The Christmas Party

by Carole Matthews

  ‘The crackers are probably made in Korea or somewhere,’ Tyler said. ‘Perhaps their health-and-safety standards are a little more lax out there.’

  Kirsten gave Tyler a threatening look. ‘Could come in useful.’

  ‘I think I’ll look after that for you!’ he teased, but his accompanying laugh held a nervous edge.

  ‘I’ll keep it, thank you.’ With a humourless smile, Kirsten slipped it into her handbag.

  ‘Put your paper hat on,’ Tyler urged.

  ‘I spent a hundred and fifty pounds getting my hair done.’

  ‘Put it on,’ he cajoled. ‘It’s Christmas. You’ll look sweet.’

  ‘I don’t want to look “sweet”. I’m not putting the hat on. End of.’

  With a defiant flourish, Tyler unfolded the crown and jammed it on. It was pink and he looked ridiculous.

  ‘Lovely.’ Melissa saw her husband reach for the bottle of wine again and blocked his move with a smooth, well-practised action. ‘Lance, honey, would you like to pull your cracker with me?’

  ‘Huh?’ Lance looked up from the glass over which he was hunched. Already his rheumy eyes were glazed over with alcohol. He fumbled to find the cracker and handed it to her. Melissa clasped his fingers round it and together they pulled. The present fell on the floor and she didn’t bother to retrieve it, but she unfolded his festive hat and put it on for him.

  ‘Don’t forget that you should welcome the staff and say grace, honey.’

  ‘Don’t fuss, angel,’ he slurred.

  The more he drank, the more belligerent he became. But the more he drank, the more chance she had of slipping away un-noticed with Tyler.

  ‘Melissa’s right, Lance.’ Tyler came to her rescue. ‘You’d better make a move. The natives are getting restless.’

  Lance lurched to his feet and staggered towards the stage.

  ‘Should I go with him?’ Tyler whispered to her, already rising from his seat.

  She stilled him with her hand. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  Tyler sat down again.

  Lance was now front of stage and took the microphone from the stand.

  ‘Good evening, everyone. I’d like to welcome you all to the Fossil Oil Christmas party,’ he said. ‘It’s been a fantastic year for us all. Profits are up. Business is booming. This evening is to celebrate a new start for our company. There are plans for big changes in the new year, but more of that later. For now, let’s offer up a prayer of thanks to our maker.’

  While Kirsten was looking away from them and towards the stage, Tyler whispered to Melissa, ‘“Big changes”?’

  She lowered her voice. ‘Yes. I need to speak to you about that too.’

  ‘You know about this?’ he muttered back.

  ‘Some of it,’ she admitted.

  Tyler tutted at her in exasperation. She knew he liked her to keep him abreast of all developments. Sometimes it annoyed her that it was all he wanted to talk about in bed. But then there were times when they sat together curled in the duvet, finishing a bottle of wine and kicking around some of the problems that Tyler was facing at work, just as she’d done with Lance all these years.

  ‘And he’s going to announce it tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said not.’ But now it sounded like he would. Sometimes when Lance had been drinking he was a loose cannon.

  ‘Why am I the only one not in the loop?’ Tyler complained.

  ‘Lance only found out about it today.’ So he said. ‘As soon as we can get away, I’ll tell you all I know,’ she promised.

  On stage, Lance lowered his head. ‘God of goodness, bless our food, keep us in a pleasant mood. Bless the chef and all who serve us, and from indigestion, Lord, preserve us. Amen.’

  A mumbled ‘Amen’ came back from the staff.

  Lance made his way down from the stage and, as one, hordes of waitresses who’d been waiting in the wings swarmed in to serve their starter of soup. It was probably all that Melissa would manage to eat. These dinners were always loaded with carbs and none of those had passed her lips since the eighties.

  She shook out her napkin, which read Merry Christmas to One and All, and spread it across her lap. Her soup was put in front of her and, just as Tyler was about to be served, Lance lurched past and stumbled into the waitress, who cried out. Tyler turned to see what was happening at the same moment that the plate she was carrying was knocked out of her hand, tipping it up so that the soup splashed out of it and splattered all over the front of Tyler’s dinner shirt.

