Chapter 28: Wintersmith Holdings

“When are you collecting your dress for the ball?” I asked. It was Saturday night—seven days before the end of term and The Christmas Ball that went with it. We were driving back from the cinema, having just been to see a three-hour epic blockbuster released the day before. I’d booked tickets two weeks in advance and even then it was almost sold out.

“Wednesday.” Hannah smiled at me. “You really didn’t have to buy me a dress, you know?”

I smiled back. “I know. But I wanted to. And it’s not like I can’t afford it.”

“Yeah, but still ... Just handing over your card and pin then sending me off with the girls? I could have spent anything. I could have bought all of them a new dress.”

I chuckled. “Well, it’s not like I couldn’t have afforded that either. But, honestly, I knew you wouldn’t.”

She shook her head and looked forwards out of the windscreen. The weather was awful, with the rain hammering down. Even with the wipers on at full speed, visibility was poor. “I don’t know how you can see to drive in this. We should have waited in KFC a bit longer until it calmed down.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “You’ve been in Westmouth long enough to know that when it starts like this, it doesn’t let up any time soon.”

“I suppose.”

After negotiating a particularly precarious bend at the bottom of Westmouth Hill Road, which was flooded where the drain wasn’t coping with the volume of water flowing down the hill, I asked, “What colour did you go for in the end, red or green?” It was Christmas—I figured that pretty much all the girls were going to be wearing either festive red or green, or timeless black.

She looked over at me and grinned. “You’ll just have to wait and see.” She looked away from me, out of the side window, and I swear she grinned as she added, “And you’ll have to wait a few hours longer to see what colour I’m wearing under it as well.”

For perhaps the first time in many years, I didn’t think Christmas could come quickly enough.

I was sitting in the kitchen having a coffee and pain-au-chocolat—one of those frozen, bake-at-home ones you get from the supermarket—and watching the Sunday morning politics show on the BBC when my mobile rang. The screen showed the number, rather than a saved contact. I picked it up and swiped across the screen to answer the call.

“Hello?”

“Paul. It’s Chris. Chris Austins.”

“Chris, hi.” I’d have to add him as a contact after I hung up.

“Hi. I’ll cut to the chase, how busy are you today? I’ve got a whole stack of paperwork that I need you to sign if you’re available. I’d like to get everything submitted before I fly home on Wednesday.”

“I’ve got nothing planned. Do you have my address?”

“Yes, I got it from Bobby. I needed it for the forms. I’ll come over this afternoon if that’s okay. Say two-ish?”

“Yes, that’s fine. I’ll see you then.”

“Will your housemates be around? You’ll need to have your signature witnessed by two other people. Have you told them what’s going on? Would you be comfortable with them witnessing? Or do you want me to arrange to meet somewhere else and bring Bobby and David along?”

“No, no, it’s fine. Here’s fine. I’m sure Imogen and Mark will be around. And if not I’m sure I can get someone else around pretty easily.”

“All good then. I’ll see you at two.”

“Chris, come in, come in,” I said after opening the door. “I thought the dining room might be best for this—there’s plenty of room on the table to spread out any papers you have.”

“Sounds ideal.” He nodded towards the open door just to the left of the entrance. “In there?”

I nodded. “Yep. Can I get you a drink?”

“Oh, tea, please. White, two sugars. Like I said on the phone, I’m flying back home on Wednesday and it’ll be nothing but coffee for the next couple of months.”

“I’ll get it,” said Imogen as she came out of the lounge. Mark was right behind her. “I make a better cuppa than you anyway.”

“Everyone makes a better brew than him,” Mark said with a grin.

“Fuck you,” I replied with a smile. Truth is, he was right. I turned to Chris. “Chris, this is Mark and Imogen. My best friends. They’ll be witnesses.”

“Excellent,” he said. “I suppose I better get set up then.” He had a briefcase with him, which he lay on the dining table and opened. Inside were several bundles of papers.

“Where is home, by the way? I know you said America, but you didn’t say where. I saw a fair bit of the country during my Gap Year. Maybe I passed through.”

Chris shook his head. “You wouldn’t have been to River’s Crossing. Smallish town in Connecticut. About forty or fifty thousand people or so, I’d guess—I’ve never actually looked it up. It’s a few hours north of New York—depends on how much you’re willing to risk getting pulled over for speeding. I’d never heard of it until I started chatting to Beth online. That must have been ... oh, about seven or eight years ago now, there or thereabouts.”

“And Beth is the reason you live there now?”

He smiled and nodded. “Yeah, she is. I think we’d actually fallen in love before we ever met in person, if I’m honest. We’d chat every night—well, it was every night for me, it was every afternoon into the evening for her.” His smile remained but there was now sadness in his eyes. “I flew out to see her on a whim five years ago. Her brother had just been killed in Iraq and I wanted to be there to comfort her. We ended up flying to Vegas for a break from it all after the funeral and got married. Crazy night. We won a ton of money in one of the casinos then decided to just do it. It felt right. We lived here in Westmouth for a couple of years, but after she got pregnant, she wanted to be closer to her mother, so we upped sticks and moved back over there.”

Just then, Imogen came in carrying a tray with four steaming mugs of tea on it and, as always, a plate of chocolate digestives.

“Hmm, I love these,” Chris said, immediately reaching for a biscuit. “Can’t get them back home. I mean, you can if you know where to look, but they are criminally expensive.” He took a big bite of the biscuit and grinned.

“I’ll bet,” I said, grinning back.

“Okay,” he said after swallowing and putting the remainder of the biscuit on the table. He clapped his hands together in the universal gesture of Let’s get on with things. “There’re quite a few things you need to sign. Most of the paperwork is complete, although there are a few blank spaces that I need to fill in—I’ll explain as we get to them. First things first, though—the first blank space to be filled in, in fact. Do you have a name for your new business?”

I looked at my friends. We’d tossed ideas back and forth a couple of evenings ago, but nothing had really struck me as right. Part of me had wanted to honour Clarissa in some way, but since we were now doing that with the scholarship, it was probably over the top to do it with my holding company too.

And besides, this was supposed to be about the future, not the past.

I took a deep breath. “Wintersmith Holdings.” Imogen smiled when I said this. Mark winked. I looked at Chris. “It’s the name of the Hall we were in last year. It’s the place my future began.”