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

by Shari Low

  Almost everything.

  ‘Oh, and Dad, while we’re on life-changing events, I’ve switched from medicine to law. I’m not going to discuss it with you. It’s a done deal and I’m much happier. Right Mum, let’s go.’

  Bernadette had to suppress a smile. Good on him for getting it in there. She couldn’t help wondering what Kenneth would be most upset about tonight after they’d all gone – the fact that Bernadette had left him or Stuart was dropping medicine. She suspected the latter.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ Nina said, and for the first time since Bernadette could recall, she didn’t kiss her dad on the way out. Despite Nina’s conciliatory words, there was no forgetting what she’d just seen. That was Kenneth’s fence to mend. It was between them. She was officially absolving herself from any responsibility for Kenneth’s relationships with his children or anyone else. Although, she would give Marge a call and thank her for all the years of friendly chat on the phone. She’d miss her.

  But for now? Time to go. Her legs were weak, her shoulders heavy, yet she didn’t think she had ever felt the kind of euphoria that was surging through her veins right now. Stuart put his arm around her shoulders as they walked down the hall.

  No more drama. No more pain. No more stress.

  Bernadette wasn’t even looking outwards when she opened the door, so it took her a moment to register the scene in front of her. A young woman. Blonde. Beautiful. Maybe a friend of Nina’s? How would she know Nina was there tonight? Must be someone at the wrong house. That happened sometimes on this road.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Bernadette asked.

  ‘You’re Kenneth Manson’s wife,’ the young woman said in a tone that was more of a statement than a question.

  Bernadette nodded. ‘I am. Sorry, who are you?’

  ‘I’m Lila Anderson.’

  Chapter 28

  Lila

  The call had come just after eight o’clock, seconds before Lila walked into the restaurant. Kenneth.

  ‘Hey baby, were you missing me?’ she teased playfully.

  ‘Were you at my house?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Were. You. At. My. House?’

  ‘No, of course not! I wouldn’t…’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  How did he know? Had someone seen her? Reported her car? Did he have a CCTV camera that she hadn’t spotted? Oh God, he sounded so angry, so absolutely furious that she kept waiting for him to come out with a punchline and tell her he was joking. She’d never heard him like this before.

  ‘Baby, I…’ she stuttered, playing for time, realising that she had to come up with something fast. Maybe he’d just nipped home and spotted her car driving past him. Yes, that must be it. ‘I think I may have driven down your street,’ she said hesitantly. ‘I’d… I’d…’ She needed an excuse. Any excuse. Something convincing. ‘I was picking some things up for my mum at a gorgeous little deli not far from there. And… Oh, wait a minute, I pulled over to take a call. The office needed some figures, so I had to get my laptop out…’ She was warming to her story now, ‘That might have been in your street. I can’t quite remember. But I certainly wasn’t at you house. Why would I be there?’

  It was lame, not an entirely waterproof story, but it was all she could do in the circumstances. He didn’t reply immediately so Lila could sense he was thinking about it. That told her he didn’t have actual proof she was at his house, knocking on his door, determined to throw his whole life into chaos. She decided to probe further, but go with teasing and cajoling in the hope of de-escalating things.

  ‘Anyway, my gorgeous grump, how did you know where I was? Are you missing me so much you’re having me followed?’ She added a giggle for effect.

  Another pause. ‘Your Facebook post about fucking lipstick. You, in the car. I recognised the street in the background.’ Her stomach lurched just a little. Shit! Number one, she hadn’t thought of that. And number two, even if she had, she wouldn’t have thought there was enough of the background in the shot for someone to identify it. But then, he was the smartest guy that she’d ever met. Wasn’t that one of the things that turned her on most?

  ‘Baby, I’m sorry if I gave you a shock, but I promise it was all perfectly innocent.’ It wasn’t. And no, her plans hadn’t changed, but if she was going to reveal all to that frump he’d married, she didn’t want to give him advance warning.

