Christmas at the Falling-Down Guesthouse

by Lilly Bartlett

  The Big Dreams Beach Hotel

  The Big Little Wedding in Carlton Square (Book 1)

  The Second Chance Café in Carlton Square (Book 2)

  For my sister, Nicole, born on Christmas Day. I’m so glad Father Christmas ignored me when I asked if he did returns.

  Chapter One

  Sorry, big sister, but it bloody well is not.

  Unless spending three days trapped with family that I don’t even like is fun… in some draughty old house in rural Scotland that probably has quaint plumbing and bats, playing happy families with my very recently exed boyfriend. In that case, pass the mulled wine; this is going to be a blast.

  Of course I did the sensible thing and tried getting Robert the Rat uninvited, but Jez won’t budge. Apparently, it’s not the done thing to jettison your best man a month before the wedding just because he’s dumped your fiancé’s sister. So we’re stuck with each other, for better or worse, till the weekend do us part.

  I’m late for Marley’s final fitting. Mum will say it’s because of my attitude. Not because the Tube is about as efficient as Father Christmas’s sleigh for getting around London at this time of year. Or because working twelve hours a day doesn’t make it easy to pop out just to hold my sister’s hand while she tries on her dress for the hundredth time.

  I can see them through the bridal salon’s large front window. Marley’s hands are flapping, which means she’s talking a mile a minute. Even jangling with pre-wedding nerves she looks beautiful. She got the petite, huggable genes in the family. Next to her I usually feel like Pippi Longstocking.

  ‘Hello, my love,’ Mum says when she spots me. ‘We’ve been having a lovely chat with Miranda while we waited for you.’ She glances at her watch.

  The bridal consultant nods to let me know that I have indeed missed a lovely conversation. My expression conveys the devastation I feel at missing their debate about veils over tiaras.

  Just as I reach for my vibrating BlackBerry, Mum sticks her hand out.

  ‘I just need to check it.’

  ‘Give it here. Whatever it is can wait. This is your sister’s fitting.’

  ‘Fine, have it your way, but it could be important.’

  ‘You have a funny idea about what’s important,’ she says.

  I’m not about to rise to that bait. ‘May I have one of those, please?’ I say instead, gesturing to the glass of fizz that Marley’s waving as she talks. Miranda’s hand keeps hovering beneath the glass as Marley makes another point. ‘Marl, do you want to try on your dress now?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask!’ She rushes off to the fitting room, nearly knocking over the white Christmas tree in her exuberance. My eyes dart to my BlackBerry, held hostage by Mum.

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘There’s nothing else to do.’

  ‘Try enjoying your surroundings.’

  It’s like the inside of a meringue in here – thick pile white carpet, plush white sofas, white walls and ornate cornicing. I feel a bit snow-blind as I wait for my sister to emerge in her bridal splendour.

  We always knew Marley would marry Jez. He knew it too, since she told him so on their second date. She’s never been afraid to lay her cards on the table when it comes to romance. That scares the crap out of most men, but not Jez. He was already crazy about her when she informed him one day that she’d be planning a honeymoon with him. Then he made her wait six years before he popped the question. I guess it was important to establish some semblance of control over the situation. Every time she brought it up he tacked six months on to the day he’d get down on one knee. She finally caught on and stopped asking. Then she had to get Mum to stop asking, which took another two years. And finally, on a snowy day last January, he asked her to become Mrs Marley Jane Lucas. She cried all over him and acted like it had been his idea all along.

  Marley emerges from the fitting room in a cloud of champagne tulle. ‘Oh, love, you are beautiful!’ Mum exclaims, like we haven’t done this seventeen times already. She’s right, though. Marley is stunning. The silk bodice moulds perfectly to her tiny waist. It’s scattered with appliquéd flowers in the palest of pastels, which tumble down the full tulle skirt in an artfully haphazard cascade. The ankle-length gathered hemline is embroidered with little pearls that wink when she walks.

  ‘I feel like a fairy princess!’ she says, carefully stepping on to the platform before the curved wall of mirrors. ‘Oh!’ She squints at her hem. ‘I think there’s a pearl coming loose.’

