One Perfect Christmas

by Paige Toon

  ‘It IS him! It’s JOSEPH STRIKE!’

  ‘AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH! JOSEPH STRIKE!’

  ‘IT’S JOSEPH STRIKE!’

  Joe’s grip on me tightens as he holds me to him. More people appear on the bridge, keen to see if the girls, who are pointing and jumping around like lunatics, are right. The look on their faces when they recognise Joe… It’s almost comical. But then I see some camera phones come out and I can’t help but give Joe a panicked look.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says calmly, rubbing my arm. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

  I take a deep breath and look up into his eyes, which are somehow smiling now. ‘Are you ready for this?’ he asks with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  And then he takes my face in his hands and kisses me, while camera flashes go off over our heads.

  Read on for a first look

  at Paige Toon’s next bestseller

  The Longest Holiday

  Chapter 1

  He’s smiling down at me with tears in his eyes as I say my solemn vow:

  ‘I, Laura Rose Smythson, take thee, Matthew Christopher Perry, to be my lawful wedded husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward…’

  I thought I would never feel like this about anyone ever again. Not after my first love… Not after the heartbreak and the loss and the trying to pick myself back up again… Then I met Matthew, and I know that he has my heart forever: my perfect, gorgeous, adoring Matthew.

  And then I wake up. And I remember that he’s not perfect. He’s so far from perfect that my heart could surely collapse from the pain that instantly engulfs me.

  ‘Sorry for waking you,’ my friend Marty apologises from beside me as she vigorously rubs at a damp patch on her jeans with a paper napkin. ‘Bridget knocked my effin’ drink over with her fat arse,’ she mutters, as I groggily come to. I look across at Bridget, who’s fast asleep and partially curled up towards the window, her offending arse anything but fat. Feeling like I’m still in a dream – or, more accurately, a nightmare – I bend down to retrieve my bag from under the seat in front of me. Tissues are the one thing I did remember to pack. I would have forgotten my passport if Marty hadn’t reminded me.

  ‘Thanks,’ Marty says, as I use my Kleenex supply to help mop up the spilt gin and tonic on the tray table. ‘How are you feeling?’ She gives me a sympathetic look and regards me over the top of her ruby-red horn-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Don’t,’ I warn, but it’s too late. The lump returns to firmly lodge itself in my throat.

  ‘Sorry, sorry!’ she says hurriedly before I cry again. ‘Here, quick!’ I take the gin and tonic that she’s proffering – what remains of it, anyway – and throw it down in one gulp. ‘Think happy thoughts!’ she urges. ‘Think of the sun! Think of the sea! Think of the cocktails on the beach and all of the hot men!’

  Bridget sighs loudly with annoyance at the noise, her back still turned towards us.

  Marty purses her lips at me and I mirror her expression, tears kept at bay. For now.

  ‘Do you want another one?’ my friend asks in a loud whisper, pressing the call button on her armrest before I can reply.

  ‘Sure, why not?’ I nod.

  ‘I’m going to,’ she says, as I knew she would. ‘May as well, seeing as they’re free and all.’

  ‘Is everything okay, ladies?’

  We look up at the air stewardess hovering in the aisle.

  ‘Could we get another couple of these, please?’ Marty asks.

  ‘Gin and tonic?’ the air stewardess asks frostily.

  ‘Them’s the ones,’ Marty replies jauntily, adding, ‘snooty cow,’ under her breath as soon as the woman turns her back. ‘So I reckon, when we arrive, we’ll just get in the car and drive straight up to Key West.’

  ‘Down,’ I correct. Her geographical knowledge is probably on a par with a seven-year-old’s, which is funny, considering her job as a travel agent.

  ‘Whatever. You don’t want to see Miami this arvo, do you? I know Bridge is desperate to go, but we can always do a day trip. ’

  ‘It’s six hours there and back,’ I remind her.

  ‘Well, we could go for a night or check it out on the return journey, something like that. What do you think?’

  ‘Sure,’ I reply. ‘It will be good to get to our hotel and…’

  ‘… And get into our swimming costumes and head to the beach-slash-bar,’ she finishes my sentence for me, although that wasn’t what I was going to say.

  ‘We could unpack first,’ I suggest.

  ‘No. No,’ she says firmly. ‘You are not unpacking. Not this time. On this holiday you are going to throw caution to the wind. There will be no unpacking, no trawling through the tourist brochures, no writing of shopping lists, or anything like that. I’m not having it.’

  I roll my eyes at her and say thank you to the air stewardess as she returns with our drinks.

  Bridget shifts in her seat on the other side of Marty and sweeps her wavy, medium-length brown hair over her shoulder as she tries in vain to get comfortable. It’s been a long flight and we had an early start.

