‘I’m sorry I did that,’ I say to Ellie. ‘I was in a bad place.’
‘And then you ignored me twice more in March and then in August when I tried making a conversation with you.’
March and August? Huh. It’s odd. I always think of my grumpiness as being an insular thing that doesn’t really affect anyone else, but looking at Ellie’s earnest, albeit pissed face, I’ve clearly upset her on more than one occasion. And it feels horrible. Plus she wanted to be my friend? She thought I was cool? That doesn’t happen to me very often.
I put Ellie’s hands back onto my cheeks and put my hands onto her cheeks.
‘I’m genuinely sorry. Let’s hang out in the New Year. Maybe you can come to my house and watch some Broad City with me?’
Ellie’s eyes glisten. ‘I would adore it!’
I shrug. Not quite sure why I am inviting a co-worker to my house but noticing that in my stomach, it feels quite nice to be doing so. It must be all these cheesy twinkle lights and people singing having a weird effect on me.
Once Ellie has wobbled off back to the team from Harmonious Spaces, I finally get served, ordering Adam’s double vodka and coke and the same for me. Taking into consideration the size of the queue, I order a couple more of the same along with some salted peanuts. Gathering the lot on a silver tray I head back to our table. As I’m edging through the crowd I notice Adam politely talking to two women. I say talking but the three of them are completely flirting – Adam doing that smile that everyone seems to be falling over and the two girls touching his shoulder, one of them draping a piece of tinsel around his neck. I squint a little, trying to see what they see. He is very good looking, I suppose, with those dark brown curls and almost black eyes. I mean he definitely looks more attractive to me than he did when I picked him up from the airport. Which is weird because he’s been annoying me all day. I mean, he’s definitely not my type. Then again Mitch was exactly my type and look how that turned out. With him suggesting a vague old age marriage pact that made it impossible for me to stay with him afterwards.
I reach the table and Adam offers a polite goodbye to the two girls as I take a seat opposite him, wriggling into position to avoid hurting the bruised portion of my bum. The girls dance off into the crowd and I take a large sip of my drink, Adam doing the same. Now that we’re here it feels a little awkward. What the hell are we supposed to talk about. Adam is just staring at me and smiling. I feel my cheeks go hot.
‘So! Your fiancée cheated on you?’ I say, at a loss for anything else to say and deeply mortified once the words tumble out of my mouth. ‘Sorry, I mean… shit. Sorry.’
Adam, to his credit, ignores my blabbering apology and answers. ‘Yes. Danielle cheated on me with a friend of mine, in fact. But let’s not talk about that. It’s boring and not a topic of conversation for a lovely Christmas Day with a new friend.’ His voice is breezy and the only thing betraying a hint of pain is the slightest pursing of his lips.
‘Deal,’ I say. ‘But just so you know, I know how you feel and I’m so sorry that that happened to you. At Christmas too. It’s the worst.’
‘You also got dumped at Christmas?’
‘I had to end a relationship I didn’t want to end,’ I explain. ‘We’d been together for over a year and it turned out that he didn’t love me quite as much as I loved him. I was devastated, but I couldn’t stay with him after that.’ I sigh. ‘It sucked, you know?’
‘I do know.’
‘Yep. Last Christmas was horrible.’
‘It was last Christmas?’ Adam narrows his eyes. ‘That makes sense then.’
‘What?’
‘We met at Mum’s office in January last year.’
‘Did we?’
‘Yeah. You were so rude to me and I wondered why. People aren’t rude to me very often.’
I think of Ellie making the same comment.
‘I’m sorry I don’t remember meeting you. And that I was mean,’ I say. ‘I was pretty broken at the time.’
Adam nods and hold his glass up to mine. ‘To healing hearts.’
‘To healing hearts,’ I echo, clinking his. We smile at each other for a long moment and then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot something that makes my heart drop into my feet.
It’s Mitch.
He’s at the other end of the bar with a girl and he’s looking right at me.
Chapter Ten
Christmas Eve 7:35 p.m.
