“I know, Dale. And I’m sorry. Last night, after I spoke to Jamie, I was called to reception and told that Petra wanted to see me. I couldn’t exactly refuse; she was in such a state earlier on.”
“How is she?”
“Devastated but she’s stronger than she realizes. And at least the crisis has brought her parents to her aid, even if her father is channelling his anger into legal side of things rather than just going and giving Petra a big hug, which is what she’d no doubt prefer.”
“I’m sure she’ll be okay.”
“I hope so.” Lucie took a deep breath. “I was with Jamie for a while last night… but we just had things to discuss. Things about the past.”
Dale stared at the ceiling.
“Dale?”
“Don’t worry about it. You didn’t want me there and it wasn’t my place to be there. He’s your ex… I’m…”
“My friend.” She propped herself up on her elbow then wriggled closer to him. “My very best friend and you mean the world to me.”
Dale glanced at her. “Thanks.” Spots of colour appeared on his cheeks.
“Do you want more from me, Dale? To make our fake relationship real?”
He frowned as he turned to her. “What?”
“Do you?” Her heart was beating so hard she felt dizzy. And suddenly brave. She had to ask. “Do you love me?”
“I… Luce, I don’t understand. I thought last night that you and Jamie were… I don’t know. It’s just you stopped me…when we were in bed together the night before and sometimes I just feel like I’m a yo-yo. You’re sure then you’re not sure and I can’t live like that.”
“So let me explain once and for all, Dale. Let me tell you about my fears and my doubts, my sorrows and my secrets. Then you can decide if you do want me.”
Please want me!
“Okay, Luce. But you have to be sure about what you want too.”
“I know.”
She leaned forwards and kissed him gently, breathing him in.
“Let’s get some coffee and breakfast then we can talk it all through properly. It’s about time.”
***
Lucie ordered croissants and coffee. While Dale had showered, she’d browsed the TV channels, watching as people attended church ceremonies and flicking between various different festive cartoons.
Christmas Day had arrived as it did every year. The days turned into weeks, into months and into years. How had twenty years passed since she’d last seen her mother? How had twelve years passed since she broke up with Jamie? How was she thirty-three?
She stood at the window, her face pressed against the cold glass, gazing at the winter wonderland below. It was still quiet out as it was early, but a few tiny figures moved around in the park, their figures black against the bright, white snow. The glass kept misting up. Each time she’d wipe it, then it would mist up again. Was this what kept happening with her and Dale? They’d seem to clear things up but they’d get all foggy again, as if something was there between them, like a glass wall. Here in New York, things that she had buried, feelings she’d once denied about Dale, all seemed to resurface. It was as if the Big Apple had shown them temptation and they’d bitten into it, falling harder and harder for each other yet still not quite letting go. Lucie knew why she’d held back and she intended to explain that to Dale. She owed him a clear explanation. But she wondered what Dale would say. What was it that held him back? Was it just Lucie pushing him away or was there more to it?
Breakfast arrived, delivered by a cheerful porter who wished her a very merry Christmas. She thanked him, tipped him generously, then closed the door. It was Christmas Day. Lucie and Dale were finally alone with no possibility of being disturbed. It was time to talk, and to be brutally honest, if they had any chance of a future together as more than just friends.
In the corner, the tree lights twinkled and the fairy on top smiled, her tiny hands outstretched as if in excitement or benediction, as if she had a special Christmas wish to grant and was delighted to have the opportunity to do so.
***
Lucie took the croissants and coffee into the bedroom and found Dale sat up on the bed fully clothed. He’d opened the curtains and the room was bright with morning light.
“Good morning.”
He frowned. “We’ve already said that haven’t we?”
“Well I wanted to say it again. Good morning, Dale, and Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas to you too.”
Lucie poured the coffee and passed one to Dale then handed him a plate with two fat, freshly baked croissants on it. They drank their coffee and ate the buttery croissants as Christmas carols filtered through from the TV in the lounge. Dale usually spent Christmas mornings at his parents’ house and Lucie was invited every year. She’d accepted a few times but it depended on how she was feeling in the build-up to the season, and until last Christmas, she hadn’t been there for a few years. Instead, she’d insisted on being alone Christmas morning, on leaving the TV turned off and not listening to the radio. But it hadn’t helped to drown out what day it was. Outside her flat, car doors had slammed as people left to visit relatives or arrived to do the same. Revellers had called out festive greetings and car stereos had blared out festive tunes. It was as if the festive season was impossible to avoid and try as she might, Lucie could not completely forget its existence.
Last year, Dale had turned up at hers at nine am, his hair messy and his pyjamas on under his coat. He’d begged her to go over his parents’ house, because whatever she felt about Christmas, he just couldn’t bear to think of her alone. He’d told her that he couldn’t enjoy it all if she wasn’t with him. There was no way she could refuse when he was so earnest about needing her. She’d put it down to him just being his usual kind self, but now she looked back at it, perhaps it had been more than that. Had she been walking around this whole time so self-involved over the loss of her mother, and with what had happened between her and Jamie, that she refused to see what was right in front of her? The chance of true happiness with her very best friend.
