One Winter's Night (Kelsey Anderson) Read online

  One Winter’s Night

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  A Letter from the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  One Winter’s Night

  Kiley Dunbar

  This one’s for Liz, with love and gratitude, x

  ‘I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks’

  (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)

  A Letter from the Author

  Hello! It’s me, Kiley Dunbar.

  Welcome to beautiful, historic Stratford-upon-Avon. If you’ve read One Summer’s Night (2019) you’ll already be familiar with Kelsey Anderson and her new life in this pretty English theatre town on the banks of the River Avon, but don’t worry if this is your first visit. You don’t need to know much, really. Here’s a little taste of what happened in One Summer’s Night. Feel free to skip it, you can enjoy One Winter’s Night as a stand-alone novel without letting any of this stuff bother you.

  Kelsey Anderson had played it safe all her life, having seen her mum, Mari, lose the love of her life months after Kelsey’s little brother was born, and the three of them had to pull together and get by. Kelsey grew up as a homebody, stuck in a rut while her mates got on with adulting.

  All that changed last summer, when Kelsey took a risk.

  Finding herself out of work, and unsure of her staid boyfriend Fran, she packed her suitcase with her well-thumbed copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and her vintage camera (both gifts from her much missed dad), left Scotland, and took a job working for the indomitable Norma Arden at her tour-guiding agency in faraway Stratford-upon-Avon.

  The move started a chain of events she could never have predicted – which included the not exactly supportive Fran rapidly becoming her ex-boyfriend (hurray), and Kelsey becoming entangled in a messy, passionate attraction to an American stage actor in Stratford only for the summer season (sigh). She thought Jonathan Hathaway was loved up with his co-star, the stunningly beautiful Peony, but time untangled that knot – it was all just a midsummer misunderstanding – and his heart was Kelsey’s all along.

  But as summer came to an end and handsome, talented Mr Hathaway hopped on a flight to Canada and an autumn of work commitments on the other side of the world, Kelsey was left alone and in a long-distance relationship. That’s where we find her, working hard to set up her own photography studio in town.

  You should know that Kelsey’s a modern girl with retro tastes. She’s more likely to queue up for a matinee at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre than she is to binge on a Netflix boxset; she’s a fan of writing snail mail over WhatsApping; and instead of Instagramming camera phone selfies, she’d far rather pop 35mm film spools in the post and wait for real, old-school glossy prints to come back from the developer’s lab.

  This is the story of what happened after Norma Arden shut up her tour guide agency for good and the summer tourists went back home to their busy lives. This story is about what Kelsey did next, and follows Mirren, Kelsey’s best friend since forever, who at last broke up with poor old Preston after letting him down one too many times. We’re going to get to the bottom of her love story too.

  Happy reading.

  Love, Kiley x

  Chapter One

  ‘The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

  Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose’

  (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

  The autumn came in quickly this year. Even in early October the leaves of the rowan trees in Kelsey’s shared gardens at St. Ninian’s Close are tinged golden brown. Gritty breezes gust down Henley Street, whipping past the house where, once upon a time, William Shakespeare was born. Chill morning dews make the grassy banks of the River Avon sparkle, and dawn mists settle over the subtle valley that the town nestles inside. Above its tangle of medieval streets, church spires, theatre turrets and flying flags, up on the gentle rises of the Welcombe hills the brambles have swollen fat and blushing on thorny boughs and the blackbirds sing out that summer is over.

  Having worked as a tour guide, pounding the streets of Stratford all summer long and getting to know its most beautiful treasures and best-kept secrets, Kelsey thought she had discovered everything there was to know about her new home, but as she observed autumn creeping in, she came to the realisation that fall in Warwickshire was even finer than the summer months.

  Fall. That’s what Jonathan calls this time of year. But he isn’t here to see it with her. He’s been wowing the crowds at an Ontario Shakespeare festival with his Hamlet and after Christmas he’ll be heading to California to take up his drama teaching residency for the winter. But he writes, and he video calls…

  ‘Don’t wake up, I’m just taking my stage make-up off before bed and calling to say goodnight. I love you, Kelsey.’

  ‘Don’t go, I’m awake. Wow, you look good.’

  Jonathan held the phone closer to his face, letting Kelsey see the subtle black eyeliner that deepened his ice-blue eyes and his messy brown hair lightened a little with dye for playing the Prince of Denmark.

  ‘I was gonna say the same thing about you. Is it after six in Stratford?’

  ‘Uh-huh, but old habits die hard, I’ve been up for a while. There was a blackbird going crazy under the oak tree at six, so I’m already on my first coffee, just listening to him sing. How’s the run going?’ Kelsey gathered her duvet around her for warmth. Her little garret room at the top of the building which had been so warm in the summer was growing chillier by the day.

  ‘Pretty good. Full houses, excited crowds. They’re a lot more vocal than the Stratford audiences. I forgot about the spontaneous applause and the interaction. You don’t get that with English theatre. Tonight the first row were whooping and hollering when I kissed Ophelia, kinda threw us both.’

