by Low, Shari
Mistake. Huge. Mistake.
She’d barely sat down in one of her favourite restaurants when she sensed that something wasn’t quite right with the love of her life. Not to come across as gushy nor needy – because she was neither – but she truly felt that’s what he was, and for the first time ever she was in a relationship with someone she could actually envisage a future with. They’d been best friends and work colleagues for years, a couple for six months and there was a gift-wrapped key to her home under her tree with his name on it.
‘Looking handsome today, Mr Butler,’ she told him as the waiter disappeared with their coats and their drinks order. Water for Tom, champagne for her.
Okay, so that was a bit gushy but she was awash with festive joy, so it was allowed. Unfortunately, it also threw up the first sign that something was off. Normally, he’d compliment her right back, but today he said nothing. She let it go. It was Christmas. His grandfather was unwell and in hospital. His estranged father was on his way from Australia and due to arrive later that day. The guy had things on his mind.
Oblivious to the juggernaut headed her way, she went on, ‘I’ve said to my sister that you’ll try to make it for Christmas dinner.’ As always, Marina was hosting the festivities and it was being run with military precision. ‘I know it’ll be difficult with your grandad being ill and your family being here, but I’m hoping you’ll get a chance to slip away. Or maybe you could bring your parents? I’m dying to meet them and I’ll have to do it at some point, so Christmas dinner is as good a time as any. Marina always lays on far too much food anyway – I think she’s doing turkey, ham and steak pie this year – so there will be loads to go round. I was going to pick up a gift for your parents this afternoon, so they won’t feel left out. I want to make a good impression on your mother—’
‘Stepmother,’ he corrected her. His weary tone was warning number two, but she missed it again. Clearly her emotional radar was sitting in a corner, pissed on mulled wine, watching reruns of Elf.
Still oblivious, she went on, ‘Of course, stepmother. Anyway, I was thinking we could nip to Vivienne Westwood and pick up something nice, maybe earrings, for her. And for your dad—’
‘Zoe, we need to talk.’
There it was. The first line of almost every break-up speech in history, yet still she didn’t register the vibe. Must have been getting to the good bit in Elf. ‘Yes, of course, darling. You don’t think you’ll make it for dinner? It’s fine. I understand. I really do.’
‘We need to talk about us.’
This time she paused, reality finally dawning, dread swooping right in after it.
‘About?’
Aw, crap. Crap. Crap. Say you want to discuss the weather. Or the price of tinsel. Anything but—
‘I can’t see you any more. I mean, outside work. In a relationship.’ He was stumbling. ‘I’m sorry. I hate to do this, I really do. I’ve had a great time with you but—’
‘Who is she?’
‘What?’
She took a slug of the champagne that had just been placed in front of her, resisting the urge to ask for the bottle for pain-numbing purposes. Sixty seconds ago, she couldn’t see this coming, yet now she absolutely knew it was going to hurt like hell.
‘Who is she? There’s someone else.’ On the outside, she was calm. Measured. On the inside, she was fourteen and having a bigger emotional break than when she’d discovered that Slash from Guns & Roses had got remarried to someone who wasn’t her.
‘I promise there isn’t,’ Tom vowed.
Zoe thought about it for a few seconds. Of course, there wasn’t such a thing as a ‘type’ that cheated, but if there were, then Tom would be a founding member of the Monogamy Club. She’d never seen him so much as use someone else’s milk from the office fridge. He was honest. Decent. Upstanding. So, if there wasn’t someone now, then it had to be…
‘But there was?’ It had to be someone from his past. She’d always wondered why a guy like him had reached thirty and never married, settled down or even had a relationship that lasted longer than the one they were currently having. Or currently ending.
He didn’t answer. Suddenly, she hated being right.
‘An ex,’ she charged on. ‘How long ago?’
His whole body slumped in surrender. ‘Twelve years ago.’
‘Twelve years? But you must have been—’
‘Eighteen,’ he replied.
No. Come on. He was chucking her for someone he’d dated at a time in his life when he lived in student digs and survived on Pot Noodles?
‘And you’re seeing her again?’
‘No. I haven’t seen her since.’
‘For God’s sake, Tom, you were a kid. You can’t still have real feelings for her. You’re seriously dumping me for the memory of some high-school girlfriend?’
‘I know it sounds crazy but—’
‘There is no “but”. It’s completely bat-shit crazy.’ She realised that sounded harsh, so she immediately ramped it down and came back a little more conciliatory. ‘So, did she break your heart and leave you scarred for life?’
‘No. I broke hers.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ she groaned. ‘This is what I get for choosing a nice guy for once. I bloody knew it was a mistake. So, go on then, tell me. How did you break her heart and why did you not fix it before now?’
He sighed, as if he was the one having the bad day. ‘It’s all a bit tragic and pathetic.’
‘I like tragic and pathetic,’ she countered. ‘I was supposed to be having lunch with my boyfriend, but he just dumped me, four days before Christmas. Right now, I’m cornering the market in tragic and pathetic.’