  Miranda rushes to Marley’s side to assess this latest catastrophe. ‘I don’t see–’

  ‘There, there’s a thread hanging down.’

  We all peer at Marley’s hem. I point to a quarter inch thread. ‘You mean this little thing?’ And my family thinks I’m a perfectionist.

  ‘Don’t pull it!’ she bellows. ‘There’s another one.’ She points as if there’s poo on her dress. ‘And another one… and another. Look!’

  I can see she’s about to lose it. I’m very familiar with the symptoms. First her cheeks go crimson and her mouth pulls down at the ends. Then her eyebrows start twitching. Finally, she sticks her chin out just before she cries.

  She gets to the twitchy eyebrow stage in record time. ‘My dress is all thready!’ Out goes the chin. ‘You have to fix it!’

  ‘Marley, love, Miranda can fix anything. Can’t you, Miranda?’ Despite the inflection, Mum’s voice is always gentle (well, gently threatening). That comes from decades of getting her way.

  ‘Of course we can fix it, Marley. Please don’t worry. There won’t be a loose thread on it for your big day. I’ll personally supervise the seamstresses.’

  Thank God the crisis is averted. It wasn’t quite as dire as the Should I Wear My Hair Up question, but more serious than the Shoes Are A Bit Pinchy emergency. I’m just glad there was no permanent psychological damage this time.

  Marley calms down enough to change back into her normal clothes. I can see the shine has come off the day for her. I go to try on my dress to cheer her up.

  As I yank the silk over my head, I comfort myself with the fact that she’s not normally insane. Obsessive has always been my territory.

  ‘What do you think?’ I ask them as I emerge from the fitting room with, admittedly, less grace than Marley had.

  ‘Are you sweating, love?’

  I look down at the darkening streak beneath my left boob. ‘Well, it’s hot in that room, and it’s not the easiest dress to get into.’ When Marley chose it I threatened a boycott. A mushroom-coloured bandage dress wouldn’t be everyone’s (anyone’s) first choice for a bridesmaid. I look like I’ve been sprained. She says it’s supposed to be that fitted. I practically have to dislocate a shoulder to get it over my head.

  ‘Will it need to be cleaned?’ Marley asks Miranda, her face flushing. ‘Do we have time to have it cleaned?’ Not again with the eyebrows.

  Miranda assures her there’s time to clean it. I know better than to ask whether there’s also time to let it out a few inches, so that I have at least a chance of squeezing into it after eating my own body weight in mince pies and Celebrations over Christmas. If Marley has her way I’ll be under Nil By Mouth instructions until the twenty-eighth.

  Chapter Two

  The difficult thing about Christmas is that it doesn’t come all at once. It builds up like a festive toxin until the immune system is overwhelmed. Every year I do my best to protect myself. I wash my hands of any Crimbo activities that aren’t strictly necessary. I don’t share merry drinks and I avoid carols wherever possible. Unfortunately, sometimes there’s such a virulent strain of yuletide that I’ve got no chance. This is one of those years.

  I won’t go down without a fight, though. Barring a Bah Humbug tee shirt I couldn’t have dressed in a more miserly outfit as I arrive at the hotel for our office Christmas do, rain-drenched and bursting for the loo. I found the little black dress last year in the sales. It makes me feel a bit like Holly Golightly and was worth the dent in my
credit card. Some people collect postcards or fridge magnets from their travels. I’ve started collecting couture.

  ‘Who died,’ quips our slutty Russian secretary, eying the dress. Nadia hates me because I don’t have a penis.

  ‘Your fashion sense, by the look of it.’ Actually, she dresses okay for someone who spends more time out of her clothes than in them.

  She shrugs. The important thing isn’t that our insults hit the mark. It’s that we keep them up. Otherwise, we’d have no relationship at all.

  ‘I’d love to stay and talk but, well, I don’t really want to.’

  ‘Run along, then,’ she says. ‘There must be someone else you can bore.’

  I need to wee too badly to think of a witty response. Nadia: 1, Carol: 0.

