“No, I’ll go.”
But my legs are wobbling so much, as I climb the stairs, that I’m almost worried they won’t carry me.
Is this true?
Actually, forget that. This is true. I know it’s true.
All those late nights “at the office.” The “client dinners.” The meetings he just couldn’t reschedule to come to his son’s carol concert. His slavish devotion to late-night emailing on his BlackBerry. His total lack of interest in me, even when I was throwing myself at him in that stupid cheerleader outfit.
But more to the point, there’s the intangible stuff, too. The fact that, even though I didn’t even talk to Celia at that party—because Saad steered me away from her—I do recall that she’s exactly the kind of pretty, mousy, extremely young little thing I was when Charlie first met me.
I wonder if she’s the “friend” he’s staying with in West Hampstead.
I wonder how lucky he must have felt when he caught me out having a fling of my own.
I wonder if he’s enjoyed coldly punishing me quite as much as he has, over the last week, because he’s projecting onto me some deep-seated guilt of his own.
I wonder, though, if Charlie is actually capable of feeling guilt.
I’m in a bit of a daze as I open the door to Robbie’s room, so I’m taken aback to see that he’s out of his bed and that Hector is there with him. They’re both huddled up together at the window, peeking out from the robot-patterned curtains to look down onto the street below.
“Do you think he’ll come out?” Hector is whispering.
“He might,” says Robbie. “He still has to give Mummy some presents … oh, hello, Mummy,” he adds, noticing my presence as I come up behind them. “We couldn’t sleep because we’re still too excited about Santa.”
“Robbie, darling, Santa has gone away now.” This might upset them; I must try to focus. “What I mean is, he’s gone away for another year. Back home to the North Pole. But he’ll come back next Christmas, if you’re both very good …”
“But he’s still here,” Hector insists. He grabs my hand and pulls me closer to the window, pushing back the curtain so that I can see clearly. “Look! Santa!”
He’s pointing at Saad’s shiny blue Bentley, which is parked on the opposite side of the street.
“That was the car Santa came in last time, wasn’t it, Mummy?” Robbie looks up at me, slightly uncertain now, and checking. “When he brought you the pretty shoes?”
“Yes.” My voice is a weird croak. “Uh … is this the Santa you’ve been talking about today, boys?”
“Yes.” Hector is impatient. “He’s been here all day. We haven’t seen him, but we know he’s inside. Just waiting.”
“We don’t know,” Robbie adds, “what he is waiting for. But maybe he’s lost, or something, Mummy. Maybe he needs directions back to the North Pole.”
“Maybe.” I start for the door. “Mummy will just go and see what he wants, OK?”
“Tell him we’ve been very good!” Hector’s voice floats after me as I hurry down the stairs. “And take a carrot for Rudolph!”
It’s freezing outside now, with drizzle coming down that’s only a degree or two away from turning into sleet. I’m unsuitably dressed in my jeans and thin sweater, not to mention the fact that I’ve only just remembered I’m not wearing shoes, just the comedy reindeer bed socks that were Percy’s Christmas present to me. So my feet are already soaking wet by the time I reach the Bentley and tap on the window.
The back door opens immediately.
“No! Get back in!” I shove Thomas back into the car, clambering in myself, before Robbie and Hector, who I’m quite sure are still watching, can see that “Santa” isn’t wearing full festive red-and-ermine regalia but a heavy black coat and a rather natty Burberry check scarf.
And before the car’s other passenger—Saad, of course—can think about getting out either.
“Grace!” He leans forward from where he’s sitting on the backseat, takes my hands, and pulls me down to sit next to him. “Are you all right? You’re freezing! Would you like some coffee? Thomas, pour Grace some coffee. Or would you like something stronger?” he adds as Thomas, bent double, starts shuffling around in a huge picnic basket that’s on the floor of the vehicle. “We have some pretty good fifty-year-old single malt, or Thomas has been desperate for a chance to crack open the Bailey’s. And we’ve got McDonald’s leftovers, too, though they’re probably a little bit cold by now.”
