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

by Shari Low

  Lila’s parents were still talking. Sometimes, he thought they were a strange couple. Lila’s mum, Louise, looked just like her daughter, even shared her mannerisms, her voice, her opinions. They said if you wanted to know what your wife would be like in twenty years’ time, look at her mother. Going with that theory, Lila wouldn’t change much at all. Her dad though – Cammy had never quite clicked with him. Apparently he’d worked away most of Lila’s life, and that would probably explain why he always seemed a little… detached? Once or twice, it had actually jarred with him to see how much Lila sought to get his attention, his approval even. That said, he was a nice enough bloke, good company, and Cammy knew he had to stay most definitely on his good side if he wanted to marry his daughter.

  A thought struck him. Shit, should he have asked him first? He should have.

  It wasn’t too late. Lila wasn’t here yet – now was his chance.

  ‘Jack, Louise, you know I love your daughter very much…’

  Crap, he’d gone with an adaptation of the corny line and now Louise was frozen, her glass halfway to her mouth.

  ‘We do,’ Jack replied, a shade of anticipation in his voice.

  ‘Well, I’d like to ask her to marry me and I’d like your blessing.’ There. That was okay, wasn’t it?

  Louise gasped, yelped, then threw her arms around him. He took that as a blessing delivered. Jack, on the other hand, merely nodded, as if he’d been asked if it was Friday or if he’d like a sauce with his steak.

  After a pause, he seemed to muster up the right words, even if they weren’t exactly delivered with overwhelming enthusiasm. ‘That’s fine with us, Cammy. Welcome to the family.’ He shook his hand, and Cammy marvelled again at how cool he was, unruffled, like he was dealing with a situation that really didn’t matter too much at all. Cammy decided never to play him at cards – that kind of poker face would be unbeatable.

  ‘When are you going to ask her?’ Louise chirped, unable to keep the beaming smile off her face or the pure excitement out of her voice.

  ‘Tonight,’ Cammy replied. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t ask you before now. It was a spur of the moment thing.’

  ‘When you know, you just know,’ Jack said, but he wasn’t looking at Cammy, he was looking at his wife, his hand over hers, her grin now even wider, the two of them locked in their own moment.

  The volume from the football tables lowered sharply, and as Cammy turned to investigate, he immediately saw why. Lila had just walked in the door, and she was gliding towards them. She was poetry. Mesmerising, intoxicating poetry. Every second thought he’d never admitted to having, every doubt, every hesitation was squashed right there and then. She was the most breathtaking woman in any room and he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with her.

  A response, it would seem, that was shared by the guys with the fancy footwork at the middle two tables. Almost all of them had eyes on her now, a few of them continuing conversations, but most of them having given up trying to speak and stare at the same time. Cammy saw Lila register their attention, and put just a little more hip action into her strut. She liked to be admired. Nothing wrong with that.

  Jealousy had never been high on his radar. Years of loving Mel while she was married to her first husband had forced him to dampen any twinges of envy and it was a life lesson that had stayed with him. Damn, Mel again! Why did she keep creeping into his thoughts today? He fought to get back on message. Yep, he was thinking about how jealousy was a wasted emotion. Pointless. Anyway, while he knew Lila enjoyed the approval, she would never act on it. Not once had she ever given him a reason to doubt her fidelity and that was saying something given that she could absolutely have any guy she chose, including, it seemed, her pick of these French footballers.

  As he stood to greet her, he felt like the luckiest guy in the room – which was saying something considering at least twenty of his dining companions earned more than ten million a year and were adored by an entire nation of almost 67 million people.

  Lila kissed both her parents before sliding into the seat to the left of Cammy.

  ‘Hey babe, tough day?’ he asked her and watched as a shadow crossed her face.

  ‘It wasn’t great. You know one of those days when you know what you want to achieve and you just can’t get there? That was today.’

  ‘Did the last appointment not work out?’ he asked, aware that he wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about. Lila visited doctors, they then ordered her company’s products. That was about as much as he’d picked up because she avoided talking about work at home. ‘Way too boring – let’s talk about something else,’ she’d say when he tried to take an interest and ask her about it.

