by Mandy Baggot
Lara picked up her second pint and took three good gulps. When in doubt, turn to probably the best lager in the world. Except it wasn’t quite hitting the spot. She wasn’t in the mood for a party. She felt like going back to her barn and crying like her heart had been ripped out … which it had. She hadn’t even gone home to get changed before coming here. She had planned black trousers and a Christmas vest top stating ‘It’s the most wonderful time for a beer’ but instead, while everyone else was sparkling in new shirts or dresses, she was still in her jeans, Dr Martens and Slipknot T-shirt. As was normal, the social club heating was belting out at full blast so her hoodie was on the back of her chair. It was hail-soaked anyway and needed to dry out. A bit like her hair. She had shoved her short, dark crop under the hand dryer in the ladies’ toilets but it was no Dyson Blade and her hair was still wet-wipe damp. And Susie hadn’t turned up yet either.
Lara’s best friend Susie Maplin was a hairdresser at Appleshaw’s Cuts and Curls. She had moved to the village from London with her parents five years ago, fresh out of hairdresser training. Mr and Mrs Maplin were fed up with the rat race and were looking for a little bit of English countryside peace and quiet. To begin with, Susie hadn’t been enamoured by the slow pace and far too many shampoo and sets but, when Wendy had given her total control over colour, extensions and basically anything twenty-first-century mane, Susie had come into her own, bringing a whole new wave of waves to the high street.
Lara looked at her phone and the background wallpaper. Her and Dan standing in front of her new, beloved, thankfully unscathed Tina. She needed to call him back. She needed to tell him going to Scotland was a mistake. That they should spend Christmas together. Maybe she could go with him to Scotland. Granted, she could think of nothing worse than being in a cabin with Cleavage Chloe, but being there was certainly preferable to being in Appleshaw, knowing your boyfriend was in a cabin with a femme fatale. And she was a femme fatale. There were divorcees in the village who called her the Mantis.
‘Don’t you want your chicken, Lara?’ Aldo asked from across the table.
She looked up from her phone to her almost-brother. He was red-cheeked and grinning, his thatch of tightly curled Justin Timberlake hair showing all its ginger under the bright bulbs of the social club. He had added a bow tie to his plaid shirt, just like her dad.
‘It’s turkey, Aldo,’ Lara reminded him.
‘Don’t you want your turkey, Lara?’ he asked. ‘Or the sprouts. I really like the sprouts.’
She pushed her plate across to him. ‘Don’t eat all the sprouts though. You might end up being blown to Amesbury by the end of the night.’
Gravy drizzling down his chin, Aldo looked a little confused. He wasn’t the best at picking up subtle humour. Lara looked back to her phone as the first few bars of ‘Step into Christmas’ began from the disco.
‘I am sooo sorry I’m late!’ Susie threw herself down into the chair next to Lara, unwound a fake-fur scarf from her neck then removed a matching hat. The coat was next. ‘This woman comes into the salon at a minute to six – and I mean a minute to six – and wants her hair glitterised.’ She picked up Lara’s pint of lager and downed half of it. ‘Sorry … I’ll get us some more drinks in a minute. Anyway, so I’m half-tempted to send her to the garden centre for that spray we coat the outside plants in at Christmas but then I notice what she’s wearing: face-cheek to butt-cheek in designer. I’m talking Victoria Beckham jeans, Prada top and one of those very I’m-leading-the-fox-hunt Barbour jackets,’ she said breathlessly. ‘So, I look at Wendy and Wendy looks at me and I’m already deciding what I’m going to do. Well, to cut a long story short, I create this amazing fusion of pinks and purples and a little of that mermaid-blue Demi Lovato favours every now and then, then I roll her hair up into these two unicorn-horn-shaped cones and I cover the entire thing in this diamond dust I bought at that conference in Italy.’ Susie grinned. ‘She Insta-ed before she was even out of the chair and she has over two thousand followers! I’m hoping they’re all from the polo set, or at least members of the golf club.’
