A Winter's Wish. Alice Ross

thing Amelia noticed when she awoke was her fuzzy head. The second was a strange sense of bewilderment. She couldn’t recall another Monday morning when she’d had nothing to do. In fact, she’d be hard pushed to think of any morning when she’d had nothing to do. Even on holiday she had a schedule: a swim before breakfast, a jog along the beach, a session in the gym. But this morning she had neither the energy nor the motivation to even slide out of bed. Perhaps she should just give into the urge and burrow under the duvet—

      ‘Thomas! Come out of there!’

      Amelia jack-knifed up as her bedroom door flew open and in bowled a miniature Darth Vader brandishing a flashing lightsaber. Pip, red tinsel around his collar, followed, leaping onto Amelia’s bed with a great sense of purpose.

      ‘Gosh, I’m so sorry,’ apologised Annie, scuttling in after them. She scooped up her son with one hand and dragged the dog off the bed with the other. ‘I’ve told them to be quiet and stay away from your room but—’

      ‘It’s all right. I was just about to get up,’ lied Amelia.

      ‘You honestly don’t have to,’ said Annie. ‘You should have a lie-in. I would if I could. I really shouldn’t have had that last glass of wine last night.’

      ‘Me neither.’ Amelia didn’t normally drink so much. In fact, she rarely drank at all. A couple of glasses of champagne at work functions was as much as she ever risked. You couldn’t run an actuarial department without a razor-sharp mind. But she wasn’t running an actuarial department now, was she? She wasn’t doing anything. For the first time in her life she was completely without purpose.

      ‘So, any plans?’ Jake had asked her in the pub.

      Amelia had toyed with a chunk of aubergine on her pasta salad as tears, once again, stung her eyes. ‘Er, no. Not at the moment,’ she’d managed to reply.

      ‘That’s not like you,’ Annie had pointed out. ‘You always have a plan – always striving towards your next career goal.’

      I don’t have a next career goal, Amelia had wanted to wail. Thankfully, though, the attention had shifted to Mr Russell – the owner of the newsagent’s, who’d scuttled over to tell them he’d be closing the shop for a few days over the holidays as he was going to visit his family down south. As soon as he’d tottered off Amelia, unable to face more interrogation about her own sorry situation, had steered the conversation onto the much less emotive subject of Annie’s new tearoom.

      ‘Breakfast’s ready if you’re coming down,’ Annie informed her, whisking the interlopers out of the room and closing the door behind her.

      Well, given she was now fully awake, Amelia concluded she might as well get up. Dragging herself out of bed, she padded over to the en suite and examined her reflection in the mirror. God! She looked terrible: skin the colour of putty, dark shadows beneath her bloodshot eyes, and not an ounce of her normally high-voltage energy. With a heavy sigh, she turned on the shower and whipped up a bottle of shampoo.

      Half an hour later, showered and dressed in black designer jeans and a grey cashmere jumper, she wandered down to the kitchen. Sophie sat at the table in a blue gingham dress and navy cardigan, her hair in two fat bunches, spreading what looked like an entire jar of strawberry jam onto a tiny piece of toast. Cereal boxes and soggy cereal remnants, as well as a smattering of crockery – some clean, some used – a rack of wholemeal toast, and a half-full cafetière covered the table.

      ‘Hello,’ said Amelia.

      Abandoning her toast-smearing for a moment, Sophie lifted her head and gazed at her aunt with huge green eyes. ‘Hello.’

      Amelia immediately felt awkward – on the back foot. For heaven’s sake, she chided herself, she regularly presented to groups of highly educated, intelligent people. How on earth could a seven-year-old make her feel so self-conscious?

      Resisting the urge to turn on her heel and shoot back upstairs and under the duvet, she pulled out the bench opposite her niece and plopped down onto it. She cleared her throat.

      ‘So. Are you, er, going to school today?’

      Her earnest gaze still fixed on Amelia’s face, Sophie nodded.

      ‘Do you like school?’

      Sophie nodded.

      ‘Do you have lots of friends there?’

      Sophie nodded.

      ‘Right. Well, um, that’s nice.’ At a loss as to what else to say, Amelia reached for a slice of toast.

      ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Sophie piped up.

      Amelia’s toast slipped from her fingers, landing on a couple of Coco Pops, which had seen better days.

      Before she could reply, Annie waltzed into the room, Darth Vader scuttling behind her.

      ‘Got to dash, I’m afraid,’ she said, whipping most of the detritus from the table. ‘It’s completely manic up at the manor at the moment. Portia’s rather gorgeous, and very generous, boyfriend, Jed, surprised her with a two-week holiday in the Caribbean, so while she’s sunning herself on a beach, the rest of us are running around like the proverbial blue-bottomed flies.’ She began bundling up the children in coats and scarves, then swiped up their accompanying baggage and headed for the front door.

      ‘If you want to take Pip for a walk, his lead and stuff is in the utility room,’ she called through from the hall. ‘Jake will be back at lunchtime. He’s up at the manor preparing for his next writing course. Come up later if you like. I can show you round the house, in all its newly refurbished glory. And you can sample our coffee and cake. I’ll leave a key on the table here for you.’

      And with that, off they went.

      No sooner had the door closed, than an eerie silence settled over the house, which suddenly seemed far too big. Unnerved by the dramatic change in atmosphere, Amelia spotted a radio on the kitchen bench. She wandered over and flicked it on. Stone Cold Sober by Paloma Faith floated out. With her back against the bench, gazing out into the frost-covered garden, she contemplated Sophie’s question.

      Did she have a boyfriend?

      Of course, for most people, the question would elicit a simple Yes or No. But not for Amelia. Her love life fell unreservedly into the “It’s Complicated” category. And yet again, there was no one to blame for that but herself …

      ‘Anyone sitting here?’ a gangly youth with dark floppy hair had asked on her first day at Cambridge. All the freshers had been summoned to a meeting on “Keeping Safe” in one of the lecture theatres.

      Amelia had shaken her head, far too taken aback by how devastatingly good-looking he was to add any words to the gesture.

      He plumped down on the bench alongside her. ‘I hate all this induction stuff, don’t you? Can’t wait to get it all over with and get down to some serious drinking. You coming to the meet ’n’ greet thing at the pub after this?’

      Amelia hadn’t intended going to the meet ’n’ greet thing. She’d been planning on scrutinising her reading list for what must have been the twenty-seventh time, making doubly sure she’d crammed in as much as she could before lectures started. But, gazing into those sparkling hazel eyes as he awaited her response, she found herself nodding.

      ‘Great,’ he said, delicious lips stretching into a grin. ‘I’m Doug, by the way.’

      ‘Amelia,’ croaked Amelia, simultaneously wondering how her throat was suddenly lined with sand, if she’d managed to get her name right, and why all previous thoughts of reading lists, colleges and induction lectures had suddenly left the building, replaced with an overwhelming urge to kiss that delectable mouth.

      For the next hour, while the speaker droned on about keeping away from the river if “one had partaken of alcohol”, and how bikes should be “secured at all times”, Amelia was aware of nothing more than Doug’s firm body squashed up against hers.