“I don’t want a drink! Or McDonald’s leftovers! I want to know what you’re doing here.” I stare right at him, which is more difficult than I thought it would be. Because he looks so truly lovely. He’s all muffled up in a big black ski jacket, plus a new-looking Burberry scarf that—I have a suspicion—might have been a Christmas present from Thomas. His hair is sticking up a bit on one side, as though he’s been dozing in an uncomfortable position, and there are the faintest dark circles under his ink-black eyes. He looks in need of a good night’s sleep. And, like I already said, truly lovely. But I can’t let myself get distracted by that now. “Have you been here all day? What in God’s name were you thinking? With Charlie coming for Christmas, and everything …”
“Thomas, could you get into the front and give us a moment alone?” Saad puts out a hand to stop Thomas from rooting around looking for his bottle of Bailey’s.
“No, wait, you have to get out the other side,” I tell Thomas, as, with an expression of infinite patience, he clambers for the door. “My two little boys are watching from upstairs, and they’re waiting for a glimpse of Santa Claus,” I add apologetically. “Would you mind being really, really careful and getting into the front without them seeing you?”
“Certainly, Mrs. Cos … Grace.” He nods at me. “I will ensure that I am invisible from all possible sight lines from the house.”
For the first time, I actually trust him. After all, I don’t think his telling Percy about Charlie’s affair with Celia was a malicious thing. I think he was doing what Saad wanted him to do. I think the information was supposed to filter back to me eventually.
I wait for Thomas to slide silently out of the back of the car and behind the black panel that separates us from the front before I say, “So. Charlie’s been having an affair with his secretary.”
Saad swallows. “You know?”
“You wanted me to know.”
“Yes. No. Well, yes.” He lets out a long, exhausted sigh. “Look, I don’t know what I wanted, Grace. All I know is that everyone at the office knew about Celia, that I knew about Celia, and that it’s been killing me that you didn’t know about Celia. Especially when you kept feeling so guilty about what we were doing. When Charlie has been at it for months.”
“For years, I think, probably.” My mind is racing back to a couple of Charlie’s former secretaries and young female colleagues at Farrell Christie Dench, his old firm. The funny looks they’d give me when I’d turn up for office Christmas parties. The way Charlie was suddenly managed out of the firm when a new boss took over: a tough, no-nonsense, middle-aged woman boss who perhaps didn’t take kindly to Charlie’s extra-office activities. The way she looked at me, at the one office party where I met her, with a kind of confused, pitying expression on her face, which I misread as disapproval of my stay-at-home-mother status. “But it still doesn’t mean it was OK for me to cheat on him.”
“OK, maybe not. But it certainly means you don’t have to feel quite so torn up with guilt about it. And it certainly means he can stop acting so bloody superior to you. I mean, I saw his face when he left the house earlier, Grace, and he looked so fucking pleased with himself, I could have got out of the car and knocked his front teeth out.”
I smother a laugh. I can’t help it. Partly at the image of Charlie with no front teeth, partly at the vision of Saad peeking up over the edge of the car window to spy on the house all afternoon like some kind of lunatic cop on a stakeout, and partly just because I can feel low-level hysteri
a creeping in. “Was that what you came round for? To sit outside the house waiting for Charlie so you could smash his teeth in?”
“No!” Saad runs a hand though his hair, giving even more oomph to the sticking-up bit. “I wasn’t even sure if Charlie was going to be coming until I saw him arrive. Of course that’s not why I came. It’s just … look, you haven’t been returning my calls, or my texts, and I knew you wouldn’t even have read my letter, and I’ve been worrying about you. And I can’t stand it. I can’t stand not being able to see you, and talk to you, and hold you. So I just … came over. Maybe I didn’t think it through enough.”
I gesture at the picnic basket. “It looks like you thought it through enough to bring supplies.”
“That was Thomas’s idea. As soon as he knew I wasn’t going to be talked out of it. I think he knew that as soon as I got here, I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else.”