Shit. Why? Why is this happening. Today of all days. I’ve managed to last a whole year without bumping into Mitch, which I’ve considered lucky since he lives just down the road in Kensington. What is he doing in Notting Hill? This is my patch. He’s invaded my turf! Yes, it’s been a year since I ended things but still. I’m not ready to see him. Argh!
I stare at him and he stares right back at me. God. I’ve imagined him many times over the last year, but seeing him here in real life, with his dark mahogany muscled arms and those sloping, long-lashed eyes makes me feel horny and angry and sad all at once. The woman he’s with picks up his hand and fondles it. She looks very comfortable around him. Girlfriend? Mitch smiles the lazy half smile that used to drive me wild and it pulls me out of my trance.
‘Phoebe, are you alright?’ Adam asks. ‘You’ve turned rather a funny colour.’
I swallow and it gets stuck in my throat. I look down at myself, cringing as I realise I’m still in my work clothes, makeup up sweated off, hair bunched up under my woolly hat.
Do not cry, Phoebe. It’s been over for a year, you goon.
‘My ex,’ I tell Adam in a strangled voice. ‘At the bar, with who I am assuming is his new girlfriend. Don’t make it obvious that we’re talking about him. Don’t look.’
‘The ex from last Christmas?’ Adam asks, very casually casting his eyes around the bar until he spots Mitch.
‘Yeah,’ I say, my stomach twisting. ‘I should be over it by now. I just feel so angry at him for stringing me along for a year and but also attracted to him, which makes me feel even worse. Like I’m an idiot.’
‘There are no rules when it comes to heartbreak.’
‘Christ. His girlfriend’s gorgeous. Of course she is.’
‘You’re gorgeous, Phoebe. In fact, I think you’re —’
‘She looks like the fairy on top of the Christmas tree.’
‘You’re smart too. And you take no shit.’
‘Argh, this is horrid. He keeps looking over.’
‘You know what you need to do, right?’
‘What?’
‘You need to make him jealous. Show him that he really fucked it up the day he messed you around.’
I take a large gulp of my drink and yank off my hat, smoothing down my hair self consciously.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t know how to make him jealous.’
‘Just flirt. With me. He’s looking right this way.’
‘I’m terrible at flirting.’
‘Well, I happen to be rather good at it.’
‘We made an agreement that you weren't allowed to flirt with me.’
Adam raises an eyebrow. ‘Well, this would be fake flirting.’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Do you want him to wish he’d never upset you? That he’s a damn fool for losing you?’
I glance over at Mitch. Holding hands with the Christmas fairy woman, he heads over to a tall poseur table by the door. He glances at me once more, making my heart pound out of my chest. Thirteen months he let me think he had proper feelings for me. And to try to make that stupid insulting pact with me on Christmas Day?
‘Yes,’ I say to Adam, necking the rest of my drink. ‘Yes I do.’
Adam’s eyes sparkle with mischief. ‘Well, dear Phoebe, let me show you my ways.’
Another drink in and it turns out that I might not be too bad at flirting after all. A lot of it is just touching the other person a lot, giggling, leaning in close and also touching yourself on the neck or the hair or the collarbone.
/> Adam nestles in close and whispers into my ear. ‘Whispering can be a good flirty technique too.’
His breath tickles my neck and sends a tingle to unexpected places. But that’s just basic ASMR. It could be Horace the creepy IT guy whispering to me and I’m sure that would give me unwanted tingles too.
‘Should I whisper back?’ I ask Adam, swaying a little to the left as the vodka makes itself known in my bloodstream.
‘Sure,’ Adam shrugs.
I lean in to his ear and notice that up close he smells like Bondage, which makes me giggle and also recoil a little.
‘What is it?’ Adam laughs at me laughing.
‘Bondage.’ I pull a face.
‘I usually smell amazing. Very manly and fresh.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Okay, Mitch is looking over. Whisper something to me.’
I lean in again. ‘Spssssss spssssss blah blah blaaah.’
‘It has to be something real, Phoebe. You have to actually say something.’