  He jumped back with a startled cry and Melissa rushed to his aid, frantically dabbing at him with her Merry Christmas to One and All napkin. His face was like thunder.

  ‘That bloody husband of yours,’ he hissed under his breath. ‘He’ll be the death of me.’

  ‘It’ll be fine, Tyler,’ she soothed, keeping her back to Kirsten. ‘Trust me. Everything will be fine.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tyler was beginning to wish that he’d come down with some deadly illness. Well, perhaps not deadly, just something debilitating for twenty-four hours. Anything rather than be at this party. He’d hardly touched his soup, mainly because there was more of it on his shirt than in the bowl. Before he could finish the rest, the waitresses came to clear the table for the main course.

  The bizarre thing was that he’d been looking forward to this do. He was held in high regard by the staff of Fossil Oil and it was good to show a united front with them. It helped to loosen up relations. Despite what Lance said, this year had been tight for sales, everything was getting harder and he thought it would be good to let his hair down for a couple of hours, get him in the mood for Christmas.

  Now he wasn’t so sure.

  The table they were on was filled with excruciatingly dull people. There was Kelvin Shaw, head of finance. Bore. Shaun Thomson, who ran Alternative Fuels. Nightmare. Then there was Stephanie Lewison, who headed up the research laboratory. Her partner was a woman, which Tyler had suspected all along. No wonder she’d proved resolutely immune to his charms.

  This lot certainly weren’t going to prove to be a laugh a minute. Which was a shame. He’d hoped that he and Kirsten could have fun tonight, throw themselves into the Christmas spirit – God knew there was enough of it flowing in here – and perhaps start to get back to how they used to be. They hadn’t been out together in a long time and, while his wife might have preferred a romantic dinner to the Christmas party, it was a start.

  He wanted to give Kirsten a great Christmas this year. In fact, she was demanding it and he felt duty-bound to deliver. All that fuss with Debbie had unsettled her. He’d smoothed it over, obviously, but there was nothing like a few strategically timed diamonds to win over a woman’s heart again. It was Christmas Eve tomorrow, so he’d have to find an hour to run out to the shops in the city to buy her something or, preferably, get Louise to do it for him.

  He loved Kirsten. He was sure he did. Who wouldn’t? She was a beautiful woman. It was just that there was so much else going on in his life.

  Take Melissa here. She was stroking her hand up and down his thigh under the table and he really, really wished that she wouldn’t. Kirsten was in a very weird mood tonight and it seemed to be getting worse, as if all her senses were on red alert. One wrong move and it could all end badly for him.

  Melissa was a mistake. He knew that now. She was an attractive woman, there was no doubt about it. But she was high-maintenance and she was Lance’s wife to boot. He shook his head at his own folly. If you played with fire like that, the likelihood was that you were, at the very least, going to get your fingers burned. Now he was quite worried for other parts of his anatomy too.

  All he’d wanted was to find out a few of the chairman’s secrets from her, and in that regard their affair had been very lucrative, but now the risks were too high. He’d enjoyed talking to her about the business. She’d become the confidante that he’d never had before and that had been a bonus he’d never expected. Yet now she seemed to be fa
lling in love with him, and that could never, ever happen.

  He’d told her the score. She knew that, in his own way, he adored Kirsten and that there was no one else for him but his wife. He might have the odd fling, but they didn’t matter. He thought Melissa would understand that, play the game. Now Tyler wanted to break it off, but there was an addiction on his part too. It was useful to know all of Lance’s thoughts about the business, and on more than one occasion Melissa’s insider knowledge had given him the edge in a meeting. That would be hard to give up.

  But there was something going on at Fossil Oil that he wasn’t party to. Melissa had just confirmed as much. Lance was being very secretive at the moment and that didn’t bode well. Tyler was his right-hand man, the wily, youthful Robin to Lance’s ageing Batman. He should be all-knowing. If he didn’t have a clue what was happening, who’d be there to catch the ball when Lance inevitably dropped it?

