One Perfect Christmas and Other Stories

by Paige Toon

  Not that he wanted us to return with all of this going on…

  ‘The safest place for you both right now is in Cambridge with your parents,’ he told me last night. I could hear the wind raging through the palm trees in the background.

  I know he’s right, of course. If I’d been in Key West, Max and I would have gone to the mainland for sure. But we damn well would’ve dragged Leo with us.

  Carmen tried to persuade Leo and Jorge to go and stay with her in Miami – Carmen is Leo’s sister-in-law and Jorge is Carmen’s brother and Leo’s best friend – but the two men were having none of it.

  ‘Lorelei has withstood hurricanes before and I’m confident she will do again, but I need to do everything I can to secure her,’ Leo said last night. ‘I need more time to board up the windows and get our belongings in order.’

  ‘Your safety is more important,’ I stated adamantly.

  ‘I’m sorry, baby, but it’s too late now; I might not reach the mainland before the storm hits. But you wouldn’t have changed my mind anyway,’ he adds gently. ‘This is my home. I’m staying. And once you leave the Keys you can’t get back in.’

  ‘That’s because it’s not safe!’ I exclaimed angrily. ‘They’ll let you back in when it is!’

  ‘I can’t wait a week or more to find out if we still have a home; if we still have a dive boat. I’d go out of my mind.’

  Jorge was in agreement. He used to only come to Key West during high season, but a year ago he moved down permanently from Miami to set up a dive centre with Leo – they’re both scuba instructors.

  Lots of our guests want to learn how to scuba dive and for a long time we’ve been giving business to the dive school where Leo and Jorge worked. The men thought it was about time they went out on their own, but the lease on their dive boat is cripplingly expensive.

  That boat is their livelihood – as is our house. If the hurricane destroys either, we’re screwed. Insurance pay-outs won’t come close to covering all of the damage.

  Lorelei was Leo’s childhood home, rundown for years until I came along and urged him to do it up. Now that big old house is my home, too – and our son’s.

  It’s gorgeous, with pale-blue shutters and gleaming-white weatherboarding and ‘gingerbread’ – the name for the patterned woodwork that hangs down from the eaves of many houses in Key West. Inside, the rooms are all styled in different, striking colours, from teal and emerald green to ochre and burnt orange. Brightly coloured, retro posters of old Cuba hang in large frames on the walls and colourful rugs adorn the newly sanded floorboards. The original intricately carved wooden banister has been varnished and polished to a dark shine, and there are leafy, green pot plants dotted throughout.

  We’ve poured blood, sweat and tears into that house, not to mention our hearts and our souls. We have so much more invested in it than money. If anything happens to it, we won’t just be screwed financially, we’ll be heartbroken. It’s going to be hard enough managing without the tourists in the wake of the hurricane.

  Leo promised me that he’d hole himself up in the bathroom with plenty of food and water while the storm raged outside, and he’d better. They’re saying there could be winds of 150 miles per hour or more, and one tin sheet from one house roof could take his head off.

  I feel like I’m going to throw up.

  Max wriggles and squirms in my arms, so I turn him to face me, bouncing his nappy-clad bottom lightly on my knees. He cracks up laughing, blissfully unaware of the danger his daddy is in.

  Our son is adorable, his chubby cheeks expanding so far out from his face when he smiles that he reminds me of a chipmunk. He has the longest lashes: thick and dark and just like his father’s, and aside from a small bald patch from where his newborn hair rubbed off on his pillow, he also has Leo’s short, black hair.

  My hair is light-blonde and my eyes are blue, so I don’t think Max resembles me at all, but my parents claim his smile is mine. I assume they mean he looks like me from when I was his age. I’d be less than thrilled if they still thought I resembled a rodent.

  Max and I came to the UK for my friend Bridget’s wedding. Because of a holiday Mum and Dad had booked well in advance, we were only able to stay with them for a couple of days before we had to set off to Cornwall on an exhausting fourteen-hour round trip. I’ve been dreading our long-haul flight back to the States today, but now I can’t wait to be allowed to step onto a homeward-bound plane.

