Christmas Shopaholic

by Sophie Kinsella

  I’m about to retort, “Maybe!” and google Amish villages (are there any in Hampshire?) when Irene comes up, holding a piece of paper out to me.

  “Oh, Becky!” she exclaims. “Good news. I found the name of the young man who was asking after you.”

  “The striking young man,” puts in Suze, grinning at me.

  “Exactly.” Irene beams innocently. “It was…” She reads off the piece of paper. “Craig Curton.”

  I stare at her, feeling a bit gobsmacked. Craig Curton?

  “D’you know him, Bex?” says Suze with interest, as Irene hands me the piece of paper.

  “Actually, I do,” I say. “Actually…” I hesitate. “He’s an old flame.”

  “An old flame?” Suze stares at me. “I never heard about him! When was he?”

  “Ages ago.” I make a brushing-away motion. “At uni.”

  I’d completely forgotten about Craig Curton. Or not forgotten about him exactly, but I can’t say I’ve thought about him much.

  “He’s very striking, Becky, dear,” puts in Irene, her eyes bright. “Very handsome.” She heads off to greet a customer, and Suze grins wickedly at me.

  “Irene’s got the hots for your old boyfriend. Is he a supermodel or something?”

  “I think Irene must have quite low standards,” I say, giggling. “He’s a bit weird-looking. You know, dyed black hair and really pale and awful teeth. He was in a band,” I add hastily. “That’s why I went out with him.”

  “Well, I’m googling him,” announces Suze, grinning. “I have to see this Greek god for myself.”

  “He’s not a Greek god.” I roll my eyes. “In fact, I don’t know why I went out with him, even if he was in a band.”

  I wait for Suze to reply but she’s staring down at her phone, looking a bit stunned.

  “You know what, Bex?” she says slowly. “He is a bit of a Greek god. Unless it’s a different guy. Is this him?”

  She holds out her phone and I jolt in shock. That guy is gorgeous. That can’t be Craig Curton.

  I stare down at the image, trying to make sense of it. OK, I can just about see that it’s Craig. An older Craig. But his hair, which used to be weird and shapeless, is now tumbling down to his shoulders in dark shiny waves. And his teeth have been done. And he’s tanned. And look at those arms.

  “He’s amazing,” says Suze flatly.

  “He’s changed.” I find my voice. “He’s…he didn’t look like that. Nothing like that.”

  “What does he do?” Suze scrolls down the page, which is some kind of professional network. “Musician,” she says, sounding a little awestruck. “His latest release is called ‘Love Underneath.’ ”

  “Really?” I try to grab for the phone, but Suze snatches it back.

  “I haven’t finished looking!” she says. “Last year he released ‘Honest.’ He recently toured Germany with Blink Rage. Who are Blink Rage?”

  I have no idea who Blink Rage are, but I’m not going to admit that.

  “Haven’t you heard of Blink Rage, Suze?” I say, a little pityingly.

  “Hi, Becky.” A raspy male voice greets me from across the shop, and both our heads jerk up—and I nearly die of shock.

  It’s him. It’s him. He’s here. And we’re googling him. Fuck.

  “Hi!” says Suze in a weird squeak, dropping her phone with a clatter. “Hi. Welcome to the…Hi!” As he gets near, she grabs her phone and hastily turns it over—but not before we’ve all seen his face filling the screen.

  My face goes instantly red. This is so embarrassing.

  “Hi, Craig,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. “Hi. We were just…Hi. What a surprise! It’s been…”

  “Years.” He nods. “Unreal, right?”

  He sounds like a rock god with that raspy voice. And he looks like one, too, with his long hair and battered leather jacket and a skull tattooed on his earlobe.

  He greets me with a kiss on each cheek, then he steps back and just looks at me with an easy, confident smile. That’s new too. He never used to smile like that at uni; he used to read me depressing pieces out of the paper and tell me I should be more engaged with the struggle.

  “This is Suze,” I say, and Suze says, “Oh, hi!” She shakes his hand, then gazes at him with moony eyes, twiddling her hair as if she’s about fourteen.

