‘Did you two?’ Jack bounced the question back to Charlie and Robin.
‘We did.’ Charlie answered for both of them. ‘Out like a light.’
‘And the shower’s good as well,’ Robin added to that. ‘Who would have thought such a little head could power out water like that? I feel positively pummelled.’
‘Yes, it was better than I expected,’ said Jack, who’d had much the same thought.
‘Thank goodness you’re making a fire,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s not very warm in here, is it?’
Robin swept a throw up from one of the chair backs and deposited it on Charlie’s shoulders. ‘Here, this will do until the flames take hold.’
‘Oh, Robin, you do fuss,’ said Charlie, mock-annoyed.
‘It’s a good job I do, isn’t it? I would prefer people thought I cared about you more than your money,’ Robin threw back at him.
‘So you say.’
‘How dare you, Charles Glaser.’
‘Ha. Sorry about us having a spat in front of you, Jack.’
It wasn’t a fight, thought Jack. He’d seen fights between people who were supposed to love each other and this was at the other end of the scale. The shouting, the accusations, the violence… No, this wasn’t fighting here today.
‘Luke up yet?’ asked Robin.
‘He was in the shower when I came down.’
‘Ah, good morning, girls.’ Charlie beamed at Bridge and Mary as they appeared at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sleep well?’
‘I did,’ replied Mary.
‘Yes, not too bad,’ Bridge answered at the same time.
Mary didn’t like to say that Bridge must have slept very well because she’d been snoring. Not too loudly, but the sort of snore a contented sleeper made.
‘I’m going to make breakfast for everyone,’ said Robin, clapping his hands along with the announcement. ‘Bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, lashings of coffee if I can find it all.’
‘Full English,’ said Charlie. ‘Drenched in tomato sauce, thick white toast slathered in butter.’
‘You’ll get what you’re given,’ said Robin. ‘Porridge if I can find some. Or a nice yogurt.’
‘You care too much. Pretend you hate me and give me something fried,’ returned Charlie with his best disarming eyelash-flutter, which Robin duly ignored.
‘Where’s Luke?’ asked Bridge.
‘I’m here,’ said a voice from up the staircase. The sound of footsteps, followed by the man himself. Wearing his trademark grin, as per usual.
Bridge swallowed. She hadn’t had much of a chance to look, really look, at Luke yesterday other than to see someone bedraggled, damp and grateful to be alive, but here he was, showered and fresh, lean, healthy and fit as a Wimbledon men’s singles finalist, albeit one with sticky-out mad scientist hair. He looked taller than his actual five foot ten, his shoulders wider than she remembered and as if he had aged in the best sort of way, like a lanky teenage boy grown into his limbs. Her brain wasn’t making sense with how it was thinking but something inside her was admiring him too much, feeling too much.
‘I’m going to cook breakfast,’ said Robin, after wishing Luke a good morning. ‘Bacon, eggs, you know the sort of thing. That suit?’
‘I’m vegetarian,’ replied Luke. ‘So if you can work with that?’
‘I’ll come and help you, Robin, I’m a veggie too,’ said Mary.
‘Are you?’ asked Jack.
There was no reason for him to know, of course, but still his question felt like a painful flick against a sensitive part of Mary’s skin. Does he know anything about me apart from my name? she thought suddenly.
* * *
‘So, here we all are,’ said Luke. ‘Doesn’t look as if any of us are going to be driving anywhere soon, does it?’
Jack lit a match, placed it against the newspapers he had ripped apart and scrunched up. A stack of twenty-five-year-old News of the Worlds among them; the salacious headlines made for interesting reading.
‘Anyone tested their phones?’ asked Luke.
‘Yes, and zilch,’ said Bridge.
Jack nodded to affirm. ‘Landline is still dead too. I checked when I got down here.’
‘Looks like we need Radio Brian then,’ said Charlie and crossed the room to switch him on. ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’ rang out from the speakers.
‘That’s the only thing with radio, there’s no fast-forward button,’ said Jack, standing up now and proudly viewing his fire tasting the logs.