  She clocked the bottle of champagne in the ice bucket at the side of the table. Cristal. Her favourite. ‘Oooh, are we celebrating something?’ she asked. There was an irrepressible chirp from her mother and Cammy thought for a moment that she’d given the game away, but then saw that Lila had already been distracted by the two rows of tables to her right.

  ‘‘Is that the… the…’ If she hadn’t had Botox, her brow would have been frowning in puzzlement.

  ‘French football team,’ Cammy answered, while filling the glass in front of her with bubbly liquid. And, he saw, a couple of them were still casting glances in Lila’s direction.

  There was no avoiding her reaction. Back a little straighter, boobs a little higher, smile a little wider and a dramatic flick of her hair. He knew she probably had no idea she was doing it – it was a completely unconscious reaction.

  Great. The night he’s proposing to the woman he loves and he’s in a packed, noisy restaurant, with other blokes ogling his intended fiancée.

  This wasn’t going well. Perhaps he should postpone, but he’d already told her parents and he definitely didn’t trust Louise to be able to keep this one a secret – she was already sitting there with an expression of rapt anticipation that was hard to miss.

  It was a relief when the waiter appeared in front of them with his tablet out, ready to take their order. No common pads and pens in this place.

  Lila hadn’t had a chance to look at the menu but he knew that wouldn’t matter.

  ‘A green salad, dressing on the side,’ she said, repeating the same order that she placed in every restaurant they ever went to. No meat. No fish. Nothing other than green salad leaves, kale and spinach. As a rule, he avoided carbs and treated his body well, but Lila took discipline to a whole other level.

  Except, it would seem, when she was responding to some casual interest from a nearby table. As he gave his order – steak, side salad – he noticed her flick her hair yet again. Okay, time to get this back on track. Small talk. Get control back with casual conversation.

  ‘So, Jack, Louise, have you booked any holidays this year?’ he asked. Great. He now sounded like a hairdresser making chitchat over the sound of a blow-drier.

  ‘Actually, we just booked yesterday – we’re going to Mauritius for two weeks over New Year,’ Louise said, before turning to Lila. ‘Your dad has always wanted to go there, but don’t worry, darling, we’ll still be here for Christmas.’

  Cammy spotted Lila’s fleeting shadow of disappointment. ‘But you’ll be away for New Year? We always spend New Year together…’ There was no hiding the touch of petulance that had taken residence at the table. ‘And especially this year…’

  Had he heard that right? It was so damn busy in this restaurant that he could barely hear himself speak, never mind pick up everything the others said. Yet, he was sure he’d heard her say…

  ‘Why?’ Cammy blurted. ‘Why “especially this year”?’ Bollocks. Did she know? Had she sussed it out? Did she want her parents here to celebrate the end of the year that she’d got engaged?

  She shrugged, stuttering, ‘Oh, I don’t know – I just meant it would be nice for us all to be together every New Year now that Dad’s retired. We missed so many years when he was working away.’

  Okay, phew. It was
fine. Her head was in a different place altogether and she had absolutely no idea he was about to pop the question.

  ‘We’ll have lots of years ahead of us,’ her dad said, dismissing her objections. Cammy felt a twinge of sympathy. For just an instant, she looked crushed, but then she immediately rallied, smile back on, and changed the subject. That was why he loved her, he thought again. She never let anything get her down.

  Instead, true to form, she pulled out her phone. ‘Let’s get a picture!’ she rearranged her position, so that she could capture the full scene, the gorgeous table, the champagne, her mum and dad, Cammy, and of course her, eyes wide, chin down, megawatt smile.

  ‘I’ll post it later – can’t see in this light if it needs tweaking,’ she said, and by that, Cammy knew she meant a touch of Photoshopping. A photo didn’t go up unless it was a hundred per cent flattering. Ok, so that might be a tad pretentious. Or maybe it was just the way things were done these days. Sometimes the ten years in age difference between them felt like nothing – he’d always prided himself on being hip, current and frequently immature – but sometimes it felt like they came from completely different generations.