  I’m within squatting distance of the loo when my boss waves me over. I could mime my discomfort but grabbing my crotch might be misconstrued. ‘Nice to see you,’ I say, as if we haven’t just seen each other in the office for ten hours straight. ‘Enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘Did Gandalf get back to you about the meeting?’

  I nod. We don’t actually have a client named Gandalf. It’s the code name for the CEO of a company that the Investment Banking division is looking at selling. They don’t use real names in case corporate spies catch wind of the transaction. It’s all a bit cloak-and-dagger, but bankers have to get their fun where they can.

  Once he’s got the information he wants, I’m dismissed. He never feels the need to make small talk as if we’re friends, and I’m glad. I haven’t got friends in my office (only Zack, but he works in IT on another floor so he’s not technically a colleague). Having office buddies just complicates things. What if you fall out? You’d still be stuck with them five days a week, like a spouse you can’t divorce. At least with colleagues you know where you stand. Take Nadia. We’re rude to each other but there are no hard feelings. It’s when feelings get in the way that everything goes wrong.

  Appraising myself in the dimly lit loo mirror, I’m pleased to see that the torrent outside hasn’t wreaked much havoc. My colleagues would fall over if I ever looked dishevelled. Scruffy is for other people.

  Marley and I have the same thick, super-straight blonde hair, though mine reaches my shoulder blades instead of all the way down my back. At least it won’t go all frizzy when it dries. I’ve piled on layers of mascara, which make my brown eyes look big. I’m not one of those women who can do natural. Marley can. She looks like a child, even though she’s pushing thirty. I’m twenty-seven but people often mistake me for the older sister. Marley just loves that.

  When I was a junior analyst I enjoyed myself at these things. They are fun for the first few years, like your first year in sixth form or college when everyone is older and cooler. Then around year three they stop being the gossip-gathering shag-fests they once were, and start being a ‘networking event’. Now we have to network all over the place, talking to people we won’t see for another year because Marley’s investment banking division is in St Paul’s and I’m on the trading floor in Canary Wharf.

  ‘Hi, Carol.’

  I jump at Karl’s voice behind me. He’s Marley’s boss and the one reason this might not be a completely awful night. He’s also a welcome distraction from my thoughts. Being so unceremoniously dumped by Robert the Rat has played on my mind a bit this past month. ‘Hi, Karl.’

  ‘What, no happy Christmas for me?’

  ‘You know my thoughts on the subject.’

  Karl leans in to kiss my cheek, knowing perfectly well the effect that will have. The smug bastard. ‘It’s a shame Marley can’t come tonight,’ he says.

  ‘Well, Jez is getting the Most Fabulous Architect Award or some such thing, and he really wanted her at his do.’ It’s the first year in nearly a decade that Marley hasn’t been here. Even after six years I’m still getting used to sharing my sister with Jez. ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘Long enough to have my arse chapped by puckered-up sycophants. When did a good old-fashioned knees-up become so corporate?’

  I wrinkle my brow before remembering Mum telling me not to do that or I’ll get lines. ‘You sound like a granddad. In my day…’ I croak, shaking my fist with my lips drawn down over my teeth. It’s a good look. I wonder why I’m single. ‘Tell me, was it very different in the old days, when you drove your buggy to the office and worked by candlelight?’ Karl heads the bank’s investment banking division and despite sounding like the world’s oldest living World War II veteran, isn’t even forty yet.

  ‘It was a hell of a lot more fun,’ he says, his face breaking into a gorgeous grin. ‘We got properly drunk, for one thing. None of this pacing yourself shite or drinking elderberry-bloody-cordial. And it was a lot friendlier, if you know what I mean.’

  He winks in case I’m in any doubt. With Karl, I’m never in any doubt.

  ‘Now one can’t even give one’s secretary a friendly pat on the bottom. What’s the world coming to?’

  He’s talking bollocks. He’d no more pat a secretary’s arse than he would a vicar’s. His means of seduction are much subtler. ‘If you tried that with Marley, she’d kneecap you.’

  ‘My relationship with Marley is as pure as the driven snow. Her sister, on the other hand…’ He lets the sentence hang in the air.

  I’m holding my breath. ‘You’re just a tease,’ I finally say, hoping he’ll prove me wrong.

