Mistletoe and Magic, page 22
With Charlie vacating the room to give her some space to get in the writing mindset, Eva made herself a cup of tea using the room’s miniature kettle, cracked her knuckles like a pianist before a concert, and began to type:
“We love our tragic heroines best when they’re beautiful corpses. Catherine Earnshaw wasting away on the moors. Juliet in her marble tomb. We want our broken-hearted women aesthetic and finite, their pain wrapped up neatly with a bow.
Margaret Wells refused to give in to a tragedy. She lived.
Eva thought about it all as she typed. Margaret lived through rationing and rebuilding. She lived through marriage to a good man she respected but didn’t burn for. She lived through raising children and burying a husband and watching the world change around her. She lived, and in living, she loved—not with the desperate passion of youth, but with the steady, transformative love of someone who understood that hearts, like bones, grow stronger at the broken places.
Eva wrote all through the day, fuelled by Florence’s tactical tea deliveries (the room kettle just couldn’t fill the epic sized mug she needed) and her own desperate desire to get this right. She wrote about the library where Margaret had worked, slipping notes into books to tell people ‘You matter’, ‘Tomorrow can be different’ and ‘Someone believes in you.’ Simple phrases that became lifelines for damaged soldiers learning to live again with shaking hands.
She wrote about Christmas 1952, when Margaret had noticed children pressing their noses against toy shop windows. By Christmas Eve, mysterious baskets had appeared on doorsteps throughout York—oranges and walnuts, hand-knitted mittens, and small toys. The Christmas Angel, they’d called her, never knowing it was the head nurse who’d organised it all, encouraging shopkeepers into donations with surgical precision.
When she got to Walter, she paused. This was the tricky part—how to tell a love story without making it the only story. She thought of her own failed relationships, how she’d tried to build her entire identity around loving men who couldn’t love her back the same way. The difference was, Margaret had chosen to love anyway—just differently. She flexed her fingers and typed:
In 1945, Margaret Wells fell in love with an American soldier named Walter Lorne. They wrote notes in library books, planned a future on a Pennsylvania farm, dreamed the dreams of eighteen-year-olds who think love conquers everything.
He left without saying goodbye—deployed in the night, no warning, no explanation, just gone. She waited. He never came back.
Although this is where other stories would end, Margaret had over sixty more years to live.
Eva continued to inform the reader of how she spent them at bedsides and Christmas markets, in council meetings and charity drives. She spent them teaching children to read and veterans to hope. She spent them proving that love isn’t just what happens between two people in the dark—it’s what happens when you decide the world deserves better than your broken heart.
She kept writing, her eyes burning, her back aching. The radiator clanged its evening song. Her tea went cold, then colder. At 7 p.m., she opened Margaret’s box and found a photograph—Margaret in her forties, surrounded by children at the library, every face turned towards her like flowers to the sun. On the back, in spidery handwriting: ‘Tuesday story time, 1973. My favourite hour of the week’.
Eva taped it to her wall and kept typing.
She wrote about the inn being saved in 1947, the Christmas Angel Project of 1952, the reading room established in 1963. She wrote about a woman who transformed heartbreak into an engine of grace. Not a saint—saints didn’t have Margaret’s sharp tongue, her weakness for sherry or her habit of ‘accidentally’ tripping rude customers at the tea shop. Saints didn’t write letters to the council calling them ‘complete nincompoops’ for trying to close the veterans’ shelter. Saints didn’t keep a flask in their handbag for ‘medicinal purposes’.
Just a person who chose, every day, to be useful rather than bitter.
By the time she typed the last word, her laptop clock read 7.06p.m. Florence had moved the office printer into her room earlier in the day and so Eva began to print her first draft. She’d go through a hard copy she decided, spell-check, edit, make sure she’d captured not just the facts but the feeling of a life lived in service to joy. She saved the document with shaking fingers, then nearly jumped out of her skin when Florence knocked on the door.
