“Chips are an anytime food. Didn’t you know? I’ll go find a table.”
Kate gets a coffee for herself and when the order’s ready, she joins Ian at a table near the fireplace. She sets down the drinks and plate of greasy chips, slinging her jacket over the back of the chair.
“You don’t mind hanging about after your shift? Don’t you want to get home?”
“Nah,” Ian says. “I love it in here. And you can’t have a proper coffee shop without lines of spines. No point going anywhere else.”
Kate smiles. “I can appreciate that. What’s with the mugs?” She gestures to their white cups, which are emblazoned with the familiar KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON phrase printed in dark red.
“Ah, this?” Ian lifts his. “You know this was an old wartime morale poster, right?”
Kate nods.
“So funny enough, these are the best known, but they never actually got posted anywhere. Almost all the copies were destroyed after the war, but the owners of this shop found one in a box of books they bought at auction a decade ago.” He can’t talk without his hands. If you asked him to sit on them and tell a story, Kate’s sure his elbows would just start dancing instead. “We’ve got the original up behind the cash desk. You can see it on the way out. The shop’s famous for it.”
“Huh,” Kate says, inspecting the words on her own mug.
Ian reaches for a chip. “Help yourself.” But Kate shakes her head, clocking the calories. “So how’d you end up at the Oakwood, anyway?” he asks. “Audrey didn’t say.”
“That’s because she didn’t know I was coming,” Kate replies. She explains about the advert Sue posted, and her arrival.
Ian chuckles. “Audrey can be… brusque. But why the Oakwood?”
It’s a simple question, a polite inquiry, but the answer is so complicated. She sees all the factors and moments and bad fucking luck that got her to this point line up in her mind before the first domino begins the cascade, one falling into the next until Kate packed up her car and arrived at the inn.
“A new start, I guess,” she says, a grossly inadequate summary, but the closest thing she can say that sounds like a normal reason.
“Oh yeah?”
She meets his eyes but doesn’t say any more. Soft instrumental Christmas music floats around them like snow. Kate doesn’t spot any obvious speakers; it’s as though the music is issuing from the walls themselves, reminding her that the holidays will be everywhere soon, and she can’t dodge it, no matter how much she might want to this year.
Ian takes the hint and another chip. “You’re up from London, then? Your accent.”
“Yeah. Never been this far north before. It’s beautiful. Have you lived here your whole life?”
“Mhm. Everyone always wants to leave for the bigger cities, but I love it here. My dad died when I was a teenager, but my mum’s still here.”
Something familiar plucks at Kate’s insides. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. He had a degenerative disease called Huntington’s. Affects the brain. He didn’t last more than a couple of years after he was diagnosed.”
Kate’s brow knits. “That’s awful.”
Ian clears his throat. “Yeah, it was. Particularly hard on my mum. But we mustn’t let these sorts of things define us, right? I had fifteen years with my dad, and thirteen good ones. I’m grateful for the memories I do have.” He sits back a little. “Are your parents still in London, then?”
“No.” She’s hesitant to share, but Ian’s transparency has put her more at ease. “They’re dead,” she says, the words gritty on her tongue.
“God, sorry,” Ian says. “What happened?”
Kate looks down at her coffee, swallows her fear.
What happened, Kate?
“There was an accident,” she says. “Last winter.”
Ian looks pained, but she doesn’t take it as the same brand of pity she received from well-meaning friends who couldn’t relate. Ian’s been in these particular trenches. He knows that you never quite get the mud out from beneath your fingernails when you’re trying to climb back up to the surface.
Her stomach jolts, but she tells him. “A car crash. They died. I didn’t.”
He doesn’t press for details, though his eyes scan the scar on her cheek.
Kate blusters on. “And I guess… well… I picked the Oakwood because they stayed here on their honeymoon. I just kind of wanted to see it.”
“I get that. So is this your first Christmas since they’ve been gone?” he asks gently.
“Yeah. Hanukkah too. It’s going to be hard. And—”
Her mind wanders to Adam, wonders for a moment whether this holiday would have been any easier if they were still together. But she knows the answer to that.
“It’s shit, honestly,” Ian says.
Kate lets out a weak laugh. “Got any advice for me?”
Ian heaves a breath. “You can’t expect it to feel normal, but you also don’t have to enjoy it. Not for a while, at least. Took me a few years.”
Kate feels certain it will, at least, be marginally easier to manage the holidays if she spends them in an unfamiliar place. No heirloom tree decorations, no missed rituals. No tripping hazards.
“But,” Ian continues, “in the end, the only way out is through. Though I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know.”
