Last Christmas by Julia Williams

of the farm from his father. How to explain that it was in his blood? He’d grown up farming sheep and had only left it behind because his parents feared for the future of their industry and had wanted him to have a job with more security. But Gabriel had never really taken to city life and had always known that one day he’d go back. When his parents announced their retirement it seemed like the perfect time to do so. He’d loved it from the first, but Eve had never settled.
    ‘If you could be a proper wife…’ had often been on his lips, but he’d never been cruel enough to say it. Eve, his poor little Evie, couldn’t help who or what she was. She’d never been cut out for country living and found the life oppressive. Everyone had warned him he couldn’t change her, but Gabriel had been too stubborn to listen, and now he was paying the price.
    Where was she? How was she managing without him? He hadn’t heard from her in weeks and the sense of loss was still so raw that the pain caught him short sometimes, and he’d find himself blinking away sudden tears that came when he least expected them. Shit. He had to be stronger about this. Stephen needed him. Gabriel couldn’t afford to let him down.
    Mind you, sometimes his son showed such astonishing strength, Gabriel had to pinch himself to work out who was the child and who was the parent. Stephen seemed to have a knack for knowing just when Gabriel was hurting most, and would sometimes come up and hold his hand, and say, ‘It’s okay, Dad’ in a way that tore at Gabriel’s heart. It was at such moments Gabriel’s sympathies for Eve’s suffering would evaporate and be replaced with cold, harsh fury. How could she have done this to them?
    The fury returned briefly as Gabriel strode across the frozen wastes of the land thinking of the life that he’d sobadly wanted to share with her. It didn’t seem fair. None of it did.
    ‘I think you’ll find life isn’t very fair,’ a voice greeted Gabriel, as he approached the stile leading to the lane that ran down the side of his house.
    ‘What?’ Gabriel jerked himself back to the real world to find himself staring into the welcoming smile of Ralph Nicholas, out walking his dog. Where had he sprung from so suddenly and silently?
    ‘Jeez. I must be going mad,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’m talking to myself now. Sorry.’
    ‘No matter,’ said Ralph. ‘I know you have a lot to deal with.’
    ‘How?’ Gabriel was a little more belligerent than he meant to be. He was uncomfortably aware that his family situation was the talk of the town and hated being the centre of attention. He’d barely ever spoken to Ralph Nicholas, who hardly spent any time in Hope Christmas anymore. How on earth did he know what was going on in Gabriel’s life?
    ‘There’s not much that happens in this village that I don’t know about,’said Ralph.‘Incidentally,do you think it unfair when a fox gets one of your sheep?’
    ‘No,’ said Gabriel, ‘because I do everything I can to prevent that. If a fox catches a sheep, it’s usually bad luck.’
    ‘And if you’ve done everything you can to help your wife,’ said Ralph, ‘don’t you think you should just accept there’s nothing you can do for her? Some people cannot, or will not, be helped. It’s just bad luck.’
    Gabriel looked at Ralph in astonishment. How had this relative stranger plumbed the depths of his heart so conclusively? He’d never even talked to Pippa about how he really felt about Eve.
    ‘I feel I’ve failed her,’ said Gabriel slowly. ‘I wanted to look after her and I couldn’t.’
    ‘But you can look after your son,’ pointed out Ralph. ‘I’ve always found a new hobby very helpful for a broken heart.’
    ‘I don’t have time for hobbies,’ said Gabriel.
    ‘Well, maybe it’s not a hobby you need,’ said Ralph. ‘But perhaps you could use the considerable talents you have for protection into something that you can do something