How to Stuff Up Christmas

by Rosie Blake

  ‘It’s harder with a dog,’ he said, sounding accusing.

  ‘Well, er… I’m sorry, but…’ She imagined her own office. They would never be this abrupt. Well Ed would, but that was precisely why they never allowed him to talk to clients.

  ‘Anything at all? Please,’ she tacked on, wondering if they had just got off on the wrong foot or whether he wasn’t really a phone person.

  ‘Not in that vicinity.’

  That was it then; she sagged in her chair. She would have to get something further away, in town perhaps, and work out how to get into the course. It wasn’t impossible but it would take more planning.

  ‘We do have a short-term let for a houseboat for the month of December. They’re normally really popular in the summer, but we do have people coming down for the winter months sometimes and we’ve just had a couple fall through as he’s broken a hip and doesn’t want to be getting in and out of it…’

  Eve had stopped listening at ‘hip’. A houseboat. She sat up, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

  A houseboat was wonderfully romantic. She pictured herself now, out on the deck with her hair tied back, a scarf around her neck, an aperitif in her hand, watching the sun sink below the line of the water, fish zipping past, peace, alone on the water, just her and the great outdoors.

  ‘Oh yes, please,’ she breathed. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘What do river people wear?’

  ‘What did you call yourself?’

  ‘I am one of the river people.’

  ‘Sounds like a terrible Irish band.’

  They were browsing the rails in a big department store, Eve holding up a pair of frayed dungarees on the sale rack.

  ‘There’s a reason they’re for sale,’ Harriet commented, grimacing as Eve held them up to her body.

  ‘Because they’re so sexy.’

  ‘No, that is not the reason.’

  Eve poked her tongue out as she put them back, plucking a checked shirt from another rail.

  ‘Very Brokeback Mountain,’ Harriet commented as Eve frowned at herself in a full-length mirror.

  ‘Well, what else can I wear? I’m on a boat. Ooh, how about stripes?’

  ‘You’re not a pirate,’ Harriet said, holding up a plain black top. ‘How about this?’

  Eve looked at it. ‘Not exactly memorable, is it?’

  ‘Well, I thought you were doing all this so you could be alone with your thoughts and your pots. Why do you need to look good?’

  Eve frowned at Harriet, realising that there was something in her voice. ‘You’re annoyed,’ Eve pointed out.

  Harriet sighed. ‘I’m not annoyed.’ She raised a finger as Eve went to speak. ‘And don’t do that thing where you say “You are annoyed” and I say “I’m not” and you say “You are”, and then I get annoyed.’

  Eve had been about to do exactly that.

  ‘It’s not that I’m annoyed, I’m just sad, I suppose.’ Harriet shrugged, not really meeting Eve’s eye. Harriet rarely did big emotion so this was reasonably unexpected.

  ‘Are you really going?’ she asked.

  Eve nodded. ‘I paid the deposit yesterday.’

  Harriet exhaled slowly. ‘She’ll miss you there,’ she said, pointing to the stationary pram where Poppy lay, one arm thrown above her hair, her smooth skin so strokeable it took all Eve’s willpower not to reach down and touch it.

  ‘Hey, don’t bring her into it. You know I can’t resist her.’

  ‘I was going to dress her as an elf,’ Harriet said, a renewed glint in her eye.

  Eve’s head snapped up and she nearly cancelled all her plans. But she had made up her mind and she was sort of excited about doing something different. She knew she might miss them, Harriet in particular, she hero-worshipped her, and Poppy was just adorable. But she also knew she’d be a misery, moping and hopeless, remembering all the previous Christmases, remembering the proposal.

  ‘I’d be a complete drain,’ Eve said, pulling out a pair of red skinny jeans.

  ‘They’d look good on you,’ Harriet said begrudgingly; she could never stay stroppy with Eve for long.

  Eve came and threw one arm round her neck. ‘I’m sorry I’m being hopeless, I know it’s all very me, me, me, but I just can’t face it all.’

  ‘I get it,’ Harriet said, stiffening under her embrace. She wasn’t brilliant at PDA. Gavin thought it was hilarious and always tried to grab her in restaurants.