Breakfast done, Dale cleared away the plates and mugs and took them into the lounge. When he returned and passed Lucie, she caught his clean citrus scent and inhaled it deeply. He was delicious and she wanted to hold him. She ached to hold him but that would just confuse things. They had to talk first. Before anything else could ever happen, they had to open their hearts completely.
“I hope Petra’s okay this morning,” Lucie said as she quickly checked her mobile.
“I’m sure she is. She’ll either still be sleeping or Joanna will be pouring champagne and valium down her throat to numb the pain.”
“I still feel bad because I knew, Dale. Tania told me and I could have said something sooner. If I’d warned her she might not have gone through with it and she’d have been spared the humiliation.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t your place to do so. Imagine if Tania had been wrong, or just lying and Harry really had loved Petra. Then you’d have been the bad guy, the stirrer ruining their happiness. It’s their business, Lucie. Much as you care about Petra, you couldn’t have ruined things for her. She had to find out for herself, see things with her own eyes as it were.”
Lucie covered her face. “Oh and she did see it for herself. How absolutely terrible!” When she let her hands fall, Dale was staring at her.
“She’ll be better off now. Some men aren’t meant to be husbands.”
His words were dark and full of meaning. “You’re referring to Jamie here too, I take it?”
He nodded. “He’s not a good man, Lucie.”
“I know. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Go on.” He turned slightly, so that his knees pointed towards her and he rested his right arm on the bed head. Lucie brought her knees up and hugged them. This was not going to be easy.
As she took a deep breath to speak there was a knock at the door. She stared at Dale but he shrugged and shook
his head.
“I’d better check who that is,” she said as she slid off the bed and walked through to the lounge. When she opened the door to the suite, there was a porter stood there holding an enormous festive flower arrangement set in a deep red basket.
“Flowers for Mr Treharne and Miss Quigley.”
“Oh! Thank you. Hold on.” Lucie ran into the lounge and located her bag, grabbed some cash from her purse then returned to the door. The porter handed her the flowers and she managed to slip him the money. “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas to you too!” He smiled then closed the door behind him.
Lucie took the flowers into the bedroom.
“That’s what you call a flower arrangement, right?” Dale helped her to place the basket on the ottoman at the foot of the bed. “Who’s it from?”
Lucie took the card from the envelope that was tied to one of the silver twigs in the arrangement. “It says: ‘Merry Christmas Dale and Lucie. May this be the first of many that you enjoy as a couple. Lots of love, Mum and Dad XXX’”
“They must be missing us.” He fingered a sprig of mistletoe.
“They probably are.”
“I’ll ring them later. Once we’ve talked.”
“Yes. Good plan.”
They went back to sit on the bed.
“Dale, I’ve never told anyone this before. I couldn’t. Not even you. And not because I don’t trust you but because I was afraid of how you’d react… what you’d do.”
He inclined his head slightly but his eyes had darkened.
“Well, you know more than anyone how Christmas has always been hard for me. I mean, after losing my mum on Christmas Eve, I just couldn’t enjoy the festivities. When I was with Jamie at university, I fell for him hard. After… we… you and I… what happened… I just fell in love with him very quickly. It was that young, innocent infatuation and it carried me along for two intense years.”
“This isn’t easy to listen to, Luce.” He picked at a nail, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard.
“I know and I’m sorry. I just want to explain it all to you, fully. So you can understand.”
“Okay.”
“So with things being as they were with my father and stepmother, I just felt rootless. Being with Jamie and living his glamorous lifestyle lifted me from it all for a while. I felt a part of something, almost as if I wasn’t me. I believed that I belonged, that I could fit into his world.”
“I can understand why you’d want that. It was when I missed you most though.”
“I know that now. And I’m sorry for neglecting you then, Dale. I never stopped thinking of you or wondering how you were. I guess I was just trying not to be me. Anyway, two years along and things were okay-ish between us. He wasn’t exactly a model boyfriend but I was happy to accept the scraps he gave me because I was young and vulnerable, needy for what he represented. I thought he loved me and that was enough to keep things going. Until the Christmas after I graduated. When I went to stay with him in his family cottage in North Wales. It was just us and a few of his friends.” The room darkened suddenly and small shapes appeared on the walls, floating softly downwards. “It’s snowing again.” She nodded at the window. “It was snowing that year too. Heavily where we were. We had the most awful blizzard that Christmas Eve, it just came in from nowhere and went on for hours. Jamie and his friends had been drinking all day. I didn’t have anything to drink until later on but it seemed to affect me quickly. I hadn’t eaten much and I was upset. It had only been eight years since I’d lost Mum and the grief was building.”
“Luce, I’m not sure I like where I think this is going.” His jaw was set, his knuckles white.
“Please keep calm and hear me out. I need to tell you now. I can’t live with this secret any longer.”
“It was dark really early because of the snow. Kind of like today. I was a bit upset because some sentimental film on TV brought everything back. And Jamie was drunk. Really drunk. I asked him to stop drinking but he refused. His friends were the same, all laughing and downing shots and boasting about women they’d shagged and intended to shag. The atmosphere there changed. It became edgy. And I didn’t like it. But I was trapped.”