  ‘Have you managed to get any kip?’ I ask Marty quietly.

  ‘No. I’ll sleep on the beach. Cheers.’

  We chink glasses. Matthew’s face appears in the forefront of my mind and I wince as nervous anxiety swells inside my chest. I take a gulp of my drink.

  ‘Stop thinking about him,’ Marty snaps.

  ‘I wish I could,’ I reply, not taking offence to her tone. Anything but sympathy.

  ‘How long until we land?’ She changes the subject.

  I check my watch. ‘Two hours.’

  ‘Just enough time to watch a movie.’

  ‘Good plan,’ I agree.

  She reaches into the seat pocket in front of her for the entertainment guide and then presses the call button once more.

  ‘You haven’t finished your last one!’ I exclaim.

  She sniggers like a naughty schoolgirl. ‘I know. I thought I’d ask the snooty cow if she has any popcorn…’

  For all her bravado, Marty doesn’t last long before she falls fast asleep in the front passenger seat of our hired red Chevy Equinox. Bridget is driving and I’m relieved because we’d barely turned out of the airport car park before we’d had two near misses – the drivers here all seem a bit nuts.

  We’re on a long, wide, straight road heading away from Miami and towards the Florida Keys. I stare out of the window at the fat palm trees planted in the central reservation. It’s a bright, sunny afternoon and in a rare, uplifting moment, I think to put on my sunglasses, but then I remember that I packed them in my suitcase and I can’t even be bothered to feel irritated. It’s hard to care about anything much these days.

  Jessie J comes on the radio and Bridget turns up the sound. We’ve barely said two words to each other since Marty crashed out. We’re not friends.

  That sounds wrong. What I mean is, she’s Marty’s friend, not mine. It’s not to say that I don’t like her. I do. Sort of. But Marty and I have been best friends since childhood. Bridget only dates back to Marty’s early twenties, when they shared a flat together in London. They’re great friends, but not old friends. When it comes to longevity, I win. And yes, it does feel like a competition.

  I wasn’t supposed to come on this holiday. Bridget is a travel writer, Marty, as I’ve already mentioned, is a travel agent, and between the two of them, they had this holiday sewn up long before I came along and ruined it.

  That’s not strictly true. Marty invited me. And Bridget couldn’t exactly say no, considering 20.10.12.

  20.10.12. The date of my hen night, the date of Matthew’s stag do, the date that popped up on one of his Facebook messages just two weeks ago:

  Are you the Matthew Perry who was at Elation on 20.10.12?

  ‘There it is!’ Bridget interrupts my dark thoughts with a gleeful cry.

  Before she fell asleep, Marty challenged us to be the first one to spo
t the ocean. Bridget thinks she’s the victor.

  ‘That’s not the ocean, is it?’ I say doubtfully, although I think I can smell salt water, even through closed windows. ‘Is it a lagoon?’

  ‘A lagoon…’ From her side profile, Bridget looks thoughtful. ‘Do you know, I have never said that word out loud.’

  ‘Neither have I, come to think of it.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you have many lagoons in London.’ That’s where we live. ‘Or England, for that matter,’ she adds. ‘Probably the whole of Europe. Mangroves!’ she exclaims, her blue eyes widening as they look at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Don’t they grow in swamps?’

  I laugh. ‘I have no idea. But swamp or lagoon, it’s still not the ocean.’

  ‘I’ll beat you yet,’ she says in what I think is a joke serious voice. Perhaps she’s more competitive than I thought.

  We pass a palm tree farm on our left, followed on our right by a tangled sprawl of multi-coloured bungalows with boats in their backyards.

  I’m struggling to keep my eyes open, but I feel bad about abandoning Bridget. She may have nabbed the driving just so she could sit in the front seat with Marty, but I won’t hold that against her. Don’t want her to fall asleep at the wheel and kill us all – much as it’s hard to imagine how I’ll ever live with the humiliation of what my husband is putting me through.

  ‘There!’ she shouts as we pass a huge expanse of water.

  ‘Nope,’ I shake my head. ‘Still a lagoon. Look, you can see land over there.’

  ‘Shit,’ she mutters.

  I smile to myself. The sunlight on the water is blinding, but I force myself to look at it. I need some light in my life. The last two weeks have been dark.

  ‘Hang on,’ Bridget snaps. ‘We’re in Key bloody Largo! You can’t tell me that’s not the ocean.’

  ‘Okay, you win,’ I concede. I told you, it’s hard to care about much these days.