  ‘Look, Lila,’ he didn’t sound angry now, maybe just a bit weary. Well, she could certainly make him feel better. In fact she could… ‘Maybe we should take a break from this for a moment.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just think that we need a break.’

  What was he saying? The words were floating out there but she couldn’t quite grab them and make sense of them. A break. They’d just got back together again a couple of months ago after the last break. That’s not what they needed – what they needed was for him to leave his wife so they could be together.

  He was the first to fill the silence. ‘It’s a really busy time for me at work, and my son and daughter need my time…’

  ‘I need your time,’ she blurted.

  ‘Lila, I know, and I want to give it to you. I do. But my schedule is just so intense. You deserve someone who can be with you all the time, and until I’m free to be with you, that can’t happen.’

  Now it was her turn to get angry. She’d heard all this before, last time he’d called it off, and the previous time too. He loved her – the fact that he kept coming back proved that. ‘Make it happen! For god’s sake, Ken, it’s not difficult. People leave their wives all the time, marriages break up, it’s no big deal.’

  ‘It would be a big deal to my children. Look, you know I don’t love Bernadette. It’s always been you. But I can’t just walk out – the consequences right now are too high. My children would be devastated…’

  ‘They’re adults, living their own lives! Nina is almost the same age as me! I really don’t think her world will stop if her parents divorce now.’

  The urge to scream was almost too strong to ignore. This wasn’t happening. Not now. She wasn’t giving him the chance to push her aside yet again. For seven years she’d waited for him to make good on his promises, and yes, she knew it all came from a place of decency. He just didn’t want to be the bad guy who left his millstone of a wife. Well too bad. Time had come. After this stupid meal was over she was ending it for good. He’d thank her for it in the end. In the meantime, she wasn’t going to give him a chance to finish what he’d been trying to say.

  ‘Listen, darling, I’m just about to walk into a restaurant now… and by the way, I’m wearing that dress that drove you wild in London. I’ll call you later. Kiss kiss. Love you.’

  She disconnected the call and threw her phone into her clutch, trying desperately to steady her breathing. She wasn’t prone to violence, but she had such an urge to kick something, anything. The huge window at the front of Grilled would do. Although, nothing was worth scuffing her Louboutins. And nothing was worth spoiling this make-up, hair and dress. The only way to deal with this was to focus on the big picture. Ken would be hers, tonight – just as soon as she managed to put herself in front of Bernadette. End of story. Getting angry would only make her Botox work harder, so there was no point. Instead, she paused for a moment, inhaled, exhaled, put a huge smile on her face and entered the restaurant.

  The difference in the energy was obvious the minute she walked in. Usually, the restaurant was so quiet, intimate and romantic, but tonight it was loud and busy. For a moment, her irritation flared again, until she saw the root of the transformation – two tables of impeccably dressed men, some of them dinging the bell at the top of the attractive scale.

  In a split second, the vibe changed, as one by one they spotted her, fixed eyes, and she felt the adrenalin start to kick in. Her reaction to the attention was instant – she threw back her shoulders, worked those hips, adopted a catwalk strut, while all the time acting completely oblivious.

/>   By the time she reached the table with Cammy – who was looking decidedly hot tonight – and her mum and dad, the buzz of the entrance has almost dissipated her earlier fury. A break? Ken didn’t mean that. He loved her. It was just some stupid knee-jerk reaction to the photo. Note to self – must be more careful about location of photos. A second though struck her – he’d obviously been looking at her Facebook page. He wasn’t on social media at all, so he must just have been checking out her latest posts. That wasn’t the actions of a man who wanted a break.

  That realisation was enough to get her back on an even keel. Telling Bernadette was the right thing to do. She had never been surer of anything. In the meantime, she just had to get through this dinner.

