Eliza Hope-Brown

  Another Year Over

  Copyright © 2023 by Eliza Hope-Brown

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Eliza Hope-Brown asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  First edition

  Editing by Daisy Hollands

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  Contents

  Acknowledgement

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Eliza Hope-Brown

  Acknowledgement

  When I first started out on my writing journey, had you asked me if I’d ever work on a Christmas story, I’d politely have told you no, absolutely not, even though my inner elf would have been bouncing around, excited at the prospect. It’s certainly been a weird experience, listening to Christmas songs in the Autumn to get me into the right head space but it’s been a fun time working on this. I really couldn’t have done any of this without the support and guidance of Daisy though, who (like an over excited 7-year-old on Christmas Eve) has worked with me to get this ready. Her constant reassurance and love enables me to be the writer I was born to be and without her, I’d not be here today, writing this story for you.

  The Playlist

  I have always been a lover of music from a very young age.

  As cliched as it sounds, music is regularly the soundtrack to my

  life and you’ll often find me plugged into something listening

  to my favourite songs.

  Here are a selection of the songs I listened to while writing Another Year Over.

  I have collected them into a single randomised Spotify playlist for you to listen to

  while you read.

  Enjoy!

  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7gR2rrlWmpNVocpuUAWtiq

  Chapter 1

  Trudging down the centre aisle of B&M, Holly Coleman kept her eyes cast down, avoiding the joyful looks of the late morning Christmas shoppers buying the last of the tat and trinkets to fill their homes over the coming days of celebrations.

  With under a week to go until the big day, she was just anxiously waiting for it all to be over so she could go back to feeling the depression of the dark winter in the peace and quiet of her one-bedroom flat.

  It had been a hell of a year. Another twelve months in her dull accountancy job, dealing with spreadsheets that made her head throb and her heart sad. Even though the money was good and she felt like she should just be happy, with the passing of each week she felt increasingly numb to her surroundings.

  Her love life wasn’t much better. She’d all but given up on dating, with a string of first dates that had either failed to show up or were far from what they’d promised to be. She was tired of it all. It seemed as if her life simply wasn’t destined to be a modern day Hallmark love story.

  The worst of it all over the last 365 days however, had been the loss of her beloved grandmother, who had been her favourite person in the whole world.

  It hadn’t really been a shock. Her grandmother’s health had been greatly deteriorating over recent years and even though she made it to ninety-two, something she herself said was pretty good going, her death had hit Holly hard.

  With her passing, Holly’s favourite person in the world was gone and it left a gaping chasm of hurt inside her, one that had shattered her in every way possible.

  Her best friend Belle, had tried all year to be supportive and a place of safety but nothing had seemed to lift Holly from her spiralling depression. The world just seemed to be against her no matter which way she turned.

  The darker the months had gotten, the more she’d retreated from the world around her.

  For weeks previously, Belle had been trying to convince her best friend that something was wrong and that she needed some help, but it had taken a day of non-stop, uncontrollable tears with Belle at her side for Holly to listen and get an appointment to see the doctor.

  As the calendar had flipped over from November to December, everything had come to a head.

  After missing days of work to hide under the duvet on the sofa using “some sort of ‘flu” as a vague excuse, she’d been signed off for an initial three weeks, diagnosed with anxiety and depression.

  No one had really been surprised apart from Holly.

  “It’s a positive thing. It’s just about helping you get straight and on your feet again, that’s all. It’s not a permanent solution.” Belle had said as they’d walked arm in arm back to her car, with Holly clutching a little bag of antidepressants. But to the girl who’d just been told she was officially depressed, the world around her felt imposing and scary.

  “It will all be okay, Hol, I promise.”

  Belle had then taken her home where they’d spent the first day of her official sick leave cuddling and watching easy movies, Holly’s dog Humbug sat across their feet like a draught excluder.

  Now, with the dulcet tones of Michael Buble playing above the hubbub in the large, cold discount store, Holly just wished she could be back at home.

  But she couldn’t.

  Earlier that week she’d been emailed and asked to attend a return-to-work meeting on the last work day before Christmas.

  Even the mere of idea it had caused her stress and given her a pounding headache already and going into the office was the very last thing she wanted to do. So here she stood, numb to everything around her, needing to get some paracetamol and a bottle of water to wash them down

  She’d tried in vain to get her boss, Martha, to move the meeting to the New Year so she could ignore the notion of work for a little while longer but her boss had insisted it was the right thing to do.

