by Low, Shari
‘Everything is pretty much done,’ Marina told her. ‘The turkey is already in, and the potatoes are peeled. Just the veg and the chipolatas to do.’
‘Great,’ their mum chirped. ‘I’ll get on to that then.’
True to her word, she did. But all that was left to do took about ten minutes out of the next four hours of raucous Monopoly. For the rest of the time, Marge lay on the couch, chatting to her friends on the phone and watching her favourite programmes on TV. Marina even had to dive up from the table and take the turkey out of the oven when the timer dinged.
They didn’t care though. Dad’s jokes and the fun they had playing made the hours whizz by. When they eventually cleared away the board games so they could eat at the table, they even pretended to enjoy the soggy Brussels sprouts, mushy potatoes and crispy turkey. Mum had forgot about the veg and left it all too long.
It didn’t matter. They ate dinner, pulled crackers, read the silly puns and laughed until their sides hurt at Dad’s daft songs and impressions.
‘What was your favourite present today, Dad?’ Yvie had asked him as Marina served up the Viennetta for pudding.
He’d grinned that crooked way he always did and given her a hug.
‘You lot,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘We’re so lucky to have each other. So yeah, you guys… And my new Brut aftershave, of course,’ he joked. They’d all chipped in to buy it for him and he’d loved it. ‘Family forever,’ he said, raising a toast that they all matched with their glasses of Irn-Bru.
‘Family forever,’ the girls echoed, beaming.
Only it wasn’t.
Because one person at the table already knew that this could be the last Christmas Day they would all spend together.
7
Zoe – A Month After Sushi-gate
Tom leaned in the doorway of her office, his wavy brown hair pushed back from his face, in his standard uniform for dress-down Friday: black jeans, white T-shirt, black boots. His twice weekly five-a-side football sessions and morning runs kept him looking exactly the same as he had done for years.
‘Is there any chance you can develop a liking for pies and completely let yourself go, just to make me feel like I had a lucky escape?’ she asked him, drily.
His face cracked into a grin. To onlookers, it might look like there was some unresolved tension between them, but they both knew differently. This was their norm. Their whole relationship – brilliant as it had been until the moment his ex appeared on the scene – had been built on the foundations of love, trust, compatibility, mutual admiration, her sarcasm and his enjoyment of it.
The first week back after Christmas had been a bit awkward with lots of walking on eggshells. The second week, they’d relaxed a bit – especially when their personal feelings had to be put aside to focus on reorganising the company after Tom’s founding partner took off to set up a new office in New York. Zoe had been offered a partnership in the company and stepped into his shoes. She’d lost the love of her life but achieved a huge career ambition. It was a small consolation. On the third week, they’d settled into their redefined relationship with just a few moments of uncertainty. And now, they were back on solid friendship terms, as witnessed by the full return of Zoe’s dry barbs. Normal service resumed. She just had to make sure he didn’t realise that she still missed him desperately and hadn’t quite shut off her ‘I love Tom’ gene.
Grinning, he pulled a Greggs bag from behind his back. ‘It’s as if I could read your mind.’
‘If there’s a maple doughnut in there, you’re forgiven for dumping me.’
‘Yassss!’ he punched the air, swooping the bag down on to her desk and tearing it open to reveal her favourite cake. One that came with a soft dough, a sweet topping and a pang of ‘How bloody wonderful is he?’
She ignored the last ingredient.
‘Forgiven. Anyway, what’s up?’
‘Nothing.
She eyed him suspiciously. ‘It’s Friday, you’re in my office, you’ve brought a bribe. That’s not “nothing”.’
‘Okay, I just wondered how long I need to leave it before I can ask if you’re really okay and we can talk about our relationships like we used to do when we were best mates?’
Zoe sat back in her leather chair and put her feet on the desk, her black leather spiked heels landing squarely on top of the Kemp Hotel Group contract. It was up for renewal and she was going through it, making sure they’d met all their commitments before pitching for it to be extended. Roger Kemp was a nice guy, but he had tough demands and expected them to be on top of their game at all times. That wasn’t a problem for Zoe. It wasn’t like she had much else going on to distract her. Unlike the bribe-bearing man in front of her.