  Somehow, he managed to keep it together throughout their starters and main course. If Lila noticed that her mother was particularly smiley, she didn’t comment, and for once, he was grateful that her dad kept the conversation going with endless talk about golf. He put on his best ‘paying attention’ face, he laughed when the others laughed, he asked questions when he thought they were relevant. By the time the plates were cleared away after the main course, he felt like he had a fairly good chance of acing the entire history of golf on A Question of Sport.

  The dessert menus came out. ‘Nothing for me, thanks,’ Lila said, waving dismissively.

  ‘Nor me,’ said her mum, her gestures completely mirroring Lila’s. ‘And you shouldn’t either, Jack. Remember what the doctor said about your cholesterol.’

  Bugger. Cammy had forgotten that he was with the family that never bloody ate dessert. It was a stupid idea in the first place, one that he clearly hadn’t thought through. This proposal planning stuff was way out of his league. There was obviously the reason he’d never tried it before.

  ‘Shall we just get the bill and go?’ Lila asked. ‘I’m already feeling completely full. I might actually pop out to the 24-hour gym later and work this off.’

  Work off a green salad? Sometimes her dedication to her body went too far.

  Lila turned to the waiter again. ‘Can we just…’

  Nooooooo. They couldn’t wrap this up now. He had a ring to deliver, a proposal to make.

  ‘Actually, I’d like a dessert,’ Cammy blurted. The other three rounded on him in surprise.

  ‘But you never eat dessert,’ Louise said.

  Cammy tried to give her a loaded look, but she wasn’t grasping the significance. He should really have filled Jack and Louise in on the running order for the proposal before Lila got there.

  Lila, meantime, was looking less than impressed. ‘Can’t you just get something at home. I’m, like, so tired, babe.’

  Oh God, this was going to turn into an actual argument. Great. A fight, right before he asked her to marry him. This wasn’t helping the case for an acceptance.

  ‘I just fancy trying the new meringue dessert – Neil was raving about it when he popped into the shop this afternoon.’ He was a terrible liar. Terrible. She was sure to pick up on it. Or maybe not…

  Lila sighed, then shrugged her acquiescence, but the pouting expression made it clear she wasn’t happy.

  ‘Can you ask Neil for the dish we discussed earlier please?’ He blurted before any more protest could be made, before turning back to the others. ‘And would you guys like coffee?’

  Jack and Louise agreed immediately, and Lila reluctantly followed, sighing ‘I suppose I could do with a shot of caffeine.’

  The waiter nodded, and went off to find his manager, looking more than a little flustered. Cammy had no way of knowing that this had something to do with the fact that Jude, twenty-one, working at GRILLED to pay off his student loan, had suddenly realised that he had left the ring on an empty beer crate when he’d popped out for a cigarette earlier in the evening.

  ‘It won’t take long,’ Cammy tried to console Lila. This wasn’t going well. Flattery. That was what was needed here. ‘By the way, you look incredible tonight…’

  She’d already turned to look at the other diners and wasn’t listening. ‘Did you say that was the actual French football team there?’ she asked.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘So which ones are the big stars. I mean, they’re not all famous, are they?’

  Cammy’s knowledge of football was up there with his expertise on the schedule of the Dover to Calais ferry, so he shrugged. ‘No idea. Jack?’

  Lila’s dad wasn’t sure either. If it had been the French golf team, he’d have been able to give them their history, statistics, and inside leg measurements.

  Lila stood up and tossed her napkin on the table. ‘I’ll just ask them all then.’

  Cammy watched, horrified, as she marched over, and leaned down to whisper in the ear of a dark-haired guy who could give Ronaldo a run for his millions in the looks department. And yes, the only reason he knew anything about Ronaldo was because he had a fashion line. Sometimes Cammy really questioned his ‘bloke’ credentials.

  Whatever Lila said to him, the man was in full agreement – well, of course he was going to be - and immediately put his head towards hers and grinned as she held up her phone and took a selfie.

