Nothing to Lose

by Christina Jones

  Everyone had been telling her for ages that she and Andrew were wasting their time – she knew it and so did he. It just needed one of them to be brave enough to make the first and final move. And, of course, Peg had been absolutely right about Andrew last night. It made her sad, though, she thought, looking at the school photo of her and Andrew and Ewan and Clara. It should have worked out. For all four of them.

  She pushed back the duvet and shivered. The shutters and door all rattled alarmingly in the wind, and the slats in the floorboards now emitted irregular icy blasts round her ankles. It may not be the lap of luxury, she thought, scuttling out into the kitchen to put on the kettle and ignite the heaters, but she truly never wanted to live anywhere else. And if she had to live here alone for the rest of her life then things weren’t all bad.

  The radio burbled comfortably in the background as she washed and dressed in as many layers as she could squeeze into. Four days until Christmas. She’d bought her presents in a one-off blast in Bournemouth some weeks ago, and they were all piled behind the sofa, wrapped and ready. Most of them she would dole out at Peg’s traditional party at the Crumpled Horn on Christmas Eve, but the golfing sweater for her father and the diet cook book for her mother would prove the perfect excuse for calling now and explaining about her plans for a solitary Christmas.

  Crunching toast and strawberry jam, and warming to her theme, Jasmine convinced herself that Sunday morning would be the ideal time to catch both her parents at home. She hadn’t seen them for ages, although Andrew still called in regularly to the Chewton Estate house and kept her updated on the matrimonial developments. There had been no indication that either of them was about to decamp with an extra-marital lover, so she assumed that it had all been a lot of fuss over nothing. Maybe her father had been dallying with the decrepit Moira Cook, and maybe her mother had taken a lover to score points. Jasmine sighed. She’d never know, and even if they had, it all seemed to be over now.

  Dragging Benny’s waxed jacket from its hook behind the door, she stuffed Yvonne and Philip’s Christmas presents into a carrier bag, then turned down the heaters and switched off the radio. Gloves . . . She’d need gloves for the trek across the village. Fumbling deep into the pockets of Benny’s jacket she came up with a fistful of sweet wrappers and several scrumpled up tissues. So where had she left her gloves? She stared down at her hands. There was something wrong. Something missing.

  She gawped at her bare fingers in total surprise. Andrew’s engagement ring was no longer there . . . Was it a sign, a portent, an indication that her body knew the relationship was over even if the rest of her didn’t? She shook her head at such flummery. So what on earth had happened to it?

  Wondering momentarily if she’d lost enough weight for the ring simply to have slipped from her finger, she dismissed the notion straight away. Not that she was given to regular weigh-ins, but on the trip to Bournemouth she’d jumped recklessly onto the scales in Boots, only to see the red digital read-out spiral into amazingly high metric figures. She’d then got off, put down her shopping bags, taken off her coat, her shoes and a jumper and tried again. This time the red kilos had translated satisfactorily into somewhere around her normal eleven and a half stones.

  The only logical reason for the ring to have moved was because her hands were so damn cold, that her fingers looked like wizened matchsticks. And so where the hell was it? Knowing that she’d had it on last night, it must be here in the beach hut somewhere. Retracing her steps from kitchen to living room, from bedroom back to kitchen and not finding it, she sighed in exasperation.

  Oh God, Grandpa, what do I do now? How can I go and tell Andrew that I want to break off the engagement but that I can’t give him the ring back? He’ll think I’ve hocked it or something.’

  She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of the waxed jacket and her fingers closed round something small, circular, cold and solid. She smiled and withdrew the ring.

  Cheers, Grandpa. Any more advice?’

  None seemed forthcoming, so Jasmine slid the ring safely inside her glove, then picked up her carrier bag and stepped out onto the veranda.

  The walk had taken her breath away. Every part of her was numbed. Jasmine wished it would snow. Surely a good snowfall would take the biting edge off the temperatures? Anyway, she loved the snow. A white Christmas, snugged up in the beach hut, dreaming of Sebastian, would be lovely. Not that it ever snowed at the proper times any more. Last year it had been relatively warm all winter and then snowed in April. She and Benny had built a snowman in the middle of the greyhound track and given it Gilbert’s fedora and a string of pearls nicked from Peg. They’d thought it looked a touch like Eddie Izzard.

