One Week 'Til Christmas
Page 17
My body shook with laughter. ‘I’m sorry, but that was pretty funny.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did. Jack and I had had a fight that evening, and I took it out on you. And, really, it’s hypocritical of me to even think that you shouldn’t follow him back.’
‘Isobel, did you leave the oven door open? It’s awful out here.’ Tom shook the front of his shirt out as he stepped inside.
‘I was just about to tell Isobel that the girls love their gifts.’ Miriam looked to Tom for support. ‘It’s four thousand degrees out there, your boyfriend looks like he’s about to melt, and there they are, running around in rubber ducky coats telling everyone they have special clothes from England.’
As she said that, two yellow clad girls zoomed past the kitchen window and around one of the tables outside.
‘They have more coming,’ he said. ‘Isobel popped some little parcels in the mail for them before we left, didn’t you? She thought it might be nice for them to have something to come home to.’
‘Are you serious?’ Miriam looked at me.
‘It was Tom’s idea.’ I took his empty glass from him and offered him a refill. ‘I can’t take all the glory.’
‘Considering the morning you’ve just had, Isobel, I think you should,’ Tom said.
‘What’s happened this morning?’ Miriam leaned in. ‘You aren’t pregnant, are you?’
‘What?’ I shrieked. ‘No! I just quit my job.’
‘You what?’ she said in a loud whisper. ‘Do Mum and Dad know?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ll tell them later.’
‘But you should tell me now.’ Miriam folded her arms over. ‘Because I need to hear this.’
Under pain of death, I unravelled the last week for her; how I’d met Tom, how I’d interviewed him, and how that had snowballed into me finally, finally taking the step to start my website. Then I got to the auction, the sale, and this morning’s inundation. But, typical Miriam, she remained nonplussed about it all.
‘Isobel, that is phenomenal.’ She clapped a hand over her mouth as she scrolled through my new website. ‘I mean, I’m not surprised; everything you touch turns to gold. You were like this even in school. Awards for everything you put your hand up for while I sat in the background with mediocre results. Hello, you run into some random guy in the street, and now look? He’s here with you, and you’ve got friends all over who love and support you. I have every confidence you’ll get it right.’
‘Just so we’re clear, this is not my funeral then?’ I asked.
‘Oh my God, no,’ she said with a laugh. ‘So, how long have we got you for?’
I looked to Tom. ‘Well, Tom leaves in …’
‘Five days,’ he said. ‘I need to be home for New Year’s. I promised my parents I would be; it was part of the bargain when I called and said I was following a girl halfway around the world.’
‘I should come with you,’ I said. ‘I owe your mum an apology.’
‘Or …’ Tom rounded the counter and slipped his arms around me. ‘You can stay and spend time with your family. Hang out with those two busy little nieces of yours and, when your sister leaves and you’ve had your fill, then you can come back.’
‘You don’t want me to come back with you?’ I asked.
‘I absolutely do.’ He pressed a kiss into my forehead. ‘But you don’t have to travel to anyone’s beat anymore, do you? You are a woman of your own destiny, and you may as well take advantage of that.’
‘All right, okay.’ I pointed at him. ‘But I have to be there for the opening night of your play.’
‘There we go,’ he said. ‘Let’s plan for that, then.’
‘Here.’ Miriam held up a Christmas cracker. ‘Let’s snap one for good luck.’
I grabbed at one end and tugged. It let go with a pop and a sprig of plastic mistletoe fell to the floor. Laughing, Tom picked it up and waved it above my head. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I let him scoop me up for a sticky summer hug and kiss.
‘To travelling salesmen,’ I mumbled against his lips.
‘And the best Christmas present ever.’ He stopped. ‘That’s you, by the way.’
If Tom and Isobel’s romance made your heart sing, don’t miss Lessons in Love, another gorgeous romantic comedy from Belinda Missen. Available now!
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Acknowledgements
It really is quite a pinch-me moment to think that we’re all back for book number four. It feels like just yesterday I was shovelling Doritos in my face in a Sydney hotel room while I typed out the first few scenes of what would become A Recipe for Disaster. From then to now, there are so many people I need to thank for helping me along the way (even if sometimes it felt like I was kicking and screaming the whole way).
*Pulls note cards from pocket and pushes glasses up nose*
As always, a massive thank you to the team at HarperCollins and HQDigitalUK for believing in me (when I sometimes didn’t), and for allowing me to live out a dream that began when I was twelve years old. Standing in the office for the Christmas party last year blew my mind. To Abigail Fenton, thank you for letting me pull the handbrake on one project and slide over to this – your stellar advice, late-night phone calls, and guidance have helped craft One Week ’Til Christmas into something magical. To quote your Tweet: you give good email, so thank you. I hope this is one of just many books we get to work on together.
