Kate closed her eyes to stop the tears. Why did she have to love someone who didn’t love her back? Why was life such a bitch sometimes?
She heard a chair scrape and opened her eyes to find Laura sitting opposite her. Laura’s expression was concern and anxiety mixed. She chewed a fingernail and fidgeted.
“What’s up with you?” Kate asked.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” said Laura. She moved on to another fingernail.
“Are you pregnant again?” Kate asked.
“No!” exclaimed Laura. “Good God, no! This concerns you.”
“Am I pregnant?” Kate joked. Laura didn’t laugh.
“It’s about Matt,” said Laura.
“I don’t want to talk about Matt,” said Kate.
“Hear me out,” said Laura. “You need to know this, in case it changes things.”
“Unless Matt’s undergoing a personality bypass, or you’ve got a potion to fix unrequited love, I doubt there is anything you can tell me that would change things.”
Laura pursed her lips as if she were wondering whether whatever she was about to divulge was a good idea, but then she seemed to find her resolve. She set her jaw, took a deep breath, and began.
“About six months after you left to go traveling,” Laura began, “Matt came to see me. He thought we were still living together. He didn’t know you were out of the country, and, well . . .” She shrugged. “You know what he was like back then; I hadn’t seen or heard from him to tell him. The thing is, Kate . . .” Laura stopped. She looked directly at Kate. “He told me he was in love with you.”
Laura watched her friend, waiting for the words to settle in the air between them.
“I’m sorry,” said Kate. “He what?”
“He told me he was in love with you,” Laura repeated. “He’d come to Liverpool in a great rush of bravado, with flowers and this idea about professing his love, and then found you’d gone.”
Laura was quiet. She looked at Kate, and Kate knew she was waiting for her to respond. But Kate didn’t know how to respond. She was stunned. How had she never known this? A different life flashed before her eyes. What-ifs clattered through her mind.
“When he heard that you were intending to stay away longer, he told me to forget it,” said Laura. “I told him to email you, tell you how he felt, apologize for being such a dick. But you know how stubborn he is. He got all angry, embarrassed probably, and he made me promise not to tell you. He said he never should have come in the first place.”
Kate’s mind reeled.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“I didn’t know what to do for the best,” said Laura. “I’d promised Matt I wouldn’t. But I told myself that if in your next email, you mentioned Matt, I’d tell you regardless. But you didn’t. Your next email was all about Aaron or whatever his name was.”
“It seems like quite a big thing to omit,” said Kate.
“You were having such a great time,” said Laura. “And Matt had been such a pain in the arse, and I know how upset you were with him and I guess I just thought, why bring him up when you’re so happy? It would’ve just meant more Matt drama. And let’s face it, he was good at bringing the drama back then.”
“He told you he was in love with me?”
“I didn’t know whether to believe him,” said Laura. “And then he switched so quickly back to his default position of miserable bugger that I thought—well, I didn’t know what to think.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” asked Kate.
Laura blinked and bit at one of her nails.
“In case this changes things,” said Laura. “If you love him, well, maybe he still loves you too and you’re both too stubborn to admit it!”
“Clearly he is not harboring feelings of love for me,” said Kate. “I’d say he’s pretty well channeling the opposite right now.”
“But if you just talked to him,” said Laura.
“It’s a little late for that,” said Kate. “You should have told me when it could have made a difference.”
Her voice was quiet. She was feeling so many things, but her overriding emotion was anger toward Laura. Her best friend, Laura. Her best friend, who hadn’t bothered to tell her that Matt had been in love with her. How different might her life have been if she’d known?
“I promise you,” Laura began, “that if I’d thought for one minute that the feeling was mutual, I would have told you straightaway, but you were all about Aaron!”
“You should have told me regardless,” said Kate.
“Let’s just say that I had,” said Laura. “And you dropped everything and rushed back to find he’d changed his mind. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, Kate; he was up and down like a bloody yo-yo. He was married to someone else three months later, for God’s sake! He wasn’t exactly a reliable barometer of emotions back then.”
Kate rose from her chair. Laura looked up at her, her eyes glassy with tears, a pleading expression on her face. Kate didn’t care.
“I hope you feel better now that you’ve purged yourself of guilt,” said Kate. “It must be a relief for you.”
She left her friend sitting alone at the table in the deserted tearoom and set off into the cold dark evening.
* * *
• • • • •
The cold wind bit at her cheeks but Kate hardly noticed. She’d been unfair to Laura and she knew it, but it didn’t make her any less angry with her. And why tell her now? All these years later, when Matt hated her and she was leaving? Why now? Other than to assuage her own guilt.
The snow whipped at her face as she trudged down the lonely lane home. The snow was deep here, almost as deep as her boots. Sheep huddled together on the other side of the wire fence, ghostly forms on the landscape. The wild weather and bleak farmland echoed her mood.
Kate was struggling to understand what cosmic influences had found her at odds with the two people she considered to be her best friends in the world. She didn’t know which betrayal stung more. How could Laura have kept something like that from her?