  By the time the main course came, that was proving tougher than she anticipated. Cammy was in a weird mood – edgy and distracted. While her mother… urgh, she really had to have a word with her. Dad was totally monopolising her attention and it was really starting to get annoying. Much as she’d never admit it, she actually preferred it when he was away two weeks out of the month, because then she had Mum all to herself. Now they just talked about their plans to travel and bloody golf. They hadn’t shown a moment of interest in her all night. Pathetic. And all that stuff about going away for New Year? Not if she could help it. This was going to be her first Hogmanay with Ken and she wanted her parents to share it.

  To make it worse, she couldn’t even use her favourite Cristal to take the edge off because she wanted to be able to drive later. This was no time to get hammered. One glass, that was all she could have. Maximum. Bummer.

  The only way to get through it was to amuse herself with a few photos. Her with Cammy. Her with Mum. Her with Dad. Her with some French footballers that were dining there too.

  It took a good fifteen minutes to work her way around them all, but it was hardly a hardship. Four of them asked for her number and not one of them felt her up. One of them had been particularly keen, Jean Pascal something-or-other. If she was single, she totally would. And if Ken could see her now he would soon shut up about taking a bloody break.

  Back at the table, she was out of options for passing the time. All she wanted to do was get the bill, get out of there, and then head over to Ken’s house, knock at the door, reveal all. She’d even made up some lie about wanting to go to the gym to set up an alibi. Then Cammy tried to get her to order dessert. Why would he even think she’d want to join him in the pudding club? Did she look like a Bernadette? Someone who would let herself go and sail off on a sea of carbs? And why was he being so insistent about it? It was only a bloody meringue.

  This was so tiresome and she needed it to be over, needed to be out of there and was about to call it a night, when Cammy stuck his fingers right in the pudding, fished something out…. What the hell was he doing? What was going on?

  Why was he sliding off his chair. Had he dropped something? Taken ill? Oh, hopefully not because then they’d need to wait for an ambulance and they’d never bloody get out of here. No, he wasn’t falling. He was on one knee. And now he was looking at her, all misty-eyed.

  A moment of realisation dawned.

  He was holding a ring. Her eyes fixed on it. It was the most unremarkable ring she’d ever seen. Nothing to it. A band. A tiny stone. Seriously, was that it?

  The rabble of noise in the restaurant seemed to drop, as people started to stare and she felt her face begin to burn. This was, like, so mortifying.

  For a split second, her gaze shifted to her mum, who was, as far as her latest round of Botox would allow, bloody beaming with glee too – but there was no surprise there. She knew! She absolutely knew Cammy was planning this and she didn’t even give her a warning? He was speaking, but all she caught was the last line…

  ‘Lila Anderson, will you marry me?’

  Was this a joke? One of those prank videos that would go viral on Facebook?

  It had to be, because otherwise he meant it, he really was down there asking her to spend the rest of her life with him.

  She couldn’t think. Couldn’t process. Couldn’t speak.

  Marry him? She didn’t even want to stay with him. Sure, they’d had a good time but this was never a ‘forever’ deal.

  The stares were burning into her skin now. The irony. Her whole life, she’d adored being the centre of attention, and now she would give her last pair of Louboutins to be anywhere but here.

  This was a nightmare.

  For a split second she saw a different image – Ken, on one knee, asking her to marry him. That’s what her future held, not this.

  ‘No… I can’t… I…’ There were no more words. Instead, she grabbed her bag, jumped to her feet and rushed to the door. No catwalk swagger this time. Just a heart-thudding charge, as fast as she could go in those heels, while every bit of her seared with embarrassment at the fact that every person in the restaurant was watching her with astonishment.

  Outside, another moment of panic. Keys. She fumbled in her clutch and pulled them out, beeping the car open.

  ‘Lila!’ Her mum’s voice. Traitor. Last person she wanted to speak to. Why hadn’t she told her Cammy was going to do this? She could have been prepared, cancelled dinner, spoken to him.