‘Why? Mitch can’t hear what I’m whispering.’
‘You want it to look authentic, don’t you?’
‘Yes?’
‘Then you have to whisper something real. Tell me a secret.’
I lean in for a third time, feeling the heat of Adam’s neck, warm on my cheek. I swallow, feeling more than a little tipsy now. ‘I sometimes worry I’m not a nice person or that I’ll never be happy.’
Adam looks at me for a long moment. I wriggle in my seat at his intensity. Why on earth did I spill something so genuine? I didn’t have to do that. Stoopid vodka.
‘Sorry, that was a weird thing for me to say.’
Adam’s face is very serious. ‘No, not weird. I used to feel pretty much exactly like that.’
‘You did?’
Adam sighs, taking a gulp of his drink. ‘I was pretty depressed a few years ago. I found a therapist and started medication and I’m much happier now.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah... Although, I’ve got to say this past few weeks have given me a bit of a wobble.’
‘I bet. I’m sorry things have been shit with you too. And here I am being a grump all day. That can’t have helped.’
‘Today was the most fun I’ve had in ages,’ Adam says, his eyes searching my face so intensely I have to look away for a moment to gather myself.
‘The thing with me is I know I’ve been blaming the way I feel on my breakup last year,’ I say eventually. ‘But… the truth is, I was feeling this way for a long time before that… It’s kind of become the norm.’
‘It will get better.’ Adam smiles at me. ‘I know it will.’
We go quiet for a moment, both lost in our own worlds.
I hold my glass up to Adam. ‘Well, I guess it’s a Merry Christmas for us!’
Adam laughs his weird loud laugh and it’s so very loud and so deep from his belly that it makes me laugh too. And despite the fact that it’s Christmas, that Mitch is here with someone else, that all this flirting is fake and that I’m only hanging out with Adam so that I can impress my boss – I realise something… I’m actually having a really good time.
Chapter Eleven
Christmas Eve 8:45 p.m.
‘My bladder is so full of vodka and Diet Coke, but I don’t want to walk past Mitch to get to the toilet,’ I moan to Adam.
‘Well, it’s either walk past him or piss yourself in his vicinity.’
‘Good point, succinctly made.’
‘Just hold your head high and stride past. For all he knows, you are dating me – the hottest man in all of Notting Hill.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘Handsome, yes. But I wouldn’t say hot.’
‘Ouch.’ Adam frowns. ‘I thought my flirting was very hot.’
‘Fake flirting.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I’m going for a wee now.’
‘So go.’
‘I’m going.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
I stand up from the chair, and trying not to sway with tipsiness, I do as Adam says and hold my head up high, walking past Mitch and his new girlfriend. Then, of course, I stumble on the way because I am holding my head up high and not looking where I’m going. I throw Adam a dirty look for the bad advice to which he laughs and gives me two thumbs up.
Once I’m done in the loos, I walk back out through the flock wallpapered corridor towards the pub and there, blocking the doorway, smiling at me as if we’d never been apart, is Mitch.
‘I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,’ he says, in that deep voice that used to drive me crazy, even when he was talking about something dull, like tennis or traffic. And now he tells me I’m beautiful when I have hat hair and a slightly snotty nose and am bundled up in my super puffy shiny black puffa jacket that makes me look a teeny bit like a bag of recycling.
Shit. How the hell am I going to get out of this corridor without falling apart. How, after a year, can he still make me feel this way, make me feel sad that we’re not together. That I wasn’t enough for him?
‘Good morning, Mitch,’ I say very professionally, before realising that it’s the evening and I am a knucklehead.
‘Good morning, dweeby.’
My heart lurches at the use of his daft nickname for me.
I walk towards him, willing my knees not to shake. ‘It was very nice to see you. All the best to you and yours. Goodbye.’ My voice wavers. I try to get through the door but Mitch blocks my way and I sort of bump into him chest to chest.
‘Let me out, Mitch,’ I say, avoiding his eye.
‘I just want to say hello, is all.’ He presses a hand to my cheek and I expect my whole body to come alive at his touch like it always did, but today that doesn’t happen.
