by Jill Mansell
The phone rings, brrrrrr brrrrrr. Nick hesitates then answers it. His eyes widen in wonder as he whispers, ‘Blythe?’
Cut to: a sunny, snowy hill overlooking an insanely picturesque London. Lola, wearing her beautiful sparkly white scarf, sends Blythe up the hill ahead of her and sits down on a bench to wait. At the top of the hill, Nick paces nervously to and fro through the snow. Then he sees Blythe and everything goes into warm and fuzzy slow motion until somehow they’re in each other’s arms, spinning round and round in that way that can make you feel dizzy just watching them…
Well, it could happen, couldn’t it?
‘Okey dokey, that’s the parsnips done.’ Wiping her hands on her blue striped apron, Blythe counted the saucepans and consulted her list. ‘Stuffing, check. Bread sauce, check. Chipolatas, bacon, baked onions, check check check. How are those carrots coming along?’
‘Finished.’ It was a ridiculous amount of work for one meal but that was tradition for you. They both enjoyed the whole cooking ritual. In fact, Lola discovered, while she’d been lost in her happy Hallmark reverie, she’d managed to peel and chop enough carrots to feed the entire street.
‘Ready for a top-up?’ Blythe took the bottle of sparkling Freixenet from the fridge and gaily refilled their glasses. ‘That skirt’s wonderful on you. And the belt’s perfect with it. Oh, sweetie pie, I love you so much, give me a hug.’
Mum, guess whose number I’ve got stored on my phone…?
Mum, remember when I was born…?
Mum, you know how sometimes you bump into someone you haven’t seen for years…?
Still the words wouldn’t come. As Blythe wrapped her in a Fracas-scented embrace, Lola decided to wait until lunch was over. Maybe this afternoon, when they were relaxing together in front of the fire eating Thornton’s truffles, she could casually slide the conversation round to the opposite sex in general, then old boyfriends in particular and how they might have changed since they’d last seen them—
‘Ooh, I’ll get that.’ Blythe darted across the kitchen as the phone began to ring. ‘It’s probably Malcolm, calling from his sister’s in Cardiff.’
It was Malcolm. Lola popped a chunk of carrot into her mouth, tipped the rest into a pan of sugared and salted water, and went upstairs to the bathroom. By the time she came back down, her mother was off the phone.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Lola.
‘Nothing’s wrong.’ Blythe’s freckles always seemed to become more prominent when she was feeling guilty. ‘That was Malcolm.’
‘I know. He’s staying with his sister’s family in Cardiff.’ Malcolm was a divorcee whose son was serving overseas in the army.
Blythe leaned against the dishwasher. ‘He was. But now he’s back. His sister’s mother-in-law had a heart attack yesterday afternoon and they all had to rush up to the hospital in Glasgow. She’s in intensive care, poor thing, and it’s touch and go. But poor Malcolm too,’ Blythe went on pleadingly. ‘He had to drive back from Cardiff last night and now he’s all on his own at home.’
Lola experienced a sinking sensation in her stomach, like water spiraling down a plughole.
‘Can you imagine?’ Blythe’s eyes widened. ‘On Christmas Day.’
It was so obvious what was coming next. Lola wanted to wail ‘Noooo’ and hated herself for it. She wished she was less selfish, more generous, one of those genuinely kind people who wouldn’t hesitate for a second to suggest what she knew perfectly well Blythe was about to suggest.
‘On his own,’ Blythe prompted.
The frustrated ten-year-old inside Lola was now stamping her foot and yelling, But it’s not fair, this is our Christmas and now it’s all going to be spoiled.
The grown-up, rational twenty-seven-year-old Lola fiddled with a teaspoon and said, ‘Doesn’t he have any other friends he could spend the day with?’
‘I don’t suppose he wants to be a burden.’ Her mother tilted her head to one side, the diamanté clip Lola had bought her from Butler and Wilson glittering in her coppery hair. ‘Everyone has their own families.’
So he has to pick on ours, bawled the bratty ten-year-old Lola. No, Mummy, make the nasty man go away, I don’t want him here!
God, she was horrible. How could she even think that? Awash with shame and self-loathing, Lola forced herself to say brightly, ‘So he’s coming over?’
