The Christmas Surprise by Jenny Colgan Read Free Book Online Page B

they are tested. The most unlikely characters thrive in front of a room full of pupils. In his private life, Stephen was reticent and distant, a hangover from a lonely, awkward childhood of feeling different from the other Lipton children but not being able to quite understandwhy, as well as a strict father who wanted his son to be a mirror image of himself, and found a quiet, sensitive, poetry-loving boy rather than a hearty, hunting-shooting-fishing type bound for Sandhurst very difficult to deal with.
    But with a class, he came alive. He was funny, patient, kind. His group leader, Faustine, who had thought of him as a drifting posh boy wandering through gap years for want of direction, instead found him committed, engaging and devoted to his charges, as he took on everything from teaching them how to use sterilising tablets, singing funny songs, attempting to give them a notion of world geography from an atlas published in 1957, to fearlessly killing a snake that crept into the toilet hole one day, a feat that, had Stephen told him about it, would have given his father much pleasure.
    Everywhere he went in the village, he was accompanied by Jabo and his little brother Akibo, who were both absolutely devoted to him, so when Stephen planned the field trip to see the rarely flowering cactus one of the other aid workers had mentioned, they were of course right up the front, carrying the water bottles proudly, touching Stephen’s shirt from time to time to show the rest of the class that they were with him.
    Civil war had supposedly ended there six years before; the region was supposed to be cleared, and safe from landmines.
    People make mistakes.
    Waking up in the military hospital to which he’d been evacuated was the single worst moment of Stephen’s life. The noise, then the deafening quiet; the evisceration; the sight of his own blood pumping away into the sand – so much of it: that only came back during his dreams, on the nights when Rosie held him so closely he could forget where he stopped and she began; could draw the strength he needed from her warm body to bring him back to life.
    But waking up miles away, his leg a ragged mess, unable to move, knowing he had not saved the boys: that was with him always. He did not like to receive emails from his old employers. He wished Rosie was home.

    Stephen picked up the phone. His therapist was a thin, whip-smart, very quiet older woman who let him get away with nothing. Moray had recommended her and he had been absolutely right to do so; Stephen would have turned frosty under too much empathy, or combative against too much intellect, but Diane had the right mix of sharpness and a calm kindness – so sharp, in fact, that he never once suspected that although she returned home every night to her immaculately tidy apartment, ate a healthy dinner with her incredibly clever and intellectual husband as they discussed the serious issues ofthe day, went often to the theatre and smart restaurants with their equally clever and intellectual friends, she spent all night dreaming that she was instead in the unforgiving arms of a taciturn man with a limp.
    She was based in Harley Street in London, and they often had phone consultations.
    Stephen told her everything that had happened, and how painful it was, particularly at school, where they were doing a project on Africa and starting a charity to add money to the fund he was putting together. Rosie also had a tin in the sweetshop. Their first object was to fund Célestine to get to the mission hospital to have her baby. After that, Faustine, Stephen’s ex-colleague from Médecins Sans Frontières, had suggested that rather than just give money to the family, which could provoke resentment, they should attempt to help improve the school, which at the moment was still the large, boiling shed Stephen had known so well. Stephen had agreed with this.
    ‘But it’s just … ever since … I mean, it was interesting to begin with, with