She found herself haunted by ghosts of a life that could have been. She saw Matt’s arm round her shoulders in the snow instead of Sarah’s. She saw anniversaries and Valentine’s Days and Christmases and birthdays and holidays rushing past her eyes: a phantom life that might have been hers if only Laura had decided differently.
Kate arrived home to find a pie on the kitchen table with a note:
Kate,
Evelyn thought you might need cheering up, she’s made you a steak and mushroom pie.
Love you. Dad xxx
It was still warm. Kate grabbed a fork and took the pie into the sitting room. She switched on the tree lights, built the fire, and put the TV on. If ever there was a time for pie, it was now, Kate thought.
* * *
• • • • •
Kate’s phone buzzed loudly on the coffee table, causing a fork that rested on a discarded plate next to it to vibrate. Kate jolted awake. The sitting room was dark except for the glowing embers in the fireplace and the flicker of an old black-and-white horror movie on the TV.
Kate leaned over and picked up her phone. The time said 5:17 a.m.
“Oh God.” As she moved, a shower of pastry crumbs fluttered off her boobs and onto the carpet. She wiped her cheek; it was wet. She cast a glance at the cushion, where a wet mark stood out dark against the velvet.
“Oh, disgusting!” she moaned, realizing she’d been sleeping in a pool of her own dribble.
The phone buzzed in Kate’s hand and she jumped, accidentally dropping it onto the carpet, where it glowed angrily, the word Mum lit up in red letters. Kate scrabbled about and got the phone to her ear.
“Mum?” she said. Still dazed and confused.
“Katy” her mum shrieked down the phone
. Kate held the phone away from her ear. “Katy, thank God!” said her mum. “Something terrible has happened!”
“Are you all right?” asked Kate.
“No, I’m bloody not!” said her mum.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt!” said her mum, as though this were a ludicrous idea. “I’m in prison!”
“What?” said Kate.
“I’ve been arrested!” said her mum. “It was all a scam. He didn’t own the boat at all! It was stolen. He commissioned us to sell a stolen yacht for him. Well, we didn’t know!” she went on indignantly. “And then the owner comes barging on board with the police and I got arrested!”
“Where’s Gerry?” Kate asked.
“Gone,” said her mum.
“What do you mean gone?”
“He left me,” said her mum. “As soon as he saw the police, he jumped off the boat and ran away. The last I saw of him was his naked bottom mincing up the gangway like two white onions bobbing along in the moonlight!”
Kate tried to blink away the image.
“And you’re in a Barbadian prison?” Kate asked.
“Well, I’m not exactly in prison,” said her mum. “I’m being held in custody at the local police station, but the tea they served me was only lukewarm. The owner said he won’t press charges provided I give the police all the information I have about the bogus seller and I leave the island immediately.”
“Oh, thank God!” said Kate. “It could have been a lot worse—”
“I’d like to know how!” interrupted her mum. “I was bare-breasted when they burst in on us. It was pure luck I had a G-string on to cover my Aunty Mary. We’ve been working our way through the Kama Sutra . . .”
“Mum, please,” said Kate. Her mum stopped with an audible humph. “Just get yourself on a plane back to Spain as soon as you can.”
“Well, that’s just it, darling,” said her mum. “I can’t. I haven’t got any money.”
“Didn’t you take out travel insurance?” asked Kate.
“It doesn’t cover repatriation when swindled by a career criminal, darling,” said her mum testily.
Kate sucked in a breath.
“How much are the flights?” Kate asked.
“Seven hundred, give or take,” said her mum.
“Seven hundred pounds?!”
“Well, it’s Christmas and it’s last minute,” said her mum. “Just leave me here in a jail cell to rot if it’s too much of a bother.”
“It’s not a bother, Mum,” said Kate. “Of course it’s not a bother. I would pay any amount to help you, you know that. It’s just all come as bit of surprise, that’s all.”
“To you and me both, darling.”
“Of course,” said Kate. “It must have been a terrible shock for you.”
“It’s been an absolute trial,” said her mum. “My nerves are quite shattered.”
“What will you do about Gerry?”
“Gerry can fend for himself like he left me to do!” said her mum. “His passport’s been seized and I’ve instructed the harbormaster to give all his clothes to charity. He won’t get far,” she went on. “A naked sexagenarian running around the island is bound to get noticed.”
Kate had to agree.
“Leave it to me, Mum,” said Kate. “I’ll get you home.”
Kate persuaded her mum to pass the phone to the officer in charge—who seemed very friendly and assured Kate that the tea had been hot when served—and acquired the relevant details before beginning the process of getting her mother safely back to Spain.
She didn’t have seven hundred pounds give or take. She would have to whack it on the credit card and try to pay it back in the new year. If there was one thing Kate was sure of, it was that her mum would not consider this a loan.
Laura will love this, Kate thought, as she clicked confirm on the flight details. And then she remembered that she’d fallen out with her best friend and she felt sick to her stomach.