That tipped him over into a space where his pity for her made him relinquish and spill the whole story. The bullet points were something like boy meets girl, parents don’t approve, they split up and boy moves to Australia, they lose touch, he comes back, can’t find her, every day since then, he regrets what he’s done. Now, nine years after he left her, he’s just discovered where she is and he can’t stop thinking about her.
Zoe knocked back the rest of her champagne and signalled for another. This was definitely a three-glass conversation. Four glasses, when he admitted that he now felt an irrepressible need to go and see his ex, share his feelings of regret and beg her for another chance. Zoe thought about pointing out the folly of his ways but could see it would be fighting a lost battle. He was torn up, conflicted, rattled. She had to let him go and get answers and just hope that he would come back to her.
She drained her glass. ‘Then I think you need to finish it, one way or another, otherwise you’re going to live a lonely life, Tom,’ she said, not unkindly. ‘And if she’s married, with sixteen kids, and has an arse the size of Govan, give me a shout. In the meantime, I’m going to go to Vivienne Westwood for some consolation retail therapy.’
She left him with the bill, then went and shopped out her feelings. One pair of Vivienne Westwood earrings later, she didn’t feel any better, so she took the only reasonable, mature path… She showed up at Verity’s school at 3 p.m., just as the final bell of the term was ringing, with two bottles of Prosecco and a yule log, and she begged her to go and drown her sorrows with her. When it came to her choice of sister, she was hedging her bets. Marina would undoubtedly have the kids, and as for Yvie, with her crazy shift patterns at the hospital, there was a better than average chance she’d be working. Verity was definitely the best option, given that she had a social life of monastic levels. ‘I’d rather read a book. Or wash my hair. Or rearrange my knicker drawer,’ she’d say when they were teenagers and Zoe was trying to drag her out to a club. Wild social abandon and spur-of-the-moment parties had never been Verity’s thing. In fifth year, she’d required at least a week’s warning if any guy wanted to kiss her under the mistletoe at the school disco, and even then she’d bailed out early because she said her boob tube was giving her a friction rash under her arm. Zoe, on the other hand, would walk on he
els until her feet bled, wear jeans that cut off circulation to her lower limbs and a ponytail so high and tight it gave her a migraine, for the sake of looking great and snagging some bloke she had her eye on.
True to form, Miss Danton, primary three teacher and Best Behaved Sister of the Year Nominee, didn’t capitulate easily, which – admittedly – put Zoe’s hackles up. It’s not as if Miss Uptight had anything else planned. However, she was a chucked woman on a mission, standing in the middle of a school staffroom, surrounded by snowman pictures made out of cotton wool and buttons, and she didn’t give up easily.
It took some persuading, a whole lot of pleading and a fair amount of emotional blackmail, but eventually Verity agreed.
Much, much later, Zoe would look back and think that if only Verity had said no, then she wouldn’t be sending back the wedding presents.
3
Verity – Eighteen Months Before
‘Miss Danton, the Virgin Mary’s skirt is tucked into her knickers!’
Verity had never wanted a day to be over more. The nativity play was on its second run of the day and so far they’d had three sobbing sheep, a wise man who punched the innkeeper because he claimed he stole his playtime Wotsits, Joseph had dropped the baby Jesus twice and now Mary was having a wardrobe malfunction.
Thankfully, Crystal McNamee, aka The Virgin Mary, heard the comment and swiftly modified her robes.
‘Thirty-five minutes,’ came a voice just behind Verity’s left ear, as she stood at the side of the stage, praying her class of eight year olds would nail the first verse of ‘Away In A Manger’. The questionable high notes had compelled an elderly gent to take his hearing aid out at the morning performance. Probably just as well. No matter how much she’d drilled the correct words into them, a confused few were still singing that the baby Jesus had no crisps for his bed.
Behind her, she could still feel the presence of her colleague. Was she imagining it, or could she feel his breath on the back of her neck? And should she really be contemplating how sexy that voice was when she was in close proximity to several biblical characters and the local vicar, who was sitting in the front row with the other invited guests?
‘Sorry? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of “Away In Manger”.’
His face came within inches of hers. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. In fact, it was the closest she’d come to an intimate encounter in longer than she chose to remember. When she’d been working with the kids on writing letters to the House of Claus, she’d been tempted to write her own.
Dear Santa, please bring me a love interest for Christmas. I’ve been way, way too good. And not that I want to appear too demanding, but if I can specify the aforementioned love interest, please make it Ned Merton, my fellow teacher, he of the River-Island-model looks and the husky voice. Thank you.’
Her attraction to Ned Merton had sparked on the first day she met him when he joined the school a few years before. In the last year or so, though, it had grown to almost fantasy proportions, despite the fact that she’d heard rumours that he’d dated at least three of the other teachers and one of the office secretaries. Not that the women in question had confided in Verity. She had no interest in personal chat or joining the cliques in the staffroom. She preferred to go in, do her job and leave. Anyway, none of the alleged relationships had lasted, so if the gossip was true – and it probably wasn’t, given that the staffroom was worse than the playground for exaggerated tales – then all it meant was that they hadn’t been right for each other. No harm in that, was there?
Now his husky voice was whispering in her ear. ‘Thirty-five minutes and then we’re out of here for three whole weeks. I’m counting the minutes.’