  A month later Benny was dead.

  Brushing away the tears, and deciding to call into the cemetery on the way back from Andrew’s for a lengthy chat with the headstone before visiting her parents, Jasmine trudged on towards the outskirts of Ampney Crucis. Andrew shared a house with several of his dealership colleagues, though she rarely went there because it was always scuzzy and she felt everyone laughed at her. Occasionally she’d spent the night there with Andrew, after a party, and had always been made to feel very unwelcome the following morning. Andrew’s workmates were all target-blind in the loo, never cleaned the bath, and farting out the tune of the National Anthem while watching Say watch seemed to constitute their main entertainment.

  She rang the doorbell. All the curtains were sort of dragged together, so the chances were that no one was yet up. She rang again. The wind was pushing debris against the doorstep and rattling a discordant melody amongst a heap of empty wine bottles and lager cans inside the gate.

  Eventually, the door was pulled partly open. Nick, one of the dealership boys, peered at her round it. His hair was on end and his eyes were almost closed. Jasmine thought he was possibly naked.

  ‘Er – is Andrew here?’

  ‘You’re too late for the party, sweetheart. That was last night.’

  Party? What party?

  ‘Yeah – I know. Um – can I see Andrew, please?’

  ‘I’ll go and ask him. Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Just get him.’

  The door closed again. Jasmine seethed. Even if she’d known Andrew and his flatmates were having a party, she wouldn’t have gone. She’d been working anyway. But surely he might have mentioned it to her?

  The door opened again. Andrew, looking even worse than Nick had stared at her is though she was the last person on earth he wanted to see. ‘Jas?’

  ‘Good party, was it? Can I come in?’

  ‘Yeah, well, um – no, not really . . .’

  ‘Tough.’ She pushed past him into the hall. With the curtains closed and the lights off, the darkened house smelled rancid – of stale smoke and stale beer and stale vomit. She looked at him. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk? Not down here – your room?’

  ‘Not my room.’ Andrew, dressed only in Y-fronts and someone else’s T-shirt, hurled himself at the bottom of the staircase.

  Have you got someone else in there?’

  No.’ Andrew looked very pale. ‘But Jon and Richard have.’

  What? Both of them?’

  Yeah. Nick pinched their room, you see, for him and – well, you wouldn’t know her – and then they piled into mine with – um – well, you wouldn’t know them either, so I’ve slept on the sofa – ’

  ‘With us . . .’ A very thin girl in grubby Sloggi vest and pants, and with most of her make-up round her chin and twiglets in her hair, staggered into the hall. ‘Me and my sister. Oh, and her friend, and her friend’s mate from work.’

  ‘Not that we were – like – together,’ Andrew said quickly. ‘Were we?’

  ‘Christ, no.’ The thin girl gave Andrew a disparaging glance as she disappeared into the downstairs loo. ‘It was just there were no more beds free and we were all zonked.’

  Jasmine felt very old. And extremely angry. ‘Why didn’t you invite me?’

  ‘D
on’t shout, Jas, please. I’ve got one hell of a headache. You were working. And you wouldn’t have liked it. You don’t like my friends. Look, give me half an hour to pull myself together and we’ll go to the Crumpled Horn and talk. OK?’

  ‘Not OK.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve got millions of things to do. Actually, I just came to give you this.’ She wriggled off her glove and pushed the ring into his hand. ‘Sorry. I should have done it a long time ago, shouldn’t I? Now you’ll feel better.’

  Andrew stared at the engagement ring. ‘You don’t want to marry me?’

  ‘No. I don’t think I ever did, not really.’

  ‘But you can’t do it now!’ Andrew almost howled. ‘I’ve bought you a Christmas present! What shall I do with it?

  ‘Give it to her.’ Jasmine, feeling light-headed and joyously liberated, nodded towards the thin girl who’d emerged from the loo holding her nose. ‘I’m sure she’ll love a set of three hankies and some cheapo bath foam.

  ‘How did you know? Oh. . .’ Andrew looked crestfallen.