At the mention of the golf club, Lara’s delight at seeing her best friend waned absolutely.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late though, Lara. But I’ve heard all about the close shave with the soup stand – Flora caught me up on the way in – and it doesn’t matter that I missed the melon course, melon’s basically water, I’ll get some water when I get the next drinks in.’ Susie looked around the table, giving a feasting-on-sprouts Aldo a little wave. ‘Where’s Dan?’
Lara felt the hurt and rejection crush her chest like she was pinned to the wall by an out-of-control forklift. And she knew how that felt because it had actually happened once. Tears were welling up before she could keep herself in check. What did she say? What could she say?
‘Lara?’ Susie asked, putting a hand on her arm. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Dan … he … doesn’t know if he loves me any more. He wants to go on a break.’
Her words had tumbled out the very second the DJ had messed up mixing into the next tune and the function room plunged into silence. Suddenly, the inquisitive eyes of every partygoer were on her.
‘With Cleavage Chloe,’ Lara said.
The whole room inhaled.
Three
‘I’ll pulverise him!’ Gerry declared. Aldo, next to him, threw a karate chop into the air. Everyone in the Weeks Haulage team were crowding around Lara at the bar in a show of solidarity. ‘When I’ve finished with him he’ll need physio to learn him how to smile again.’
‘Dad,’ Lara said, touching his arm. She hadn’t wanted this to come out tonight. Her dad worked hard every year organising the party. It was their big annual celebration. She didn’t want it blighted by her relationship drama.
‘I’ve a good mind to go round there now. Give him a piece of my fist.’
‘Dad, no,’ Lara stated hurriedly. She knew Gerry was at least three pints down already, and there was a quarter-drunk flagon of Flora’s mince-pie whisky on the Weeks Haulage table. ‘Honestly, it’s fine.’
‘I wouldn’t say it’s fine,’ Susie interrupted. ‘I’d say he’s being a complete dick.’
‘Dick!’ Aldo shouted angrily.
Lara closed her eyes for a second. They were all being so nice but equally they were angry, mad on her behalf, but she wasn’t feeling anything like fury. She felt desperately, desperately sad. This was her fault. Her and her small village mentality had lost her Dan. Cleavage Chloe might work at the golf club, but Lara knew she travelled. She saw more than the inside of a truck and didn’t holiday at Haven campsites. Chloe probably had interesting things to say about sunsets over Santorini and eating tabbouleh. Lara was hungry for more than Appleshaw, but Appleshaw was the centre of her universe. Her dad, her job, Aldo, they needed her as much as she needed them. Her mum had left the village, and it had taken her dad a long time to pick himself and a six-year-old Lara up. Appleshaw was who she was. It, and the people in it, had helped raise her. But apparently Dan was done with it. And done with her.
‘We’ll excommunicate him,’ Gerry declared. ‘And that company he works for.’ He held his hand in the air like he was the preacher from Damnation. ‘Let it be noted down this night. As from the first of December 2018, Dan Reeves is not to be spoken to, written to, or communicated with in any way … and neither is Spa South.’ Gerry drew in a long breath, his bald head going bright red. ‘Let’s see how they transport their hot tubs now.’
Lara couldn’t listen to any more. She snatched up her hastily poured tumbler of Flora’s special brew from the bar area, almost knocking over the tinsel-draped charity pot, before retreating to a table in the corner of the room. It was the furthest seating area away from the fallout of her life and the disco, that seemed to be playing an early erection section starting with ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’.
‘Oh no you don’t.’
Susie was at Lara’s heels, nudging her arm before she could take a chair.
‘No, you’re not,’ Susie replied. ‘And I don’t blame you one bit. Not only has Dan done a really, really shitty thing to you on one of your favourite nights of the year, but you’ve got your dad and Aldo and the rest of the drivers turning all biblical talking about burning at the stake and ostracising.’
She still didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? When your heart was breaking in half and you didn’t even know how to go about making it through the next few hours, let alone the rest of your life.
‘So, in order for me to help you I need to know exactly what Dan said to you.’ Susie sat down, slurping at her glass of mince-pie whisky.
‘What?’ Lara asked, suddenly coming to a little.