  Four white sails project out of the mangrove swamps as they make their way towards open water. We pass a bank of houses on stilts and I can see the water glinting beyond them. The houses and shop fronts are painted in colours of blue, green, aqua, yellow and cream; in front of some flies the American flag on a gentle breeze. Polystyrene buoys hang like garlands over fences and outside bars. There are lots of scuba diving and bait and tackle shops – and hundreds of boats. I keep catching flashes of the ocean through the lush, tropical vegetation. And all the time, the long, straight road goes on. How strange that it will come to a permanent stop in Key West, the southernmost point of the USA. Then all that will be left in two weeks’ time is for us to get back on this same road and come home again. The thought depresses me. Maybe I’ll hitch a boat ride to Cuba instead.

  Marty lets out a loud – and I mean LOUD – snore, and Bridget and I crack up laughing.

  ‘What? What?’ Marty jerks awake.

  ‘You were snoring,’ Bridget says.

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ Marty scoffs.

  ‘Yes, you bloody were! You sounded like a whale. Didn’t she, Laura?’

  ‘Whales don’t snore,’ Marty retorts, before I can answer.

  ‘A pig, then,’ Bridget says.

  ‘I’d rather be a friggin’ whale!’ Marty exclaims.

  We all crack up and then Bridget lets out a huge snort at the end of one guffaw, which only makes us laugh more.

  ‘God, I’m tired,’ she says when we’ve all calmed down.

  ‘Do you want me to drive for a bit?’ I offer.

  ‘No, it’s okay.’ She brushes me off. ‘I slept on the plane, so I’m alright.’ She yawns loudly. What a martyr.

  ‘What have I missed?’ Marty demands to know, as she wriggles in her seat.

  ‘Bridget spotted the ocean first,’ I tell her as we drive onto a massive bridge with ocean all around us.

  ‘Wow, exciting stuff,’ she replies sardonically.

  I guess this is why they call it the Overseas Highway, I think to myself as I look out the window. The Atlantic on our left is choppy and sparkling, while the Gulf of Mexico on our right is glassily still. Two pelicans glide over the road ahead, huge and grey with an enormous wingspan, and then we’re back on land again.

  We pass a dolphin rescue centre with a sign out the front saying, ‘Have you hugged a dolphin today?’

  ‘I want to hug a fucking dolphin!’ Marty shouts at the top of her voice, making Bridget jump out of her skin. Marty and I giggle. And then I see another sign on someone’s front gate, saying: ‘Wish you were here’, and for a brief moment I imagine Matthew sitting on the empty seat beside me and I miss him so desperately, it hurts.

  Suddenly the urge to get out of the car overcomes me.

  ‘Can we stop for a moment?’ I ask, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Marty whips her head around to look at me.

  ‘Sure,’ Bridget replies, nonplussed, indicating left. She pulls off the road into a small car park next to a white sandy beach. A middle-aged couple sits at one of the picnic tables, but other than that it’s deserted.

  ‘Don’t know if there’s a loo here, though,’ she adds, misunderstanding my needs.

  ‘I just want some air,’ I explain, opening the car door and climbing out. I hear the sound of Bridget’s car door opening too, but Marty says something to her in a quiet voice, so they stay in the car. My oldest and dearest friend knows me too well.

  Head and heart pounding in unison, I walk to the water’s edge and kick off my shoes, stepping into the cool, clear, turquoise-coloured water. Then I take a deep breath and momentarily close my eyes before opening them again and staring out at the nothingness of the vast blue ocean.

  On his stag do, my husband-to-be got wasted beyond recognition and ended up kissing a random girl at a club. He didn’t tell me this before marrying me a week later. Nor did he think it would be wise to confess to it during our first six months of marriage. He probably wouldn’t have confessed to it at all, except that two weeks ago, I saw a message on his Facebook page from a pretty girl called Tessa Blight. It soon transpired that she’d been messaging every Matthew Perry she could find – trying to track down my Matthew Perry. My Matthew Perry, whose kiss with a random girl at a club called Elation had somehow developed into dirty sex in the club’s toilets. And now that random girl is having Matthew Perry’s – my Matthew Perry’s – baby in less than two months.

  My husband is going to be a father to another woman’s child for the rest of his life. There is no getting away from that. No getting away from the crippling humiliation of all of our friends and family knowing that he had sex with another woman a week before marrying me, the so-called love of his life. He’s sorry, of course he’s sorry. He’s not a terrible person, but he made a terrible, terrible mistake. He didn’t mean to hurt me, he didn’t mean to do it at all – he was so drunk, it just happened. And he will do anything he can possibly do to make it up to me.

  But he will never be able to make it up to me. I will never forget. How could I when this baby will be a constant, lifelong reminder?

  I feel like he has ripped my heart out from my chest and thrown it to the sharks. And in this moment I want to hurl myself into the water to join it.