  ‘Hey, shall we both get reindeer hairbands?’ Harriet said, passing Eve one.

  Eve put it on, trying to make Harriet laugh. She had been such a grump recently and she didn’t want to keep being a big stroppy bore. Bad things happened to people and in this case no one had died, it was just selfish of her to still be moping about. But she was moping about; she was having to make an effort to stay cheerful. She looked up to say more to Harriet and that was when it happened.

  He was here.

  She knew this moment was going to happen. She had been amazed in a way that she hadn’t already bumped into him. Yes, London was made up of a population of eight and a half million and, yes, they lived on different sides of the river, and, yes, they hadn’t arranged to meet, but she just knew, as if there were a Magnet of Doom, that somehow this moment was entirely inevitable. She wondered briefly whether she should buy a lottery ticket.

  He looked irritatingly good, unshaven and sort of dirty, but she quite liked him like that. He was rubbing a hand over the cleft in his chin, a familiar Bench T-shirt in khaki, the bottom half of him lost to the clothes rail of denim skirts in front of him. Why was he standing by denim skirts? What was he thinking? She froze in the shop as he turned and saw Harriet and her only metres away.

  He looked frightened of Harriet, his eyes widening in alarm, a little start in his shoulders as if someone had administered a small electric shock. He should look frightened, Eve thought; Harriet was frightening and now she was giving him the frostiest of frightening looks. If they were in the culinary section he should have feared for his life. Fortunately for him, unless she planned to smother him with denim skirts, he was safe. Eve was gratified to see he didn’t take a step forward, although his eyes flickered to the pram. Eve knew he wanted to ask after Poppy, bend down and say hello. He had always loved Poppy when they’d been together, constantly telling her to say ‘Uncle Liam’ in a gooey voice despite knowing she was months away from her first word.

  This thought made Eve feel nauseous, one hand resting on her stomach. They had teased each other about their own babies. They were going to make a family, have a child that was a wonderful blend of their best traits. The child would have inherited his straight teeth and her excellent hands (she had wanted to be a hand model for years). Their child would have been the best child. Eve blinked, desperate not to give anything away. Fortunately, Liam was looking around him as if he were hoping a large hole might suddenly appear in the glossy parquet and he might escape through it.

  This made Eve stronger and she straightened and said, ‘Liam,’ with a nod. As if they were in a screenplay and she were about to pull out a long cigarette-holder and narrow her eyes as she smoked it.

  Liam nodded after a momentary pause. ‘Eve,’ he said in a level voice.

  ‘That’s a new T-shirt,’ she said, pointing at it to help demonstrate her sentence.

  ‘No.’

  Even his denial made her bristle. So she couldn’t remember all his wardrobe, was that the reason that he had shagged someone else? He looked uncomfortable, tugging on said T-shirt, which at a second glance did look vaguely familiar. Harriet hadn’t said anything as yet, still staring at him as if she was hexing him. To be fair, Eve wouldn’t put anything past Harriet. Then, as his eyes darted nervously around the room, it dawned on her that he might have been following them. ‘Are you following us?’

  He shuffled from one foot to the other. ‘I wasn’t following you,’ he said in a voice that suggested he had definitely been following them.

  ‘What are you h
ere to buy?’ Eve asked, hands on her hips, feeling strangely powerful. She had never really been like this around Liam. Always agreeing, nodding and acquiescing, in case she upset the barrel cart and he got fed up and slept with someone with really neat pubic hair. WELL, THAT TURNED OUT GREAT.

  ‘Buy? I’m… here… to… buy…’ Liam was slow. Clearly buying time. Buying time to make up more lies about why he was there, clearly stalking them, desperate to get another look. Eve brightened at the thought that he had grown so desperate, softening for a moment, a half-smile playing on her lips.

  He was looking over his shoulder now. He did look really shifty, like he was planning his first shoplift.

  Oh my God. It suddenly hit Eve. They were in the women’s section of a department store. They were standing near clothes meant for women and Liam was not a woman. If he wasn’t following them, there was only one other solution. He was here with… her. Eve looked over her shoulder, convinced now that she saw someone dive behind one of the marble pillars by the escalators.

