The Twelve Dates of Christmas

by Jenny Bayliss

  After about five minutes Sam stood up.

  “I’m sorry about this,” he said. “But I just have to check something.”

  And with that he strode across the room to the nearest Lightning Strikes rep and engaged in a clandestine conversation with her. After a couple of minutes—and some expressive protestations from the rep—Sam and the rep walked over to where Lumberjack Beard was talking amiably to a sullen-faced Red Leather. Kate watched the peculiar farce play out with incredulity, and moments later, Lumberjack Beard and the harassed rep arrived at her cocktail station.

  “Um, hi there,” said the rep.

  She was overly smiling in a way that begged, Please don’t hate me, I just work here.

  “This is a bit awkward,” she continued. “But Sam and Clarissa feel they’ve made a connection and they’d like to continue the date with each other.”

  She glanced at Lumberjack Beard, who smiled and shrugged.

  “So, with that in mind,” said the rep, “I was wondering if you two, as their dates, would mind pairing instead?”

  “Fine with me!” said Lumberjack Beard.

  His smile was warm and his posture relaxed, and Kate thought there probably wasn’t much that rattled him.

  It was down to Kate now. The rep looked at her with a cross between hope and pleading. It would be churlish to make the rep’s life difficult and pointless to force Sam to continue their date when he clearly wanted to be with someone else.

  “Of course,” said Kate graciously. “No problem at all.”

  The rep visibly relaxed.

  “Thank you!” she said, and introduced them. “Oliver, this is Kate. Kate, Oliver.”

  And she scurried off before they had the chance to change their minds.

  Oliver sat down.

  “Hello,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll be your consolation prize for the evening.”

  They hit it off instantly.

  “This isn’t really my thing,” said Oliver. “My mates signed me up for it because they’re fed up with my, and I quote, lackluster love life.”

  “Oh dear.” Kate laughed. “Is it that bad?”

  “Put it this way,” said Oliver. “Lackluster would be an improvement.”

  Kate considered her own love life. It had been so long since she’d had sex, she worried her hymen might have grown back. Kate raised the shot glass that the barman had just filled with blue liquid.

  “Here’s to an end to lackluster love lives,” she said.

  “Amen to that,” said Oliver.

  They clinked shot glasses, knocked back the blue liquid, and coughed and spluttered on the strong liquor.

  Oliver was into rock climbing and, ironically given his choice of clothing, was a tree surgeon by profession. He was impressed that Kate knew her way around a climbing wall—thanks to Dan—and even more impressed by her design credentials; their shared love of nature made for easy conversation.

  “It seems to me,” said Kate after her second Slippery Nipple, “that there are two distinct camps at these events.”

  “Go on,” said Oliver, draining a Sex on the Beach and checking the ingredients for the next cocktail.

  “Well, there’s the ‘just haven’t found the right one yet’ camp and the ‘found the right one and lost them’ camp,” she said.

  “Actually,” said Oliver, “there are three. You’re forgetting the ‘I’m just here for a shag’ camp. And don’t go thinking that’s just a bloke thing,” he went on. “On my first date we didn’t get on at all! We both agreed we didn’t want to see each other again. And then she suggested that we might as well have sex anyway so it wasn’t a wasted evening.”

  “Wow!” said Kate.

  “On my life.” Oliver handed her a glass. “Screaming Orgasm?” he asked.

  Kate took the drink and sipped it.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” she said. “At least your date turned up. My first couldn’t be bothered.” She hiccupped and almost slid off the stool but recovered herself.

  “Aw, that sucks,” said Oliver. “He was clearly an idiot.” And he poured himself a double measure of something green.

  An hour and a half later and Kate and Oliver were well and truly hammered. They had fixed themselves something that loosely resembled the recipe for a Sex on My Face and retired to a couple of leather armchairs in the corner.

  “So you’re a found-’em-and-lost-’em,” Kate slurred. “And I’m a jus-aven’t-found-the-righ-one-yet. Hic.”

  “Yep,” said Oliver. “I am a self-confessed idoit, I mean indoit . . .”

  “You mean idiot,” said Kate helpfully.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am an idiot! I let the love of my life slippery through my flingers because I was too proud to let her dream job dictation where we lived.”

  Kate shook her head.

  “That’s soooo sad,” she said, flopping her hand on Oliver’s knee.

  “I thought I’d be compromolising my own happiness by going with her,” said Oliver. “But it turned out, breaking up with her compromolised my happiness anyway.”

  “You should tell her!” said Kate, swinging her glass in the air as she spoke. “You should tell her that you’ve comonise. Cosmonprised. Ruined your happiness.”

  “No,” he said. “She deserves better. She’s gelling along with ’er own life again. I can’t jus’ bowl in there and tell ’er I made a mislake. She deserves to be hic-hic-hic-happy.”

  “You’re sooooo lovely,” said Kate. “Sooooo romantic.” She leaned her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. “You’re like a book I read once,” she told him.

  “Wha was it called?” asked Oliver.

  “I dunno,” said Kate. “Maybe . . . Book.”

  And whal abou’ you?” asked Oliver. “Why are you always the brisemaid and never the brise?”