  There was general chatter at the table, but Tyler was struggling to join in. He was distracted, on edge. Lance was worrying him as well. Even for Lance he was half-cut too early in the evening, and there was a long way to go before bedtime.

  ‘Pass the other bottle of wine, Tyler,’ Lance said, across his wife.

  He and Melissa exchanged a worried glance.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Tyler whispered.

  She nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Tyler shrugged and reached for the bottle at the other end of the table which hadn’t been touched. He passed it down to the chairman, who proceeded to glug it into his glass.

  Under the table, Melissa’s hand wandered higher up his thigh.

  He glanced across at his wife, who was looking particularly stunning tonight. Sometimes Kirsten complained that he didn’t notice her. And sometimes she was right. He took her for granted, he knew that. But she was a woman who had everything she wanted. She only had to ask and it was hers. Wasn’t that what most women desired? She didn’t have to worry her pretty little head about anything. If she needed money, he gave it to her. Everything in the house was done for her. If anything broke, she just picked up the phone and called Fossil Oil’s maintenance department and it was sorted. She didn’t even need to touch the garden, someone came in to do that. Kirsten’s life was a bed of roses.

  He grinned across at her and she smiled softly back. That look, he knew, was reserved just for him. Next year would be different, he thought. He’d stop all this messing about. He was getting too old for it and he didn’t want to end up like Lance. His new year’s resolution would be to get fitter, healthier. He’d give up drinking, actually go to the gym when he said he was there. He’d ditch the other women, Melissa being at the top of the list. It was time to turn over a new leaf. From now on, it would be just him and Kirsten.

  Then, across the room, Louise caught his eye. She was sitting next to Josh Wallace, head thrown back in laughter. Clearly, his right-hand man was being very amusing. They could have done with some of his hilarity at this table. His mouth went dry. God, she looked sexy tonight. In the office she was always wrapped up in jumpers and such. The sort of stuff librarians probably wore. It didn’t stop her from being attractive, but he’d never known that she could look like this. Her neck was long, slender. Her throat was flushed. There was a brightness, a sparkle in her eyes that he also hadn’t noticed in the office. She wasn’t just a looker, she was sharp too. A challenge. He liked that.

  What he didn’t like was how cosy she looked with Josh. Tyler stroked his chin as he watched them. They were on a table with the rest of the sales managers. What a motley crew they were. Lazy bastards every one of them. They’d all rather be lounging in the office, hanging round the secretaries, rather than out there in the harsh world, making deals. Except for Mr Super Sell Himself, of course, the inimitable Josh Wallace. That man could sell ice to Eskimos, and he’d saved Tyler’s bacon more than once.

  Tyler had seen his potential when he’d first started at Fossil Oil and had taken him under his wing to groom for superstardom. But, recently, there were some days he felt that Josh just wasn’t grateful enough. He was getting far too big for his boots. Too many people were noticing just how good he was. The man seemed to believe that he now ran Fossil single-handedly with nothing more for support than an iPad and a top-of-the-range Audi.

  Tyler glowered at him. If he hadn’t been such a good salesman and brought in so much money for the department, Tyler might have been tempted to sack him, just to take him down a peg or two. Then he’d learn that there was no such word as ‘indispensable’ in the oil business.

  It was only the fact that his sales figures were so strong that protected him. In times of recession every other sales manager’s figures were down, yet Josh continued to buck the trend. Thank Christ. If Josh Wallace went, and left him exposed, then it would be Tyler’s head above the parapet.

  ‘Tyler?’ Kirsten was frowning now. ‘You’re staring.’

  He snapped his attention back to his wife. ‘Sorry. Just thinking about something the head of the refinery told me. We’ve got a few issues there.’

  Despite his attempted deflection, Kirsten scanned the room until she settled on where his gaze had been. Her eyes fixed on Louise, who happened to look up at the same time. His assistant smiled in their direction, but Kirsten’s features were frozen.

  ‘We may have a few here,’ she said coolly.

  It would serve him well to remember that Kirsten was a jealous woman. A jealous woman with a penknife in her handbag. Tyler shuddered.