After phoning the Barbados police station and giving the details for her mother’s swift departure—for which the officer sounded only too pleased—Kate got showered and dressed.
It was seven thirty a.m. and still dark outside. Kate grabbed her boots and threw on her coat and went to intercept her dad on his way back from getting his morning paper.
She found Mac wading through last night’s fresh snowfall, cap fastened on his head, a thick tube of rolled-up newspaper under his arm. They were the only two people out in the street. Mac’s face lit up when he saw Kate.
“Hallo, love,” he said. “Are you out searching for inspiration?”
“Actually I was out searching for you,” said Kate. “Fancy coming round for a coffee?”
As they walked arm in arm along the quiet road, Kate regaled her dad with her mum’s latest adventures.
“I can’t believe that Gerry is such a snake,” said her dad.
“Can’t you?” asked Kate. “I can well believe it.”
“Well, you can’t afford to pay out all that money by yourself,” said Mac. “I’ll give you half.”
“No, Dad, it’s fine, honestly . . .”
“Now don’t go arguing with me about it,” said Mac. “I’m paying half and that’s the end of it.”
“But she doesn’t deserve it, Dad,” said Kate. “Not from you. I have to help. I’m obliged by the unwritten law of daughterly responsibility.”
“And I’m bound by the fatherly protection code,” said Mac. “I’m not doing it to help your mother, I’m doing it to help you. And I won’t take no for an answer,” he went on. “You want to know where you get your stubbornness from? You’re looking at it!”
Kate squeezed her dad’s arm and reached up to kiss his cheek.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “You’re the best. Mum never did deserve you.”
“Do you know something, my love,” said Mac. “I think you might be right.”
Kate smiled at him, already dreading having to ruin her dad’s day by telling him she planned to leave Blexford. But it wasn’t something she could put off. No action or expression was missed in the village; no roll of parcel tape purchased or cardboard box saved went unnoticed. It would only be a matter of time before tongues began to wag, and Kate couldn’t bear the idea of her dad finding out from anyone else but her.
THE ELEVENTH DATE OF CHRISTMAS
• • • • •
Lip-Smacking Wine and a Smack in the Chops
This was horrible. Awful. Kate looked at her dad and her dad looked back at her. He was getting old. It was easy to forget, he was so busy, so chirpy. But now as he sat at the table, holding his mug, looking from Kate to the table and back again, he looked his age. Worry lines crinkled his forehead and the lines under his eyes seemed more pronounced somehow; it was easy to miss them when he was smiling. He wasn’t smiling now.
“So when are you leaving?” he asked.
“I heard back from Josie this morning,” said Kate. “I can stay with her from the twenty-eighth. Just until I get myself sorted with my own place.”
“Why the rush?” asked Mac.
“I think you know why, Dad,” said Kate. “I think you knew before I did. I’m in love with Matt, and Matt is in love with Sarah, and it’s a big mess. How can I stay?”
“I’ll miss you,” he said.
“I’ll come and visit,” said Kate. “And you can come and see me anytime. I’ll book you into a nice hotel, and when I’ve found a place, you can stay with me.”
“Don’t you think this is a bit drastic?” asked Mac.
“It’s not going to get any better,” said Kate. “I love him, Dad. And he doesn’t love me back and that’s all there is to it.”
Her dad sighed.
“I’m only surprised it took you this long to realize,” said Mac. “Yo
u’ve loved that boy all your life. I could see it when you were twelve: the way you smiled when he called for you. And when you were sixteen; do you remember that bonfire night when you insisted on going to the fireworks with just that silly little denim jacket on and you ended up getting inside Matt’s parka with him?”
Kate smiled at the memory. She’d had to stand flat against him so they could do the zip up. They’d spent the evening lolloping around like conjoined twins, laughing hysterically.
“I thought to myself that night,” Mac went on, “I’ve lost my girl to that there lad. But I didn’t mind so much. He was a good boy.”
“Huh,” said Kate, smiling at her dad. “I wish someone would’ve let me know.”
“Like I said,” said Mac, “he brings out your sparkle.”
“Not anymore,” said Kate. “What I need is a total Matt detox. I need to de-sparkle.”
Mac rested his hand on Kate’s.
“Have you patched things up with Laura yet?” he asked.
“No,” said Kate.
“You know, as your father, I’d like to shake Laura’s hand for what she did.”
“Oh, thanks a lot, Judas!” said Kate.
Her dad shook his head and smiled.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I would say Laura is the finest friend you could hope for. If she hadn’t taken the decision not to tell you about Matt, you wouldn’t have traveled the world, you wouldn’t have been so driven in your work, you might not even be working for Liberty.”
“I could have done all those things with Matt.”
“Of course, you could have. But would you?” asked her dad. “Because sharing your life with someone will always mean compromise. You probably would have moved back to Blexford when Matt took over the shop. You might have taken a design job with a company closer to home. The things that define you would be different.”
“But not wrong,” said Kate.
The Twelve Dates of Christmas Page 27
