Shallowfield sat on the southern edge of the Finchbottom Vale and was bordered on the other side by the Dancingdean forest and the town’s fortunes had always relied largely upon forestry and agriculture for its survival.
In the post war years with rationing and a shortage of
work a lot of people moved away from the area and it only just survived and the
community around Teardrop Lake fared even worse.
Only a few of the houses around the Lake were
thriving, a lot of the houses had been rented out and those that hadn’t were in
a poor state of repair, some too such an extent they were little more than
ruins.
But by the 70s however things were beginning to
change, thanks mainly to tourism as a result of an increase in leisure time.
This trend was reflected by the fact that the
previously derelict Shallowfield Lodge, which had been inherited by a young
couple from Lincolnshire, Rob and Sheryl Brown, was being turned into a Hotel.
From then on Shallowfield went from strength to
strength which was echoed by the fortunes of the Claremont Hotel.
It was once the home of a wealthy Downshire family but
like so many similar great houses in the county it fell into disuse as the
fortunes of the owners suffered after the Great War.
It had had many reincarnations since then,
particularly in the years between the wars and had been used for many things
over the post war years but it wasn’t until the 60s that it became the
Claremont Hotel.
However things had got tough in the Hotel trade with
the success of Travelodge, Premier Inn and Holiday Inn Express and so places
like the Claremont needed to offer something extra to attract the guests which
was why Clara
Davits was in Shallowfield, because she was an events manager and in December
there was an awful lot of scope for such things and Clara was good at her job.
She was also exceptionally hard working, and that December
she was working even harder than ever although that was due in no small measure
to the fact that she needed distracting.
That was
because her husband Owen was a sergeant in the Downshire Light Infantry and was
currently on exercises with the regiment firstly in Brunei for jungle operational training and from there
to Canada for battle training on the
prairies of Alberta.
It was a three month absence which was passing agonizingly slowly for
her.
She was able to skype him occasionally and he messaged her when he could
but it wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing.
However the two back to back deployments meant she wouldn’t see him
until the New Year and as that would have been their first Christmas together
she had been very down, which is why she threw herself into her work.
Despite that however she was prone to bouts of daydreaming as she
unpacked the Christmas table decoration.
She knew she
should get busy on the rest of them to meet her target but she was overcome
with tiredness so she decided to have a mug of coffee instead to try and wake
herself up, so she sat down on one of the sofa’s to drink it and promptly fell
asleep instead and had a long luxurious nap.
When she
awoke it was two am and the place was in darkness, obviously someone had come
along and thought the room was empty and turned out the lights.
She was still feeling tired so she decided to go outside for some fresh air so
she donned her coat, hat, scarf and gloves and went outside.
The snow
that had fallen on and off all day had petered out and when she looked up at
the night sky she could see breaks in the cloud and the multitude of twinkling
stars beyond.
Clara looked
back at the hotel where her Christmas lights were visible and then up to the
stars again and she addressed them curtly
“Yes I know you’re
beautiful, but you’re just showing off”
She walked
around the grounds for about half an hour through the fresh fallen snow and when
she was done she made her way back towards the hotel when her phone vibrated in
her pocket.
Even if she
had been able to retrieve it from her pocket with her gloved hand she wouldn’t
have been able to operate it so she waited until she had tromped back across
the terrace to the warmth of the hotel before she removed her glove and checked
her phone.
The source
of the vibrating was a text message so with her un-gloved finger she selected “unread
messages” and her heart skipped a beat when she realised it was from Owen.
The message
seemed to take an eternity to open but when it did she couldn’t believe her
eyes as she read,
“Just landed
in London, exercise cut short, unexpected ten day leave, see you in 36 hours,
counting the minutes”
“Me too” she
said and hugged the phone before she ran back outside and she began to laugh
out loud as she ran around like a child experiencing its first sight of snow
culminating in her falling backwards into a virgin bank of snow.
Despite the
lateness of the hour she was seen by one of the guests on the second floor.
“Look at
that crazy woman, making snow angels at this time of night” he said to his wife
who agreed wholeheartedly that she was crazy.
And Clara
would not have disagreed, she
was crazy, crazy in love, and her love was coming home for Christmas.
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