  I pick up my mobile and search my news apps for word of the hurricane. If Mum and Dad had Sky, I’d have CNN on constantly.

  ‘Do you want me to take him, darling?’ Mum offers.

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’ I distractedly pass Max back to her and return my attention to the news article on my phone screen.

  Miami authorities are begging locals to evacuate the Keys, hours before Hurricane Jackie’s arrival, warning that storm surges and high winds pose a particular risk to the string of low-lying sandbar islands tailing off Florida’s southern tip.

  Jackie’s winds will hit Key West first in the early hours of Friday morning and officials worry there won’t be enough time for residents to make what can be a three-hour-plus journey from Key West to the mainland.

  I check the time this piece was posted and calculate the time difference between America and the UK in my head. The hurricane has already hit. I read the rest of the article with a tightening knot in my stomach.

  We’re very concerned about the residents who refuse to leave,’ said Victoria Thomas, a county spokesperson. ‘Storm surges could kill a lot of people. Once the water comes, there’s nowhere to go.

  ‘Dammit, Leo!’ I exclaim out loud for the second time that morning. Anxiety is pulsing through my stomach in waves. Are you okay?

  There’s no way to know. We just have to wait for the storm to pass.

  A memory comes back to me as I think of those words…

  Don’t wait for the storm to pass; learn to dance in the rain.

  It was written on a billboard outside a church on my very first trip to the Keys, and it felt particularly relevant to me at the time, considering everything that I was going through.

  I’ll never forget that long journey along the Overseas Highway, the glittering ocean out of the car windows and the pelicans flying low overhead as we crossed the forty-odd bridges on our way to Florida’s southernmost key. In the driver’s seat was Bridget, who I barely knew at the time, and next to her was our joint best friend Marty, who slept for much of the way. I was feeling nauseous with stress and misery because I’d recently found out that my husband, Matthew, had managed to get another woman pregnant on his stag do, a week before he’d married me. He’d made a terrible, drunken mistake with a girl he’d only just met: their seemingly harmless flirtation had led to a snog, and the next thing they knew, they were having it off in the club’s toilets. The girl – Tessa – had tracked Matthew down seven months later to break the news that he was going to be a father. Their baby – their baby! – would be a constant, never-ending reminder of his infidelity to me, and Matthew would be expected to help raise the child that should have been mine. It’s impossible to describe how humiliated I felt, how lost I was not knowing how Matthew and I could ever move on. We loved each other deeply, but our future felt like it would be forever tainted.

  So I ran away to Key West with Marty and Bridget. I was only supposed to be away for a fortnight. But I stayed. I met Leo, developed a whopping great crush and decided to bury my head in the sand indefinitely. Everyone tried to get me to return to England to face the music, including Marty, who loaded on pressure for me to forgive Matthew and welcome his baby son into our lives. But I couldn’t. What began as a crush strengthened to something more and I fell in love. I couldn’t let Leo go.

  Bridget was the only one who understood.

  At first, she was just Marty’s friend and I was the nuisance who gate-crashed their girly holiday and brought the mood down, but now she’s the sort of person I’d fly thousands of miles fo
r to attend her wedding.

  She and Charlie got married in an old stone church in a place called Lansallos in Cornwall and then the entire congregation walked down a long track for a picnic reception on the beach.

  It was such a beautiful day, but I missed Leo dreadfully, and not just because I had to manage Max almost entirely on my own. Charlie’s lovely brother, Adam, offered to help carry him on the return walk up to the car park, but it was still a long day for him – and for me. It’s not easy to breastfeed on a beach surrounded by dozens of people you barely know. Also, Bridget’s wedding was the first I had attended since my own, and it brought back some surprisingly painful memories. I would’ve given anything to have had Leo sitting next to me, holding my hand and reminding me of how full our lives are, even though we’re not married and never will be.