‘The trouble with anyone born after 1980 is that they have forgotten how to wait for things,’ said Charlie, gently admonishing him. ‘Let Brian play his song; you can’t go anywhere, so enjoy the delightful voice of Perry Como in the meantime.’
Perry Como. Jack remembered his dad playing Perry Como vinyls on his record player, always skipping over the track ‘How Insensitive’ because the words were too hard to listen to, someone with ice for a heart finishing a relationship with a partner. It was as if his mother was singing it about his father via Perry Como’s vocal cords.
‘And you’re listening to BBC Radio Brian. That’s Brian Bernard Cosgrove, not the British Broadcasting Corporation. Coming to you from the cold and frosty Yorkshire moors. And that was Perry Como with “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”, because it is, isn’t it?’
‘I see he hasn’t found his teeth yet,’ said Bridge.
‘Shh,’ said Luke, holding a shushing finger up against his mouth.
‘The news on the street is that severe weather warnings have been issued. More snow on the way. Stay indoors and I hope you’ve got enough milk and bread because the temperatures are recorded in this area as minus ten, so that would indicate the snow is going nowhere fast. And here’s Dean “little ole wine drinker” Martin with “Let It Snow”.’
‘The weather outside is indeed incredibly frightful,’ said Jack with a growl, checking his watch. He should have been in Tynehall now, presenting his case on why Chikafuji Incorporated and Butterly’s scones should be married in fruitful union before a speedy drive back to the office for a debrief working lunch with the heads of finance and marketing. The office would be closing early, but he’d stay on for longer. There was nothing to rush home for. No one to rush home for.
‘Beautiful though, isn’t it?’ said Luke, taking up Robin’s default position by the window. ‘Spectacular, even. Like a postcard. So long as our loved ones know we’re safe and there’s nothing we can do about the situation… we might as well just relax into it.’
He felt able to do that because he’d managed to get in touch with Carmen before all the mobile networks crashed and burned yesterday, though he’d lied slightly to save her worrying about him and told her that he was ‘only around the corner’ from the meeting place. The relief in her voice was palpable and warmed him right through. Her sister and parents had come over for Christmas, so she wasn’t rattling around in their large house alone. She was safe, protected by them but he wished it was him who was protecting her instead.
Bridge went over to him at the window as behind her Charlie and Jack started up their own conversation about scones.
‘Does Carmen know you’re okay?’
‘I hope so. I told her I was almost here and I promised I’d stay put until it cleared if the weather got worse. She wouldn’t want me to take chances.’
‘And where does she think you were driving to?’ asked Bridge, her interest piqued.
‘If you’re asking did I tell her I was coming to meet my wife then yes, she knows where I was driving to.’ A smile.
‘Really?’ Bridge seemed surprised by that.
‘Yes, really. We have no trust issues.’ As soon as he said it, he realised he might as well have given Bridge a sucker punch to her kidney. ‘Did you tell your fiancé you were meeting your husband?’
‘Of course I did. Ben doesn’t see you as a threat.’
‘Touché.’
‘It’s not as if anything’s
going to happen between us because we’ll be in each other’s company longer than planned. We’re history. Ancient history,’ said Bridge, sounding more sure than she felt.
‘Totally in the past. Dead in the water,’ Luke appended, feeling that somehow he had slid back years, was returning to getting-the-last-word-in territory. A treacherous landscape he never wanted to venture near again. ‘…Hence why I’m glad we managed, against the odds, to meet up. I thought it was best we finalise things between us before the year ends, leave no threads hanging…’
‘…to be retied.’ Bridge’s brain ended his sentence for him. A ridiculous thing for it to think.
‘Well, I thought exactly the same. Which is why I suggested it and—’
Luke interrupted her. ‘I asked for the meet, Bridge. Before you.’
‘I don’t think you did. If I check my diary I—’
‘Look…’ Luke held his hands out, palms flat as if pushing a fast-sprouting argument away. ‘Let’s not bicker and fall into our tried and tested bad habits. Whatever the truth, we both want the same. I don’t want anything from you, you don’t want anything from me and now that… Sabrina’s… gone, there’s nothing that we need to argue about any more, is there?’