“Come in,” Eva called, her voice hoarse from disuse.
Florence entered carrying yet another pot of tea and something more precious—hope in her eyes. “Is it finished?”
“Just.” Eva gestured at the pages resting in the printer. “But Florence, even if it’s good, how do we—”
“Get it to the right people?” Florence’s smile was sly. “Already sorted. James Hartwell at the Yorkshire Herald owes me more favours than I can count. His mother was one of Margaret’s Christmas Angel recipients back in ‘58. I rang him an hour ago.”
“The Yorkshire Herald would publish this?”
“James is waiting for it right now. Has held space in tomorrow’s edition—Christmas Eve morning. It’ll be online by midnight, in print by dawn.” Florence moved to look at the printout. “May I?”
Eva nodded, watching nervously as Florence skimmed through sections of the article.
“This is it,” Florence said softly. “This is Margaret’s real story. Send it to James now—here’s his direct email.” She handed Eva a business card that looked like it had lived in her apron pocket for years. “He said if we get it to him by ten, he can have his best editor review it tonight.”
“But what about Aidan’s journalist friend?”
“Different paper,” Florence said with satisfaction. “Smaller circulation. And James has already heard whispers about Aidan’s sensationalist piece. He’s no fan of developers who treat history like a commodity. Your story will run as the lead feature, with a note about the heritage trail and tomorrow’s gathering at the inn.”
Eva’s hands trembled as she attached the document to an email. “What if it’s not enough?”
“Then at least the truth will be out there,” Florence said. “Margaret’s real legacy, not Aidan’s twisted version. That matters, love. Truth always matters.”
“Okay, let me do one more read through and then we can share it.”
“Right then,” Florence said briskly, though Eva caught her wiping her eyes. “You rest for a bit. Charlie’s been busy with the trail all day, but he’ll want to know it’s done.”
Eva took the pages from Florence to look at the document one last time. She’d proofread it properly, she just needed to close her eyes for a moment …
Charlie found her shortly after she’d nodded off, face smooshed against her keyboard, one hand still reaching for her cold tea. Scrawled pages covered every surface—the desk, the floor, her bed. The unlocked laptop screen’s light caught the photos on the wall, making Margaret’s face glow like a benediction. Tilly padded in behind him, lead wrapped twice around his wrist, and gave Eva’s dangling hand an investigative sniff.
“Eva?” Charlie whispered, then louder: “Eva.”
Nothing. She’d even managed to fall asleep with perfect typing posture, because of course she had. There was a crease on her cheek from her keyboard, and her glasses sat askew. She looked like a disaster. She looked perfect.
Charlie looked to the document placed on top of the printer and laid his eyes on Eva’s first draft. Picking up the story, his eyes began to scan. As he read, his hands stilled. His breath caught.
She’d done it. She’d captured Margaret—not the martyr he’d feared she’d write or the victim the papers wanted, but the complicated, stubborn, gloriously human woman who’d raised him. But more than that, Eva had found the thread that connected them all: a woman turning private grief into public good, one small kindness at a time.
He kept reading, sinking into the corner of Eva’s mattress as Tilly settled at his feet. When he reached the section about Walter, his eyes burned:
Margaret Wells and Walter Lorne loved each other for three months in 1945. It wasn’t enough time. It was a lifetime. Both things can be true.
The simplicity of it—the truth of it—hit him like a physical blow. Charlie pulled out Walter’s letter—the one he’d finally read during those terrible hours when him and Eva were fighting. He’d memorised parts already, the words seared into his brain:
“My dearest Maggie,
By the time you receive this, I hope you’ve found happiness. I was shipped back to battle without warning, then home rather quickly. My arm, as you know, was worse than we thought. I’ve started this letter a hundred times over during the past few months, but couldn’t find the words.
The truth is, I’m broken, Maggie. Not just my arm. The things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done—they’ve left marks that won’t heal. I wake up screaming. I can’t hold a coffee cup without shaking. What kind of life is that for a woman like you?
