I held my hand over my eyes and squinted. Dev’s features came into focus as the dog hopped up onto my chest and settled right down.
‘Hello, stranger,’ I said.
‘Hello yourself,’ he replied, smiling when he saw I wasn’t injured.
Each time I saw him, I noticed something new. His beautiful grey coat, his exceptional forearms and today, the sprinkle of salt and pepper at his temples, only visible when the sun shone directly on his hair.
‘Did you fall or are you lying on the ground for fun?’ Dev asked as he and my dad offered up an arm each and hoisted me back up to my feet, the little white dog looping in circles around us.
‘You must not have heard about my new job as a government grass inspector,’ I replied. ‘All looks to be in order.’
Dad straightened his flat cap and gave Dev a knowing, manly nod. ‘Wasn’t watching where she was going, if you can believe it.’
‘Gwen? Never!’
‘I’m not usually a clumsy person,’ I protested, relieved to know the time loop meant that somewhere out there, The Elms’s Santa Claus could not refute my claim. Today he would be walking around with his testicles intact. ‘There isn’t nearly as much sheep shit to slip on in London.’
‘But it makes up for it with other delights,’ he replied before pointing towards the nearby stately home. ‘Are you going down to the house?’
‘We are,’ Dad and I confirmed at the same time.
‘Mind if I join you?’
‘If you really must,’ I said with a friendly shrug.
On the outside, I looked politely pleased, but on the inside I was happier than three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. A lovely countryside wander with a man whose time, place and date of birth I still knew by heart could be just the tonic. Dev would never call me cold toast. But at the same time, that annoying voice that loved to ruin things couldn’t stop wondering where he was hiding his fiancée. Not that I was in much of a mood to discuss other people’s happy relationshipsand really, there were a million possible reasons why she wasn’t around. Maybe she was with her own family? Maybe she didn’t celebrate Christmas? A lot of people met their partners at work and Dev was a doctor, she could be a doctor as well. A lot of doctors worked over the holidays, people didn’t stop getting poorly because you wanted to gorge yourself on turkey and give your daughter a vibrator as a present. That was probably it: he was engaged to a beautiful, kind, intelligent doctor with naturally curly eyelashes that didn’t even need mascara, wore her hair pulled back in an elegant chignon that always had one perfect strand falling in front of her face just so, who was most likely in surgery, literally saving someone’s life while I lay on the ground covered in sheep shit.
What a bitch.
‘I’m sure you’ve got lots of catching up to do, why don’t you go on without me? I can’t keep up with you kids anyway,’ Dad declared, even though it was quite clearly a lie, he was twice as fit as I was, but I suspected we both still remembered the time he came in my room without knocking and found me making a collage out of photos of me and Dev and one of Cerys’s bridal magazines. We never spoke of the incident again.
‘Are you sure you’re all right walking back on your own?’ I asked as he fussed over Dev’s dog until she rolled onto her back and did a small wee.
‘Do I need to remind everyone who fell on their arse? Because it wasn’t me.’ He wiped his hand on the back of his trousers, the dog tucking her tail between her legs in disgrace. Striding off across the fields, he raised his walking stick in a farewell. ‘Be back before lunch or your mother will have you. Merry Christmas, Dev!’
The little white dog bounced up and down around my knees, barking until I picked her up and nursed her like a baby.
‘Pari likes you,’ Dev said, rolling up the leather lead in his hand and slipping it into his coat pocket. ‘That’s a good sign, she’s very wary of strangers.’
‘She only wants me for a human heater,’ I replied, turning to mush as she burrowed into the front of my coat. ‘Is she yours?’
‘My mum’s. I borrowed her as an excuse to make an escape.’ He smiled and swept his arm out in front of us with a gentlemanly flourish. ‘Shall we?’
‘We shall,’ I confirmed, pushing his wonderful, beautiful-but-doesn’t-know-it surgeon of a fiancée out of mind and leading the way.
Chatsworth House was always beautiful but at Christmas, it was out of this world. Giant fir trees decorated with twinkling lights lined the driveway and even just walking along the path towards it made me feel as though we’d been transported to a winter wonderland. When I was younger, I used to dream of what it would be like to live in such a beautiful place, imagining myself staring out of the top-floor windows and off into the woods. I loved the gardens and the ponds and the little arched bridges that crossed the river where I would pause and stare moodily into the water, as though I was secretly filming my own music video while Manny got lost in the maze every single time. By springtime, every inch of the house and gardens would be absolutely packed with tourists, but just for today it felt as though it all belonged to me and Dev.
‘It’s not open today, is it?’ he asked, looking around the empty grounds. No one here but us.
‘Don’t think so.’ It was years since I’d been to visit but she hadn’t changed a bit. ‘Pretty sure they’re closed to the public on Christmas day.’
‘We’re not really the public though, are we?’ he said with a devilish smile.
With Pari still nestling inside my coat, I gave him a questioning look.
‘We aren’t?’
Dev shook his head. ‘We are a couple of friendly neighbours, stopping by to say hello, celebrate the season.’