‘Depends. Are you going to tell me how Chrissie is the most wonderful woman you’ve ever met and you’ve never been happier?’ she asked with the kind of eyebrow arch she could only do now that her one-time brush with Botox had worn off.
His silence and rueful shrug was her answer.
‘Then I’m thinking it’s going to take two doughnuts before I’ve eaten enough of my feelings to go along with it,’ she replied, grinning as she took her first bite.
Tom laughed as he crossed the room and pulled out the chair on the other side of her desk. ‘Okay, I’m doing it anyway. I need to know you’re moving on and happy. It’s the people-pleaser in me.’
She knew that was inherently true, so she refrained from pointing out that he hadn’t bloody pleased her when he’d dumped her four days before Christmas.
‘I’m happy. I’m fine,’ she argued, maple icing sticking to her lips as she took another bite. ‘I’ve tried to keep my moping over my newly single state to a respectable ten minutes a day and then I give my inner miserable cow a good talking to and get back to work.’
Tom’s eyes crinkled and a bit of her melted. She’d always loved to make him laugh. Still did.
‘Seeing anyone?’ he asked, lifting the other doughnut for himself.
She shook her head. Finding someone else was the bottom of her list of priorities. Getting over Tom was at the top. ‘I’m throwing myself into my work. I have a very demanding business partner who hides his relentlessly high expectations under a veneer of being a nice guy.’
‘Sounds like a complete twat,’ Tom offered, laughing again.
‘Indeed, he is.’
‘Anyway, back to you. What about the guy you hooked up with at Christmas? The teacher?’
Zoe took a sip of coffee this time, buying a few moments because she wasn’t quite sure how to answer that.
‘He’s called a few times, left a few messages, but I’ve blanked them. I know that sounds heartless, but I decided it would be a bit of a dick move to use him to make myself feel better. It wouldn’t be fair to him.’ She was going for nonchalance but wasn’t sure if she was hitting martyrdom instead.
‘Are you crazy? If someone like you wanted to use me to get over an ex, I’d be all for it,’ he joked.
As if the cosmos was listening, her phone buzzed at that moment and that familiar name popped up on the screen:
NED TEACHER BLOKE. She’d put that in her contacts when she woke up in the morning after the night that they…
Shuddering, she pulled open the curtains on the mental image. Ned had been gorgeous. Fun. But that night she had been a drunken mess. It had been all been pointless too. In her tequila-fuelled haze, she’d thought it would make her feel better. It didn’t. And despite all her chat on Christmas Day about having a fling with him to get over Tom, she hadn’t actually followed up on it.
Tom stretched over, saw the name flashing on the screen of her phone, then leaned back in his chair. ‘Go on. Answer it.’
‘Nope.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because…’
She stopped, realising she had nothing. Not a single viable excuse for rejecting his call. Ned was handsome. Smart. Interesting. Funny. He worked with kids, for God’s sake. What was wrong with her? Th
e answer was obvious. He just wasn’t Tom. Not that she was going to say that to the man in front of her now, but, come on, of course the bruising would take a while to heal. They’d only been together for six months, but after a couple of years of friendship, which developed into so much more, she’d really thought they were both on the same path. One that ended with lifelong commitments and at least a couple of episodes of reproduction. That was a tough future to rewrite.
‘Because I’d rather call him back later when I don’t have an audience. Look, don’t worry about me, I’m fine. I promise. I’m loving the new role and personal stuff will just have to take a back seat for a while because I want to focus on this.’
He seemed to accept that he wasn’t getting anywhere and went for a change of subject. ‘How’s the family doing?’
Zoe thought about it for a moment. ‘Marina’s finally over Sushi-gate. I think. It’s hard to tell, given that – much as I adore her – her happy-go-lucky face is almost exactly the same as her resting-bitch face. And Yvie, well she’s just gorgeous, happy Yvie. Nothing ever gets her down. Something’s going on with Verity, but I think I need to bring in CIA interrogators to get it out of her.’