  Kirsten’s expression was grim, but before he could begin an explanation – or even think of one – the main course was served.

  So often at these big corporate events, the food was disappointing, yet this looked like the real deal. There was a tranche of succulent white turkey breast, golden roast potatoes and all the trimmings. Now Tyler was ravenous. Apart from a few spoonfuls of the soup, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Lunch had involved a meeting with the Business Development team and three cups of strong black coffee.

  As he contemplated the deliciousness of the dinner in front of him, Lance stood up and lurched forward. ‘Is it time for my speech yet?’ he said, knocking the table.

  Tyler lunged to steady it, but misjudged his movement. His elbow caught the edge of his dinner plate and he catapulted his Christmas dinner, with astonishing precision, right into his own lap.

  ‘Oh my,’ Melissa said.

  He sat there wishing he was anywhere else. There was a mound of creamed potatoes covering his groin, with a bacon-wrapped sausage sticking out of it which looked quite obscene.

  ‘Oh, Tyler,’ Kirsten said, voice heavy with exasperation.

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ he protested.

  Melissa was the first to galvanise herself into action. She swept up his Merry Christmas to One and All napkin and set to mopping his lap, scraping away the potatoes with more enthusiasm than perhaps an uninterested party might have.

  ‘You can’t let Lance give this speech,’ she whispered to him when she had her back to the table.

  ‘How am I going to stop him?’ Tyler hissed back as he bent forward to put his ear closer to her mouth.

  There was gravy as well as soup on his shirt now. He even found an errant sprout in his suit pocket.

  ‘I need to be alone with you before then.’

  ‘I have no idea how we’re going to get away.’ He had to be careful. Kirsten seemed to have eyes in the back of her head tonight.

  ‘We have to try. I have something that I need to tell you urgently.’

  On a night that was already proving to be testing, that was music to Tyler’s ears.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The very second my soup is put in front of me, my phone rings. I rummage under the table and find it in my handbag. It’s Dad.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say to Josh. ‘I need to take this. Urgent call.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘I hope not.’ I rush back out to the anteroom where the drinks reception was
held, heart in my mouth. Like every mother who is away from her child, I instantly start to fear the worst. I can feel Tyler Benson watching me as I leave.

  As I hit the now-empty room, I head for the winter wonderland display. ‘Hi, Dad. What’s wrong?’ My voice sounds too loud and echoey in the vast space.

  ‘Oh, nothing, love,’ he says. ‘Just wanted to tell you that we got home safely and to see if you were all right.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I start breathing again. ‘Is Mia OK?’

  ‘Fine, love. She’s tired. It’s way past her bedtime.’ Said for Mia’s benefit, not mine. ‘And Gramps has been teaching you a Christmas carol, hasn’t he?’

  I take a longing glance at the marquee where my lovely dinner is going cold. The polystyrene snow comes over the top of my shoes and I tuck myself in next to one of the Christmas trees.

  ‘She wants to say goodnight, love.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad. Put her on.’

  ‘Mummy!’ she cries as if she hasn’t seen me for weeks rather than just an hour or two.

  ‘Hello, sweet pea. Are you being good for Granny and Gramps while Mummy’s at her party?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Then you need to be a good girl.’

  Theatrical sigh down the phone. ‘Ohhhh Kaaaay.’

  ‘I’ll say goodnight and then you go up to bed.’

  ‘I want to sing my song.’

  ‘Now? Can’t it wait until Mummy comes home?’

  ‘Shall I stay up specially?’

  So cute. So very cute. ‘No, sing it now for me. That would be lovely.’ I have mentally written off my soup. Hopefully this will be a short song and I can get back in time for the turkey. The waiters are tidying up around me and giving me sideways glances. I go deeper into the Christmas trees.

  ‘OK,’ my daughter says. ‘Are you listening properly, Mummy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Deep breath. ‘Good King Wenser last looked out on the Easter Stephen. When the snow layabout, deep pan crisp pan even.’

  I can’t help but smile, not just at the twisted lyrics but at the fact that it’s sung at full volume and, essentially, all on one note. I hold the phone away from my ear.