  “Because I’m picky,” said Kate. “And spiky! Like a cactus!”

  Kate made claws of her hands in an attempt to look cactus-ish.

  “I don’t think you’re spiky,” said Oliver.

  “You don’t?” asked Kate.

  “No,” he assured her. “And you’re not green.”

  He had leaned down across the table so that his face was level with hers. “I think you’re great,” he said. “And really, really pretty.”

  “No, I’m not,” said Kate. “I wore the wrong dress. This dress is not sexy. Corduroy is not sexy like leather. I should have been sexy! Even my date did’n’ like the look of me!”

  “I think you’re very sexy,” said Oliver. “I think corduroy is a very sexy fabric. Leather is made from a cow.”

  Kate laughed. She tried to shake her boobs but sloshed her cocktail over herself. Oliver leaned over and haphazardly wiped at the spilled drink with a napkin.

  “I’m mopping your boobs,” said Oliver.

  “They don’t mind,” said Kate.

  “I think you’re the prettiest girl in the bar,” said Oliver. “I’m very pleased that I got to be your consololation prize.”

  “Aww, thanks, Oliver,” Kate replied. “I think you’re pretty too.”

  “I going to kiss you now,” said Oliver. “I’ve been wanting to kiss your face for about an hour.”

  He leaned closer to Kate and their lips met. Kate was drunk and relaxed and Oliver tasted delicious. He pulled her around the table toward him and wrapped his arms around her, and Kate let herself be blissfully swept into his embrace.

  They kissed for a long time. It was good. He was a good kisser. It had been a long time since Kate had been kissed like that. The rest of the night was a perfectly lovely blur.

  * * *

  • • • • •

  It was Sunday morning. Kate opened her eyes and closed them again quickly. She groaned. The sounds of crockery being clanked together down in the kitche
n forced her to become more alert. She sat and held her head. She kicked off the patchwork eiderdown that covered her. She was fully clothed, right down to her shoes.

  “Oh God,” she moaned, and peeled herself off the bed. “Dad, is that you?” she called softly as she shuffled down the stairs.

  She kept a tight hold on the banister and shielded her eyes from the brilliant winter sun that flooded the kitchen.

  “I may have gotten shamefully drunk last night,” she said, flopping down onto a dining chair. “Don’t judge me.”

  She laid her head on the cool pine table and kept her eyes closed.

  “Oh, I’ll judge you, young lady,” said Matt.

  Kate shot up from the chair, lost her balance, and keeled over face first and headlong into the sofa by the French doors.

  “Why are you here?” she grumbled into the cushion. “How did you even get in?”

  “You called me up at three a.m., remember?” said Matt.

  Kate’s eyes snapped open and with supreme effort she pushed her face up out of the cushion and her body unglamorously onto all fours on the sofa, where she stayed, swaying like a cow in a strong breeze.

  “Why would I do that?” she asked.

  She had no recollection of calling Matt.

  “What did I say?” she asked.

  “You said you’d been kissing a sexy lumberjack for three hours and you couldn’t get into your house,” said Matt.

  Kate remembered Oliver’s body pressed up against hers. That was definitely a good memory. She didn’t remember much else. Things were blurry. She had a hazy recollection of them being asked to leave the bar. She couldn’t remember where they’d gone next. His place? Hers? No, she would have remembered that. A vague image of Oliver helping her into a taxi swam into her mind. She felt like she had beard burn. She wondered if her face was red.

  Kate grimaced and shuffled backward off the sofa in an ungainly fashion, pulling herself up to standing and assuming the haughtiest air she could muster.

  “I see,” she said. “Is that all?”

  Her eyelashes were sticking together with last night’s mascara and she knew her hair must look as if it had been backcombed, ready for a beehive.

  “No,” said Matt. “You also told me you’d had sex on the beach—which must have been very cold—and a screaming orgasm.”

  Kate raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips and tried to retain a regal unamused posture, which was not easy when the room wouldn’t stop spinning.

  “Anything else?” she asked nonchalantly.

  “Only that if I didn’t come over at once and help you get into your house you would die of exposure,” said Matt.

  “Well,” said Kate, smoothing down her corduroy dress and finding an alarmingly sticky blue stain down the front of it. “It was very cold,” she reasoned. “Why are you still here?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to choke on your own vomit in the night,” said Matt. “And you did vomit, Kate. You vomited an inhuman amount. How on earth did you get into that state? You were paralytic!” His voice was serious. “Especially on a blind date. You don’t know these men! They could be rapists or murderers!”

  Kate put her hand to her ear mockingly and said, “Is my mother here? I think I can hear her lecturing voice.”

  “I’m serious, Kate,” said Matt.

  Kate sighed and flopped back down on the sofa.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Bad Kate. Stupid Kate. But so far as I remember Oliver was an almost perfect gentleman, if that’s any consolation.”

  “It isn’t,” said Matt. “You were lucky.”

  He took Kate’s hand and pushed a large mug of coffee into it.

  “I’ve got to go,” he told her. “Sarah’s opened the café for me.” He kissed Kate on the top of her head. “Stop being an idiot,” he said.