‘Is that all right, love? You don’t mind, do you?’ Which meant the invitation had already been extended and accepted. ‘Dear Malcolm, if it was the other way round he’d be inviting us to stay. He’s an absolute sweetheart. If ever anyone needs any help he’s there like a shot.’
‘Of course I don’t mind.’ Disappointment hit Lola like a brick. Bang went the opportunity to raise the subject of her real father.
‘Thanks, love.’ Beaming with relief, Blythe slotted a new compilation CD into the hi-fi. ‘You’re an angel. We’ll have a lovely day together.’ Then she clapped her hands as, in his familiar raspy voice, Bruce Springsteen began to sing ‘Merry Christmas, Baby.’ ‘Oh, my favorite! Did I ever tell you I used to lust after Bruce Springsteen? Those skintight jeans, that sexy red bandanna, those beautiful dark eyes…’
Yeek, and now she was dancing around the kitchen in a scarily early eighties way. This was her mother; once upon a time she had lusted after snake-hipped gypsy-eyed Bruce Springsteen and now she was involved with Malcolm Parker who sported patterned sweaters, hideous sandals and the world’s bushiest beard.
This was what getting older did to you, Lola realized. Your priorities shifted and you truly began to believe that things like hairy-hobbity toes weren’t so bad after all.
Please, God, don’t ever let that happen to me.
Chapter 25
‘Ho ho ho! Happy Christmas one and all!’ In celebration of the day, Malcolm was wearing a bright red, Santa-sized sweater over his plaid shirt and bottle-green corduroys. As he made his way into the house he grazed Blythe’s cheek with a kiss and beamed at Lola. ‘Well, this is a treat! How kind of you both to invite me. I hope it’s not too much trouble.’
‘Of course it isn’t.’ Lola felt ashamed of herself; he was a sweet man, if not what you’d call a heart-throb. And at least he wasn’t wearing sandals today, so the hairy toes weren’t on show.
‘The more the merrier,’ Blythe gaily insisted. ‘Come on through to the living room. We’re going to have a lovely day!’
Lola watched Malcolm sit down and realized that for the rest of the day, instead of sharing the comfortable squashy sofa with her mother, she was relegated to the slightly less comfortable armchair with its less good view of the TV.
‘I didn’t know if you had a Monopoly set, so I brought my own.’ Triumphantly Malcolm produced it from his khaki haversack. ‘Nothing like a few games of Monopoly to get Christmas going with a swing! Those people who just sit around like puddings watching rubbish on TV… what are they like, eh? They don’t know what they’re missing!’
Lola, who couldn’t bear Monopoly and had been banking on sitting like a pudding watching TV, said brightly, ‘What can I get you to drink, Malcolm?’
And it wasn’t rubbish.
Evidently detecting the bat-squeak of panic in her voice, he looked anxious. ‘Unless you don’t like playing Monopoly?’
‘Of course we do, Malcolm.’ Blythe rushed to reassure him. ‘We love it!’
***
The day was long. Verrrrrry lonnnnnng. Being relentlessly nice and having to pretend you were having so much fun had been exhausting. By ten o’clock, with Malcolm still showing no sign of leaving, Lola conceded defeat. Faking a few enormous yawns, she made her excuses and kissed Blythe goodnight.
‘Sure I can’t tempt you to one last game of Monopoly?’ Malcolm’s tone was jovial, his eyes bright with hope.
‘Thanks, Malcolm, but I just can’t stay awak
e.’ Poor chap, it wasn’t his fault he was boring. ‘I’m off up to bed.’
‘Let’s hope it’s not because I’m dull company, ha ha ha!’ Crumbs from the slice of fruit cake he’d been eating quivered in his beard as he beamed at Blythe. ‘You’d tell me if I was, wouldn’t you?’
The thing was, people said that, but they didn’t actually mean it; if you told them how staggeringly dull they were, they’d be shocked and hurt.
‘Don’t be daft, Malcolm.’ Cheerily Blythe said, ‘How about a nice drop of Scotch to go with that fruit cake?’