  ‘Is she here?’ Eve hissed.

  Liam frowned, his eyebrows pulling together as he asked, ‘Who?’

  ‘The vagina.’

  Liam had the decency to look vaguely embarrassed; a flick of his lowered eyes to Harriet, a blush spreading from the top of his T-shirt. He shook his head, mumbling a ‘no’.

  ‘She better not be,’ Harriet said in a low voice. She sounded exactly like the head gangster in a movie. In the next scene they’d definitely both be found dead.

  Liam had pulled himself up taller now and had taken a step towards Eve. ‘Where’s Marmite?’

  ‘Marmite doesn’t like shopping,’ Eve said, refusing to be diverted.

  ‘I hope you haven’t left him alone too long in the flat. That’s cruel.’

  Eve clenched her fists. As if he still had the right to be Bossy Boyfriend.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, one finger to her lips. ‘Cruel, I know what is also cruel.’

  She could see Harriet bending over the pram, possibly to shield Poppy from the waves of fury rolling off her now. ‘Cruel is you being here now lecturing me about our dog when you are shopping with your new girlfriend.’

  ‘I’m not shopp… I don’t have a gi… Marmite is my dog.’

  ‘Seriously, not this again.’

  ‘Don’t make a scene, Eve,’ Liam said, always quick to try and quieten her down in public.

  ‘I’m not making a scene. There is no scene. I just don’t want you lecturing me,’ Eve hissed, her spittle hitting the row of denim skirts.

  ‘I’m not lecturing you.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m not doing this here,’ he said, trying to sound like the reasonable one. ‘We need to talk about this again. I want my dog back, Eve.’

  ‘Oh you go, you go,’ Eve said, bordering on deranged.

  He turned sharply and headed to the escalators, almost sending a rack of vest-tops flying in his haste to escape.

  ‘You won’t get him,’ she called after him. She turned back round to Harriet, hoping she would be impressed. She had always told Eve to be more assertive with Liam, to stand up for herself a little more.

  ‘You were almost scary,’ Harriet said, stifling a laugh.

  Eve frowned at her. ‘I was scary. Well, I thought I was quite good. At least I didn’t cry.’

  ‘No, you didn’t cry.’

  ‘What then?’

  Harriet pointed just above Eve’s face and then it dawned on her. She pulled off the antlers in one smooth motion. ‘Oh crap.’

  The next couple of weeks flew by as Eve transferred the payments for the course and boat. She’d already taken the first two weeks of December off, assuming she’d be on holiday with Liam, so Ed hadn’t minded tacking on a few extra days. In fact she actually made him stutter a ‘Happy Christmas’ into the palm of his hand as, in a fit of gratitude, she bent to kiss his cheek.

  The agency was pretty quiet at that time of year but Daisy made things easier, saying she was happy to cover the days. To return the favour, Eve found herself inviting her to her house for dinner the night before she left. Daisy had asked whether they would be getting a takeaway.

  ‘I will be making dinner,’ Eve had announced confidently, dialling Harriet to invite her and Gavin round too.

  She’d been planning it all weekend. Weekends seemed strangely long and empty these days, no more snuggling under a duvet watching a movie, no more takeaways, no more sex on a Sunday morning. She didn’t like the way the flat sounded as she padded round it alone. The other night she had made the mistake of watching I Am Legend and had slept on the sofa with a tennis racket by her side to brain the zombies that were going to get her in the night.

  Liam and her had often hosted dinner parties. She was used to it, she assured herself as she stared at the kitchen tops, the oven rather too clean from its lack of use these past two months. Normally she would waft around the house in a dress lighting candles, laying the table, making napkins into swans (party trick), filling the fridge with wine and doing the washing up as Liam cooked. He’d been a brilliant cook, often talking about the meat he had bought from the butcher’s or a new recipe he wanted to try out; he would record episodes of Saturday Kitchen and Eve would listen to him exclaim over the ideas.