  Jasmine grinned. ‘See you around, no doubt. And no hard feelings. Bye. . .’

  She closed the door behind her and burst into tears.

  More than an hour later, having sat on the kerbstone of Benny’s grave in the freezing wind, and given him chapter and verse of the break-up, Jasmine felt a lot less wobbly. It was really strange, not being part of a couple any more. No more Jas and Andrew. It would take a lot of getting used to. She stood up. Just her parents to sort out, then she’d go back to the beach hut and ring Clara and tell her. And then – and then, what? For a frightening minute the future seemed to stretch ahead full of nothing. Jasmine gulped in the icy air. The feeling would pass, she knew it would. She’d get used to being alone. She’d even enjoy it. Probably.

  It took another twenty bitterly cold minutes to reach the Chewton Fstate. Maybe, she thought, puffing like mad, the time was right to invest in a small car. She’d made a decent profit since she’d become Benny Clegg, and her building society account was looking reasonably healthy. And now she wouldn’t be needing any of it as the deposit for the house she and Andrew were supposed to have. And she wouldn’t be able to borrow cars from Andrew for her journeys in future, would she? Yes, she thought, definitely. My early New Year’s resolution: I’ll buy a car in January. The future was already looking a bit less scary.

  There were two cars parked outside her parents’ house. Her mother’s and Andrew’s. Jasmine groaned. It hadn’t taken him long to come to spread the glad tidings, had it? And her father’s car wasn’t there, which probably meant be was out playing golf – even in this weather – and she really didn’t want to see her mother alone, or Andrew at all.

  Dithering for a moment, hesitating on the edge of the drive, horribly aware that various neighbouring net curtains were twitching, Jasmine decided to march straight in, hand over the presents, ignore Andrew, and beat a hasty retreat. Anyway, her nose was running from the cold and she could do with using the loo.

  The swimming pool, left uncovered and undrained, had a thin crust of ice which rippled strangely in the wind. The garden was unkempt, all the summer flowers left to go to seed and now rattling their stalks together, lace-topped and neglected. Feeling guilty, Jasmine realised that she hadn’t been here for ages. And things must have got serious if both her parents had let the garden run riot. She should have cared more about their problems. She shouldn’t have been so wrapped up in the greyhound stadium and being a bookie – and Sebastian. She’d had weeks while Damon and his boys were doing the rebuild to pop up here and be a real daughter . . .

  She paused by the kitchen door. Walk straight in or slope off back round the front and ring the bell? Straight in, she decided: the neighbours had had their floor show for today. The kitchen was empty. There were signs of breakfast scattered around, but no smell of lunch being prepared. Andrew must be pouring out his heart to Yvonne in the sitting room. In a fit of cowardice, Jasmine thought about leaving the Christmas presents on the kitchen table and just creeping away. It was her mother’s voice, suddenly raised, that stopped her.

  ‘. . . no, I won’t keep my voice down! I’m bloody angry! How dare he do this to me! I’ll be a laughing stock! What?

  There was a low rumbly male voice – obviously Andrew’s. Jasmine couldn’t make out the words. Her father was in the doghouse, though, that much was obvious.

  ‘Moira Cook!’ Yvonne shrieked. ‘God – I wish! Yes, yes, I know what you told Jasmine. She came here and asked me if it was true, remember? I said it wasn’t because dear God, Moira Cook! The woman’s dead from the neck down!’

  More Andrew rumblings.

  ‘That’s wicked!’ Yvonne laughed. ‘Oh well, yes, I know Philip has trouble getting it up, but even so – ’

  Jasmine wanted to stuff her fingers in her ears. She shouldn’t be listening to this – and neither should Andrew. What the hell was her mother playing at?

  Yvonne’s laugh was closer now, as if she was about to walk into the hall. ‘OK, OK – I’ll give you that. Well, she’s welcome to him. I hope they’ll be very happy together. And of course she’s got her own place so he won’t be coming back here . . .’

  The voice receded. Andrew laughed too. Jasmine felt she might join in, hysterically, at any moment.

  ‘Anyway, he’s finally gone to fat Verity – the woman’s thighs are like lard slabs! I’ve seen her in the gym. Mottled cellulite! Like two salamis. What? Yes, well, there’s a blessing ... no more poxy knitted tea cosies.’