“But it’s Christmas Day.” I mean, didn’t he want to spend it with his family, or with some fellow billionaire friends? In his beautiful house, or at a fabulous hotel, or on whatever private island the Amars collectively own? Instead of sitting in a freezing car on one of the shabbier streets in Fulham, drinking whisky and eating cold Chicken McNuggets with his slightly obsessive housekeeper?
Now he looks at me, and it’s as if he’s read my mind. “Grace, you don’t understand. Christmas or no Christmas. I don’t have anywhere better to be than here.”
The small explosion of happiness I feel inside is the first thing I’ve felt in days that hasn’t hurt.
It’s what propels me the few inches across the backseat toward Saad, and what makes me start to kiss him like I’ve never kissed him before. His lips feel incredible. His arms, wrapped tightly around me, feel even better. And for the first time in twenty years, I really do believe in Santa Claus.
Bella
Friday, December 25
As hideous Christmases go, this one has been right up there with the best of them.
Mum has been hungover ever since she and Brian arrived just before midday, a very (very) long eight hours ago. She’s been sitting about the flat looking like a wet weekend and complaining: that it’s too cold/warm/damp/stuffy; that the smell of cooking is making her feel sick; that Brian is giving her a headache with the noise of gently prying open roasted chestnuts and scooping out the soft flesh; that the queen’s yellow suit is so bright it’s hurting her eyes; that the goose is too rich; that the brandy butter is too buttery. And too brandied. And Christmas pudding has enough calories in it anyway, without adding lumps of booze-soaked fat.
It’s a wonder, really, that any of us got through our own bowls of Christmas pudding without dropping down dead from lard-induced heart attacks. Or leaning across the table and setting fire to our mothers’ eyebrows with the box of matches that was brought in to flame the pudding.
I came close, by the way. Several times. Such as when Mum decided to reserve her only pleasant words of the day for Jamie, cooing at him as she handed over her barely touched plate of perfectly roasted goose and her uneaten portion of Christmas pudding, and urging him to “Eat up, eat up, God knows you need the strength to cope with Bella!”
Mind you, Jamie’s been pretty thick with her, too. Offering her his tried-and-tested hangover tips (never mind that she’d rather burn off her own eyebrows than eat a fried ham-and-cheese sandwich, or drink a raw egg in a pint of Guinness) and sitting with her in front of the TV most of the afternoon, agreeing that the queen looks like a canary in a wig and that Roger Moore is a better Bond than Sean Connery could ever have hoped to be, and raving about the bottle of whisky and the aftershave she bought him rather than admitting that he’s never worn aftershave a day in his life and that whisky gives him diarrhea.
Though I’m pretty sure the only reason Jamie’s putting in so much time with Mum is that it’s a surefire way of avoiding me. Which I know he’s doing, because he hasn’t said more than three words to me since he got up this morning (Happy Christmas, Bells) and because every time I go into a room, he finds an excuse to leave it.
Still, I can hardly complain about him avoiding me. Let’s face it, I’m avoiding him, too. Why else did I wander the frozen streets of Shepherd’s Bush until three o’clock this morning? Why else was I weak with relief when I finally crept back in through the front door to see that the living room lights were off and that there wasn’t even any thin TV light flickering from underneath the door of our bedroom?
Liam’s bedroom light was still on, incidentally, when I got in at 3:00 a.m.
It did cross my mind that maybe he was waiting up for me just to be sure that I got back OK. Especially as, by the time I’d gone into the kitchen for a glass of water and then come back out into the hallway again, his bedroom light had gone off.
But probably he was just staying up to read or something, and only realized the time when he heard the front door shut and looked at his clock to see what time I was crawling in. Hence the sudden lights out. Nothing to do with being worried about me at all.
Still, bless him either way, for being as stoical as he has been today, in the face of Mum’s hangover hellishness and me and Jamie circling each other like wary wild animals. This can’t have been the Christmas he was hoping for, even if he had known he’d be stuck in London rather than with his beloved daughters. Actually, he’s ended up spending most of the day in the kitchen, chatting to Brian and offering to help with menial chopping and peeling tasks, while Mum and Jamie have cozied up in front of the TV and I’ve spent what felt like hours on end sitting in front of my dressing table, staring at myself in the mirror and wondering if I should give up on becoming a mother—let’s face it, someone in charge of the universe seems to think that’s a pretty bad idea—or give up on Jamie.