  The door slammed too loudly behind him.

  THE FIFTH DATE OF CHRISTMAS

  • • • • •

  Slinky Salsa and Shivers

  Laura was perched on the sofa in the kitchen with a takeaway coffee in her hand.

  “So, you got on really well and you kissed him a lot, but you’re not going to see him again.”

  “Correct,” said Kate.

  Laura leaned back and crossed her legs. She shook her head.

  “I don’t understand you,” she said.

  Mina was painting at the table next to Kate, who was color-washing some winter berry sketches. Charley lay dozing on a mat on the floor.

  “I can’t see the point of starting something with someone who is still clearly broken up about their old girlfriend,” replied Kate.

  “But you could be that person who makes him forget her!”

  “In which case I would be the rebound fling who helps him over his ex and then he’d break up with me, all fit and ready to marry someone else,” said Kate. “I don’t want to be the rebound, I want to be the One.”

  “Geez, you’re cynical,” said Laura.

  “Cynical!” Mina parroted.

  “It’s all academic anyway,” said Kate. “We didn’t swap numbers. At least I don’t think we did. So I couldn’t call him even if I wanted to.”

  “Matt was spitting feathers,” said Laura.

  “Matt can do what he likes,” said Kate. “It’s none of his business.”

  Laura tapped her nails against her mug and gazed out the French doors.

  The sky had turned a grayish mustard color; it looked heavy, closer to the ground somehow, like a theater backdrop. Perhaps it would snow again.

  “Are you sure,” Laura began with trepidation, “that you’re not making excuses to avoid meeting someone?”

  “I signed myself up for the Twelve Dates thing,” said Kate. “Why would I sign up for something—that wasn’t cheap, by the way—if I wasn’t serious about meeting someone?”

  “You tell me,” said Laura.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” said Kate. “I’m being sensible, that’s all, strategic even. I am not going to pursue someone who has a dead-end sign flashing above their head.”

  * * *

  • • • • •

  Laura left and Kate cleared up the mess inevitably left behind by two children under the age of five.

  Kate opened a cupboard in the dresser and pulled out a Tupperware container filled with leaves she’d foraged the day before: the last of the russet autumn spoils, which had been hidden from the elements beneath dark hedgerows. She’d painted them liberally on both sides with thick PVA glue to preserve them; they wouldn’t keep indefinitely, of course—over time the vibrancy of the reds and golden greens would fade—but it gave her a few days’ grace.

  She upturned the box and let the leaves float down onto the kitchen table: feathery oak leaves the color of jack-o’-lanterns and beetroot blood, mottled moth-winged birch leaves, and fanned horse chestnut leaves with rust spots creeping over their skeletons.

  Kate reached for her sketchbook and a fine-line pen and began to work. When she had five pages of leaf studies, she began to mix paints to capture their colors: poppy red and satsuma for flaming maple leaves, toasted gold and egg yolk for the leaves of the poplar tree.

  When the studies were dry Kate would cut them out and arrange them on different-colored backgrounds until she found a design that pleased her. Sometimes it would be quick; the first arrangement gave her the thrill in her stomach that signified success. Other times the process seemed to take an age; she’d fiddle with the composition, she’d go away and drink coffee and consult her mood boards, but she couldn’t submit a design until that tickle in her stomach made itself felt.

  Perhaps—she mused as she pushed an oak leaf to overlap a horse chestnut—that was why her relationships hadn’t lasted; maybe she was waiting for her stomach to thrill with a man the way it did with her work.

  *
* *

  • • • • •

  “So, what’s the next date?” asked Evelyn.

  Kate had popped in to the shop to get one of Carla’s ready meals and a bottle of wine. She raised her eyebrows.

  “Does the whole village know about my twelve dates?” she asked.

  “Oh yes, dear,” said Evelyn merrily. “We’re all very excited for you.”

  Kate shook her head and picked up a chocolate bar. There was a sign on the counter that read Order your late Christmas tree here.

  “Have you gone into business with Patrick?” Kate asked, pointing at the sign.

  Patrick rented extra land from the Blexford estate to grow Christmas trees.

  “Didn’t you hear?” asked Evelyn, delighted that she had news. “Patrick’s run out of trees!”

  “You’re kidding,” said Kate.

  “I’m not,” said Evelyn. “Fresh trees have become all the rage; everyone wants one. He ran out on Friday, so we’re doing a little business venture together; we’re going up to Covent Garden market on the fifteenth with his van to buy a load and we’ll sell them from the shop here.”

  Evelyn was a canny businesswoman. There was a list with names on it by the sign. Kate hadn’t gotten around to getting a tree yet, so she wrote her name and the size tree she’d like on the list.

  She noticed Matt had his name down for two trees. She couldn’t imagine where he’d fit them; the whole of one corner of the Pear Tree was already taken up with a large Norwegian spruce, dripping with ornaments and gaining more each day as children brought in more homemade baubles to hang on it.

  “Well?” said Evelyn.

  “I’ll have one seven-footer, please,” said Kate.

  “Not the tree,” said Evelyn. “The date!”

  “Oh, yes. Sorry.” Kate laughed. “The next date is salsa dancing.”