‘Well, you said that he said that he wants to “go on a break”. In my experience, that’s man-code for “I’m having a bit of a pre-thirty crisis, am worried about my age, my attractiveness to women, my ear hairs and my risk of prostate cancer versus how many pints it’s acceptable to drink on a weekend”.’
‘It is?’ Lara asked.
‘It’s classic, almost-thirty behaviour,’ Susie confirmed. ‘Remember Ruby at the Appleshaw Inn and her bloke, Trigger? He bought a motorbike and shares in a speedboat then said he was going off to “find himself”. Absolute classic case. And Dan is the same. He’s heading off to Scotland for Christmas because he thinks it’s different, new and exciting. It’s not playing Scrabble with your dad, Aldo and Mrs Fitch, not that there’s anything wrong with that but …’
The home-made whisky was starting to numb Lara’s senses a bit. ‘He knows I wouldn’t want to leave the family at Christmas,’ she began. ‘But he still made his decision on this lodge without even talking to me … and then why didn’t he say he was going there for Christmas and he’d see me for New Year? Why this “break” stuff as well?’
‘Pre-thirty crisis, like I said. So, what did he actually say? Word for word.’
As Lara thought back to that hands-free conversation in her truck, the sound of Christmas crackers being pulled filled the air, together with comments about the arriving dessert. Her group were making their way back to the table, but she didn’t want pudding. Right now she wanted to fill her system with as much booze as she could get her hands on.
‘He said he needed space … to go on a break … to have time out, no, to have a time-out.’ Saying the words out loud was making her feel sick. How could this be happening? They were good together, solid, comfortable …
Maybe that was the issue. Maybe she had got too comfortable. She had started leaving the door unlocked when she was in the shower. Dan often came in to clean his teeth. They hadn’t gone so far as using the loo in front of each other but … she had thought about it when he had been in there for more than half an hour and she was at bursting point.
‘Well,’ Susie said, triumphant. ‘None of that sounds like the end to me. It sounds like he wants to assert his control over the relationship. Remember? I told you that’s what men do, what they feel they have to do … to feel like men.’ Susie gritted her teeth and made a noise like a horny Viking. ‘Despite all the grooming products and apps that can do anything, they’re always going to act stone age. It’s written in their DNA.’
A tiny flicker of hope burnt a little brighter inside her. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘Absolutely. I mean, Chloe, she’s …’
‘Hot.’
‘No … well, a bit, I suppose … if you like that sort of thing.’ Susie took a swig of her whisky. ‘Do you want me to stop doing her hair?’
‘You do her hair?’
‘I do every Appleshaw resident under-sixty’s hair! She has highlights and lowlights and colour … it’s a good couple of hundred quid every six weeks or so.’ Susie put a hand on Lara’s arm. ‘Anyway, you’re hot too. Super-hot. With that petite frame that says vulnerable and needs looking after, mixed with the feisty attitude that says you definitely don’t need propping up by anyone. Killer eyes. Fantastic hair – you’re welcome – and the funniest person I know, except for me.’
Lara swallowed. ‘He said he needed to work out if he still loved me.’ She looked to Susie for the next piece of relationship advice. A silence descended as the music went back to Slade.
‘But he must still love me now, right? To want to do the working-out-if-he-does bit.’
Susie’s flat expression was making anxiety trampoline in her chest. This was bad. This could go from being a break to a break-up. What was she going to do? What the hell was she going to do?
Lara stood up, her hand at her chest, feeling overwhelmed. She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t focus. The room was beginning to spin, all its Christmas finery blurring into one big, glittery melting pot.
‘Lara,’ Susie said. Her voice sounded tinny, like she was standing from far away. ‘Lara, sit down.’
What did she do in December if it didn’t involve Dan? There would be no dressing the barn and falling into bed halfway through. No taking it in turns to write the office Christmas cards and seeing who got the septic tank company this year – she always fixed it so Dan did – Merry Christmas from us to poo. She felt sick and sweaty …
‘Sit down!’ Susie ordered, grabbing her arm and forcing her into her seat. ‘This is not happening. Do you hear me? Dan is not going to make you fall apart like this. Lara. Lara, are you listening to me?’
