One Day in December: The Christmas read you won't want to put down

by Shari Low

  Apparently not.

  Caro saw immediately that the need for privacy had bypassed the gorgeous woman with the expensive blonde highlights and the gleaming white teeth, her head turned so she was looking over her shoulder, pouting at the camera, her slender figure wrapped in a gorgeous white dress, her feet in shoes with red soles.

  Click.

  Caro was scrolling down the stranger’s Facebook profile now, a vicarious spectator to her life.

  Lila Anderson. In a relationship. Works at Radcal Pharmaceuticals. Went to Strathclyde University. A complete stranger, nothing to see here, time to move on… yet Caro couldn’t seem to stop looking at the images and words on the screen.

  The stranger at the gym. In a restaurant. In New York, kissing a very handsome man she called her ‘Bae’. Caro knew from listening to the kids spouting today’s slang that ‘Bae’ meant ‘babe’ or ‘lover’. The stranger in a restaurant, with her arm around… her arm around…

  Caro pinched two fingers together and then spread them to zoom in.

  The stranger with her arm around a man that looked very familiar. Her eyes flicked to the status update at the top of the post. ‘This guy! Happy birthday to my amazing dad! Jack Anderson, you’ve spoiled me for twenty-nine years and now it’s my turn to spoil you. Love you so much!’

  The sound of her mum’s laboured breaths beside her made Caro realise that she hadn’t exhaled for several seconds.

  The resemblance was uncanny. Incredible. But of course, it wasn’t him. This girl lived in… She checked the tag – The Rogano, Glasgow. Yep, Glasgow. The city that her dad had been working in for decades. A tiny, but persistent, seed of suspicion began to take hold.

  Her eyes went back to the man in the photo, the one who bore a startling likeness to the man she called ‘Dad’ too. But it couldn’t be the same man. It was a ridiculous thought.

  The facts and timescales didn’t add up at all. This Lila person said she was twenty-nine. Caro was thirty-two. There was no way her dad could have another daughter of almost the same age. As far as she knew, her mum and dad had never had any separations, and there had never been a hint of an affair, and surely there was no way something like that could have been covered up for 29 years?

  And anyway, her dad’s birthday was… She scrolled back and looked at the date on the man’s birthday post and the power to exhale was temporarily suspended yet again. November 1st. Same birthday as her father. They’d rarely managed to celebrate it on the actual day because he was invariably away working in… Glasgow.

  No breath.

  Her gaze went to the cake. 54. Same age as her dad.

  Click. Photographs. A lifetime’s worth. Retro pics of Girl With the Same Surname when she was five. Eight. Twelve. Sweet sixteen. Maybe 25. And countless others since then.

  Loads of the early pics showed younger versions of the man who had been around when Caro was five, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty-five. But not thirty. He’d left by then, a couple of years ago, right after her mum was diagnosed. He didn’t come back.

  She’d called him a couple of times. Rebuked him. He’d told her this was ‘his time’

  In all honesty, there had never been a time that wasn’t. Their lives had always orbited around his, fitted in with his schedule, sprang into action when he was around.

  Click. Click. Click. This had to be him, but it couldn’t be. This made no sense at all. None. It had to be one of those surreal coincidences. Had to be.

  She went through them all again, lifted the phone to call him and then stopped. No point. Last time she’d tried, she’d got an automated message saying his number was no longer in service.

  It was probably just as well. What would she say? Hey Dad, why are you on someone else’s Facebook page? Why does someone else call you dad? Where have you been going all these years? Where are you now? Why did you betray Mum, leave me, cut us off and walk out, you faithless, cold-hearted, arrogant, bastard?

  It took a moment for her breathing to return to normal. Hate and fury, both emotions that rarely featured in her personality, had taken root on the day he left and they had grown branches that had wrapped around her and were now squeezing her ribcage.

  She despised him. When he walked out, she’d thought she couldn’t hate him more. Now, looking at these images, she realised there was a whole pool of hate she hadn’t even dipped her toe in yet. Her mum, here, without the man who had promised to love her in sickness and health. Him, away somewhere playing happy bloody families.

  She didn’t want to believe it was true.