You deserve someone whole. Someone who can give you dancing nights, Sunday dinners and babies who’ll run in your garden without their father flinching when they move too fast.
I love you too much to make you settle for half a man. I know that there is someone already waiting who deserves you far more than me. Be happy.
All my love, Walter
P.S. (Added by Mabel Lorne, 1987)—My brother died last Tuesday. It’s only this following week that I found this unsent letter. He never married. I thought you should know he kept your picture at his bedside all these years. His last word was your name.
Charlie wiped his eyes with his sleeve. All that waste. All that noble stupidity. Two people so busy trying to save each other from pain that they’d caused infinitely more. He looked at Eva, drooling slightly on her keyboard, and felt his heart crack open.
On the screen there was a draft email ready to be sent, article included. Eva was second guessing herself. But after reading the article, Charlie knew that what she had written was perfect. She’d channelled some part of herself in order to tell Margaret’s truth, and for that he’d be eternally grateful. Maybe he could be brave for both of them. Holding his breath, he clicked send.
“Eva,” he said softly, touching her shoulder. “Eva, wake up.”
She stirred, making an indignant noise that might have been “five more minutes” or possibly “death to morning.” Her eyes fluttered open, focused on him, then went wide.
“Charlie? What time—oh no, the pages!” She tried to stand, got tangled in her chair, and would have fallen if Charlie hadn’t caught her elbow. For a moment they were close enough that he could see the exact shade of brown in her eyes, like tea with honey.
“The pages are fine. I’ve read them.” He steadied her, their faces suddenly very close. “Eva, they’re perfect. It’s ready, I’ve sent it.”
“You read them? All of them?” She was adorably rumpled, her hair flat on one side, keyboard marks on her cheek. “Even the part where I called her ‘beautifully belligerent’? And you’ve sent it!?”
“Especially that part, yes.” Charlie’s voice was rough. “It’s exactly what she was. Beautiful and belligerent and absolutely refusing to let the world be less than it could be.
“Every word.” He held up Walter’s letter. “And this. I want you to finally read this too.”
Eva’s face softened as she took the fragile paper from him. “Oh, Charlie. What does it say?”
He told her, watching her eyes fill as he recited Walter’s words about being broken, about wanting Margaret to have better. When he got to the part about waking up screaming, Eva’s hand found his. When he reached the sister’s postscript, she made a small, wounded sound that he felt in his chest.
“They were both idiots,” she whispered.
“Noble idiots,” Charlie agreed. “Tragic, self-sacrificing idiots who robbed themselves of decades of happiness because they each thought they knew what was best for the other.”
“My therapist has a word for that,” Eva said with a watery laugh. “She calls it ‘catastrophising your way out of joy.’”
“Your therapist sounds smart.”
“She’d have had a field day with these two.” Eva gestured at the letter. “Can you imagine? ‘I love you too much to let you love me’. The ego of it. The absolute arrogance of deciding someone else’s happiness for them.”
They stood there in the dawn light, surrounded by the scattered pages of Margaret’s life, the weight of all that wasted love heavy between them. Without thinking, Charlie reached up and fixed Eva’s crooked glasses. His fingers lingered against her temple.
“Charlie,” Eva said quietly. “We can’t let the inn go. We can’t let Aidan turn it into some soulless—”
“We won’t.” The certainty in his voice surprised them both.
“The deadline is in a few hours.”
“I know.”
“We have no money, no legal standing, no—”
Charlie stopped her with a finger to her lips, a gesture that made them both freeze. The air between them went electric. “What we have,” he said slowly, “is Margaret’s story. The real one. The one you just spent all day writing.”
“A story won’t pay the mortgage.”
“No, but it might do something better.” His eyes were bright now, that manic gleam she’d seen when he talked about his maps. “What if we made Margaret’s trail real? Physical? Something people could walk, touch, experience?”
Eva’s exhausted brain tried to keep up. “Like a heritage trail?”