‘What kind of thing?’ One of the many things she’d loved about Tom was that he was genuinely interested in the people he cared about. He’d always been hugely fond of her sisters and had got to know them well over the years.
‘I don’t know. She’s just off. A bit reclusive. That’s nothing new but she’s even worse than usual. I’ve asked her to go out a few times over the last month and she always has an excuse. I’m giving up and waiting until she comes out of it on her own. Hopefully it’ll be before we retire and start taking bus tours together.’
It had been genuinely puzzling to Zoe, though. She’d asked Yvie and Marina if they knew what was bugging Verity, but they didn’t seem to have a clue either. Not that they’d tell her. The four sisters had had a pact since they were in their twenties, that if they were sworn to secrecy on something by another sister, they had to stick to it. Interference and gossiping never ended well.
‘She’ll come round. She always does. Maybe she’s just got some work stuff on her mind.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘Or maybe… is there any chance she likes the guy?’
‘What guy?’ Zoe asked, genuinely puzzled.
‘Ned. The one you went out with that night.’
Zoe’s reaction was instinctive. ‘Noooo. No way. She’s worked with him for years. If they were going to hook up, they’d have done it long ago.’
‘Eh, can I point out that we worked together for years before we developed a relationship?’
‘Yes, but that’s because you were my boss. This is different. They’re just co-workers, so there’s no political stuff to get in the way.’ She chewed on another chunk of doughnut while she pondered it some more. ‘No, they’d definitely have got together by now if there was any kind of spark between them. Our Verity is a bit reserved that way, but she’s not completely hopeless.’
Tom scrunched up the Greggs bag and tossed it in the direction of the bin. Of course, it went in first time. ‘When was her last relationship?’ he asked, making a gentle point.
Zoe conceded defeat. ‘Okay, so she is a bit hopeless, but if she liked Ned, I’d know. I’m sure of it.” She filed the thought under ‘ridiculous’ and pushed it to the back of her mind. ‘Right, be gone and let me get some work done.’
‘Sure thing,’ he said, stretching out of his seat. She ordered her libido to be completely unaffected by this. It did its best to comply. ‘Can we go over the Kemp contract at three o’clock? I want to get away sharpish tonight. We’re taking Ben out for dinner and then to a basketball game.’
His face lit up as he said it and Zoe’s heart melted. He was so happy, so thrilled to discover that he was a dad, and she couldn’t begrudge him that. Even if her uterus hadn’t been involved in creating the situation.
As the door swung behind him, she paused, glanced around the open-plan office. There was Dex, the head of the art department, over by the kettle, whipping himself into a frenzy as he shared his plans for the weekend. He and his boyfriend, Jasper, were off to Barcelona on the last flight tonight.
Cally, the receptionist, and Sarah and Becky, the marketing managers, were all heading out straight after work to some restaurant opening. They’d invited her, but she’d declined. Now she wasn’t sure why. She continued her scan of the room. Every single person had something planned for the weekend, somewhere to be, people to see, except her. She’d maybe call Yvie and see if she wanted to grab a curry, or land on Verity with a bottle of wine and beg her to stay up past ten o’clock.
Something snapped. Enough. No more moping. Time to get back out there. So, two choices. A dating app or… or… did she want to see Ned again?
Really, how many relationships that started off with a drunken one night stand ever actually worked?
It hadn’t been her finest moment. Casual sex wasn’t generally her thing, but it was one of those right place, right time, take her mind off Tom bloody Butler things. And it had worked. Immediately afterwards, she’d had all intentions of seeing Ned again, but somehow she’d just let it drift. Her mind went back to their one and only call on Boxing Day. They’d chatted for a while, exchanged Christmas Day stories, Zoe omitting the bit where the starter was ruined, Marina was furious, Verity was a moody cow all night, her mother and Derek had a terse argument about God knows what, and Graham’s mother made a passive-aggressive comment about every single aspect of the dinner, making Zoe remove all sharp objects from Marina’s vicinity. It had been tense and uncomfortable, so Zoe, Yvie and their mum had overdone the wine and ended up singing Christmas songs around Annabelle’s piano. By the third rendition of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’, they’d pretty much cleared the room. Marina had muttered something about ‘so much for a perfect bloody Christmas’ and gone off to bed.
