One Week 'Til Christmas

by Belinda Missen

  ‘Him?’

  ‘No, not him.’ I snorted, though that wasn’t the worst idea I’d had in the last day. ‘My website.’

  Estelle stopped and stared. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely serious.’

  Between bags of jelly snakes, salty crisps and a single foot massage that ended in a make-out session, I somehow managed to get my website up and running. It was gorgeous in greys and whites, and there was a placeholder for my first blog post and photo; all I needed was to get them sorted.

  ‘Iz, this is beautiful.’ Estelle scrolled through her phone. Granted, there wasn’t a lot to see, but it was better than nothing. ‘I’m going to mention this at our meeting this afternoon. I ran the idea of you photographing Tom past one of my bosses the other day and he was thrilled. I’m sure the rest will be fine. It’s just a shame you won’t be here to see it all go off.’

  I waved a hand. ‘It’s fine. I’m sure you’ll keep me in the loop.’

  I listened to my friend prattle on about the rest of the auction while she loaded my arms with wheels of cheese and cellophane packets of crackers. She’d spent the last week dressing the gallery, hanging prints in the right order and rearranging them again when she’d changed her mind.

  ‘Why didn’t you ask for help?’ I asked, taking a camembert from her. ‘You know I’d be there in a heartbeat.’

  ‘No, I know you would,’ she said. ‘But you seem to forget you’re on leave. You’re not here to help me, as much as you ask.’

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ I grumbled. ‘When you visit me, I’ll put you to work.’

  ‘Good, because I’m visiting in February. You better leave me a handwritten guide.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Complete with crayon illustrations.’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’

  Again, she paid for her loot and pulled me along to the next stall. Before we got too far, my phone rang. Excusing myself, I lumbered over to a quiet spot away from the crowd and answered.

  ‘Good morning.’ I grinned into the handset and felt a shiver run down my spine.

  ‘Morning,’ Tom answered. ‘Whatcha doing?’

  ‘Acting as human trolley for Estelle. We’re at Parliament Hill,’ I said, looking out at the view of the city, all the tourist landmarks pointing their way to the sky. ‘How was the radio show this morning?’

  ‘It was the usual, really,’ he said. ‘Nothing earthshattering. How about you? Shall we coordinate watches for this photoshoot?’

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked. ‘I think we’re just about done here.’

  Estelle nodded, bit down on her pretzel and leaned into the phone. ‘Come and take her away.’

  * * *

  ‘That was amazing.’ Tom skipped breathlessly up the hill, having raced down it after a toboggan full of kids. ‘I haven’t done that in years.’

  ‘I have never done that.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You should go ask them,’ he implored. ‘Go, I’ll wait here.’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine. It looks freezing.’

  ‘Maybe, but it was all we lived for as kids. I mean, you’re out on some ruddy great hill, and you’ve got a toboggan and a truckload of snow. It was life for a couple of rambunctious kids with too much energy.’

  ‘Rambunctious.’ I slipped my arm around his middle. ‘If ever there was a Tom word.’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ he teased. ‘What did you do every Christmas?’

  ‘Uh, our equivalent was the slip and slide, the garden hose and half a bottle of dishwashing detergent.’ I chuckled as I recounted the memory of a cousin who slid halfway across the backyard and ended up with grass burn along his legs. ‘That was, of course, after we’d been picked off the Hills Hoist.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The clothesline,’ I said. ‘Keep up.’

  ‘You know what else I loved about Christmas at home?’

  ‘What’s that?’ I slipped my hand into his.

  ‘Gingerbread,’ he said succinctly. ‘Icing little gingerbread people with chocolate buttons and brightly coloured lines. All the grandkids would line up at Grandma’s house while the parents had a well-earned break. They’d be in one room sipping drinks and catching up, and the rest of us would be crowded around the island bench in a kitchen full of icing sugar smears and noise. Oh, and Bing Crosby. Grandma always, always listened to Bing Crosby while we were making a tip of her kitchen.’

  ‘That sounds absolutely wonderful.’