Upstairs in her old bedroom Lola sat up in bed with a book and tried hard to feel more like Mother Teresa, less like a selfish spoilt brat. Malcolm’s last words to her had been, ‘Thanks for being so welcoming, pet. I tell you, this has been one of the best Christmases of my life.’
Which had brought a bit of a lump to her throat. Because Malcolm was a sweet, genuinely good man who had given up his Sundays for years to do volunteer dog-walking, and who would never say anything unkind about anyone. He would never hurt Blythe.
But he was no Bruce Springsteen either. He wasn’t even Bruce Springsteen’s older, grizzled, weather-beaten uncle. Lola really, really hoped he wasn’t going to spend the night here… oh God, how did other people with parents-who-were-dating-again cope when their parents chose partners who just weren’t… well, right?
The book wasn’t holding her attention. After a couple of chapters Lola gave up and listened to the murmuring voices of Malcolm and her mother downstairs in the living room. She couldn’t make out what they were saying but at least the fact that they were saying something meant they weren’t… urrghh, snogging on the sofa.
Reaching for her mobile, Lola scrolled through the address book until she found Nick James’s number.
As it began to ring at the other end she felt her chest fill with butterflies and, panicking, pressed Cancel.
OK, this was ridiculous. He was her father. It was allowed.
Taking deep breaths she rang again. Had he spent the last five days waiting for this moment, getting all jumpy every time his phone burst into life, then being disappointed each time it wasn’t her?
Or, or, what if she’d been a disappointment to him and he’d decided he didn’t need a daughter like her in his life after all? What if he’d hastily changed his number? Oh God, what if it had been a fake one all along?
Five rings. Six rings. Any moment now it was going to click onto answerphone and she’d have to decide whether to leave a—
‘Hello?’
Whoosh, in a split second all Lola’s nerves vanished. His voice was as warm and friendly as she remembered.
‘Nick?’ She couldn’t call him Dad, that would feel too weird. ‘Hi, it’s… um, Lola.’
‘Lola.’ She heard him exhale. Then, sounding as if he was smiling, he said, ‘Thank God. You don’t know how glad I am to hear from you. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t.’
She waggled her toes with relief. ‘And I was just wondering if you’d given me a made-up number.’
‘You seriously thought I’d do that?’
‘Well, I was dressed as a rabbit. It could put some people off.’
‘I’m made of sterner stuff than that. Hey, Merry Christmas.’
Lola grinned, because her actual biological father was wishing her a Merry Christmas. How cool was that? ‘You too. Where are you?’
‘Just got home. Spent the day with friends in Hampstead. How about you?’
Thank goodness he hadn’t been on his own; that would have been just awful.
‘I’m at Mum’s house.’
He sounded pleased. ‘You mean you’ve told her?’
‘Um, no.’ Realizing that he thought Blythe was in the room with her now, Lola said, ‘I wanted to, I was going to, then this friend of hers turned up and I couldn’t. They’re downstairs. I’m up here in bed. Too much Monopoly takes it out of you.’
‘God, I can’t stand Monopoly.’ Nick spoke with feeling. ‘Sorry. So how do you think she’ll react when you do tell her?’
‘That’s the thing, I just don’t know.’ She hesitated, hunching her knees under the duvet. ‘But I’m a bit worried that she might refuse to see you. And once Mum makes up her mind about something she can be a bit, well…’
‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Nick’s tone was dry. ‘OK, let me have a think about this. What are you doing tomorrow?’
‘Working.’ Lola shuddered, because tomorrow was going to be hell on wheels; when she was crowned Queen of the World, opening shops on Boxing Day wouldn’t be allowed.
‘Friday?’
‘Working.’
‘Saturday?’
‘I’m not working on Saturday.’
‘How about Blythe? Would she be free then?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘OK, now listen,’ Nick said slowly. ‘How about this for an idea?’
But before he could tell her what it was, there was a knock at the bedroom door and Blythe poked her head round. When she saw Lola’s mobile, she said, ‘Well, that’s a relief, I thought you were talking to yourself! Who’s that you’re on the phone to?’
Um… ‘Gabe.’
Her mother, who was fond of Gabe, said brightly, ‘Say hi to him from me!’
‘Mum’s here.’ Lola gripped the phone tightly as she spoke into it. ‘She says hi.’