‘Me too.’
That was true. But while she was fairly sure that Ned Merton was counting down to some kind of post-term revelry, she was staring down a night of gift wrapping, card writing, and perhaps – if she felt really wild – a bit of ironing and then a five mile run before bed. Alone.
‘A few of us are heading out after work today. Fancy coming along? Just into town for a few beers, something to eat and a general rant about how we’re overworked and underpaid.’
She shouldn’t. She absolutely should not. She had things to do. Gifts to wrap. Cards to write. Trainers to pull on. And she’d rather be tied to a tree with tinsel and starved than socialise with the rest of the people she worked with. But this was Ned Merton. And she did concede that somewhere in her mind – although not in a weirdo, stalkerish way – she’d replaced the whole ‘nativity’ scene characters with her, him, a non-virgin birth and the inclusion of a comfy room at the Holiday Inn.
Did he feel it too?
Dear Santa, PS: Can I also have some joie de vivre and a more carefree attitude. Thank you. x
Sod it. Why not?
‘Sure, that would be great.’
A general murmur in the audience distracted her from his reaction, then a giggle that escalated and spread and…
Oh, dear God. The baby Jesus had now been propped up in a corner and told to watch TV while Mary and Joseph wandered off the other side of the stage, claiming they were ‘going for a snack’. You take your eye off a religious tradition for two seconds and suddenly a biblical couple are up on child-neglect charges.
Verity swooped round behind the curtain to the opposite side of the stage, ambushed Mary and Joseph and ushered them back into the spotlight, to more hilarity from the audience – which would have been highly mortifying if it weren’t for catching Ned Merton’s eye and being rewarded with a wink and an empathetic grin.
Half an hour later, play over, bell rung, kids dispatched, Verity boxed up the day’s Christmas swag. There had been an article in the Daily Mail about how pupils’ parents were trying to outdo each other with Christmas gifts for their little darlings’ teachers, splashing out on Prada purses and Chanel perfumes. Not around here. She bundled up approximately fifteen boxes of Roses and Quality Street, five supermarket scented candles, six bottles of wine and a Body Shop gift set that had definitely been sitting in someone’s bathroom cupboard since the nineties. Not that she’d become a teacher for the material rewards. Her career choice had been down to a real desire to pass on knowledge. The real desire for Ned Merton came later.
Hands full, she tapped the staffroom door with her foot and, as it swung open, she jolted, then flushed, as a grinning Ned held it for her to pass through. For a split second, her spirits soared and she was sure, for the first time, that this wasn’t a one-way thing. Was he attracted to her too? Why else would he be smiling from ear to ear, why would he look so happy to see her, why would those gorgeous eyes be twinkling with merriment? It had to be…
‘Zoe!’ Her sister. Half leaning, half sitting on the window ledge, a bottle of wine in one hand, and a mug in the other. Going by the flush of her cheeks and her slightly swaying frame, Verity guessed it wasn’t the first. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to take you out for a Christmas drink,’ Zoe chirped, as if this was the most normal thing ever. Verity counted up in her head the number of times they’d been for a Christmas drink – or in fact, any post-work drink – and it amounted to precisely zero.
‘But why?’
She caught Ned’s flinch of surprise at her reaction and immediately reminded herself to adjust her tone, understanding that ‘short and snippy’ probably wasn’t the usual reaction when your sister pitched up and announced she wanted to take you out.
Zoe didn’t let it dissuade her from the cause. This wasn’t a surprise. Zoe hadn’t let anyone get in her way since she was six years old.
She held up her wrist to her face so that she could peer at her watch face.
‘Because, as of, eh, two hours ago, I’m officially single and I’ve nominated you to be the person who comes with me to several bars, listens to me ranting and tells me he’s a complete bastard who didn’t deserve me anyway.’
Verity’s reaction was instinctive and admittedly poorly thought t
hrough. ‘It’s over with Tom? You’re kidding! He’s so lovely!’
Zoe rolled her eyes in disgust. ‘I don’t think you’re getting the hang of the whole “tell me he’s a bastard” thing.’
‘Sorry.’ Verity took a short pause to think. Buggery bollocks. This was what happened when it finally looked like she might finally be jump-starting her dead love life. A sister in a crisis just pulled out the plug.
Why couldn’t Zoe have got dumped on any other day? Did it really have to be the very afternoon that Ned Merton had asked her out? Okay, so not strictly asked her out on a fully-fledged date, but that was just semantics. Now she was in a no-win situation – say yes and she blew her opportunity to get to know him, say no and she’d look like a heartless cow and he’d probably avoid her for ever more. And that lot in the manger thought they had problems.
‘The thing is we were actually already planning to go out tonight and…’ She flicked a glance at Ned, who immediately put his hands up.
‘Don’t worry about that. This is an emergency situation that clearly trumps post-term celebrations.’
Zoe’s face lit up. ‘No, it’s perfect. A celebration sounds like a much better idea. I’ve got at least a week and a half for self-pity and bitter recriminations, so I’ll start tomorrow instead. As long as you don’t mind me tagging along with you tonight.’ Her hopeful face was completely irresistible…