Dale got up then and walked to the window. He stared out across Central Park as Lucie watched, his shoulders tense, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Why do you think? You would have gone after him. Hurt him and got yourself into trouble. I know you Dale and I know you couldn’t have lived with it. It’s different now though.”
He turned to her. “How is it? He ignored you when you were upset and he should have been punished for that.”
Lucie shook her head and patted the coverlet. “Please sit back down.”
He did but he kept one foot on the floor as if he needed to anchor himself in some way.
“In the end, I went to bed about nine o’clock. I thought they could drink themselves to sleep. I couldn’t drop off at first. I was jumpy, afraid even, though I kept telling myself not to be silly; that this was my boyfriend and his friends and that I wasn’t in any danger. But at some point in the night, I drifted off. I only woke up when Maxwell, one of Jamie’s friends, was standing over me.”
“Oh Luce.” Dale covered her hand with his. “I can’t stand this.”
Her throat was tight and her heart thundered at the memory. “He stank of booze. As he leant over me, it was so potent it made me gag. My head was fuzzy with sleep and from the alcohol I’d drunk. He climbed onto the bed and tried to pull my pyjama bottoms down. I was half asleep, Dale, and I tried to stop him.”
“I’ll find him and kill him.”
“No. No.” She shook her head. “He got angry because I wouldn’t let him and he slapped me around the face. Then he tore my top open and grabbed me. It hurt and I was terrified.” She paused, hating talking about that night because it was a blackness that she’d never wanted to recall. “He kept trying to pull my pyjamas down but I hung onto them for dear life. I couldn’t fight him because I was afraid that if I let go, he’d get me naked.”
“Bloody hell, Luce, this is awful.” Dale’s face had blanched.
“But suddenly, something snapped. I was filled with hot anger, fury like I’d never experienced before and I completely lost it. I screamed and reached around me until I grabbed onto something then I brought it down hard. I hit him again and again and again. Something gave beneath my blows and there was hot liquid gushing everywhere.” She looked down and realized that Dale was holding both of her hands in his. Hers were lost there, tiny in his grasp, but all she felt when he held her was safe. She knew he’d never hurt her.
“So he didn’t…”
“No. I knocked him clean out. I slid from under him, which was not easy considering that he was out cold. I dressed quickly, even putting my boots on. When I went into the bathroom, I locked the door and turned on the light. It was then that I saw the blood. So much blood. I cleaned my face, hair and hands which wasn’t easy because I was trembling so badly, then I went back into the bedroom. Cautiously. I saw what I’d grabbed. It was one of those fancy bronze paperweights in the shape of a bulldog. It was where I’d left it, on the pillow next to Maxwell. I picked it up again then nudged him a few times to check if he was alive. He was but his nose was pretty smashed up and there was a wide cut over his right eye.”
“I hope you left the loser there.”
“I did then I went downstairs and found Jamie passed out under the table. I shook him until he woke up and told him what had happened. I was just worried Maxwell would die in his sleep or something. He’d been so drunk. Besides, I had guilt.”
“YOU had guilt?” Dale’s eyes widened.
“Of course. Don’t all victims? I sat in the kitchen next to the knifeblock for the rest of the night, holding the bulldog as if it was some kind of talisman. I felt guilty because I’d trusted Jamie and loved him and wanted to be something I wasn’t. I felt guilty fo
r getting drunk and crying over my mother again and for not realizing how badly things could go. I felt guilty for being weak, for what I’d done to you when I went away and because we never spoke again about what had happened between us. I felt guilty for hating my Mum. I felt guilty for everything, Dale. And that, apart from losing my mother, was my blackest Christmas ever.”
“What happened then?”
“They all woke up in the morning with one hell of a hangover. Maxwell had a black eye and a broken nose. He was so full of remorse, said he was mortified at what he’d tried to do and asked me to forgive him. But I couldn’t. And when Jamie begged me to forgive him, I couldn’t do that either. He failed to protect me, let one of his friends think I was fair game.”
“Why didn’t you report it, Luce? Maxwell should have gone to jail for that and Jamie should’ve been punished and all.”
“I’d let him believe I could be treated like that, like some kind of nothing, I guess, and I was embarrassed too. I couldn’t bear to tell anyone about that night, so I just said that he’d broken my heart and let people read into that what they wanted.”
“Oh, Lucie.”
“I know, right! Do you think less of me?”
He tightened his hands around hers. “Of course not. I just hate that I wasn’t there to protect you. I mean, you were assaulted, Luce. No man should get away with that. What if he did it to someone else?”
Her eyes burned as Dale voiced her thoughts. “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that a million times? It’s gone round and round in my head that I should have reported him but I was so ashamed, Dale. I wondered if it was all my fault, if I’d done something to make Jamie’s friends believe it was okay to do that to me. Did I look at Maxwell the wrong way or encourage him with a smile or the wrong body language? I was consumed with guilt and anger and despair. So I came home.”
“To me?”
“And you helped me. Even though you didn’t know exactly what had happened, you helped me.”
A Very Merry Manhattan Christmas Page 20