Oh, and trying to get hold of Polly. That’s been my other main activity of the day. Not made any easier by the fact that she’s not answering her phone. According to Brian, she called him and Mum this morning to wish them a happy Christmas and to tell them she’d decided, under the circumstances (my This Is Your Life–ing her with her ex-fiancé, I suppose), that she’d spend the day with friends instead. Which “friends,” I’ve no idea. I’d have tried calling Grace to see if she’s gone there, but I assume Polly is almost as annoyed with her as she is with me. Either way, and whoever she’s with, it’s just another thing that’s contributing to my miserable Christmas Day.
It’s a mixture of relief (no more Mum!) and panic (no more stalling over what to do about Jamie!) when Brian finally announces they’re leaving, a little after eight o’clock.
“Now, there were only a couple of slices of the goose left over, but I know you always like to try to turn them into a bit of a savory pie, so I’ve put them in some foil in the fridge,” he’s saying to me as we stand by the front door and he starts trying to help Mum into her coat. “And please tell Anna I’d love her recipe for that Christmas pudding, won’t you?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Brian, Anna’s going to have better things to do over the next few weeks than pass around recipes!” Mum bats his help away and slips her coat over her shoulders, wearing it like some Garbo-esque cape. “Tell her from me, Bella, that the thing she’ll want to focus some serious attention on in the first three months is making sure she doesn’t just balloon. You know, women think they can suddenly eat for two, but really it’s only a very few extra calories they need to nourish an unborn baby. And Anna’s already carrying quite a spare tire around her tummy and hips, so if she’s not incredibly careful …”
“Yes, Mum. I’ll tell Anna that while carrying the baby she’s almost driven herself insane to conceive, she’d better watch out that her middle doesn’t get fat and flabby.”
“Not just her middle!” Mum completely misses my sopping sarcasm. “Pregnancy does dreadful things to your thighs—I never had an ounce of cellulite until I was expecting you—and she won’t want her face to get all bloated either. She’ll regret it when she wants nice photos taken of her and the baby at
the christening. Oh, and if you’re going to be a godmother, darling, please try to think enough in advance and pick out something nice to wear. Black trousers are so inappropriate for a nice church christening, and it’s not as if they do very much for your figure either.”
Bad as it’s already been, Christmas has already plummeted a few further notches down the Disaster scale by the time Brian has got Mum out of the flat, into the car, and safely headed toward the M4 to Wiltshire.
But as soon as they’re gone, I realize that I’d rather stand at the front door letting in a draft of cold air and listening to Mum’s bitching all night than go and talk to Jamie.
“Babe.”
Oh. He’s beaten me to it.
When I turn around, he’s standing in our bedroom doorway, with his well-practiced puppy dog expression on his face and a small, flat, Christmasy-wrapped parcel in his hand.
“We haven’t given each other our presents yet,” he says.
It’s true, we haven’t. I’ve completely forgotten about the gifts I’ve bought for him—a posh leather Filofax for him to keep all his new Jamie Keenan Landscapes appointments in (ha!), and one of those electronic photo frames that I thought one day soon he might like to put pictures of our new son or daughter in. They’re still in their shopping bags, at the bottom of my wardrobe. I’d have wrapped them late last night, over a rum-laced hot chocolate, if I hadn’t been out wandering the streets instead.
I head for the bedroom myself just as I notice the living room door closing gently shut. Liam, giving us our privacy.
“And look, I know you’re still upset with me about yesterday,” Jamie carries on, following me and looking pleased that I’ve come into the bedroom. “But you have to know, babe, that I really wasn’t trying to keep it a secret from you. It honestly slipped my mind, the whole prison thing.”
There Goes the Bride Page 32