She was trying to. Really trying to. She looked directly at her best friend, attempting to take in every subtle detail of her appearance. Her subtle mousy curls that had somehow survived both the freezing hail of the night and her hat, her honest green eyes, her lips slicked with a rose-coloured gloss … slowly Lara’s breath stopped catching, rolled over into a full exhale. She was getting back in control.
‘OK?’ Susie queried, still holding her arm.
She managed a nod. ‘Yes.’
‘Right then,’ Susie said decisively. ‘There are two courses of action open to us now. You need to answer one question.’
‘What?’ Lara asked, blinking determined tears away.
‘Do you want to make this work with Dan?’ Susie asked. ‘Do you love him?’
‘I think that was two questions,’ Lara answered gingerly.
‘Well?’
‘Yes,’ Lara said immediately. ‘Yes, of course I love him. Of course, I want to make this work.’
Susie clapped her hands together and rubbed them like she might start a fire with her hot palms. ‘Right then, I know just what to do.’
Four
Seth Hunt and Trent Davenport’s apartment, West Village, New York
‘I can’t do it! I cannot do it! This is nuts! Literally nuts!’ Trent put his hands in his short, blond hair and pulled. He made gorilla noises and thumped his chest as he strode around the open-plan apartment like he was caged.
From his seat at the diner-style table, Seth watched his friend in full-on meltdown mode. He should really video it. Despite the expletives falling from Trent’s lips, it would make a great comedy reel … Maybe he’d thank him for it later. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘I swear to God I am gonna sack my agent! Get this!’ Trent turned to face Seth, iPhone gripped in his hand. ‘He wants me to turn up to an audition today, like in an hour’s time, for a commercial. For nuts! Nuts!’ Trent screamed. ‘It’s nuts!’
‘What kind of nuts?’ Seth asked, pushing his glasses up his nose.
‘Seth! Man, are you for real?!’ Treat grabbed hold of the still-bare spruce they had installed in the apartment last night. They’d both been a little buzzed from drinks at Jimmy’s Corner in Midtown, seen the tree-seller on the way back in the cab and made the driver stop while they purchased a fir that was no way going to fit in the taxi with them. Carried across the city to home in the West Village, it had been left to Seth to find some sort of vessel to prop it in – currently the bowl from the kitchen sink. He would ask his mom if she had a pot they could borrow when he caught up with her later.
He looked to the notepad in front of him, the blank page he was supposed to be filling with questions …
‘Well,’ Seth began as Trent altered the position of the Christmas tree’s branches. ‘Nuts, pulses and raw diets of that stuff are big business these days. And Gwyneth Paltrow does it.’
‘Do I look like Gwyneth Paltrow to you?’ Trent asked, hands on hips, a study of pent-up frustration.
‘I don’t know,’ Seth said, angling his head a little. ‘Perhaps with a dress and a weave …’
‘OK, man, you can laugh but what auditions has your agent lined up for you this week?’
Seth put his pen down. ‘Trent, I wasn’t laughing. The total opposite. The nut commercial, it’s a chance for cash, right? We all need cash. It pays for this apartment and the cab fares to the auditions that matter.’ He sighed. ‘Plus, you know, it’s nuts. It’s something you can … crack … without breaking a sweat. The job’s yours already.’
‘Unless Junior Benson’s there again. God! That guy!’ Trent thrashed his arms out, fighting to unbutton his cuffs and roll up his sleeves. ‘No matter how hard I try I can’t look as urban as him. Every single audition and he’s there in his dope clothes, snapback on his head, breathing cool-hood like he invented it.’
‘Urban is a phase,’ Seth said, getting to his feet. ‘And nuts, they’re … sophisticated, they’re cashews and macadamia and—’
‘Monkey,’ Trent interrupted. ‘The brief said they were monkey nuts with shells you can eat, coated in cinnamon and honey.’
‘Jeez,’ Seth said. ‘How have they made shells you can eat?’
‘I don’t know! And I don’t care!’ Trent sniffed. ‘This is beneath me. It was only a few months ago I was in a film with George Clooney!’
‘And that will come again,’ Seth told him, slapping a hand to his shoulder. ‘Soon. But until then … I’d take a chance on the nuts.’