To the cover design team: thank you. I can’t tell you how much I love this cover. People laugh when I say it’s like crack for my eyeballs, but it’s true.
To Cheryl Farinola and Erin Pollock: thank you for reading this book at various stages of undress, all the while maintaining the meme-tagging standard of friendship. Thank you for the laughs, suggestions and support every time one of my messages began with ‘PLEASE BE THERE’ and a GIF of Sheldon Cooper breathing into a paper bag.
Thank you to everyone who has read, blogged, reviewed and shared anything for me on social media. It takes a Belinda to write a book, but an entire team to actually get it in front of people. Championing books takes a huge amount of time and organisation, and you’re all absolutely brilliant for everything you do. A big part of that support network lies with Rachel Gilbey. You really do know how to put together a blog tour and, as of an hour ago, a cover reveal tour. I cannot recommend you highly enough.
To Rebecca Raisin, Frankie Genchi, Zoe May, Lucy Knott, Katie Ginger, Amanda Brittany, Sarah Bennett and The Savvies – thank you all for your advice and support. It’s comforting to have you all there to chat to in times of ‘I’m out of chocolate, now what?’. The last few years have been a massive learning curve, and I’m eternally grateful to be able to glean knowledge from you all.
Becca Mascull – don’t ever stop being you.
To my WhatsApp crew – Ok let’s do this. I love you.
Terence McManus – I wasn’t able to go meta and slip your book in here, but I’ll make it happen. One day we’ll both have enough free time to make this podcasting thing work. Until then, thanks for being my NaNoWriMo partner and coordinating escape routes.
Thank you, Benedict Cumberbatch, for the career advice. I try to carry it with me wherever I go. But, while I love your face, you’re not a patch on …
… Mr Shane (even the bank sends you letters addressed like that, so that must be your name). Thank you for being the out-and-out best husband and person I know – 11/10 would recommend. Thank you for holding the fort while I’m flailing about and gnashing teeth and snorting lines of Cadbury right before deadline. I would probably be lost without you, but not in the Melway sense, because we all know who the navigator is on car trips. Thanks for fixing the stuff I break, and breaking the stuff I don’t, for not batting an eyelid when you wake up to a note on the counter that says I’ve bought flights to London, and for bringing a hanky to the cinema so I can cry about Iron Man (again).
>
Last, but certainly not least, thank you for making it this far. I hope I’ve entertained, if only for a smile while. I’ll see you very soon.
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Also by Belinda Missen
Lessons in Love
Click here if you’re in the US
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An Impossible Thing Called Love
Click here if you’re in the US
Click here if you’re in the UK
A Recipe for Disaster
Click here if you’re in the US
Click here if you’re in the UK
Keep reading for an extract from Lessons in Love …
Chapter 1
If Queen Elizabeth were to narrate my last year, there’s every chance she’d call it my annus horribilis.
While my castle hadn’t exactly burned to the ground, I had lost my job. There was also the tiny detail of my marriage falling apart. And by that, I mean my husband tripped and fell into my best friend, which meant she was also out of the picture. So was the mutual friend who was acting as sentry for their rendezvous. If only all love affairs came with a lookout, I may not have ended up here in the first place.
My dad had taken off on a European backpacking sabbatical, which had evolved into a spiritual hike of the Camino de Santiago. All of this without his girlfriend, who was less spiritual and more surgical. When her first reaction to his holiday plans had been, ‘Over my dead body’, his response was, ‘Tupperware forever’. She called time on their romance very shortly after that. As for Mum, well she hadn’t changed. She was still living it up in Sydney with her yachting weekends and Pantone apricot orange-coloured husband, Barry.
There was light at the end of the tunnel though and, by some miracle, it wasn’t an oncoming G-class diesel locomotive. It was a job. At home.
I was moving home.
Well, not technically home, per se, but within a few hundred feet of said residence. Despite his continual offers, I wasn’t prepared to move in with Dad, his pumpernickel bread, health supplements, or yoga retreats. I hoped that, one day soon, the Great Penis Drought would end, and that I’d get to bring a man home for a little health retreat of my own. There was little to no chance that I wanted to try and sneak a boy down a darkened hallway like a teenager, lest I get stuck for a lecture on contraception. No, Dad, it’s not just like putting a condom on a torch, no matter how illuminating the penis may be.
Instead, I was moving in with my cousin Penny and, for that, I was ecstatic. I honestly was. She was more a sister than a cousin and had been the first to call when she’d found out about the shit hitting the wildly spinning marriage fan. Live with me, she’d said. Pack it all in and get back to the beach.
While her offer had been tempting, I’d managed to resist for nine months. I was hellbent on the notion of proving to all and sundry, and then some, that I was perfectly capable of surviving without my husband, his bank account, or morbidly obese property portfolio.