  It wasn’t.

  But if it was, then he’d spent a lifetime lying to her.

  Now, for the cost of a seventy-quid ticket, she was going to find out.

  This train was taking her to Glasgow, though she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do when she got there. Thanks to Facebook, and the fact that Stranger With The Same Surname… Lila Anderson… had no privacy settings on her account, she knew what company she worked for. She knew the bars she liked to drink in. It wasn’t much to go on, but maybe it was enough.

  She always warned the kids that any weirdo could track them down through their social network posts if they disclosed too much information. Now she’d become the weirdo, following the clues, desperate to find out if her whole life had been a lie, if her father had been in a family-share situation that she’d been blissfully unaware of.

  It felt so, so wrong.

  She still had time to back out, to forget all of this and just go back to her life, her mother. She could get off at Perth, change tracks, get the first train back.

  As if the universe was sensing her hesitation, her phone beeped, bringing the cavalry storming to her aid.

  A text message from Todd. Her mum’s sister, Auntie Pearl’s son, so technically, her cousin but the closest thing she had to a brother. Caro knew that everything she’d been through would have been even more devastating if he hadn’t been there to make her laugh and hold her when she cried. They were the same age, but while she’d chosen teaching, he’d gone into hairdressing, got engaged twice to beautiful women, then surprised everyone by falling in love with Jared, a Canadian colourist, at a styling convention. Five years later, they were still together. Jared was a lucky guy.

  She read the text.

  Are you on train? Have you lost the plot yet? Shall I arrange for Davina McCall to meet you to discuss long-lost father?

  Smiling, she replied.

  Yes. No. Tell Davina to be on standby.

  She was doing this. No backing out. No turning around.

  The next beep came a few seconds later.

  Had to promise her my body, but she agreed to help. Will call you when coffee has restored power of speech. Love you.

  Love you back.

  She’d just put her phone down when the snack trolley stopped at her side. She bought two cups of tea and two mini packets of shortbread, pushing one towards her travel companion, accepting his thanks with a friendly, ‘You’re very welcome.’

  Lovely girl, he thought again. The kind that any dad would be proud to call his daughter.

  Lovely man, Caro thought. The kind that any daughter would be proud to call her dad.

  The kind of man she would be proud to call her dad.

  Because Caro hadn’t had a father for a couple of years now – and she was terrifyingly aware that she might discover she’d never truly had one at all.

  Chapter 2

  Cammy

  He listened as the familiar chain of morning sounds permeated through from Lila’s dressing room to the bedroom. The patter of the shower. The buzz of the electric toothbrush. The gurgle of the coffee maker that she’d put there so she didn’t have to go the whole twenty feet to the kitchen to make her morning cuppa. The hum of the hairdryer. The ping of her straighteners. The clang as she dropped item after item of make-up on to the mirrored surface of the dressing table. The rustle of the clothes as she picked out an outfit. The thud as she pulled out a box of shoes
and let it fall to the floor so she could step into them.

  Cammy pushed himself up in bed, groaning inwardly as an ache spread across the back of his shoulders. He’d gone too hard in the gym last night. He’d got lost in thoughts of today before he realised he’d done ten extra reps on the bench press.

  He reached over to the mirrored bedside table and grabbed the remote control. This was Lila’s place, bought and decorated before he’d met her, thus the over-excess of reflective surfaces. It wasn’t his thing. He owned a hipster gents’ menswear shop called CAMDEN, in the Merchant City area of Glasgow, and – much as most of his regular customers were great – working there exposed him to enough vanity, posing and borderline narcissism for any lifetime.

  ‘I only keep you around because you look like that in the morning.’ The voice from the door.

  He shrugged, grinning as he went for his usual retort. ‘I only keep you around because I’m partial to people who share my shallowness,’ he replied, rewarded with a flash of her smile, the one that he’d fallen in love with the first time he saw her six months ago. It was a June afternoon, just a few months after he’d opened the shop, and she’d come in with her dad to pick out a new suit. Her dad had left with a pretty cool Ted Baker number, and Lila had left with his phone number. She’d called later that night, they’d met up, and he’d moved out of his rented flat and in with her a week later. He had no regrets. Although, her morning routine could definitely do with a volume control. He put it down to the fact that she was ten years younger than him so she woke up with far more energy.

