Once Upon A Christmas Night.... Annie Claydon
as the notice on the door grandly announced, turned out to be a long, low-ceilinged vault, filled with row upon row of shelves. Reena felt in the pocket of her coat and consulted a piece of paper. ‘Right, so the early stuff’s over there in the far corner.’ She pulled a large, old-fashioned key from her pocket and indicated a heavy metal door.
‘What’s that? I didn’t know we had dungeons in the basement.’
‘It’s an old walk-in safe. It’s cool and dry so they keep the earlier documents in there. I had to promise Administration that we’d wedge the door open and keep the key with us at all times.’
‘And they know we’re down here this late?’ There was no reason for the basement to feel any darker or spookier now than it would have done at lunchtime. Somehow it did.
‘I said we were going to have a look after work. They might have thought that was five-thirty.’ Reena unlocked the door, pulling it back with an effort and wedging it firmly.
Jess shrugged, pulling a couple of pairs of surgical gloves from her pocket. ‘Gloves?’
‘Definitely.’
The boxes of papers stacked inside might be caked with dust, but they were stored in some sort of order. The year 1813 was located and the boxes pulled out into the cramped space outside the door.
‘Oh, you’ll never guess who I saw coming out of the canteen today.’ Reena was carefully sifting through the contents of the oldest storage box, trying not to disturb too much dust.
‘No, I don’t think I will.’
‘Give it a go, at least. Great smile.’
‘The tooth fairy?’
‘Ha-ha. Think taller. Darker and not wearing a tutu.’ Reena rolled her eyes when Jess gave her a blank look. ‘Your ex-boss.’
‘You mean… ’ It would be disingenuous to pretend that she didn’t know who Reena meant. ‘Greg? He’s back?’
Breathing would be good right now, but Jess’s lungs seemed to have temporarily forgotten how. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the large ledger in front of her so they couldn’t betray her shock.
‘Yeah. Wherever he’s been for the last eight months, he’s been getting some sun. He’s looking good.’
Greg always looked good. Jess wondered whether Reena had any more substantive information and how she was going to ask for it without sounding too interested. ‘So how is he?’
‘I didn’t see him to speak to, he was moving too fast for that.’ Reena tossed her head and laughed. ‘You know Greg. He’s a busy kind of guy.’ She turned her attention back to the half empty storage box.
He was back. He’d probably had two or three girlfriends since Jess had seen him last and had almost certainly forgotten all about That Kiss. Just the way she should have done.
‘This looks promising… Jess?’
‘Uh?’
‘I think this is exactly what we’re looking for.’
‘Yeah?’ Jess straightened, shrugging off the brief scrap of memory, which seemed to have lodged itself right in the centre of her consciousness. ‘Let’s have a look.’
Greg drifted into what passed for wakefulness in time to hear the clock in the small courtyard outside the common-room window chiming out midnight. Silence fell, and he sat up straight, easing his shoulders to iron out a few of the kinks. There was a scraping outside in the corridor, a dull thud and… If he didn’t know better he would have said that the clatter was the sound of chains.
Leave it out. After eight months, spent jetting around America and Australia, with some of the sunnier parts of Europe thrown in, London in early November seemed claustrophobic, full of shadows. But it was home. He’d longed to be back home, and now here he was. Feeling just as empty and unsure as he had for the last ten months.
Another clatter. If it wasn’t a chain, it was something that sounded pretty much identical. Greg was suddenly awake, his eyes straining in the darkness, and then clamped shut as white light hit his retinas, burning the outline of a shadowy figure into his mind’s eye.
‘Greg!’
‘What… ? Jess?’ He blinked against the light streaming in through the open door and slowly began to make her out. She had on the same red coat that she’d been wearing when he’d seen her last. His mouth went dry. When he’d seen her last…
When he’d seen her last he’d been kissing her. The length of chain, slung over her shoulder and trailing behind her on the floor, was new, and she hadn’t been quite so grimy then either. The temptation to reach out and touch her, pretend she had a smudge on her cheek so that he could wipe it away, was almost irresistible.
She was staring at him as if she’d just seen a ghost. She swallowed hard and seemed to come to her senses. ‘I heard you were back.’
‘Yeah. Only just. I landed yesterday morning, and got a call at lunchtime, saying that they were short-staffed in A and E and could I start work today.’ Guilt trickled down his spine. He probably should have called her. He’d thought about it often enough.
She nodded. No hint in her steady gaze that their kiss figured anywhere in her attitude towards him. ‘Well, it’s nice to see you back. Have you got… things… settled?’
‘Not quite.’ It was never going to be completely settled. ‘For the time being.’ The urge to explain himself was prickling at the back of Greg’s neck, but he had no idea where to start. ‘Jess… ’
‘Yes?’
‘What’s with the chains?’
She flushed prettily. Dragged the knitted beret off her head, leaving her honey-coloured hair impossibly rumpled. A little longer than it had been last Christmas, and the style suited her.
‘Ah.’ She started to unwind the length of chain from her neck. ‘It’s for the dressing up. For Christmas.’ She indicated a stack of plastic crates in the corner.
‘You’re going to dress up in chains for Christmas?’ Greg couldn’t help smiling and she shot him a glare in return.
‘No, of course not. Gerry is.’ She finally managed to free herself from the chain, opening one of the crates and dumping it inside.
‘Gerry’s going to dress up in chains for Christmas?’ Gerard Mortimer, the senior cardiac consultant. Greg was sure that there were plenty of things more incongruous in the world, but at the moment he couldn’t bring any of them to mind. ‘Starting when?’
This time her look was ferocious enough to have cut through cold steel. ‘Some of us are dressing up as characters from Dickens’s novels. Gerry’s going to be Jacob Marley’s ghost.’
There were no words to say. Greg began to wonder whether he wasn’t dreaming after all. It wouldn’t have been the first time that Jess had featured in his dreams, but he had to admit that the chains were a new development. Maybe fatigue was lending an edge to his imagination.
‘Are you okay?’ She was staring at him intently.
‘Uh… ?’ On the off chance that he was dealing with reality and not a set of unconnected threads from his unconscious mind, he should give an answer of some sort. ‘Yeah, fine. Jet lag. So who are you dressing up as?’ It couldn’t hurt to ask, and Greg found that he was suddenly and irrationally interested.
‘I’m not dressing up. I’m organising everything.’
‘So this Christmas won’t be as chaotic as last… ’ He bit his tongue but it was too late. The cat had clawed its way out of the bag and ushered something that looked suspiciously like an elephant into the room.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
She was blushing furiously,