  He laughs. ‘I know. I’m all talk. Would you like another drink?’

  He always does this. Making half promises and then snatching them back. I’d stomp off and leave him to grumble about how things were in his day, but my alternatives at the moment are my boss or Nadia. Besides, I don’t want to stomp off. I want him to finally carry through on the unspoken promises he’s been making for the past three years.

  It’s too late. Nadia gets to him just as he reaches the bar. I haven’t got a chance now against the Soviet missile. Her guidance system is unerring when it comes to successful men. They return together with my wine. ‘So,’ I say to Karl, trying to sound normal. ‘Are you going anywhere sunny for the holidays?’

  His brow furrows. ‘I think that’s too much to hope for in Scotland.’

  ‘Scotland? You’re not coming to the wedding.’

  ‘Well, of course I am. You don’t think I’d miss it, do you? Marley’s been my secretary for nine years. And my friend. I can’t wait to spend the weekend with the Colbert family.’

  With Miss Glasnost beside him he conveniently neglects to mention that he’s not only Marley’s boss and friend. Three years ago he was also my boyfriend.

  Wait till I get hold of Marley. How could she keep information like this from me? I know why she didn’t tell me. It’s because she knew I’d be like… well, like this.

  * * * * *

  Where do I start with Karl? I could recount the first time we met soon after I graduated from Cambridge and went to work in the bank’s Ethical Investments division. I worked my arse off to learn my job and did my best to grow the rhinoceros-tough skin I needed to spend twelve-hour days on a trading floor. It was like Darwin’s musical chairs, where the weak are picked off, and it set the tone for my career.

  But that’s not really where things started. Then, Karl was just Marley’s absurdly handsome, clever, world-travelling boss. She was his secretary and I was nobody. It wasn’t until she became a grown-up that things changed.

  The transformation came around the time she and Jez moved in together. Suddenly they were staying in on Friday nights watching films so they’d be fresh for the farmer’s market on Saturday. They went to Ikea without wanting to pull each other’s lungs out.

  I liked this new Marley. At least I no longer worried about her taking dodgy minicabs at 3 a.m. and ending up on Crimewatch. I was eyeball-deep in work anyway, so it was nice for her to have someone else to play with.

  Then she got the idea to host monthly dinner parties and throw near-strangers together to see what happened. I�
�m not sure whether she was going for Bridget Jones’s Diary – introducing people with thoughtful details – or Bright Young Things, where everyone hopped into bed together. Either way, that’s where I properly met Karl. Carol, this is Karl. Karl once sailed across the Atlantic and is very allergic to strawberries. Karl, meet Carol. Carol has travelled to every continent except Antarctica and loves jigsaw puzzles.

  We didn’t need the icebreakers, though. By the time Jez served up the coq au vin we were nearly in each other’s laps. I didn’t remember the last time I’d had that much fun with a man. Well, actually I did, but I wasn’t about to dwell on that. Every time I caught Marley’s eye she gave me that look. See? It said. I told you I know what you need. Or maybe she was just telling me to go easy on the wine.

  I’m not ashamed to say I woke in his bed the next morning, and what started out as a no-strings-attached arrangement carried on comfortably like that. I wasn’t breaking my no-friends-at-work rule. He got into my knickers on a technicality, since he and Marley work in a completely different office. So, like my friend Zack, he doesn’t count as a colleague.

  Karl and I are cut from the same Armani Privé cloth. We know our way around BA’s first-class cabins and we’re unsentimental pragmatists. You can keep your romantic relationships, like the ones my parents or Marley and Jez have. All that emotion can really muck things up.

  I’ve had enough of that, thank you very much.

  I’m happiest with someone I like, but not too much. So when Karl and I went out, of course I was excited. But I didn’t go nuts over him. I didn’t need to know when we’d see each other next. We just got in touch when we were free and that suited me fine. I thought it suited him as well. But then he ran away faster than Usain Bolt breaking his own world record. I never did get an explanation.

  That was three years ago. I still hope he’ll come around one day. Not that I love him or anything, but if Father Christmas is listening, I’ll be a very good girl in return for a little Karl down my chimney.