During that time, I lived in a sixth-floor apartment in the centre of Melbourne with two other couples and a vertigo-riddled cat. Fast-forward to August, when I was made redundant from my job in the city library, and the decision to move home suddenly became a lot easier, and somewhat necessary, especially if I didn’t want to end up paying the landlord in that special nudge-nudge, wink-wink kind of way he initially suggested when I was twenty dollars short for rent one week.
When I was first married, I was the library teacher in a school of more than one thousand students. I eventually swapped that for the glamour of a public library, author speaking events, and working in the repairs room. Now, I was trading it all in again, leaving the bustling high-rise library for Apollo Bay Primary School, tucked neatly into Victoria’s Great Ocean Road. Not only was it my childhood school, it also had a much smaller library with one floor, and only a nth of the books I was otherwise used to. The fact Penny worked there as the receptionist was a welcome bonus.
The job application process began within minutes of receiving my redundancy slip and had been relatively painless. Several interviews and background checks later, I got the phone call I’d been waiting for – I wasn’t a criminal! Also, I’d been offered the job. There’d be less books, less people, less drama; all the things I’d been hoping for. I was also looking forward to being closer to family again, catching up like old times over a pot of tea, a back fence, or a passive-aggressive social media post.
It didn’t matter that I was leaving my so-called life behind. Most of my friendship circle had disappeared in the great marital purge, so I didn’t feel bad leaving any of that. Those who had clung to my friends list had either told me that moving was a bad idea or supplied a constant stream of unhelpful gossip. They said I was running away with my tail between my legs and admitting defeat. It was throwing the toys out of the pram.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I respectfully disagree.
Everything was going to be just fine. Mired in paperwork, I’d had addresses changed, mail rerouted, and I’d done the big social media call-out announcing my new address to the select few who might one day need it. Not that I was holding my breath – anything outside the City Circle tram route seemed a little too over the hills and far away for most of them. When everything was done, and all my bills were squared off, I began the drive home.
Now, as I sat in my car outside Penny’s house, all that was left to do was get on inside, unpack, and make it through my first day at my new job. By six o’clock tomorrow night, I’d either be celebrating with a glass of fizz, or re-evaluating my life choices.
Currently, that life was crammed into a few boxes in the boot of my car. There wasn’t a lot to show for ten years of marriage. All I had left were some clothes and shoes, and not even my best ones, a few precious books, and some bric-a-brac. The divorce hadn’t yet been finalised. In fact, it hadn’t even been filed, but leaving a marriage was no different to fleeing a burning building – I took the important stuff and made a run for it before the roof caved in.
I curled my fingers around the black leather steering wheel of my Audi convertible and looked up at the split-level unit. For a moment, everything was peaceful. With the top closed and window cracked, I could hear the crash of the ocean at the end of the street, the low thud of bass from a party a few houses over, and the static of my car’s radio station – no longer in range after three hours winding around the Victorian coastline. It was perfectly calm. I wound the window down a smidge further and let the sea breeze wash over me.
When my car door closed with a pop, the front door of Penny’s apartment flew open. She bounced down the stairs, past the lone palm tree decorated with twinkle lights, and a ‘Santa Stop Here’ sign that still hadn’t been removed from Christmas and had faded almost beyond recognition.
Twelve months younger than my thirty-six years and stylishly soft around the edges, she had deep-set brown eyes that were Disney large, a button nose, and a Milky Way of freckles across a lightly made up face. Her dark brown hair was pulled up in a messy but subtly styled ponytail. Today, she accessorised with a smile brighter than the Las Vegas strip.
‘Ellie!’ she squeaked.
‘Hello.’ I lumbered towards her, shaking out the hours spent in the driver’s seat.
‘Finally! I’m so excited!’ She threw her arms around my neck and I sank into her hug. There was no competition: she gave the best hugs in the world – and she never let go first. I could definitely get used to this kind of reception. ‘Not about the whole divorce thing, that’s very uncool and incredibly sad but, yay, housemates!’
‘I’m sorry I’m so late.’ I pouted. ‘Brunch ran on a little long.’
Penny dismissed my concerns like someone clears the air of an offending fart, with a quick waft of her hand and a curled top lip. ‘It’s fine, seriously, gave
me time to clean your room, make it look like I wasn’t inviting Walter White for tea and powdered sugar. Oh, and I’ve grabbed some things for dinner.’
And here I was prepared to murder what was left of my credit card balance in favour of the local Thai takeaway. ‘Fantastic!’ I pipped, feeling the knot between my shoulders begin to unravel, glad to finally be here. ‘Gosh, it’s good to see you.’
‘You, too.’ She rubbed my upper arm. ‘Come on, let’s get you settled in.’
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