  ‘One day, I hope I get to pass that on,’ he said. ‘Or, maybe, pass my kids off to my mother and make her do it. Six of one.’

  I smirked. ‘My favourite memory isn’t so different to yours. I have very vivid memories of my grandmother making fruitcake in the sweltering heat. Everyone says to make them in November, but there she was the week before Christmas, skirt stuck to her backside and hair stuck to her forehead, ceiling fans spinning out of control.’

  ‘I hate the heat, just for reference,’ Tom interjected.

  ‘Noted.’ I snuggled deeper into his arm. ‘The fruit for these cakes had been soaked for months in the back of the fridge in this giant stock pot, so it always smelled of alcohol when you opened the door. Or maybe that was just Grandma. Then, the day would come to bake them. I watched her every year, and I’m sure she never weighed the ingredients. She cooked by feel but loved eating the raw batter.’

  ‘I don’t care what anyone says, I’m eating cake batter, too,’ Tom said with a laugh. ‘There’s a great ice cream shop not far from home that does an amazing cake batter ice cream.’

  We slipped out of the Heath, following the pedestrian traffic heading towards the Tube.

  An icy breeze whipped up and crawled its way under my coat. Crossing my arms, I rubbed my shoulders. Tom offered a quick, mildly worried glance. He slipped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me in for a hug.

  ‘Are you cold?’ he asked.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Know what’s good for cold?’

  ‘Getting out of it?’

  He laughed. ‘Or we could get our heartrates going?’

  I give him a suspicious look. ‘Our heartrates going?’

  ‘Yes, we could dance,’ he said, slipping his fingers through mine and holding our hands up. Behind us, the carollers rolled right into their next song. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Okay, all right, I do. But that’s not actually what I was alluding to.’

  ‘Don’t you want to?’ I ask.

  He smiled, his lips pressed against mine. ‘Oh, I very much want to.’

  ‘Then why are we on a street corner dancing to carols?’

  ‘It’s called being romantic, Isobel,’ he deadpanned. ‘I’m bringing the romance.’

  ‘Ah, yes, that’s what this is.’

  ‘Also, we have to get to the gallery, don’t we?’

  * * *

  It had been an age since I’d been into the gallery. Only ten minutes’ walk from home, but forty minutes on the train from Hampstead, it was an old converted warehouse that tastefully combined exposed red brick with white walls, chrome fittings, and epic floor to ceiling windows that were left over from the early 1800s building design.

  Lining the walls were the portraits and paintings soon to be auctioned. I passed them slowly, admiring all the different names, styles and subjects presented. It was daunting to think that my work would be presented in among this lot. Was I worthy?

  Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure. We’d spent our trip into the gallery talking about everything but. We’d shared holiday stories, filming stories, and comparing future schedules. What we hadn’t talked about was what I wanted the photo to look like. I had to trust that it would come to me.

  Grab life by the throat and all that.

  ‘We don’t have a lot of stuff,’ Estelle said as she breezed past, ‘but you can use whatever you find.’

  Tom threw a casual arm around my shoulder as we looked at the room b
efore us. ‘Any idea what you want to do?’

  ‘Run,’ I said. ‘Run far away.’

  He pressed a kiss into my temple as he mumbled, ‘You’ll be perfectly fine.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  We followed Estelle towards the storeroom, where overhead lights flickered on one bay at a time and illuminated the small space. Did I have any idea what I was looking for? Not really. The closest I’d ever come to using a studio before was a set of bright lights and a backdrop in my apartment. That was as good a starting point as any. I thrust a backdrop into Estelle’s arms, shoved a pair of upright lights into Tom’s arms, and followed them into the empty studio with a stool seat.

  What I normally did, when photographing friends and family, was get them talking about their favourite subject. I found it helped to relax them, give them something to focus on, but also allowed their personalities to shine through. I mean, who doesn’t look absolutely amazing when they’re talking about something they love?

  Tom was dressed down, exactly as I’d hoped, in an old soft pair of jeans, a white T-shirt and a stretched woollen cardigan. The T-shirt would work wonderfully against the dark backdrop, and there’d be no other jarring colours to distract from those stunning blue eyes.

