outside or the illuminated pine.
Nick left my side and, ignoring the pile of presents beneath the tree, crossed to the oak dresser. He glanced back over his shoulder and shot me a smile as he slid open the top drawer. From it, he withdrew a large, flat, gift-wrapped parcel.
‘I wasn’t going to give you this yet,’ he said, his eyes dropping to the present in his hands. ‘I was going to wait until New Year’s Eve.’ My curiosity was definitely piqued. He gave a boyish grin that lit his face and knocked about twenty years off his age. ‘But I can’t wait any longer.’
He walked towards me, and I was suddenly aware that my heart was thudding hard against my ribcage. Whatever he’d bought for me, it clearly meant a lot to him.
‘I love it,’ I declared enthusiastically as he placed the gift in my hands. ‘It’s absolutely perfect.’
He flashed me a crooked grin. ‘You don’t even know what it is yet.’
‘I don’t need to. It’s already my favourite, because you gave it to me,’ I said, kissing the grin he was still wearing before my fingers went to the tape securing the gift wrap. Nick moved to stand behind me, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders as my fingers worked to release the gift. From the weight of it, I already knew my initial guess of sexy lingerie was way off beam. It felt like a framed painting.
It took just two tugs for the gold foil paper to flutter to the floor. Behind me, I could sense Nick holding his breath as I turned the frame over and tilted it towards the light.
‘Oh Nick, it’s wonderful,’ I said, bringing the sketch closer to examine it better. I recognised it immediately as a copy of one of our staged photographs. For a moment I wondered if Amelia might have drawn it, but it far exceeded her modest talents. I peered closely at the name written in the lower right-hand corner, but didn’t recognise it.
‘I found a local artist and commissioned her to recreate the photo of the day we picnicked on the beach in the freezing cold weather.’
I looked down at the drawing in my hands and smiled at the memory.
‘I know we have the photographs we took that day, but they were always for Amelia, not us.’ Nick’s arms slipped around my waist, drawing me back against him. ‘I wanted something that was our own memory, because that was the day when everything changed for me. It was the day I first realised I was falling in love with you.’ His voice was little more than a whisper in my ear.