  ‘Oh, what’s she like,’ Louise chuckled. ‘That girl and her photos. She’s always been the same. Completely adorable.’ Her mother’s encouragement did, perhaps, give a clue as to why Lila had embraced the world of the selfie.

  Her father said nothing, just sipped at his champagne while checking his phone. Probably looking at golf scores from some tournament going on somewhere. If the guy was interested in anything that was going on around him, he hid it well.

  The only good thing about Lila’s distraction over at Le Selfie Central, was that it bought Cammy some more time to mentally prepare for what was about to happen. He could do this, he told himself yet again. His internal dialogue was like a stuck record today.

  But he could do it. He definitely could.

  ‘Lila, you know you mean everything in the world to me…’ Nope, made him sound like a X-Factor contestant talking about why their only hope of a lifetime of happiness was to get enough votes to go through to judges’ houses.

  ‘Lila, until I met you I had no idea how much I could love someone…’ Somewhere, in the truth halls of the universe, a lie detector test was wailing to signal a big fat porky.

  ‘Lila…’ He was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter, looking slightly harassed, and shiny around the edges. He was clutching a tall glass with some kind of meringue in it, resting on a silver tray. Cammy cast his eyes across, looking for the ring. It wasn’t there.

  Shit. No ring. It was supposed to be on the silver tray. This couldn’t be happening.

  Lila was still ten feet away, now on the second table of players. Cammy could feel the anxiety rising. No way. He hadn’t spent the whole day sorting this out only for it to go horribly wrong yet again, this time at the most crucial part.

  It couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t.

  ‘Eh, I think,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘that Neil mentioned this dessert came with a special decoration?’

  Blank looks from Jude, the waiter. Obviously subtlety was wasted here.

  ‘The ring…’ he hissed, causing Louise to gasp and clap a silent ovation of excitement. Thankfully Lila was too busy with les hommes to notice.

  Jude was a picture of confusion. ‘It’s there,’ he whispered, gesturing to the meringue. Thankfully, Cammy didn’t realise that Jude had spent the last ten minutes going through the recycling bin to find the bloody ring, giving it a quick wipe over and burying it in th
e meringue.

  Cammy followed his gaze and saw it, the thin band poking out of the top of the meringue. This wasn’t what he’d planned at all. Neil was bloody dead when he got a hold of him. But maybe… maybe it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps, this could actually work out kinda cute. Louise had spotted the ring too now and her eyes were already glistening. Lila and her mum cried a lot. It was one of the first things he learned about them. Happy things. Sad things. Exciting things. Gorgeous things. Mostly any kind of things could bring on floods of tears that warranted careful, expert counteraction so that they didn’t ruin make-up.

  Okay, they were back on track. They just had to wait for Lila to return so they could get on with it. A few guys still left to get snaps with. Two now. One. And, oh for Christ’s sake, she was chatting to him now. He saw her shake her head, adopt an expression of… what?... apology? Then she pointed over at Cammy and the other guy seemed to get the message, responding with a very Gallic shrug.

  Ah, he must have been asking her out. That was his girl. Asked out by a handsome sports star, and still she rebuked him because she was with Cammy. It just went to prove how much she loved him and betrayal or infidelity just weren’t in her make-up.

  He was a lucky guy and he’d be even luckier when they were married.

  It was another few moments before she got back to the table, and she sat down with a dramatic flourish. ‘Oh my goodness, those guys are charmers. I’ll go online when we get home and suss out who the big names are. I’m only posting pics with them. No point in putting up snaps of the nobodies.’

  Cammy was barely listening. Right, new plan.

  ‘Babe, try a bit of this, it’s delicious,’ he said, pushing the tall glass of meringue towards her. She’d look down, see the ring, understand the meaning, scream with delight, say yes, and he’d scoop her up, swing her round, hoping that her heels took out at least a couple of the footie guys. Either way, it was happening, she was about to realise this was one of those life-defining moments. It was going to change everything. Make them the happiest couple that…