  ‘Where do you want me?’ Tom hovered around the backdrop. ‘I operate rather well on the floor.’

  Estelle snorted and left the room. ‘I think that’s my cue.’

  I felt a warm flush race its way up my chest and neck, and into my cheeks. Placing my bag beside my seat, I grabbed my camera and switched to an 85mm lens. By my standard, it was the best for the portraits I’d tried before. Anything else gave too much focus to everything around the subject.

  I walked Tom to the centre of the backdrop and stood him in place.

  ‘Do you need me to do anything?’ he asked, trying to capture my attention.

  ‘No,’ I said, pushing some hair away from his forehead. ‘I think you’ll do just fine if you stay there and talk to me about your favourite moment on set.’

  ‘My favourite moment.’ He took a deep breath. ‘All right. Yes, I know what it would be.’

  For the next few minutes, Tom talked me through the first hectic days on set for his television series. It was six months from signing the contract to filming the pilot episode in a muddy marsh on the outskirts of Belfast. As he moved through the joy of signing the contract to the nervousness of waiting and finally the exhilaration of being green lit for a full series, everything played out on his face, and I was sure I’d captured the perfect photo in those moments.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me in a suit and tie?’ he asked. ‘I can duck home and grab one.’

  ‘The photo—’ I flicked through the few I’d taken, ‘—is about you, not your suits. I just want your face.’

  ‘Do I get to take a photo of you, too?’

  I handed him the camera and watched him inspect it. I leaned across and pointed to the shutter button. ‘Why do you want my photo?’

  ‘So I can carry you everywhere with me.’

  ‘Everywhere?’ I laughed as he snapped a photo and mumbled about the lens being out of focus.

  ‘Even to the bathroom,’ he quipped. ‘Not that you’ll be able to see anything because you’ll be in my pocket, but you know.’

  I took the camera back. ‘You’re an idiot.’

  He grinned, his eyes squeezing into tight little lines befitting a caricature, not a man.

  ‘That’s not a real smile. Come on. Just a few more and I think we’re done.’

  ‘A real smile?’ Tom said with a chuckle. ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘It’s not,’ I challenged. ‘When you smile and you mean it, your eyes sparkle. The corners crinkle and the very corners of your mouth do this thing where they point south.’

  His face fell suddenly serious. ‘How the hell did you surmise that?’

  ‘Because it’s the same look you gave me not long after you knocked me into the gutter.’ I dragged my chair slightly to the right in an attempt to even out the light.

  ‘Hey, I was not excited about that.’ He held up a finger. ‘Okay, maybe I was a little amused.’

  ‘Amused?’

  ‘Yeah. I guess that was the first time in recent memory I’d had a woman under me who wasn’t completely faking her shock.’

  I tried steadying the camera while I sniggered. ‘Stop it. Don’t be awful.’

  ‘I’m not awful.’ He smirked. ‘You are.’

  I took his face in my hands and dipped his chin. ‘Keep your chin there and give me your best audition eyes.’

  ‘Oh, my audition eyes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I pipped. ‘What’s going to get the casting director over the line?’

  ‘Usually a large bribe.’

  A snort became a laugh, but I continued to shoot. While his serious face was fantastic, all brooding eyes and cheekbones, the laugher highlighted his lines and contours. His eyes shone and reflected under the studio lights, and the infinite shades of his hair suddenly stood to attention. The browns and blondes, and the reds that were otherwise barely visible under grey London skies. I wished I could paint a picture of him in my mind and keep it front and centre forever. The masterpiece of modern life.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

  ‘Your face.’

  ‘My face?’

  ‘Because what I want, I can’t have.’ I said. ‘Not right now.’

  ‘I would say it’s the same thing I want, but it’s also not my place to say.’

  I smoothed a thumb over his cheek. ‘Do you want me to stay?’

  ‘Well, yeah. I may as well trap you before you realise that I’m a complete dud in bed.’