  “You came back!” Irene’s delighted voice chimes in, and I turn to see her hurrying over. “How lovely!” To my horror, she turns to me and mouths, “Very striking!” in a totally unsubtle way.

  Oh my God. Could we be more uncool?

  “So. Um…What brings you here, Craig?”

  “I live here now,” he says in the same leisured, easy way.

  “You live here?” I say in astonishment.

  “I’ve rented Lapwing Cottage.” He addresses Suze. “I’m your tenant.”

  “Oh.” I can see the light dawning on Suze’s face. “I didn’t know Lapwing Cottage had been rented out!”

  Trust Suze not to know she’s rented out a cottage on her own estate. She and Tarkie have got so much property and investments and stuff between them, she can’t keep track. We were once eating lunch at a local café and they kept bringing us complimentary slices of cake and being really nice to us. We had no idea why—until Suze suddenly realized that she was the landlord, she’d just forgotten.

  “Is it OK?” she adds anxiously. “If there are any problems, talk to Gordon, our estate manager; he runs all that kind of thing.”

  “It’s great,” says Craig. “It’s charming. Old world. Rustic.”

  “How did you know I work here?” I demand.

  “One of those crazy small-world things,” he says easily. “I rented the cottage online. Wanted a bolt-hole from London. A place to write songs. Chill out, you know? Then I’m in the village shop getting some supplies and I see a postcard: For sale, three garden spades, never used, apply Becky Brandon, née Bloomwood. I think to myself, There can’t be two Becky Bloomwoods. So I ask the guy and he tells me you work here. What are the odds?”

  “Wow,” breathes Suze.

  “So I have a question,” Craig adds, fixing me with his dark gaze. “Three garden spades?”

  “They were on sale,” I say, feeling a bit defensive, “so I bought a few. Our garden’s quite big and I thought we might need several. Only it turned out we don’t.”

  “Sounds like you.” He looks amused. “Well, I must be going. Nice to see you, Becky. We should have a drink sometime. What have you been up to all these years?”

  “Oh…er…” My mind has immediately gone blank. What have I been doing all this time? I can’t think of a single thing. “Loads of stuff,” I say feebly. “You know.”

  “Cool.” He nods. “You’ve got a kid, I hear.”

  “Yes, a daughter. Minnie.”

  “Nice.” He turns to Suze. “One more question. Would it be OK if I hired a hot tub for the garden?”

  “A hot tub?” Suze looks taken aback.

  “I have a thing for hot tubs.”

  He smiles, showing his dazzling new teeth, and I have an immediate vision of him in a hot tub with his hair all wet and glistening and his chest all hairy and Ross Poldark-y.

  I mean, he never used to look Ross Poldark-y, but I bet he does now.

  “A hot tub,” says Suze, sounding utterly flustered. “Gosh. Of course! I mean, we don’t usually, but…if you want…”

  “Cool.” He nods again. “And I’ll be having a Christmas party, I should think. I’ll send you both invites.”

  “Oh!” says Suze. “Thanks!”

  “Well, see you.” He lifts a hand in farewell and heads out of the shop with a lope. He didn’t used to walk like that. He’s picked it up from somewhere.

  I look at Suze, who breathes out.

  “Wow,”
she says again.

  “Yes,” I say, still feeling a bit flabbergasted. “Well, there you go. That’s my ex.”

  “He’s really cool.” She eyes me suspiciously. “Bex, were you really cool at uni?”

  I’m tempted to say, “What are you talking about? I’m really cool now!” But this is Suze I’m talking to.

  “I was a tiny bit cool,” I say honestly. “Like, for about half a term.”

  “Were you in the band too?”

  “I…um…”

  I clear my throat, trying to decide how to answer. The band is actually a sore point, because I should have been in it. I bought this amazing pink bass guitar and I learned loads of notes, and Craig said I could have a go. But after the first rehearsal the rest of the band ganged up and said I wasn’t good enough. It was so unfair. They wouldn’t even let me play the tambourine.

  “I was his creative inspiration,” I say at last. “It was pretty collaborative. Good times,” I add in a careless rock-chick manner.

  “So why did you two break up?” says Suze, agog.