“Exactly. Every place she touched, every life she changed. Mapped, marked, unmissable.”
Eva looked at him in awe. This was a brilliant idea, people would love it! “But Charlie, we have next to no time, how can we plot that all out?”
“We don’t need to. Margaret did it for us.”
“What?” Eva was tired and now even more confused.
“The diagram. Eva, do you remember the diagram in the box? I thought it was just decorative, but when I took a closer look it was as clear as day. Margaret created a map. It was a literal guide to where she had hidden all her notes.
“The veterans’ corner, the library, the orphans’ Christmas spot, the hidden garden where she went to grieve, all of them.” His speech seems to speed up with each location added.
Eva’s exhaustion vanished. “Charlie, you genius. That’s it. That’s our trail.”
They looked at each other, breathless with possibility. Then reality crashed back like cold water.
“Charlie, the deadline is midnight. We have just hours.”
“Good job I’ve already made a start on it then, isn’t it? With a little help, of course …”
“Charlie Blackwood, what have you been up to while I’ve been writing miste—”
Instead of answering, Charlie did something that stopped Eva’s heart. He stepped forward, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her forehead—gentle, reverent, a blessing and a promise. She could smell his soap, feel the calluses on his palms from years of drawing maps.
“I think,” he said softly, “that Margaret Wells spent her life proving that impossible things happen when people choose kindness over fear.”
Eva felt herself sway towards him, exhaustion and emotion making her brave. Her hands found his chest, feeling his heartbeat race to match hers. “What do we do now?”
For a moment, they just looked at each other. Eva thought he might kiss her properly. Thought she might die if he didn’t. The evening room was chilly now that she’d left the blanketed seat at her desk.
Then Charlie pulled her into a fierce embrace, his arms wrapping around her like he was trying to hold all the pieces of her together. She felt him shake slightly—exhaustion or emotion, she couldn’t tell. Maybe both.
“We save it,” he whispered into her hair. “We save all of it.”
Eva buried her face in his shoulder, breathing him in. “Together?”
“Together.” He pulled back just enough to look at her, his eyes bright with unshed tears and something that looked dangerously like hope. “I know how to save the inn. Let me show you the real people of York too.”
“Show me the way.” Eva’s voice was steady now, sure. “What’s the plan?”
“Then the last stop leads us back to the Inn,” Charlie’s smile was radiant as he finished walking Eva through the crash course of the trail he’d marked out for Margaret’s Map. While she’d been hard at work writing, Charlie had rallied every man, woman and child in the vicinity to get Margaret’s points adequately marked. A good thing no one had retired to bed yet. His friends from the Christmas dinner get together and fellow stall owners had divided and conquered each of the zones. Together, they’d created beautiful handmade markers that labelled each spot. Even Sophie had managed to shake off her ego and offered to help.
“So, what’s next?”
“Now? We set Trinkett loose on the town’s people while they’re jolly and weaponise his theatrical tendencies. We’re going to rally everyone who’s ever been touched by Margaret’s kindness. We’ll make this city remember why some things are worth saving.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we’ll have tried.” He squeezed her hand. “Margaret would expect nothing less.”
Eva squeezed back, feeling the weight of the past and the possibility of the future all tangled up in this moment. “For Margaret, then.”
“For Margaret. For Florence. For the inn.” His eyes held hers. “For us.”
Before Eva could unpack everything in that ‘us’, Charlie was already heading for the door, battle plans forming. “Trinkett will be our voice on the ground. The stall I bought your notebook from, that’s owned by a really cool local artist, he created fliers this afternoon that we’ve had people posting door to door, we’re going to hand out the last of them now. I want to see a queue winding through the streets of York tomorrow morning to understand Maragaret’s story.
“Charlie,” Eva called after him. “We need to sleep. Both of us.”
He turned back, grinning like a man about to charge into glorious battle. “Sleep is for people who aren’t trying to save Christmas. Come on, Coleman. Let’s go make some magic.”
