I Heart Christmas

  ‘I’m gonna find some food. You want anything?’ Jenny asked, reaching out to sweep away an unseen smudge on my cheek. ‘You look beautiful, by the way.’

  ‘I’m OK, thanks,’ I said with a smile. ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘Things all good?’ she asked, leaning her head to one side. I knew her Dr Jenny, amateur psychologist pose very well. ‘You seem a little off.’

  ‘Just work stress,’ I shrugged. I didn’t keep things from Jenny. She always knew exactly how to help me work through my problems but how could she help me with this? Here she was, desperate for a baby but without a dependable man in her life, and here I was, married with a happy husband ready to knock me up as soon as I said shoot and the only thing standing in the way of us getting pregnant tomorrow was me.

  ‘I knew it,’ Jenny said with a grimace. ‘It’s Cici, right? She’s already being a total fucking troll? That’s it, I’m having her killed. Happy Christmas, that’s your gift – I’m putting a hit out on that bitch.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it but there’s too much of a chance they’d get Delia by accident,’ I laughed. ‘Really, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine, just need another couple of drinks.’

  ‘Then I will make sure you have them,’ she promised. ‘Can’t have my Angie pouting at Christmas, it’s too weird.’

  I watched her go, feeling weirdly better and worse at the same time, before turning on my increasingly painful heel and stumbling off into the next room. Another tastefully decorated tree, slightly smaller than the last, sat in the corner of the room and groups of people, some I recognised, most I didn’t, stood talking and laughing and clinking glasses. I had just found a quiet corner complete with comfy sofa when I spotted Alex stroll into the room, searching, presumably, for me. I waved silently, trying to get his attention without attracting anyone else’s, and then ducked down, sprawling out on the sofa. As much as it was possible to sprawl in skintight sequins and two pairs of Spanx.

  ‘Hey there, you,’ he said, a tired expression on his handsome face. ‘Hiding already? We’ve only been here for ten minutes.’

  ‘Says you,’ I said, clinking my glass against his. ‘You’re bored of the boys already?’

  ‘I’m not banging groupies, we’re not going skiing and I have not improved my golf handicap since Erin and Thomas’s wedding,’ he replied, ‘and so we ran out of shit to talk about pretty quickly.’

  ‘You don’t play golf,’ I said, frowning. ‘And you don’t bang groupies.’

  ‘Both things that disappointed the fellas.’ Alex sipped his champagne and closed his eyes. ‘What brought you in here? You OK?’

  I took a quick, deep breath and readied myself. This was it. This was the time to tell him about Dr Laura’s call, to ask him to come to the doctor’s office with me and hold his hand and have him make everything better.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ I said, ignoring the angel on my shoulder who was repeatedly slapping me around the face. ‘Did you have a fun day? I’m sorry you got stuck on Louisa-sitting duty.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ He rested his hand on my bare thigh. ‘It’s like hanging out with you, if only you still thought you had to make an effort to be nice to me. And Grace is awesome.’

  ‘Yay,’ I replied weakly.

  ‘I asked Louisa what was going on with Tim.’ Alex reached up to loosen his tie a little, simultaneously and unconsciously tightening my ovaries.

  ‘And what did she say?’

  Clever Alex. Of course he could get away with just asking the question the rest of us were pussyfooting around, he had a penis. Penises had no tact.

  ‘She said everything is fine and that she talked to him earlier but she was kinda vague and dismissive.’ He sounded doubtful. ‘I asked if she needed any help getting shit organised to fly back to the UK but she just went quiet and changed the subject.’

  ‘Lou is a big believer in not addressing anything that she doesn’t have to,’ I acknowledged. ‘Very big into stiff upper lips.’

  Alex nodded and idly ran his hand up and down my leg. ‘I don’t think she’s talked to Tim, though. Kinda smelled like bullshit.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ I said. ‘Whatever’s going on, I don’t believe he’d be all super cool about her and Grace nicking off to America without telling him. I’m sure I would have had a passive-aggressive phone call by now.’

  ‘Maybe you could talk to him and find out?’ Alex asked. ‘Like, maybe email him or something?’

  ‘I could but she’d kill me.’ I shook my head. ‘At best, I’d be interfering which is enough to get me a slap and if she really hasn’t called him, she might just go for broke and kill me.’

  ‘Sometimes friends interfering isn’t so bad,’ he said, meeting my eyes with a smile. We’d definitely had more than one helping hand along the way, whether we liked it or not, but Louisa was not me. I was a bit useless and not terribly good at saying what needed to be said. Lou was so proud and, generally speaking, a far more capable human being than me. While I occasionally needed some sense slapping into me, Louisa was far more likely to slap you right back.

