It would be Christmas in a couple of days, another New Year looming a week later. Time to take stock. I was never usually a man for making resolutions, but this time I would; a resolve concerning someone I couldn’t get out of my head or heart. I’d been thinking about her and the possibility of us for many months – longer, if I was honest. Beatrice Brooks, Bea. Just the thought of her made me smile but how, where and when to approach her and tell her how I feel?

7

The journey home in the taxi from the airport was like driving through a winter wonderland, buildings and streets were white with snow, the pavements lined with festive lights. We sat in the back, shivering at the change in temperature from India, even though we’d pulled out winter coats and scarves the moment we’d collected our luggage at Heathrow.

As we drew up at Marcia and Pete’s three-storey, Victorian house in one of the back roads in Hampstead, I glimpsed their eldest daughter, Freya, peering out of a downstairs window. She was twenty-seven, a beautiful, long-limbed girl with her mother’s dark looks, she lived in her own flat in Camden but had moved back to the family home for the duration of the Indian trip. I reckoned she’d be relieved to give her siblings, Ben and Ruby, back into her parents’ care. Not that either of them needed much care: Ben was in his last year at Nottingham University and Ruby in her first; both were now home for the holidays. Freya disappeared, then reappeared moments later at the front door and came tumbling out with Ruby, a younger version of herself with the same stunning looks. In the background, I could see Ben, so like his father, too cool to rush forward, but Marcia was already out of the car, gathering her girls into her arms before moving up the steps to embrace Ben who, despite himself, looked pleased to see her.

I waved to them all from the back of the car and wondered how many parties they’d held with their uni mates in their parents’ absence, and what Marcia and Pete were getting back to.

‘Call tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to settle,’ said Pete as he hauled their last case from the boot of the car. ‘We need to talk plans for Christmas lunch, it’s only two days away.’

‘I will,’ I promised. ‘Tell me what to bring and I can shop tomorrow.’ It had already been arranged that I’d spend the day with them and the rest of the waifs and strays they always gathered. They wouldn’t hear otherwise, although I’d have been perfectly happy to curl up in my pyjamas and watch It’s A Wonderful Life for the fiftieth time and Love Actually for the hundredth.