  Jasmine’s head reeled. Her father had left. Her father had gone to live with Verity, his secretary. Verity of the bolster bosom and the knitting needles. He’d been having an affair all the time! Andrew had been right! Oh, her poor mother -

  And now I’m a free man . . .’ Andrew’s voice was suddenly very close. He must be standing just inside the sitting-room. ‘Aren’t you going to console me?’

  Yvonne giggled. And cooed, ‘Andy, darling, of course I am. I must say my daughter may be a huge disappointment in all other areas, but she does have impeccable timing. And, of course, after a suitable interval, you’ll be able to step neatly into Philip’s shoes . . .’

  What the hell was that all about? Surely – no . . . Jasmine’s hair stood on end. There was a sick, cold feeling snaking into her stomach. That come-on laugh of her mother’s, that cooing voice – she’d heard them before. On the phone ... on the beach . . .

  Andy? Her mother called Andrew Andy? Oh dear God – no!

  Rooted to the spot for a split second, Jasmine then sucked in her breath and stormed into the sitting room. Her mother, in a tiny silk nightie, was curled into Andrew’s arms – obviously not for the first time – making little moaning noises as he kissed her throat.

  Gagging, Jasmine stared at them. She didn’t feel hurt. Just angry and disgusted. The anger won the battle. She looked down at the carrier bag still clasped in her hand, and with a cry of fury, she whirled it round and round her head like a demented dervish, then let it go. It zoomed across the room and caught both her mother and Andrew neatly on the side of the head.

  ‘Happy Christmas, you bastards!’ Jasmine roared, ‘Happy bloody Christmas!’

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Christmas Eve in the Copacabana was getting out of hand. Martina had hired a whole batch of mini Santa outfits with obscenely short skating skirts and white-fur-trimmed hats – and insisted that the waitresses should all wear them with their black fishnets and white thigh-length boots.

  ‘I look like I should be walking the beat round Sussex Gardens,’ April grumbled, mixing a potentially lethal shooter of Cuervo Gold, sambuca and Tabasco. ‘And I’d make more money.’

  ‘You would that, love,’ the recipient of the Flatliner waggled a piece of mistletoe across the bar. ‘Gissa kiss.’

  ‘OK,but I’ve got halitosis and herpes – oh, changed your mind? Shame. Who’s next?’

  The Christmas Eve dog racing was over. Oliver had scheduled an early meeting, in
the hope that everyone would then pour away from the tracks and into the Gillespie Stadium’s many bars to continue their celebrations. It had worked very well. At least, for Oliver and Martina’s already bulging bank balance. April, who still had masses of Christmas things to do at home, had never felt so exhausted.

  All night, a girlie group dressed as reindeers had been chanting their way nasally through some really sugary festive favourites – and currently Santa Claus was Coming to Town – again. April, already punch-drunk, kept impaling green cherries on the umbrellas and setting fire to the olives. The swizzle sticks had disappeared hours ago, and the last of the sparklers was smouldering at the base of the plastic palm tree.

  This would be, without doubt, the worst Christmas of her life.

  Noah hadn’t come back. She hadn’t heard from him, and now never expected to. She assumed he’d returned to Anoushka and the gîteand the proper studio, and had forgotten all about his family in Bixford. It was almost a relief. Beatrice-Eugenie and Cair Paravel were certainly far happier without his loud, crashing, moody presence in the flat; Jix and Daff were regular visitors again; and Joel and Rusty had resumed their dropping-in for late-night drinks and chats. And, if she were honest, April was absolutely delighted about not having to perform sexual gymnastics on the sofa every night when all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and die.

  But, she still loved him. The love that she’d felt for Noah had been so all-consuming that she knew it would take ages to work its way out of her system. And it also meant that the Ampney Crucis cottage-by-the-sea dream had gone too, which made her doubly miserable. In the April-Noah Utopia plan, she’d fondly imagined that this Christmas, with Noah and Bee together, would be like some happy families television advert. Noah would fill Bee s stocking at midnight, and then they’d stand in the bedroom doorway, arms entwined, gazing with mutual love at their peacefully sleeping progeny.