  ‘Right, I’m away,’ she said, distracted, and he knew she’d be thinking about the location of her phone, her keys, her make-up bag – all the things that she lost on an hourly basis. When it came to her job, a pharmaceutical rep for a big blue-chip company, she raked in a substantial salary because she was religiously organised and highly efficient. When it came to everything else, she was borderline chaotic. It was one of the dichotomies in her personality that he adored.

  She was already out of the door, teetering on heels that made indentations in the thick pile carpet, before he realised there’d been no kiss, no hug, no promise to call. That had happened a few times lately, but he wasn’t worried. Didn’t everyone fall into familiar patterns after they’d been together for a while? Anyway, if it was an injection of romance that was required, today was going to be the day for it. Or rather, tonight was going to be the night.

  He slid out of bed and headed to the shower, still wet, with the aroma of her Dior shower gel hanging in the air.

  Digby, his assistant manager was opening up the shop for him today. First time for everything, but he had total faith in him. And besides, he’d asked Jen, who owned the holiday shop next door, to keep an eye out and make sure it was all okay. If there were any issues she’d call him.

  He sang along with the song on Clyde radio – ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’. A retro classic from Simple Minds. He had no idea when he’d first heard it, couldn’t remember learning the lyrics, yet he knew every word of it. It was just one of those songs that was just there, in the West of Scotland DNA.

  His shower routine and the song finished at the same time, and he climbed out, pulled a towel around his waist and shaved, something that he only did on weekends and special occasions.

  Today was definitely the latter.

  The most special occasion of all, if it all went to plan. And he had no doubt it would, because the people in charge would make sure of…

  The doorbell. There they were. Half an hour early. He should have expected it. They’d probably been parked outside since sunrise waiting for Lila to leave.

  Dropping the razor in the sink, he wiped the last of the shaving foam off his face, and headed to the door, delivering an exaggerated bow as it swung open.

  Two women. Perhaps, other than Lila and his lovely mum up in Perth, his favourite two women in the world. Josie and Val.

  Actually, there had been one other. Mel was the only other woman he’d ever truly loved, but it had been one-way traffic and she had long left his life.

  Even now, years later, thinking of her caused a tightening in his throat so he was thankful for the bedlam brought about by the loud and forceful entry of the new arrivals.

  Josie was blissfully unaware that she was heading for seventy, the spiky-haired love-granny of Annie Lennox and Billy Idol. Cammy had worked with Josie and Mel in another lifetime, when they’d been employed in the His and Hers departments of Mel’s lingerie boutique, a store that was in the same premises as the one he owned now. They’d spent every day together for many years, become family, before he left and headed over to LA for a few years. He’d had a great time there, but it was all surface stuff. More and more, he realised that he missed his old life, and wanted more than casual dating and wheatgrass smoothies. So he’d come home. Not to Perth, the city he’d grown up in, much as he adored his parents, who still lived there in his childhood home.

  No, he’d come back to Glasgow. Mel was long gone. The killer was that she’d married Josie’s son and went off to live abroad. But at least he still had a circle of friends that included Josie and her best friend, Val, a fifty-something Glaswegian with a perfect blonde bob and pink pencilled lips. Her heart and personality were far larger than her five-foot frame, and she collected waifs and strays, Cammy included, like other people collected shoes.

  Val ruffled his hair as she teetered past, in the wake of Josie’s steel stiletto heels, the Ant to Josie’s septuagenarian Dec.

  ‘For the love of God, Cammy, put a top on. My libido hasn’t been stirred since about 1996, and you don’t want to waken the beast,’ Josie barked, in a voice that came courtesy of a love of laughter and twenty cigs a day.

  They barged ahead of him, into the kitchen and, without waiting to be asked, set about making a pot of tea, to go with the box of caramel wafers that Josie produced from her handbag.

  By the time Cammy joined them, only a few moments later, he was fully dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, the table was set, the tea was steaming and the wrappers had been discarded. Cammy thought, not for the first time, that if the country ever considered invading a nation, they should send these two in first to clear a path using the mighty power of tea and chocolate-covered biscuits.