His voice faltered on the name; it was still wrapped up in raw grief for him.
‘Yes,’ the word softly spoken by Bridge. Sabrina, their beautiful Belgian Malinois dog, who loved them equally. They’d shared custody of her, a month at each house. She’d been at Bridge’s when she died, in her sleep. A massive heart attack, the vet diagnosed. That it would have been quick was of no comfort, neither was her ‘good innings’ age of fifteen. They’d adopted her from a rescue centre when they were newly married. She’d been achingly thin and distrustful then, aggressive, frightened, vulnerable. She’d reminded Luke of Bridge, which is why he was drawn to her, a cause to rescue. She’d been with them through it all, the highs, the lows, the even lowers. When Bridge found her dead in her bed, she’d howled like a wolf, wished Luke had been there to hold her because however much she hated him, she knew his heart would have broken like hers had and Sabrina was theirs; the last link holding them together, gone. It hurt still, months later. Hurt like hell.
‘So, what’s he like?’ asked Luke, butting into her brief reverie.
‘Who?’
‘Your fiancé, durrr?’ He nodded towards the ring on her finger. A stunning, sparkly solitaire square diamond. Ben wasn’t without a few bob himself, Luke figured.
‘The best way to describe him is…’ Bridge mused, rummaging around in her head until she found the words that fitted. ‘He’s… the exact opposite to you, Luke.’ Then she turned her back on him and went to join Charlie and Jack by the fire.
* * *
‘All I can find are these in the sausage and bacon department,’ announced Robin after a thorough search in the fridge, holding up a monster-sized polystyrene-wrapped tray of pigs in blankets and a packet of ‘Hollybury Farm’ plump vegetarian sausages.
‘I’m sure they’ll both go down a treat,’ said Mary, who was whisking eggs.
‘I wonder if we’ll still be here tomorrow,’ said Robin, reaching for two frying pans. ‘What were your plans for Christmas Day, love?’
‘Bit of a funny one this year, actually,’ Mary answered him. ‘We usually all spend it together at Mum’s but her friend has taken her away to the Canaries this year. One of my brothers is on holiday in Australia with his pals, the other one’s spending Christmas Day with his girlfriend and her parents and my sister’s got a full house as her husband’s family are over from Ireland. They’re a lovely lot but I didn’t want a big, loud Christmas, so I was just going to have a quiet one by myself.’ She answered Robin’s look of sympathy. ‘No really, it would have been nice, that’s what I wanted. I’d bought lots of lovely things to eat and was going to hole up with Christmas films and have a proper rest. I’m kind of okay with my own company. My brothers and sister were all grown up by the time I was born, so I’m sort of an only child… but with siblings. Mum and Dad had me late, you see. I was a menopausal surprise. Mum said her ovaries had one last-ditch attempt to appear useful and I’m the result. My brother Sean calls me “the mistake”.’
‘How very cruel of him,’ tutted Robin.
Mary chuckled. ‘He’s joking. There are four of us and we’re super close. We take the mick out of each other a lot, but it’s all good-humoured and great fun. They’re a bunch of comics, my lot.’
‘No sweetheart for you?’ Robin cocked his head at her. She truly was a beautiful girl; pretty heart-shaped face, a flawless cream complexion with a mere hint of pink on her cheekbones, and beautiful sea-greeny-blue eyes. And the most alluring thing about her was that she obviously didn’t realise how attractive she was.
‘No,’ said Mary, with an unconscious sigh.
‘Men must be blind,’ said Robin.
