'You have to tell me, Mr Mead. You have to tell me what's going on now.'

'The Lieutenant Colonel was most specific that his rank and background weren't to be mentioned,' said Mr Mead.

'Why?' said Eve. 'I don't get it. Why?'

Mr Mead took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'You should really ask him . . .'

'His house is up for sale, he won't answer his mobile, he's going abroad apparently and' she stabbed the papers with her finger 'he's signed over his half of the park to me.'

'That is correct,' said Mr Mead.

'Is he a secret billionaire that he can afford to do that?'

'Not at all,' replied Mr Mead. 'Just a very honourable man who thought that maybe your aunt had been a little reckless in leaving such a fortune to him after a relatively short acquaintance.'

'He was a hospital visitor, wasn't he? That's how he met Aunt Evelyn?'

'No,' said Mr Mead. 'It was your aunt who was doing the hospital visiting. That's how she met a lot of the people who now work in the park. From what I understand, Evelyn was there for him when he was having trouble adjusting to the loss of his limb and subsequently his military career.' And he coughed, fearing he had breached a confidence.

'Aunt Evelyn was visiting him?' Boy, she really had got all this the wrong way round.

'She wasn't well herself, of course, just having had that stroke, but hospital visiting perked her up no end. And, her acquaintance with the Lieutenant Colonel led to her building Winterworld.'

'Thank you for telling me, Mr Mead,' said Eve. 'Just one more thing.' She picked up Jacques' handwritten intention to assign the deeds to her and tore it in half. 'If Aunt Evelyn wanted the Captain to have half the park, then I'm not going to go against her wishes.'

Chapter 52.

It was very late when Jacques got home and parked his car in the hamlet car park. He squinted because it looked like Eve's BMW in the bay across. Then she got out, dressed in a thin coat, hands tucked under her arms and voice shivering as much as her body.

'Where the hell have you been? Have you any idea how much waiting around I've done today. And I hope there are no CCTV cameras because I had to have a wee in a bush over there.'

He had one of his ridiculously big coats on and a daft hat with a pom pom.

'Eve. Why are you here?'

'I opened your present.'

'You shouldn't have.'

'Can we talk inside? I'm so cold, I'm turning blue.'

He gestured that she walk forward. 'You know, of course, which house I live in.'

Eve's cheeks attempted to blush at that but her blood vessels had all hibernated.

Mrs Cerberus's curtains gave a tiny twitch, but satisfied that Jacques was accompanying the stranger-to-these-parts woman, she returned to her sofa and the TV. Jacques opened the door to a warm kitchen; a slow-cooker was flavouring the air with the smell of beef stew. Eve's stomach keened as the scent of it hit her nostrils. It sounded like someone had kicked a wolf at full-moon.

'Coffee?' he asked.

'Yes please,' said Eve.

'Take a seat,' Jacques invited, gesturing towards the sofa in the lounge. Everything except that sofa and the coffee table was packed up in boxes.

'You're going abroad, I hear,' she said, as he busied himself with getting cups out and boiling the kettle.

'You've done your homework. Yes, I've booked a flight.'

'When?'

'I fly out in the morning.'

'Where?'

'Australia.'

'Couldn't you get any further away?'

He smiled. 'I have friends out there. I've never visited them. I thought it was about time I did.'

'You didn't even stay here long enough to unpack, and now you've packed up again and are leaving.

'I've been used to moving around a lot.'

'What about Winterworld?'

'It's all yours.'

'Why?' She gulped down the rise of emotion in her throat.

He walked into the lounge with two cups of coffee and almost filled the doorway.

'As you said,' he replied, setting the cups down on the coffee table, 'I have no right to your family's fortune. Or this.' He reached over behind Eve to lift something off the shelf and gave it to her. Stanley's medal.

'My aunt gave it to you,' said Eve. 'You'd appreciate it more than I would.' And she handed it back. 'I won't take it. Please.'

His hands stayed down at his side, so she put it on the chair arm. 'I won't be leaving with it. And I ripped up your letter of intent.'

'The legal papers are being prepared anyway,' said Jacques. 'It's yours.'