  “The band got a record deal and they dropped out of uni to make an album.”

  “No way!” Suze’s hand flies to her mouth. “That’s amazing! Would I know it?”

  “Well, no,” I admit. “What happened was, they all went off to this place in Devon to record it—”

  “Did you go too?” interrupts Suze.

  “No.” I feel an old flicker of resentment. “Mum and Dad wouldn’t let me drop out. Anyway, they went off to make this album, but they kept fighting about it. And then one of them hit another one and the police got called. So then all their parents drove down and made them stop recording and go back to uni.”

  “Oh,” says Suze, looking disappointed. I can tell she was hoping for an ending more along the lines of “And then they sold out Wembley!”

  “Craig had a massive row with his parents,” I continue. “He refused to go back to Bristol. And then the band fell apart.”

  “What did Craig do?”

  “Took a year off and went to Manchester. But by then I’d already broken up with him.”

  “Because of the band,” supplies Suze, a little breathlessly. “Because they all thought you were Yoko.”

  “Kind of.” I hesitate, feeling I should be honest. “Also, he wasn’t very hot then. In fact, he was a bit annoying.”

  We’ve talked quite enough about my old boyfriend, I decide, so I move away to adjust a display of sweaters in a businesslike manner. But Suze follows me, oblivious.

  “And now here he is, living in Letherby,” she says wonderingly. “That must be weird for you.”

  “No it’s not.”

  It is a bit, but I’m not admitting that.

  “It must be a little weird,” persists Suze.

  “It’s not weird at all,” I say firmly. “Why would it be weird?”

  “I mean, he’s quite different from Luke,” muses Suze, ignoring my protestations. “Are you going to go to his Christmas party?”

  “Dunno,” I say after a pause. “Are you?”

  “Of course!” she says eagerly. “We have to go! I bet it’ll be awesome, all musicians and cool people.”

  At that moment there’s a clatter as a customer knocks over a pile of toffee tins, and we abandon the conversation. And as I’m stacking them back up, I try to absorb this strange new fact of my life. Craig Curton is living in Letherby. And he looks so different! His arms. His hair! It’s so swooshy and thick, and that stubble really suits him….

  By mistake I knock over the toffee tins again, and as Suze looks round I hastily say, “Oops!”

  “Distracted, Bex?” says Suze, lifting her eyebrows meaningfully, and I lift my chin in dignity. Of course I’m not distracted. At least I’m not admitting it to Suze.

  But, oh God, I can’t help it—I feel as though seeing Craig has opened up a window into the past. Memories of uni are piling into my head. Those jeans I used to wear. And that lipstick. What was I thinking?

  I was quite awestruck by Craig when we first got together. I thought he was really intellectual because he talked about Schopenhauer and drank a brand of gin I’d never heard of. But now, from my position of maturity, I can see that I shouldn’t have been so impressed. I mean, anyone can drink gin and talk about German celebrities. I was talking about Heidi Klum just the other day.

  Anyway, it was all a long time ago. We all went out with weird people when we didn’t know any better. When I first met Luke, he was going out with a totally snooty girl called Sacha de Bonneville, so he can talk. (Why am I having an argument with Luke about this in my head? I have no idea.)

  I put the last toffee tin in place and shake back my hair. It’s just one of those strange, random coincidences. And Suze is right: If Craig throws a Christmas party, we should go. Maybe famous people will be there. Or maybe he’ll play some new song and we’ll be the first to hear it.

  Maybe he can get us VIP tickets to his next concert! I feel like I suddenly have a whole new status symbol which I can drop casually into conversation: “Well, of course, I used to date a rock musician….” “Well, of course, I was always his inspiration….” “Well, of course, he wrote a song about me….”

  And then I freeze. Oh my God. What if he did write a song about me?

  Search history

  Craig Curton

  Craig Curton Becky Bloomwood

  Craig Curton lyrics

  Craig Curton songs inspired by unnamed mystery woman

  Craig Curton celebrity friends

  Sacha de Bonneville

  Venetia Carter

  talking mermaid

  Heidi Klum

  By the next morning I’ve googled the lyrics of every single song I can find written by Craig Curton. I’ve listened to snippets of them all and peered at the videos and I still can’t work out if any of them are about me.