  “I’m sorry Holly,” she’d said. “I need you to do this for me.”

  The accountancy firm she worked for had, in fairness, been really understanding about the whole situation, with Martha herself taking the time to check in every few days to see how Holly was doing and to ask if she needed anything.

  The answer was always the same however, nothing had really changed and no she didn’t need anything.

  In truth, it was Belle who was holding Holly’s life together. She was taking care of everything that was needed and she couldn’t have asked for a better friend.

  “Merry Christmas!”

  The smiling stranger spoke as she brushed past, bringing Holly out of the thoughts she’d been lost in.

  “Erm. Yeah. Sorry. Thanks.”

  She picked up a little blue box of painkillers from the shelf and scuttled away to the tills before anyone else could try and wish her festive tidings.

  Practically holding her breath until she had paid and was back out in the cold, she couldn’t have gotten out of the shop faster unless she’d stolen the 79p packet of paracetamol and the £2 bottle of water.

  The winter wind bit harshly at her exposed skin as she walked so she pulled her scarf up high around her face to keep some semblance of warmth close to her skin; the fingers of her free hand fiddling with the receipt in her pocket, reassuring her that she hadn’t in fact stolen anything before 10 am on a Thursday.

  While the town around her was busy with late-minute Christmas shoppers, the high street looked far less festive.

  Days of persistent drizzle and plunging temperatures had left the pavements damp and treacherous with hidden patches of black ice around every turn, where the council hadn’t salted due to budget cuts.

  Rather than chocolate-box perfect, with Christmas lights and snow, the town looked the same way Holly felt deep inside. Drab and depressed.

  Then she saw it.

  The black and white sign above the nondescript brown door.

  Jacob’s Accountancy and Loans.

  Chapter 2

  Holly waited anxiously in her small office, spinning casually on her office chair, hoping to go unnoticed while feeling like she was waiting to see the head teacher.

  The last thing she wanted was for one of her colleagues to come in and say hi, asking the inevitable questions that she didn’t want to answer.

  Over the time she’d worked for Martha, she’d progressed to having her own office which in reality was no bigger than a cupboard.

  It was a welcome promotion of sorts though, as it meant she could hide away and pretend to work while she whiled away the long hours, wishing she was anywhere but there. The work was in fact, easy for her and in part the lack of a challenge made the whole work situation even more miserable. She felt like she was merely existing rather than living.

  Training to be an accountant had never been her plan.

  Starting as a temp not long out of university, she had wanted to simply save money so she could pursue her dream of being a cake maker. She’d had no real plan of how she’d do that but she’d known since being a little girl, baking sponge cakes with her Granny Ivy in her large cottage kitchen, that the only thing she wanted to do in life was bake cakes. It was the only time she ever felt free and truly herself.

  But as is often the case in adulthood, the security of regular income and the relentlessness of life meant that she lost sight of her youthful fantasies and had them replaced with something much worse.

  Reality.

  Three years on and Holly was stuck in a job she didn’t like and couldn’t really afford to leave, with the dream of making cakes a thin and vague wish that she had now all but let go.

  Looking out of the grimy window of the office she thought about happier times with Granny Ivy making gingerbread men and wondered how she’d ended up here, sick and miserable.

  “Hey you.”

  She was so lost in thought, Holly hadn’t heard her boss enter the room and close the door. The intrusion into her reflections made her jump slightly.

  Martha Jacobs was an intense woman. Never seen out of a suit in the office, she cut an imposing figure. Yet, under the seriousness beat a heart that was both passionate and compassionate.

  Unlike the rest of the office staff, Holly had never been intimidated by Martha. To Holly, she had always been kind and supportive, even though she always expected results.

  “Hi.”

  Holly made to get up and follow her boss back to her much larger office for whatever rollicking her addled brain assumed she was about to get, but Martha stopped her with a gentle motion of her hand.

  “No, it’s okay. Sit. Let’s stay here.”

  “Okay…”

  “How are you doing?”

  The inevitable question.

  “Oh, the same really.”

  Martha looked at her employee and barely recognised her from the girl she’d hired three years ago. Holly looked tired and broken, the very opposite of who she was when they first met.

  “We’ve all been missing you.”

  It wasn’t quite the truth, as she knew the girl liked to keep herself to herself, shut away in her office, but she hoped it would make her feel cared for.