  ‘I can see how that would be distracting. How is Peony? Did she get the postcard I sent her?’ Kelsey asked. The confusion of the summer months when she’d been convinced Jonathan and his co-star and childhood sweetheart were still an item, had been left far behind.

  ‘She did, and she’s good too, sends her love. She’s kinda pissed I’m leaving the company after our Stratford run of Love’s Labour’s Lost in the spring but she gets that I’m ready for a new beginning. Anyways, I’m counting down the day
s ’til I fly home to you for the holidays.’

  Kelsey had never heard Jonathan call Stratford ‘home’ before, and although it sent a thrill through her, she worried he was counting his work-visa chickens before they hatched. He was allowed to stay in England for the spring run but after that, nobody could know what would happen.

  ‘What’s today? Ninth of October?’ he added. ‘That’s only… seventy-five days.’

  ‘Only?’

  ‘I’ll be home soon and we’ll get to spend a few days of the holidays together. Until then I’ll just have to make sure I catch every English sunrise with you.’

  Kelsey smiled, listening to his breathing and enjoying the flex of his dimpled jaw when he grinned. For a while they let the silence speak between them. They could do this, she had found; just say nothing and be together, feeling somewhere close to contented, three and a half thousand miles apart.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot,’ Jonathan said eventually, his deep Oklahoma drawl crackling.

  ‘You have?’

  She saw the light blazing in Jonathan’s eyes as he carried the phone over to his hotel room door, turning the lock. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘What have you been thinking?’

  Jonathan made a low laugh which was followed by a moment of hesitation before he settled on his bed, holding the phone at arm’s length so Kelsey could see his loose black stage shirt open at the neck and offering a glimpse of the broad, honed torso she missed touching so much. ‘I’ll tell you… if you lie down with me.’

  Kelsey cast a quick glance at the pillows behind her, her face flushing pink and her pupils dilating in the way that made Jonathan’s heart pound.

  ‘All right then,’ she said, as she settled back, blushing and grinning at the same time.

  ‘First of all…’ His voice was low as he looked confidently into the lens. ‘I miss being able to kiss you whenever I want…’

  Kelsey fought to catch her breath, narrowing her eyes, intently watching as Jonathan slowly tugged the shirt over his head, letting it muss his hair.

  Jonathan talked with increasingly shallow breaths and Kelsey listened, losing her inhibition as the bubble formed around them. They forgot the miles between them; their separate time zones realigned and whole continents moved to bring them closer together. Yes, this felt somewhere close to contentment, and for now that would have to be enough for both of them.

  Chapter Two

  ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together’

  (All’s Well That Ends Well)

  ‘Long-distance relationships have their perks,’ said Mirren, with an air of authority, holding her phone in one hand, scarlet lipstick in the other, reapplying it in a confident sweep as she only half-looked in the mirror of the ladies’ room down in the basement of the Edinburgh Broadsheet newspaper offices.

  ‘But you’ve never been in a long-distance relationship, have you, Mirr?’ Kelsey said, rummaging in her satchel for a lip balm and failing to find one, her other hand clasping the phone to her ear as she walked purposefully into Stratford town centre, still smiling over that morning’s call with Jonathan.

  Mirren searched her memory, making exaggerated contemplative umming sounds. ‘Well, no… But you could say I’m having one with you. When are you nipping back home for the weekend? I’m missing you, Kelse. You haven’t been home since you packed your bags back in June.’

  Giving up the search, Kelsey’s hand fell upon the keys to her studio as she reached its steps, unlocked the outer door and punched in the security code. Fifteen sixty-four, the year Shakespeare was born. Familiar digits to Kelsey after her summer spinning yarns about the Bard for tourists around the town’s heritage spots.

  ‘I’ve got a million things to do here, Mirr, otherwise I’d be up those train tracks like a shot.’

  Kelsey climbed up past the accountancy office and the landscape artist’s design place to the second floor landing and her own studio door. And I’ve got a million things to do and supplies I need to buy if I’m ever going to get this place up and running properly, she thought, but the weight of those worries didn’t dampen the thrill of pride and excitement that she felt every time she turned the key and stepped inside her new business premises. It had been five weeks since Norma had handed over the keys and the novelty most definitely wasn’t wearing off.

  ‘I do have a favour to ask though, Mirr. Will you pop in and see how my mum’s doing? You could tell her I’ve asked you to dig out some photography stuff from under my bed, or something like that?’

  ‘It’s OK, I don’t need a reason,’ Mirren replied. ‘I’ll call in. I’ll take some muffins or something. It’ll be nice to see her. I take it you’re missing her?’

  ‘Am a bit.’ There’s an understatement. ‘Just give her a hug from me. Do you mind picking up a bag of Edinburgh rock for Grandad? You know it’s his favourite and he must miss the bags I’d bring him on Fridays.’

  ‘Consider it done. You know, if you’re lonely I can come visit one weekend? Help out with the studio, maybe? If I can clear my backlog at work, that is. There’s always so much admin to do and I always seem to be the one lumbered with it.’