  I’m definitely not in his best-known song, “Lonesome Girl.” It starts off, “She’s mesmerizing,” and at first I thought, Ooh, that could be me; I’m quite mesmerizing. But then it continues: “She’s everywhere, she’s in the air, feel the pain, know the pain.” What pain? Anyway, I’m not lonesome. So. Not me.

  Then there’s a song called “Girl Who Broke My Heart,” but she’s got “French lips, French kisses, French soul, French heart.” So I’m guessing that’s not me either.

  I’d better not be the inspiration for the woman in “Twenty-third Century,” because it says, “What will you learn from her?” and the answer is, “Hate, only hate, twisted hate.” Which isn’t exactly very cheery.

  In fact, none of Craig’s music is cheery. It’s quite thrashy and shouty, and the lyrics are depressing. It’s far better to watch his videos with the sound off. (I probably won’t mention that to him.)

  I’ve also followed him on Instagram, and he’s pretty cool. He doesn’t ever seem to wear anything except leather, ripped T-shirts, studded boots, and stubble. His Instagram feed is full of photos of him in smoke-filled bars with girls lounging about—and all the girls are very beautiful, with nose rings and tattoos and electric-blue eye shadow. He always did like parties. I remember that. When we were going out, I went to more parties than in the whole of the rest of my life. I don’t think I did a single bit of work.

  Even when we weren’t partying, we kept pretty extreme hours. I remember we used to stay up way into the night, burning joss sticks, lying on the floor, and staring at the ceiling. Craig would play the guitar softly and talk about South American politics, which was really important to him. I didn’t know that much about South American politics—but I was doing a Spanish module at the time, so I would casually drop in Spanish phrases like “¡Qué pena!” I felt special, as though we were solving the world’s problems, along to a great acoustic soundtrack—

  “Excuse me!”


  An elderly woman’s voice penetrates my memories and I blink into reality. I’m standing on Jermyn Street, surrounded by Christmas shoppers, blocking the entrance to a shop. Oops.

  “Sorry!” I say, and as I step away I feel a stab of guilt. OK, I need to stop thinking about my ex. Focus, Becky, focus. Christmas shopping is my task; I’ve taken the day off especially. Christmas shopping.

  I take a few steps forward, looking around all the decorated shop fronts, getting myself back in the zone. There are twinkly Christmas lights all around, which helps, and I can hear “Last Christmas” being piped from somewhere. (I love that song.)

  Last night I skimmed through a few holiday magazines, which really got me in the mood. God, I love glossy-magazine land. You turn the pages in a happy stupor, staring at amazing decorations and women laughing while they drink champagne in sparkly tops, and you think, Oh my God, I want all of this and I definitely need a new sequined top and I hope Mum buys that Christmas pudding with the orange inside.

  But this year, of course, it’s me buying the Christmas pudding. I’m in charge. I sometimes feel a little weak at the responsibility that has been handed to me. However, thankfully, the magazines were full of useful tips—for example, the “must-have tree ornament” this year is a silver llama with glittery hair and world peace embroidered on its side in pink. To be honest, I hadn’t realized there was such a thing as a “must-have tree ornament.” But there it was in every magazine, so I’ve ordered six. We’re going to have the most on-trend tree ever!

  The magazines also said you should book your supermarket delivery early, so I did that too. In fact, I did it twice. I’ve got one delivery arriving on December 23, with the turkey and all the important stuff—and then a second one on Christmas Eve, in case I forget anything. Talk about organized!

  I was getting a bit wired, but then I read this brilliant article called “Don’t Try to Solve Ten Problems at Once!” It said the answer to stress-free Christmas shopping was prioritizing and doing one thing at a time. So today I’m focusing again on one simple task: find a present for Luke.

  But what?

  I feel so uninspired. I’ve already been round all the department stores and, OK, I’ve seen nice things—but nothing that made me think, Yessss! So then I came to Jermyn Street, because that’s menswear central, isn’t it? Only now that I’ve wandered about a bit, I realize that all the suits need to be tailored, which is too complicated….