  Leo doesn’t believe in marriage. I don’t blame him; his childhood was complicated. His father had another family back in Cuba – his mother was his father’s mistress, and he and his brother their illegitimate offspring. Leo has half-siblings somewhere out there that don’t know he even exists. But I still believe in marriage, even though mine ended in divorce.

  I have another wedding later this year, too. Marty is getting married to her doting boyfriend Ted, and I’m going to be one of her bridesmaids, along with Bridget. Marty gave herself a headache, trying to choose between us – she was the chief bridesmaid for both Bridget and me, but only one of us can be her Matron of Honour. I’m Marty’s oldest friend, but I won’t be in the country much to help out, so I encouraged her to choose Bridget. Bridget was predictably thrilled, but on her hen night she did an about-turn and insisted we share the honour. I don’t know how that’s going to work, but it’ll be fun, I’m sure. Things usually are where Bridget’s concerned.

  After lunch, when there’s still no new news, I decide to kill some time by taking Max out for a walk around the farm. It’s a working farm, producing grain for local cereal manufacturers, but my parents are pretty much retired these days, letting hired hands do most of the work.

  Rather than try to navigate a buggy over the rough, tractor-shod ground, I hook Max into my forward-facing baby carrier so we’re more mobile. He’s not a big baby, but I won’t be able to carry him in this for much longer, so I’m making the most of it. It’s probably been my favourite piece of baby kit, allowing me to crack on with small jobs while keeping him close to me. Just before we set off for the UK, I had to wind lengths of rope lights up the two new palm trees that we’d bought to flank the gate at the end of the garden. Max watched me complete the entire task with avid interest and his whole face lit up when we turned on the lights. It made Leo laugh.

  My heart pinches at the memory. What has become of our garden now?

  When I think back to the overgrown shambles that it used to be, I can hardly believe how much we’ve done. It’s been a work in progress and we’ve added to it as we’ve been able to afford it, but we now have a blissfully cool plunge pool and a separate hot tub set within wooden decking and surrounded by tropical flora and fauna. There are fragrant frangipanis and pink, purple and orange bougainvillea, fiery hibiscus, and even a Key Lime tree that produces the golf-ball-size yellow citrus fruit that gives Key Lime Pie its name. Along with numerous palm tree trunks that are strung with rope lights, we also have green uplighters shining through the leafy foliage of other plants.

  Our guest house is not big by hotel standards, with only four double bedrooms and two shared bathrooms, but we have ambitions to build two more rooms down where the shed used to stand. It’ll be a while before we can afford it – the proceeds from the sale of my London flat with Matthew are long gone – but we’ll get there one day.

  Because of the shared bathroom set-up, we tend to get families or groups of friends who know each other well, and my favourite part of the job is welcoming our new arrivals to the porch for afternoon cocktails and nibbles. Seeing them kick back and relax in our little oasis is very satisfying. Even Leo enjoys joining in. He used to be a bit… hmm, how shall I put this? Dark and brooding? Sullen and moody might be more apt. But he’s chilled out a lot since we’ve been together and he’s now warm and welcoming and surprisingly sociable. We make a good team.

  We’ve been fully booked for the last couple of summers, so we don’t get much time to kick back and relax in the garden ourselves as a family, but sometimes our guests go out on day trips, and as we organise a lot of these ourselves as part of the service, we know roughly when to expect them home. If Leo isn’t at his day job, working as a scuba instructor, then we usually end up in one of the pools together. Sometimes Max is with us, and then it’s all splashes and giggles. But sometimes Max is asleep, and then it’s just Leo and me…

  I strip off quickly and pull on the red bikini that I found at the bottom of a drawer a couple of days ago – it’s an old one, dating back to my early days on the island. I haven’t worn it in ages – not since well before I fell pregnant.

  Max has conked out after his night-time feed and the two families that are currently staying with us – two couples with four teenage children between them – are out together in town. They’ve gone on a sunset cruise, followed by dinner, after which they’ll probably hit Duval Street, judging by what the teenagers were saying to each other earlier.