  ‘Thanks, Mirr. I’m fine, honestly, and you’re so busy. I’ll see you when things settle down here, OK?’ Or if I ever earn enough money to afford the rail fare to Scotland. ‘I’ve got so much to do here, I’ve barely had time to think about being lonely. It is a bit strange without Jonathan, though. I keep seeing him around town, and I have to do a double-take before I realise it’s just some other brown-haired tall drink of water.’ Kelsey curtailed a sigh with a shrug, her renewed positivity kicking in. ‘I suppose this is what happens when you meet the love of your life in June and spend all summer faffing around him only finally getting together at the end of August, a few days before he has to leave town for six months.’

  ‘Excepting Christmas,’ said Mirren.

  ‘Yes, excepting Christmas. And maybe Valentine’s weekend.’

  ‘There you go, that’s not so bad, is it? He’ll be back soon, just hang on in there, Kelse. Listen, I’d better get back to work. I’m in a long-distance relationship with my own desk at the moment. The only women’s loos in this building are down three flights of stairs in the bowels of the earth. Ridiculous! I’ll call you soon, OK? Cheerio.’

  Kelsey blew a kiss, hung up her phone, and placed it on the desk. Once belonging to Norma Arden, her old boss, the desk had until recently been cluttered with staff tour-guiding rotas and payslips and a huge diary from which Norma ruled her heritage industry empire.

  Kelsey could still feel her here in the room and not just because she was grinning down at her from the framed shot of her wedding day with the entire Norma Arden Tours gang giving her a group hug. She was just an unforgettable kind of woman: tenacious, oh so very loud, an odd combination of posh and brassy, and with a huge, welcoming heart and a penchant for bringing together the town’s artistic waifs and strays, as well as dabbling in a bit of matchmaking among them. She may well have left the country to spend her retirement in newly wedded bliss on the Amalfi coast with Gianfranco, but she’d left a feeling of emptiness in the town, a great void that could only be filled with her whirlwind energy and ten to the dozen speech. Kelsey missed her every day and often thought about the great debt of gratitude she owed her.

  Norma must have had some kind of sixth sense in order to pick Kelsey out.

  How had she foreseen that the insecure Scottish homebody, who she hadn’t known from Eve, would become a great tour guide and a valued member of the agency team? Had Norma recognised the fact that a working holiday in her favourite place on the planet was just what Kelsey needed to bring some sunshine back into her overcast life? And just in the nick of time too: Norma had read her – slightly desperate – job application in the spring when Kelsey was losing faith in her dour, hardworking boyfriend Fran and unexpectedly unemployed from what was supposed to be a stop-gap job at a dusty old camera shop back home. Norma’s j
ob offer had changed her life.

  Kelsey often wondered how much Norma had been responsible for engineering her meetings with Jonathan too. It was Norma, after all, who put together the rotas that had thrown them together in the planning of the theatrical gala evening back in August, forcing them into closer acquaintance, giving them time to get to know each other better. And when had Norma realised Kelsey was the ideal candidate to take over the let on her office?

  Norma signed it over at a tiny peppercorn of a rent, set for six months, ‘until you get your business off the ground,’ she’d said, while flashing her lipstick-stained teeth beneath her signature purple specs and shocking, severe red bob.

  ‘What business?’ Kelsey had asked.

  Kelsey smiled at the memory of that moment, only a few weeks ago, when she had been so green.

  ‘Your photography studio, of course,’ Norma had replied, and within minutes the rental agreement was signed and Kelsey, always a little unsure of herself and what she would do with her life, suddenly had a career mapped out for her.

  Looking back, Kelsey reflected, Norma had probably never once seen her without a camera around her neck, and even though she had loved working for Norma at the agency, it was plain to see that Kelsey wasn’t dreaming of a life of tour-guiding, instead she had her heart set on a life she didn’t dare waste any daydreams on. Deep down, Kelsey was only really truly happy behind the lens of her dad’s lovely old camera. Norma had known instantly this fact that Kelsey was only dimly becoming aware of.

  Taking the feather duster from the cupboard under her desk, the autumn light spilling in through the bare studio windows, Kelsey ran it around the sparse room, carefully going over her camera on its new tripod facing the blank whiteness of the smoothly plastered wall where she planned to shoot passport and ID photographs. She hadn’t had the opportunity to do an actual, proper portrait shoot yet either, which wasn’t great when, technically, she’d been in business for almost two weeks.

  The place had needed a full makeover and it had taken time to source and set up the (new to Kelsey) second-hand reflectors and modern studio backdrops she’d found she needed. She’d had a sign installed over the studio door – ‘Kelsey Anderson Photography’ in delicate purple calligraphy – and she’d had to master the new photo-editing software on her tablet. Yet, she had managed all of that, working methodically and efficiently, trying to avoid the temptation to splurge on pretty soft furnishings and extras she didn’t need. Now the studio was complete, and it was her pride and joy.