  ‘Dud?’ I blew him a raspberry. ‘I highly doubt it.’

  ‘You do, do you?’ A slow, mischievous smile formed.

  ‘I mean, that would be a theory I’d have to test, but I’m sure it stands.’

  Tom’s gaze drifted towards the door. ‘No, you really should test it.’

  ‘Now?’ I asked.

  ‘Have you got enough photos?’

  ‘I only need one.’ I grabbed my bag in one hand and him in the other and dragged him out the door.

  * * *

  Tom’s house held an old-world charm about it. High ceilings and architraves met hanging lights and intricate cast features through arches and along walls. His lounge wore the look of years well used, a wrinkled old man against the wall of the room.

  In the corner was the largest Christmas tree I’d ever seen. Fairy lights and baubles passed by in a flash as Tom tossed his house keys in a bowl by the front door and pulled me upstairs. The last embers of an open fire had kept the house warm enough that it didn’t matter that I was almost naked by the time I made it to the top of the stairs.

  Once upon a time, I would have debated going home with a guy for weeks, months. I’d create self-imposed rules about dates and times and how many and how often but, with Tom, this all felt so easy. The way he kissed, seemingly harder with each breath; the way he pressed himself against me, our steps like an awkward teenage dance as we bounced from door frame to door, wardrobe to random chair by the bed. I was relieved when the mattress finally kissed the backs of my knees, because I was far too out of practice for this sex against the wall business.

  Chapter 20

  3 Days ’til Christmas

  I couldn’t sleep. Not because I wasn’t tired – I was exhausted – but because I didn’t want to miss a minute of time with Tom. Those feelings he’d admitted to on the doorstep the other night had finally crept up and taken root in me. Beside me, he was curled into the pillow, duvet tucked under his chin and over his shoulders. All I could do was watch him.

  The night had turned streetlight-orange, and the sound of traffic dipped to a lull of distant engines and the soft bark of faraway dogs. I watched as ice slivered across the bedroom window behind our heads, and resisted nature for far too long when my bladder became impossibly full.

&nbs
p; Dustbins rattled as the sky changed from inky black to muted technicolour, and car horns sounded once again as one of the last of the pre-Christmas traffic jams came to life. I wondered when impolite became polite and I could wake him up.

  As it turned out, my threshold for patience was 7.30 a.m. I pressed down once and then twice on the tip of his nose like a button. When that didn’t rouse him, I poked at his cheek and pushed his bottom lip in. I loved how malleable he was first thing in the morning, all limp and cuddly with sleep.

  ‘Wake up,’ I whispered, kissing his forehead.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll make you breakfast?’ I tried.

  ‘Can’t you just let me sleep? That would be a great breakfast.’ He frowned and buried himself further under the midnight blue covers.

  ‘Maybe I’ll just go down to Alfred’s.’ I kissed him again. ‘He’ll be happy to see me.’

  ‘He’ll be happy to take your money.’ Tom rolled onto his back. ‘Anyway, why so far? I’m sure I’ve got stuff here we can eat.’

  ‘It’s only a few extra blocks and I want to say goodbye before I leave,’ I reasoned. ‘Plus, it’s not as if I’m going to make it out of here anytime this evening, is it?’

  He cocked a brow. Finally, a single groggy eye popped open.

  ‘At least that’s what I’m planning.’ I climbed out of bed and stepped, wriggled and bounced back into my jeans. I drew my sweater over my head and twisted my hair up behind my head.

  Tom grinned and pulled the covers back up around his chin. ‘Isobel?’

  I turned back into the doorway. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I adore you.’

  ‘And I adore you.’ I hugged myself. ‘Be back soon.’

  Out on the street, I wound Tom’s scarf up around my mouth and chin, and drew my coat in closer. I smiled and greeted people who passed, and I was too tired to be angry at the truck that splashed me with water.

  Alfred’s was farther than I’d thought and while that was mildly annoying, I laughed to myself. It was just like every time I’d use a mapping app that told me I was twenty minutes’ walk from somewhere that turned out to be forty-five minutes and a sandwich stop away.