The Little Village Christmas by Sue Moorcroft

Author:Sue Moorcroft
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780008260026
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Alexia felt cross and out of sorts as the wind blew her home. Not only had she never known Gabe suffer more than a sniffle before, but until now it would have been Alexia and Jodie making sure he had what he needed. Now Ben was using his status as blood-relative to dismiss Alexia, and Jodie wasn’t showing signs of caring about anybody but herself. Everyone in Alexia’s life right now was unsettling her.

And that included Ben. He’d been the only one-night stand of her life. Now, instead of moving out of the village as planned and leaving her uncharacte‌ristically wayward behaviour behind her she was obliged to stay for the time being. It meant facing what she’d done every time she and Ben met, which, because of his relationship to Gabe and The Angel, was often. The spectre of That Night floated between them and it was always going to if the stupid man reacted to a stupid excuse for a kiss – a peck, not even a proper kiss – with such a painfully obvious withdrawal.

Marching up her garden path and into the house, she resolved to make herself too busy to brood on the negatives of her life. ‘Keep busy, keep out of trouble,’ Grandpop used to say. OK, then.

With the rest of the day now at her disposal, she messaged the person on Freecycle and arranged to drive over to pick up the table and chairs after lunch. If she took the seats out of the multi-purpose vehicle her day job made practical, she was pretty sure she could squash the table and chairs in.

Then, after waggling her phone between her fingers while she pondered, she sent another text to Jodie:

Alexia: I have to go to Bettsbrough for 2.30 p.m. to pick up some stuff. Want to come with?

Jodie: I’m not feeling 100%, can you come here after instead?

With a sigh, Alexia replied that she would. She was lonely for her friend. They hadn’t gone a two-week stretch without speaking since they’d met in the village primary school.

After a quick sandwich, overdue as she’d never got around to breakfast, she drove off to make her collection, the blinking blue dot on her phone app guiding her.

The table and two chairs stowed in her vehicle with a bit of pushing and shoving, she drove back to Middledip with them rattling in the back. She could call at Iona’s house to see Jodie on her way into the village as they lived at the top end of Port Road. Their house stood with its back to the estate still known as the ‘new village’ though it had been up for at least fifteen years.

Jodie answered the door when Alexia rang the bell. She seemed hesitant and unsure. ‘Hey. Thanks for coming.’

‘What’s up?’ Alexia stepped into the familiar cluttered home that she’d visited a thousand times. A pile of coats swamped the newel post at the foot of the stairs, a curtain had become unhooked at one end and a pile of boxes and bags awaited some purpose unknown.

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