  The words tumbled from Holly before she could take a breath. “Look I’m sorry I’m off. I’ll come back as soon as the office opens up in the New Year. I can even pick up some lost hours over Christmas. You don’t have to say.”

  “You will do nothing of the sort.” Martha said softly.

  Holly sat stunned, unsure of what to say.

  Her boss sighed and put her ever-present phone face-down on the desk beside her.

  “Holly, why are you here?” Martha perched herself gently on the edge of the desk and looked concerned.

  “You asked…”

  “No, I mean why are you still here? In this job? This was never your plan.”

  “I…” Holly remembered excitedly oversharing during her job interview, spilling her dream to the friendly Martha before panicking that she’d said too much and ruined her chances of employment.

  The interviewer, with a passionate entrepreneurial streak herself, had simply nodded and said she’d do all she could to help that happen for the keen young girl.

  “Another year over, Holly and what have you done?”

  The hot burning feeling of an emotional onslaught lodged itself in Holly’s throat and within moments the tears had begun to fall. It didn’t take much these days for her feelings to overwhelm her.

  “I’m sorry,” she tried to say through the sobs.

  “Holly. You don’t need to say sorry to me. You haven’t done anything wrong here. I’m worried about you, that’s all.”

  Wiping her tears on her coat sleeves, the young woman stared at the floor.

  “You’re good at your job and I’m very grateful you’re here but what happened to the girl who wanted to make cakes for a living?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Somewhere along the way, and it’s probably partly my fault for giving you more and more responsibility over time, you’ve gotten stuck.”

  Holly just nodded and sniffed away more tears.

  “I remember when you first started here. You would bring us cakes and buns every Monday morning without fail.

  In the beginning, I just thought you were full of youthful exuberance; we were all the same at that age. Then I was blown away the first time I tasted one of your cupcakes. You are immensely talented.”

  Without making eye contact and in a tiny voice, Holly spoke. “Thank you.”

  Martha sighed. The girl in front of her was a shadow of the smiley fresh-faced one who had bounded into her office, holding a plastic container of delicious cupcakes on her first day years before.

  “When was the last time you baked anything?”

  “Erm…it’s been a while.”

  While in the early days she’d had lots of people wanting cakes, as she’d gotten lost in the life of a working adult, fewer requests had been made and after her grandmother had died at the beginning of the year, the thought of even attempting to bake was nauseating.

  “You lost yourself here Holly and with it went your dream. It’s like your light has gone out.”

  Holly’s shoulders slumped. She knew her boss was speaking the truth. Somehow the spark she always seemed to have was gone and she was left feeling permanently cold.

  Even Belle had commented on it when she’d comforted her best friend after getting back from the doctor’s appointment weeks before.

  “Jesus Hol, you’re freezing!”

  Belle had held her close that afternoon and Holly had cuddled into her, feeling safe and loved in the same way she always did when they were together. Even that had failed to warm her up.

  “Holly, I’m not signing you back on to work.”

  “What? Why?” She looked up, confused. She’d blown it. She was sure she was about to be fired. What was she going to do now?

  Martha smiled gently at her.

  “Take the Christmas break. Your job will be here when we open back up in January, if you still want it. Over the next two weeks I want you to seriously consider how you want your life to be, okay? If you come back to me in January unsure, I’ll fire you on the spot and shove you into that life you’ve dreamed of myself.” She winked.

  “But if you decide that this is definitely where you want to be, I’ll welcome you back with open arms. My hope, however, and I’m saying this with love, is that you don’t.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Holly was stunned. This wasn’t what she’d expected at all.

  “You don’t have to say anything. Just go home and think about your life and what you want from it. And if baking is what your heart truly wants, make it happen. Just open your heart and believe. Believe in yourself and what the future holds.”

  “But Martha, I wouldn’t know how.”

  “No one does when they start. That’s a part of the process you have to go through. You just have to believe.”

  Martha stood and Holly rose with her, feeling shaky on heavy legs.

  “Right, go home. I don’t want you hanging around here with the lure of work all around you.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  As Holly moved to the door, the woman behind her spoke.

  “Do it for yourself, Holly. You deserve it. Have yourself a merry little Christmas.”

  All Holly could do was smile weakly in return and let the door close behind her as she walked away, unsure of what would happen now.

  Chapter 3

 

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