Eve looked at him, really looked at him, and tried to imagine him in a uniform, leading men. It wasn't that difficult really. Despite the stupid woolly hats and SpongeBob SquarePants sock, he was a natural leader of men and that had been clear from the off.

'Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let me believe that you were a . . . a . . .'

'Gold digger? A cross-dressing gold-digger at that,' he supplied, and then smiled to himself as he sat down and picked up his mug, drawing warmth from it. 'Mischief at first, I think. You were so incredibly snotty. I suppose I had faith in my ability to both win you over and teach you a lesson.'

'Why didn't you tell me you were a soldier?'

'I'm not a soldier any more, Eve. It had no bearing on things. I'd rather be judged on what people find me to be now than have them pity me because I'm a disabled ex-soldier.'

'You weren't just a soldier though, you were a wonderfully brave one. You lost a leg defending your men. I didn't have a clue you don't even limp.' She remembered how he had run through the enchanted forest as sure-footed as a goat.

'Prosthetics have come on in leaps and bounds in the last few years. We amputees no longer need to resort to a wooden leg and a parrot.' He smiled at her his big open twinkly-eyed smile. 'It was painful to wear at the beginning until they got the fit right. I've thrown a few legs across the room in anger, I can tell you. It takes time to learn to walk in a different way from how you've been accustomed to for the whole of your life.'

'I'm so sorry,' said Eve. 'I thought you were either deranged or a practised con man who went around taking life savings away from old ladies.' She put her cup down because she felt in danger of dropping it. 'I couldn't have been more wrong about everything, could I?'

'And you've got so much right too,' said Jacques. 'Delivering baby reindeer, rescuing horses, bringing Evelyn's dream to life. You could run Winterworld blindfolded.'

'Why are you really leaving me?' said Eve, surprising herself even with that question.

Jacques smiled at her. 'Because you bought a Christmas tree.'

Eve wiped a perfidious tear from her eye before he saw it. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'You'll be all right,' he said. 'Christmas is making progress with you. It's all your Aunt Evelyn wanted, to see you join the real world again. When you bought that Christmas tree, I knew you'd be fine. You're starting to need people again, to enjoy them in your life. You're looking forward more and more instead of backwards. Your heart is opening up, Eve Douglas, and you're letting Christmas into it.'

'I thought it was you who visited Aunt Evelyn in hospital,' Eve blurted out, the rein on her emotions getting harder to hold. 'Not the other way around.'

'I was in a bad state when Evelyn came into my life. I didn't care about any medal I'd won. I couldn't see any future disabled and out of the army, my head was a mess. Then this funny little old lady dragged me out of my own head kicking and screaming, gabbling on about how much she loved Christmas and asking me to help her design a theme park. I thought she was barking.'

'She was,' laughed Eve.

'And she told me all about her niece who was as disabled as I was and as trapped inside herself. She wanted to help you much more than she did me, but she knew all the words had been said to you and none of them had worked.'

Eve's face fell into her hands and she sobbed. Then she felt warm strong arms close around her and her face being pushed into Jacques' shoulder, and she smelt his foresty aftershave.

'And she did it,' he continued. 'She helped me and you're nearly there.'

'Don't leave, Jacques. It won't be the same. I was climbing the walls in the new office today after two hours. The new coffee machine is too swanky and perfect and there's no noise.'

'You'll get used to those little changes,' said Jacques. He raised her head with his finger and looked into her eyes.

'The colour of Christmas trees,' he said. 'You're going to be fine.'

She felt his face near hers, she closed her eyes anticipating his lips falling onto hers, but they merely grazed against her cheek.

'I'll see you to your car,' he said, his arms releasing her. 'I think you'll sleep well tonight.'

Jacques waited until she had driven out of sight before returning to the cottage. He would miss her so much. He was only happy that he had done his duty by Evelyn and set her on the road to recovery with their spats and fights and one-upmanship. Jonathan would have been a lucky man had he lived, but he hadn't. And life was for the living. No one who truly loved another would want them to waste their precious life grieving. They would want them to live and love for them both.

He closed his eyes and saw the scene of him lying in his hospital bed, bitter and frustrated. He'd rather have died on duty than be a disabled man with no hope left in his life. The bomb had crippled his head more than his body.