‘School doesn’t start back for another week and I was thinking maybe we could make the most of it? Spend some time together?’ he’d suggested at the end of the call.
Tempting. So tempting. But by then, the reality of her split with Tom had descended with a vengeance, and she didn’t have the luxury of a week off – she was back to work the next day. All in all, she decided she had enough on her plate without the added complication of a prolonged one night stand. ‘I appreciate you asking, I really do. But the thing is, I’d just split up with my boyfriend the day we met…’ she’d explained.
‘You might have mentioned that once or twice. Or sixty-seven times.’
His teasing had made her laugh, and for a moment she had almost wavered. Almost. The reality was, she needed to come to terms with losing Tom before she dived into something new.
‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Tequila makes me repeat things,’ she’d said.
‘Well, when you’re ready to repeat us, give me a call.’ Funny. Smooth. Not helped by the fact that she could see his cute grin in her mind and the complete package made him just a little bit harder to refuse.
She’d hung up before she’d buckled. It was the right thing to do.
But now?
A month later, maybe it was time to reconsider. There was nothing to lose and a good night out to gain. Tom was right. She had to get back out there. After all, he’d very definitely moved on. She was single. Ned was single. And despite Tom’s earlier question, she was 100 per cent positive that there was no way that Verity was in the least bit interested in Ned Merton, so there was no reason Zoe shouldn’t have a bit of heartbreak-soothing fun.
She picked up the phone and dialled Yvie, who answered on the first ring.
Zoe cut right to the point.
‘Hey, it’s me. Do you think it’s time for me to stop moping and get my flirt back on?’
‘Abso-fucking-lutely.’
‘Excellent. Good chat.’ The two of them were laughing when she hung up.
Yvie was right. It was time.
Zoe picked up
the phone and toyed with it, rolling it around in her hand. Then she clicked on ‘recent calls’ and stared at his name:
NED TEACHER BLOKE.
All she had to do was press the button.
8
Verity – A Month After Sushi-gate
‘Miss Danton, Caleb just told me to fuck off!’
It took every single ounce of restraint, and the fortuitous ringing of the bell, for Verity not to say, ‘Well, tell him to fuck off right back.’ She loved her job, she truly did, but sometimes she had to launch a search party to find the joy in it.
It had been a long month. January was always tough. The weather had been horrendous, meaning that the kids were often stuck inside at break time and lunchtime, giving them no opportunity to run their energy off. They’d swapped the fun Christmas stuff for more concentrated learning. And it always took a while to get them back into a routine after the break. It didn’t help that she pretty much wanted to tell the world to fuck off too. Of course, she wouldn’t. She’d always thought swearing just demonstrated a lack of vocabulary.
As soon as the bell had cleared the room, she sank back in her chair. Another week done.
‘You look knackered.’
The voice from the doorway made her spring upright and she automatically responded with a smile.
‘I am. Long week. How was yours?’
Hands in pockets, tie loose, Ned leaned against the wall like a catalogue model. ‘Same. We’re at that final year in primary school stage where it’s only a few months until they go to high school and they already think they know everything and they’re too grown up to be here. I just caught one of my groups discussing how it’s only a few years until they can go to Magaluf. God help us.’
That threw up a recollection in Verity’s mind. Her and Zoe. Age seventeen and eighteen. A fortnight in Benidorm paid for by their Saturday jobs. All Zoe wanted to do was party all night and sleep on the beach all day. They hadn’t seen one museum or place of cultural interest for a fortnight. And no, Zoe’s argument that the Orgasm Bar was a place of cultural interest didn’t wash with her.