‘That your girlfriend out there?’ I ask.
Mitch runs his thumb down towards my chin. ‘Fiancée. Sophie. She’s great. Works next door in the hair salon. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come to this pub. I’m glad I did now…’
‘Wow. Engaged. Congratulations.’
‘Well, it’s been fourteen months, I owed it to her.’
I takes me a few seconds to realise what he ‘s just said. Mitch seems to realise at the same time. To his credit, he flushes slightly in the cheeks.
‘I meant, um, eight months.’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘Uh…’
‘Fourteen months ago, we were together,’ I say, my heart beating hard enough for me to hear it in my head.
Mitch rubs the back of his neck. ‘You and I weren’t, you know totally exclusive.’
‘We never put a name to our relationship but we were sleeping together for over a year! Felt pretty exclusive to me.’
And then something else occurs to me. ‘Wait... Oh my God. You knew!’
‘Knew what?’
‘You knew that making that pact would upset me. Make me end things with you.’
Mitch holds his hands up, feigning ignorance. ‘What pact?’
‘You fucking know what pact. If neither of us have found true love by fifty we’ll get married? You knew I loved you, that I was all in. You’d already met someone else and you were too chicken shit to tell me. You wanted me to end things with you.’
Mitch sighs. He doesn’t bother to deny it. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ he says weakly.
‘So you made me end things, just so you could keep your conscience. Not feel like the bad guy. The cheater. On Christmas Day, no less!’
Mitch is starting to look a little less sure than he was a few moments ago. ‘Listen, I don’t think now is the time to talk about this. Do you still have the same number? It would be a neat idea to get a drink sometime. Let me apologise for being such a jackass. I was different back then. An idiot. Seeing you again now, looking so happy with another man…’
He reaches his hand out again, and this time I sharply bat it away.
‘Oww!’
I stare hard at Mitch’s beautiful face and it occur
s to me that he is a dirt bag and a coward. He cheated on me, couldn’t even admit it and now he’s trying to cheat on that innocent woman out there. And yes, his torso and arms and bottom might be very sexy, but his heart is very much lacking. Why did I not realise this? I’ve wasted a year of my life feeling angry at myself for not being enough for him and angry at him for the way he ended it. Truth is, he did me a favour. He’s a moron! He is a total moron! And, oh my goodness, I don’t have to see or think about him ever again.
A wave of relief floods through me and it feels like a lovely hot, refreshing shower on a cold day. At last! I lift my chin.
‘I’m leaving, Mitch. Now get the fuck out of my way.’
‘Phoebe, come on. I was a fool back then.’
‘And an even bigger one now! Move!’
Shaking his head forlornly, Mitch steps aside.
I push open the door to the bar area and before I walk away, I turn back and look him up and down. ‘Mitch Birch is the stupidest name I’ve ever heard.’
I watch his face fall while he considers his stupid name, and feel a bloom of happiness inside my chest. Mitch is a dick. He was always a dick and I was so blinded by emotion that didn’t see it until right now. This feels like closure. It’s a miracle. A Christmas miracle!
Before Mitch can gather a response to my statement, I march back out into the pub and up to his fiancée.
‘Can I help you?’ she asks, tilting her head to one side. I stand there for a second, I’m about to tell her about Mitch coming on to me just now. But it’s Christmas Eve. He already wrecked Christmas for me last year. I don’t want to be the one to wreck it for her. Mitch says she works in the hair salon next door. I’ll go in the New Year and tell her then.
‘I, uh, like your coat,’ I say instead. ‘I just thought I’d tell you.’
She looks down at her perfectly ordinary black woollen coat. ‘Um, thanks!’ she says with a smile. ‘It’s from River Island!’
‘Cool! Bye!’ I spin on my heel and hurry over to Adam, noticing out of the corner of my eye that Ellie and Jim are snogging up against the wall by the bar. Oh jeez. Well there’s a topic of conversation for us to start with when we hang out.
It Happened on Christmas Eve Page 5