He remembered the first time he heard her voice.

'Hello, I'm Evelyn Douglas. And you are Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Jacques Glace.' She had pronounced it 'Jeen'. 'Is it all right to call you Jacques? My sister-in-law is called Jean and I could never stand the sight of her.'

And despite himself he had laughed, and she had sat down on the chair at the side of the bed and talked until he listened.

And weeks later Evelyn Douglas had placed her hand on his and said, 'You'll never know how much you've changed my life, Jacques. You make me think that anything is possible. When I first met you, you were such a grump. But you've come through so much. You make me feel ashamed that I had all that life and wasted it, when you have fought so hard to keep hold of yours. But no more. I'm going to try and make up for lost time. I won't make up for all of it, but I can set some balls rolling downhill.'

'Good for you, Evelyn,' he said, thinking she was going to go off and book a cruise.

'You're right, Jacques. Life is for the living. I just wish I could make my niece believe that. I wish you'd fall in love with her,' Evelyn had said with a heavy sigh. 'Oh, she might play the big career woman, but I know that girl's heart and it's lonely and crying for someone to love it. Make her fall in love with you, Jacques.'

'Life isn't a romance book, Evelyn,' Jacques had said kindly. 'You can't write your own happy ending. It's in bigger hands than ours.'

'You'd be good together,' Evelyn had nodded, ignoring him. 'She's not an easy woman, but she's worth the effort to get to know. I'm going to sort it that you spend some time together. I'm going to leave you both half of my Christmas theme park. You'll have to work together.'

'Yes, you do that,' he had chuckled. If only he had known she wasn't joking.

Then he found himself joint owner of Winterworld.

He had played the game for a while, in accordance with Evelyn's wishes, because it was clear from the off that if he didn't, Winterworld would have become a different place to the one Evelyn wanted. But he had always intended to sign his share back over, just as soon as things were on course. It wouldn't have been right to accept that sort of inheritance from an old lady he had known for such a short time.

He didn't bargain on falling stupidly in love with the stubborn, snotty, uber-confident, super-efficient, megalomaniac of a niece of hers though. And he couldn't be around her because she needed time, lots of it, to recover. Because she was moving into the here and now, and that meant she would finally start to grieve for Jonathan and be able to let him go.

Chapter 53.

Eve tried to sleep but she couldn't. Her head was a mess, a jumble of old prejudices and new enlightenments. Facts were easier to compartmentalize and deal with than the feelings bombarding her heart. Because those feelings were wrong, so wrong, disrespectful to Jonathan's memory, but at the same time they were so strong, so undeniably and magically strong.

Eve made herself a cup of instant chocolate and carried it into the chilly office where the cheerful candle burned brightly in the window. The sight of it churned her gut and she slumped in the chair at the desk and let the tears roll down her face.

'Oh Jonathan,' she said, her voice choked with emotion. 'I don't know what to do. I feel myself changing and I know if I do, that I'll be moving away from you. And I can't do that. Because we made a vow to each other and I know you're with me and I couldn't ever hurt you. I couldn't let you go.'

She pressed at her chest knowing that the big coat-wearing, daft-hat-and-gloves buffoon Jacques Glace had been denied access to the door there, so he had climbed in through the window.

Then a rather extraordinary thing happened. The room suddenly grew warm, as if a giant fire had been turned on behind every wall, floor and ceiling. And through the haze of her tears, Eve saw the candle flame expand, grow brighter and higher than should have been possible. She wiped her eyes, just in time to see the flame disappear, as if someone had wet their fingers and extinguished it just like that. The candle was smoking, the end of the tip a faint orange, which faded before her eyes to black. And the room grew as quickly chilly as it had become hot.

Chapter 54.

Everyone agreed that Phoebe May Tinker's childish squeals of delight summed up the noises they all wanted to make: from the elf-people to the caterers, Mr and Mrs Nowak and the Polish and Welsh workers, now out of their hard hats and work gear and in jeans, holding the hands of their babies who had come to see Santa along with everyone else who was queuing at the gates and those queues went a long way back.