  He would have around five pans on the go; the sizzle of oil, the bubbling water, smells merging in the air so that when their guests arrived they sniffed appreciatively, stomachs rumbling. It worked as a set-up, the house looked fabulous and they sat and gushed over asparagus, Parma ham and poached egg with balsamic vinegar, or a cheese soufflé that he’d read would rise better because he hadn’t over-whisked it. He had a Kenwood machine with about eighteen attachments, including a hook that apparently made bread. It was one of the industrial-sized ones, which he’d staggered under when he had packed up his things.

  She didn’t want to think about the day he’d packed up his things. It had been terrible. She’d planned to be out, to let him slope about the flat throwing his belongings into boxes and bags and leaving, his grey-faced dad helping him load things into a rented van. She hadn’t left the house in time, though, had let them both in, a dreadful silence as she skirted round him, red-rimmed eyes, mouth clamped shut so she didn’t beg him to stay, his dad opening and shutting his mouth as if he were about to apologise for everything, but then realising nothing he could say would make it better. She had given his dad a one-armed hug, stiff and awkward, the emotion blocking her throat and causing more tears to spring to the back of her eyes.

  Why had he torn them apart? She had wondered as she stumbled out of the flat and down the stairs, forgetting her wallet, bag, her book, and then just walking blindly through Primrose Hill, unaware of the sunshine, the gambolling dogs, the shrieking, happy children. She had sat on a small patch of grass, willing herself to stay there, tempted to run back in, stop the unpacking, cancel the rented van, tell him they could work it out, see his dad’s face light up, put a kettle on, forget it all.

  But she couldn’t do that so she stayed frozen to the grass, shivering as the sun disappeared behind banks of cloud. She’d returned, checking the street for the van, seeing the empty space outside the flat. As she’d pushed open the door she was instantly struck by the blank spaces, pictures that had left faded marks behind them, photos she had loved, bookshelves that now looked like gaping mouths with teeth missing, the kitchen scrubbed, two mugs left on the sideboard washed up. It had hit her then, so forcibly, that that was it and they really had separated, that it was absolutely over, no more jokes in the kitchen, no more hugging on the sofa, no more gentle ribbing from his dad.

  So she was out of practice in the kitchen, a little rusty so to speak, but she could get back into the swing of things. Sure, she had never really shown much interest throughout university and afterwards, relying on meals out, invites from friends and a lot of sandwiches and wine, but she had seen Liam’s logical approach to things and that must have rubbed off on her. She lived with him for four
years so in that time, during the hundreds of meals he had produced, she would have learnt stuff. She remembered his favourite main dish, a pasta dish with some sort of cheese and prawns in. It had been really tasty. It was pasta: that was a good place to start.

  Liam had taken all the recipe books. She’d only just noticed now, staring at the empty space in the kitchen with alarm. How dare he! She felt outraged. They had been his, fine; they had been gone for two months now without her noticing. FINE, but who takes ALL the recipes. At least leave her with one little recipe. What did he want? Her to STARVE? Rage replaced the melancholy and she stomped off to the supermarket, carrier bags balled into a tight fist.

  In the supermarket she tried to feign confidence, nodding at a fellow amateur chef in the freezer section as they both stared dumbly at the peas. There were so many different bags of peas. Should she even buy frozen peas? Were fresh peas better? She felt a flutter of panic that peas (first thing on the list) seemed to be the undoing of her and confidently threw two bags of petits pois into the trolley. The man next door copied her and she wheeled away down the aisle feeling heartened.

  They had frozen prawns in a big bag, grey and enormous, and she remembered Liam once telling her that it was better to buy them uncooked. She wasn’t sure why; she did remember taking two of them in her hands and making them kiss. ‘They’re going to have prawn babies now,’ she had said. He had laughed. She remembered that part, but not the bit about how he had cooked them and turned them from stiff grey frozen prawns to succulent pink edible prawns. She would ask the internet; there were bound to be answers there. You could ask the internet anything now and it would know. She then got home and lost thirty-five minutes to the internet, asking it things like, ‘Can shellfish feel pain?’ and ‘How do fish have sex?’ She learnt a lot about the copulation of crabs but not a huge amount about the cooking of prawns, and she was running out of time.