Mary shrugged that conclusion off. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had her chances. Someone in marketing had made it abundantly clear that he would be in like Flynn if given the opening and another in finance was very flirty, but neither of them nudged her heart rate up one single notch and she had a whole family who would have been furious had she settled for anything less than she was worth. Sean was always giving her lectures about her potential love life; he’d taken over paternal duties from their father. He even looked like him, with his bright blue eyes and ‘the Padgett nose’, which Mary had managed to avoid inheriting. Plus her heart was already engaged because she had been stuck on Jack Butterly since she came to work for him. Sean called him ‘the Boy from Ipanema’ because he was tall and tanned (well, olive-skinned) and long and lovely, and he was totally oblivious to the fact that Mary was sitting on her beach towel and sighing over him walking past her. She deserved a real man who sighed over her, Sean told her. Mary knew this. At least Mary’s head did, but her heart continued to hold out for a change in the status quo, quickening in beat every time it felt Jack’s presence nearby.
‘That’s a pretty bracelet,’ said Robin, flicking his finger towards Mary’s left wrist. ‘Very artisan.’
‘Oh, this?’ said Mary with a modest shrug. He and Charlie dealt in diamonds and he thought her daft little handmade bracelet was worthy of comment? ‘It’s just something a friend gave me once.’
‘It suits you. It’s delicate,’ said Robin, ‘Let me see.’
Mary lifted her arm nearer to his eyes so he could take a better look. The bracelet was made up of blue cord, silver beads and seven tiny wooden blocks each bearing a letter: C.M.W.Y.N.A F.
‘Is that Welsh for Mary?’ joked Robin.
Mary smiled. ‘It stands for Call Me When You Need A Friend. A pal of mine sent it to me when my dad died. She said it was a licence to ring her whenever I needed to chat and if I wore it, it would be a reminder that she was there for me at any time of the day or night.’
‘How very sweet and thoughtful of her. When did you lose him, love?’
‘Two years ago,’ replied Mary. ‘I ended up ringing her quite a lot as it happens. I had my family to talk to but sometimes it helped just offloading onto someone else who had been through it and come out of the other side. You know, losing someone really close.’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what you need,’ said Robin and smiled back at her.
‘I’m surprised it hasn’t dropped off my wrist by now.’
‘Delicate but strong then.’ Robin suspected Mary was very much like her bracelet. ‘It’s amazing the staying power of some things that others presume will snap at the slightest pressure. Like Charlie and me. The amount of “it won’t last” gossip we had when we became a couple. All the bitches came to the surface like scum, let me tell you.’
‘How long have you and Charlie been together?’ she asked.
‘Too bloody long,’ he said, causing her to laugh because it was obvious he didn’t mean it.
‘Thirty-two years and counting. Married three years ago. We were the first homosexuals to be married in
our village church. Caused quite a stir. It’s very old England where we live. They were still burning witches up until last year.’
Mary chuckled at that.
‘Yes, a lot of people presumed I was after Charlie’s money. A gigolo with no heart, a lowly chauffeur with his eye on the golden goose.’ Robin shook his head, in marked disgust. ‘It has been our pleasure to prove them wrong.’
‘Thirty-two years is a long time to stay with someone if you don’t love them,’ agreed Mary.
‘Precisely. But I was still quite apprehensive to accept his marriage proposal even after all those years.’
‘What made you change your mind then?’
‘Charlie is a very lovable man,’ said Robin, aware that he hadn’t directly answered the question. ‘Always kind, generous with his feelings, his time, his wisdom. Your family sound lovely and you’ve only told me a couple of sentences about them.’
‘My mum and dad were both good people with strong values. They worked hard and tried to bring us up the right way. And Dad always had a lot of sayings. He used to call them “the Roy Padgett book of wisdom”, and then he’d tell me a pearl to get me through whatever it was that was bothering me.’
‘Oh God, he sounds like Charlie.’ Robin laughed. ‘He’s like the bloody Dalai Lama sometimes with his sayings.’
‘There’s a lot of love in our family, I’m lucky.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘And we’ve never been afraid of telling each other, either. Some families don’t, do they? Mum and Dad didn’t come from very loving homes, and so they knew how important it is to say the words and always said them to us.’
Robin gave a little shrug. ‘Harder than it should be sometimes though, isn’t it? Saying the words.’
‘Jack…’ Mary began, before pulling herself up short. She had no right gossiping about him. Even to someone who would probably never even think of him again when the snow had cleared and they were all on their way.
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day Page 7
