The Present. Charlotte Phillips

which at – she checked the LED display on the bedside clock – two-thirty in the morning, was refusing to be shelved. And since the alternative to getting up and sorting her curiosity out was lying here and elbowing Rod every five minutes to keep his infuriatingly rhythmic snoring at bay, she might as well throw in the towel on sleep and go downstairs.

      Sitting bleary-eyed at the kitchen table, she pulled the box of Christmas decorations towards her and unwrapped one, turning it gently in her fingers. A tiny swan. Perfect in every detail. She unfolded the note that was wrapped with it.

       Do not settle for less because it is easy. Do not give in to pressure. Wait for me through this hard time and it will be worth any challenge we face.

      She frowned. What did that mean? What would Gran be settling for? Or was it a who? Who had sent these to her? The mystery nagged maddeningly. Just where the hell to even start. Wide awake, Lucy grabbed her tablet from the kitchen worktop and did an Internet search on Christmas tree decorations that was rewarded with page after page of pictures of predominantly garden centre tat. Refining the search to World War Two brought up a collection of make-do-and-mend war effort items. Paper chains. Cardboard Christmas lanterns. Jack’s first instinct today had to be right, there was no way the decorations were from that time period. Moving the dates further back, it was obvious they predated the war by some decades. She ran her hand over the smooth cool wood of the box. Whatever they were, they were undoubtedly special. Whoever had sent them to Gran, one a day with a note for twelve days in the run-up to Christmas 1944, they must have cared for her very much.

      She racked her brains for the slightest mention of that time in Gran’s life, but came up blank. Gran had simply never talked about it. She ran a finger over the slightly indented holly carving on the lid. How could she just chuck this on eBay without trying to look into it even the tiniest bit? But where to start?

      She grabbed a tote bag from the cupboard and eased the box gently into it. The best place to start was most definitely not eBay. The logical thing to do would be to hang on to these for a while. The answer could be just waiting for her in the mountain in Gran’s attic. And technically, she would still be working on the house clearance; she would just have a bit more of a purpose in mind than to just lob the whole lot in a skip.

      Jack held his tongue until he could take it no longer.

      Since the attic currently sported a hole big enough to stumble through, which then progressed through to a gaping hole in Olive’s master bedroom ceiling, it had overnight shot to the top of the list of cosmetic tweaks he had been tasked with to make this house as saleable as possible. Engaged in cutting boards to size and nailing them across the gap in the attic, it became slowly clear to him that it was simply a matter of time if Lucy carried on the way she was going, before disaster struck a second time in as many days. She had been here even before he arrived this morning, and there was, in his view, a lot more sorting through and reading going on than there was house clearance. Every so often she would finish with the contents of a box or bag, and it would be taken down the loft ladder and presumably spirited away downstairs to be disposed of. If she carried on at this current speed, Olive would still be living here in five years’ time. Then he remembered their conversation yesterday, and wondered if that might actually be the point of the go-slow.

      He managed to rein it in until she teetered towards the loft ladder with a box balanced on each arm and a cloth bag looped around her neck. Downing tools, he crossed the attic in a couple of strides. She stopped in surprise.

      ‘For God’s sake give me one of those boxes,’ he said, taking one from her before she had the chance to protest. ‘In fact, give me both of them before you fall down that ladder.’

      She held the second box aloft before he could take it.

      ‘I am perfectly capable of hefting a few boxes about,’ she said. ‘I do not need your superhero powers today.’

      ‘You piss about with basic common sense safety rules often enough, and you will break something, probably your own head. Simple fact,’ he said, exasperated. ‘And it is not going to happen on my watch. Stop arguing, and give it here.’

      He held her obstinate gaze until she gave in with an eye roll and handed over the second box.

      ‘It’s just a couple of bits,’ she called after him as he negotiated the loft ladder in half the time and none of the danger.

      ‘Where do you want these?’

      ‘Just in the kitchen, please. I’ll get on with the next lot.’

      Exactly what he was afraid of. He dumped the stuff on the ground floor in record time and arrived back in the attic just as she was poking about next to a teetering stack of boxes and junk.

      ‘Look, anything you want shifting, just ask will you? That mountain of stuff is one wrong move away from burying you.’

      She looked up at him in surprise, obviously lost in thought, and he tried to disconnect his brain from the thought that, for some reason, on her, scruffy looked alluring. She was dressed for the dust today, no expensive jeans in sight by the look of it. Her wavy hair was caught up in a ponytail from which it was already escaping. She wore a faded pink T-shirt, jeans with paint marks on them, and an ancient pair of Converse.

      ‘Okay,’ she said, looking the mountain of stuff up and down. ‘Thanks. I hadn’t really thought of a good way to dismantle all this.’

      ‘No kidding.’

      ‘I’m trying to find something that will give me a lead on the Christmas decs. There must be something, right? So far I’ve found a ton of teenage photos of me – STRAIGHT in the bin. Old clothes. A load of old saucepans. Nothing from anywhere near as far back as the decorations. The thing is, I’m going one box at a time here, and I haven’t a clue what I’m really looking for.’ She flipped the top open on the nearest box and peered inside. ‘I could still be here next bloody Christmas at this rate.’

      She glanced up at him, and somehow managed to combine a smile with a frown. For no good reason, he decided on impulse that the attic floor could wait an hour. What the hell, he had time on his hands, and an hour was hardly going to affect his usual policy of getting the work done so he could make his good next escape. He still had a week before he needed to get ready for his next excursion. Snowboarding in Austria.

      ‘Sounds to me like you need a system,’ he said. He leaned past her and took the highest box down from the next row, the one that had been most on the brink of falling on her head, and put it down next to her. Slit the top open with his Stanley knife, and turned back to lift down the next one.

      ‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘Have a quick check what’s in them, and if it looks like it might be in the ballpark, we investigate further. If it’s nothing, then you can deal with it later. I’ll just shift the boxes around and we can narrow it down between us. And if it happens to be your baby photos, I’ll just have a coffee break while I check through them.’

      She laughed.

      ‘I’m surprised Gran hasn’t already subjected you to them over coffee.’

      ‘Actually, she has. You had a great line going in crazy hair.’

      He dodged sideways as she threw an old cushion at his head. It landed on the floor behind him and sent up a cloud of dust.

      Fifteen minutes later, and things had speeded up considerably.

      ‘How come you do this kind of work?’ she asked, pulling a couple of garish orange table mats out of a box. ‘Bloody hell, look at these. Like a seventies’ acid trip.’

      As she checked and dismissed them, he stacked boxes to the side of the loft hatch, and every so often took a few at a time downstairs to free up space.

      ‘House and garden maintenance? Because it can be picked up and put down, and I can make money doing it wherever I happen to be,’ he said.

      ‘I was kind of expecting something more like “I like working outside, and the creative side is great”,’ she said.

      He