  Horns blared as a lifetime of practice in heels allowed her to break into a run across the road, with no attention whatsoever to the cars coming along the street. Thankfully she made it, opened the door, jumped in, pushed on the ignition button and she was out of the space, in another cacophony of horns, in seconds. No doubt there would be a CCTV camera covering this street and she’d get a visit from the police next week, but right now she didn’t care. She wanted, needed, to be out of there. She put her foot down, and negotiated the grid of Glasgow’s one-way system, left, lights, left again, lights, lights, more bloody lights, left, and then she was at the end of Great Western Road, heading towards the West End, stopping every few hundred metres for more hugely irritating lights.

  Her stomach was revolving like the inside of a tumble drier. This was too much. As she sat drumming her fingers on the steering wheel at another set of lights, halfway to her destination, her phone buzzed. Cammy. She declined. It buzzed again. Her mum. She declined. She didn’t want to speak to anyone. That wasn’t true. There was only one person she wanted to speak to.

  Another set of lights. Drumming her fingers again. An image in her head. Cammy. Looking so thrilled, so gorgeous, so hopeful that she would say yes. For a moment she thought she was going to have to open the door and vomit on the Corsa full of young guys, music pounding, that had just pulled up next to her.

  Cammy wanted to marry her. Her first ever proposal. Someone actually wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and she’d just crushed him. That must have been horrendous for him. She felt a brief moment of sympathy and then shook it off. He should never have ambushed her like that. If he’d actually spoken to her he’d have realised that she wasn’t in that place.

  She clenched her veneers tight shut. It wasn’t her fault he was the wrong guy. He shouldn’t have done it. He’d get over it. Cammy was just another man trying to make her dance to his tune.

  No more.

  From now on, Lila was in charge of the soundtrack and it was going to play out very differently. Cammy wasn’t going to call the shots. Neither was Ken.

  She wasn’t her mother – she wasn’t going to spend half her life waiting for the man she loved to walk in the door, missing him, her happiness determined by whether or not he was with her. It was that existence, that childhood experience, that had given her the strength and tenacity to wait for Ken all these years – but she wasn’t going to be the one who waited another two decades to have her man by her side.

  She wanted Ken now.

  More lights. This time they turned to green almost instantly - definitely a sign that this was meant to be - and she roared through, turned right, went along the all-too familiar street and stopped, turned, looked…

  His house. There were lights on, so he was home
. His car was in the driveway, next to the Fiat. Another car sat on the road outside. Visitors to Ken’s house? Or one of the neighbours?

  It didn’t matter.

  Her phone rang again.

  Cammy. Decline.

  Priorities.

  She checked her face in the driver’s mirror, then emptied her clutch, grabbed her face powder, dampened down any shine, reapplied lipstick, touched up her hair, applied some hairspray. A quick squirt of Opium, Ken’s favourite, and she was done.

  Phone rang again. Cammy. Decline. Bloody hell, could he not take a hint?

  She shoved it in the glove compartment, prepared, for the first time in living memory, to go anywhere without the device that meant more to her than just about anything else on earth.

  She opened the door, slid out, and took a moment to steel herself for this. She could do it. He would thank her. It was going to be a moment of pain, then that would be it. Bernadette would realise the truth, know that Ken was no longer in love with her, see that it was a lost cause, and she would walk away, go find someone else, someone who was more her type. They could have matching bloody Fiats in the driveway.

  She started walking. Confidence. Hair done, lipstick on, face the world. What did she have to lose? Nothing. Her job was undoubtedly gone. Ken was talking about calling it off because he was too much of a nice guy to make the move. Didn’t he see that this was only making it worse for Bernadette in the long run? She was wasting her life in a loveless marriage. Lila was about to do her a favour, and sure, it would sting, but she’d probably even thank her later.

  It was time.

  Apart from her lunchtime quickie, today had been horrendous. Now was her chance to change that and make this one of the best days of her life.

  Bravery and conviction surging through her, all regret, fear and anxiety dissipated as she prepared herself to ring the doorbell.