  ‘Right then, love,’ Val started, opening a notebook and getting out a pen. ‘Let’s go over today’s schedule.’

  ‘Hang on, I wish to interject,’ Josie, well, interjected.

  ‘Cammy, are you sure about this, my darling? Because you know, and I say this from a place of love, you could do better.’

  He came close to spitting out his tea.

  ‘Josie! That’s enough. For God’s sake, this is an anxious day for the poor boy and you’re only going to make it worse. Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he’s sure.’ Val turned to him. ‘You are sure, aren’t you son?’

  ‘I’m sure, Val,’ he said, ‘and Josie, I’m pushing forty. I’m not some crazy kid rushing into this. I know for sure, it’s right. I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.’

  ‘You thought that last time and look how that worked out,’ Josie said, not unkindly, but making the point.

  Cammy wasn’t going there, refused to pick at that scab.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he repeated.

  Josie pursed her lips, unconvinced. ‘Fine. I suppose. I mean, I could test your resolve by listing all her bad points again. Only, I’m not sure if we’ve got time if we want to stick to the schedule.’

  Val interjected on his behalf for the second time. ‘Josie, insert that caramel log in yer gob and don’t remove it until you have something civil to say.’

  Josie rolled her eyes and chewed in silence, her discomfort at the unnatural state clearly killing her. Josie didn’t do silence. She didn’t do restraint. And she definitely didn’t do withholding of her opinions.

  To outsiders, it probably seemed like a strange friendship, the successful, good-looking man-about-town entrepreneur and the aging pun
k rocker with a mouth like a sewer, but she’d forcefully adopted him the minute they’d met a decade or so before – some might call it more of a hostage situation – and he’d loved her ever since. People of all ages graduated to Josie and Val. They had an extended family that spanned the generations, and they were always happy to welcome newcomers into the fold, especially guys like Cammy, who had little family of their own.

  They’d been the first people he’d shared his decision with, the first ones to know what he’d planned, the cohorts that were here now, helping him with his plan, even if they weren’t entirely on board.

  ‘Right, what’s first then?’ Val said, looking at the checklist in front of her. ‘Okay, just so you know, we drove past the restaurant on the way here and it’s looking gorgeous. All the Christmas lights are up in the square outside, and it’s going to be perfect.’

  Cammy nodded. Despite Josie’s antagonism and blatant disapproval, this was why he’d agreed to her offer of help. Now that she and Val had both semi-retired, they had time on their hands, and they were the type of women who let nothing stand in the way of a good party. There was no obstacle they couldn’t climb over, no issue they couldn’t solve.

  Josie harrumphed and Cammy feigned exasperation. ‘Why didn’t you leave me to do this on my own if you disapprove so much?’ he teased her. ‘You know why? Because you’re so bloody nosy.’

  Josie shook her head. ‘Nope, I just decided that there was more chance of me talking you out of it if I came along for the ride. It’s a tactic of war. You just don’t know when the ambush will come.’

  There was no point in even trying to act offended, so Cammy laughed instead. Josie was all talk. Okay, so she didn’t love Lila, but she’d come round eventually, and in the meantime, although his ears would probably be bleeding by the end of the day, there was no one else he would rather do this with.

  He was sure about marrying Lila. Absolutely sure. Wasn’t he?

  Of course he was. The six months they’d been together had been the best of his life. He’d only just moved back to Glasgow after a few years in the States, and although he’d rekindled his old friendships, opened up the shop and found somewhere to live, it was Lila that had convinced him that coming back to Glasgow had been the right decision. They’d totally fitted from their first night together, even though it wasn’t a typical first date. She’d called him from a hotel bar after a fight with her boyfriend and he’d picked her up, taken her for a late night drink, kissed her, and that had been it for both of them. At first he’d worried that it was a rebound from the boyfriend she’d left that night, but it wasn’t long before that didn’t even cross his mind. She never mentioned the guy again. Cammy didn’t ask. It was inconsequential. All that mattered was that he wanted to be with her and she wanted to be with him.