  Leo and I finally have some time to ourselves.

  Grabbing our beach towels, I walk out of the house into the darkening night. Leo is already in the hot tub. He hasn’t switched on the outdoor lights, but I can see his dark eyes tracking my journey as I cross the deck towards him.

  ‘I remember that bikini,’ he says in a low voice as I reach the steps.

  ‘It just about fits.’

  ‘You look incredible.’

  I smile and shrug, trying to take the compliment as I slip into the pool.

  I don’t mind that I haven’t got my figure back after having Max. He’s only five months old – it’s hard to care about things like that these days.

  Leo leans forward and holds his hands out to me so I take them and step forward into the deeper centre section. The water laps against my chest and Leo’s jaw slackens. He stares at me. ‘Do you really have no idea how hot you look?’

  ‘With my bigger boobs?’ I ask teasingly, knowing that the skimpy red fabric is now struggling to contain what it once could comfortably.

  That’s breastfeeding for you.

  His expression remains deadly serious and his eyes are almost as black as his hair as his hands move to my hips and very slowly skim up my curves. ‘Christ, Laura,’ he mutters, his thumbs coming to a rest on my nipples. He pinches the tender skin and I gasp, my mouth falling open. It takes him all of two seconds to slip his tongue between my parted lips and pull me onto his lap so I’m straddling him. I can feel how turned on he is beneath me as we kiss.

  We haven’t had much sex since Max came along. None at all for the first six weeks. I had a difficult childbirth, partly due to complications arising from an accident I had a few years ago. Twenty-six hours of labour were followed by two hours of pushing and an eventual intervention in the form of forceps. I needed a fair few stitches and it took me a long time to feel okay again down there. Then with the sleepless nights and constant worrying that a crying baby will wake our paying guests, I’ve pretty much had to wave goodbye to my sex drive.

  But, by God, it’s returned in force.

  I slide my hands over Leo’s slippery, wet body, feeling the contours of his chest under my fingertips. He’s still as ripped as he was when we first met: narrow waist, broad shoulders, muscled back.

  ‘I want you,’ I whisper in his ear, desperate for him to take me inside and ravish me senseless. No sex in the hot tub. That’s the rule.

  ‘You’ll have me,’ he whispers in return, nipping my lower lip. ‘But not yet.’

  ‘What? Why not?’ I ask with alarm, withdrawing to stare at his face.

  ‘Foreplay, baby,’ he replies, a smile playing about his lips.

  ‘Forepl
ay? What’s that?’ I stare at him blankly and he throws his head back and laughs. It’s hard to keep a straight face.

  ‘You’ve forgotten what foreplay is?’ he asks with a deliciously wicked glint in his eye, knowing we’ve had no time for it recently.

  I nod, feigning ignorance. I like this game.

  ‘I’d better remind you, then,’ he says in a deeply sexy voice.

  Shivers rolls up and down my spine as he pulls me hard against him, prompting me to utter a small cry. He returns his mouth to mine…

  I’m so worried about Leo and what’s going on at home that I’m barely able to appreciate the beautiful English summer that we’re having as we walk out of my parents’ big country kitchen, into the kitchen garden, vegetable patch and beyond. We do a loop right round the old stone farmhouse where I grew up, passing by Mum’s roses out the front, which are baking in the afternoon sun. Their perfume wafts towards us on the breeze, mingling with the scent of warm grass. A big, fluffy bee buzzes by and Max looks after it, watching it go.

  He’s so much more alert these days: a real little man with a big personality. Mum thinks he’s developed and grown even in the two weeks since we’ve been here. She doesn’t think Leo will believe the change in him when we get home.

  When will we get home?

  Leo found fatherhood hard at first – Max scared him. He didn’t know how to read his different cries, didn’t know whether he was hungry or tired; he’d more likely hand him to me than try to settle him himself. But as Max has grown and become more responsive, the connection between them has strengthened enormously.