‘Am I Gabe?’ Nick sounded amused. ‘Say hi back. And wish her a Merry Christmas from me.’
OK, this was seriously weird now. ‘He says hi, and Merry Christmas.’
‘Tell him I hope he’s had a good day.’ Blythe smiled broadly.
‘Tell her very good, thanks,’ said Nick. ‘All the better for hearing her voice.’
‘And I hope he’s been behaving himself,’ said Blythe.
‘She hopes you’ve been behaving yourself.’ OK, enough now.
Nick sounded as if he was smiling. ‘Oh yes. Tell her I haven’t been arrested in years.’
***
If there was anything more manic than working in the West End after Christmas when the sales were in full swing, it was shopping in the West End after Christmas when the sales were in full swing. Elbows were out, toes and small children were getting trampled on and everyone was carrying bags of stuff they’d either just bought or had been given for Christmas and were about to take back. And it was worth queuing for forty minutes to return a load of clothes to Marks and Spencer’s, because who but a fool would want to keep them, when the exact same items were now half price on the rails, enabling you to buy—ha!—twice as many? This was Blythe’s favorite bit.
‘Mum, we’ve been shopping for three hours. My feet hurt. My back’s starting to ache.’
‘Lightweight!’
‘And I’m thirsty,’ Lola said whinily.
‘We’ll buy you a bottle of water.’ Her mother was in the grip of buying fever; her eyes were darting around, greedily taking in sequiny sparkly tops, dresses awash with flowers and frills, things with spots and stripes and fringes… OK, some of the colors might be iffy, but they were reduced in the sale…
‘And I’m hungry,’ Lola pleaded. ‘Sooo hungry. Mum, if you make me carry on shopping now, I’ll last another hour. But if we stop for a proper rest and have something decent to eat, I’ll be set up for the rest of the day.’
Blythe heaved an impatient sigh. ‘You were easier to take shopping when you were in a pram. OK, we’ll eat. Where d’you want to go?’
‘Marco’s,’ Lola said promptly. ‘We always go to Marco’s.’
‘Are you sure? It’s a ten-minute walk from here. We could just go to the café downstairs.’
‘Oh no, no.’ Lola shook her head. ‘Because then you’ll just try and fob me off with orange juice and a prawn baguette. We’r
e going to Marco’s and we’re going to have chicken cacciatore and a nice glass of red, just like proper ladies who lunch.’
***
The restaurant was busy, warm and welcoming. Lola slipped her shoes off under the table and took a big sip—OK, maybe slightly bigger than a big sip—of Merlot. ‘Oh, this is better. My feet thank you. My stomach thanks you. Are we both having the chicken?’
‘Fine by me. Steady with that wine, love. You’re glugging it down like water.’
It was one o’clock. Lola felt the butterflies start up in earnest; any time now, her mother was going to find out why.
She saw him twenty minutes later through the full-length front window, making his way across the street. Blythe, sitting with her back to the entrance, was chattering away about holidays. Lola took a deep breath; in an ideal world her mother’s hair would be just brushed and she’d be wearing rather more make-up, but short of lunging across the table and forcibly applying a fresh coat of lipstick to her mouth, there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. Yeek, and now the door was being pushed open, here he came, it was really going to happen.
‘… so I said I’d think about it, although I’m not sure it’s really my thing.’ Blythe wrinkled her nose. ‘I mean, hill walking in Snowdonia. In big clumpy hiking boots. Sleeping in a tent, for heaven’s sake! Would you say I was the tenty type? It’s all right for Malcolm, but where would I plug in my hairdryer? And what happens when I need to… to…’ Her voice trailed away and the piece of chicken she’d been about to eat slid off her fork. All the color abruptly drained from her face, leaving only freckles behind.
Nick, standing behind Lola’s chair, said, ‘Hello, Blythe.’
Chapter 26
Blythe was in a state of shock. For a split second Lola thought she might bolt from the restaurant. Then, visibly gathering herself, she managed a fixed smile. ‘Nick, what a surprise. How nice to see you.’ Even her voice sounded different. ‘How are you? Looking well.’ Her shoulders were stiff, her jaw clenched with terror; mentally she was screaming go away, go away, please go away.