  ‘I’ll talk to her tomorrow.’ I peeped inside my handbag at the blank screen of my new-old iPhone. ‘Even if she hasn’t called him, realistically, how long can this go on? It’s Christmas in a week, I think he’s going to notice if she’s not there.’

  ‘Depends whether or not Louisa is right about him cheating,’ Alex theorised. ‘If you took off with my kid in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t sleep until I knew where you were. Tim doesn’t seem to be trying that hard to get them back, even if he thinks they’re with her mom. Don’t you think that’s weird?’

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘But Tim wouldn’t call Louisa’s mother unless his life depended on it. She’s a right old cow.’

  ‘I guess I got lucky with your folks,’ Alex said.

  I waited a moment for the punch line.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Never mind,’ I replied. Bloody men.

  ‘And I’m not complaining about having Gracie around,’ he smiled, nudging my foot with his, unaware of the agony I was currently suffering. ‘It’s good to get some practice in, right?’

  ‘I told you I’m not getting you a baby for Christmas,’ I said, ignoring the sharp pain in my gut and the tears burning behind my eyes. ‘It’s in a week and they take ages to order.’

  ‘Maybe we should get home soon and practise then.’ The hand on my thigh slid upwards, underneath the hem of my skirt. ‘Make sure we’re doing it right.’

  My stomach flipped as I pushed his hand away gently and stood up, ready to make a hasty, tear-free dash for the bathroom. I needed extra time in my heels.

  ‘Hands to yourself, Reid,’ I said, as lightly as possible. ‘I’m off to the bathroom. If you really want to go, I don’t mind. You didn’t have to come, I know you hate it.’

  ‘I don’t hate it.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘It’s just not what I would do with my Wednesday if I had a choice. Because if I had a choice …’

  ‘I’ll see you in a bit.’ I leaned against the door frame, half to look cute and half so that I didn’t fall over. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ he said. ‘Now go pee. This is a really nice house and I don’t want to have to explain any accidents to the stockbroker boys. They’re already disappointed in me as it is.’

  On my way out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, I caught sight of Louisa. She was stood with her back against the wall, almost pinned into position by one of Thomas’s douchier co-workers. I remembered him from Erin’s wedding and as far as I could tell, his only redeeming feature was that he was friends with Erin. The man was so utterly charmless and bland that I now couldn’t remember his name. Jenny hadn’t even bothered to learn it on the day and had christened him Douchenozzle for the want of something more memorable. I started over to rescue Lou but as I tottered on, I realised she was smiling. And not only smiling but laughing. Every time the Douchenozzle opened his mouth,
she threw back her head and gave a crazy throaty laugh that I’d never heard from her before. In fact, the only person I had heard it from was Jenny Lopez, the Man Whisperer. I stopped beside a small coffee table and scooped up a handful of nuts, ignored the fact that they weren’t dry roasted as they should be, and watched, curious.

  Whatever they were talking about was apparently the most fascinating and hilarious thing Louisa had ever heard. Her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks glowed pink against her pale skin, set off by my sparkly Marc by Marc Jacobs jumper and her skinny black trousers. I watched as she crossed and uncrossed her ankles, obviously a lot more comfortable in the Jimmy Choos she had borrowed from Jenny than I was in my own shoes. I leaned against the arm of a duck-egg blue Eames chair and smiled a little. It was nice to see her looking happy. What harm could a little flirtation do? Maybe it would do her good to chat to another man for five minutes, help her remember what she was missing at home. Which was a perfectly good theory until I watched her reach up to brush some invisible lint off Douchey McDouche’s shoulder with her left hand. A hand that was noticeably less sparkly than it had been fifteen minutes earlier. She had taken off her wedding ring.

  ‘Louisa,’ I barked, pushing up off the chair and marching over, ignoring the burning in the bottom of my feet. ‘There you are.’ I forcibly inserted myself between my best friend and Douchnozzle with a dark look on my face. ‘Sorry,’ I said, without sounding the least bit apologetic. ‘I need a minute with my bestie here. You don’t mind?’

  He paused and looked over my shoulder at Louisa, clearly upset at being shunted out of what he had thought was a sure thing.

  ‘It’s my period,’ I shouted. ‘I need to talk to her about my period. Which I’m having.’

  He backed away, slowly at first and then very, very quickly, not uttering a single word. Louisa on the other hand had several words ready and none of them were very nice.

  ‘What the bloody hell was that?’ she screeched as I took the glass of champagne out of her hand and knocked it back in two big gulps. ‘I was bloody talking to him. And you haven’t got your period. What the bloody hell, Angela?’

  ‘Louisa,’ I said, giving her back the empty glass, ‘where is your wedding ring?’

  My best friend glanced down at her bare hand and reddened, her cheeks flushing from pale pink to a beet-red stain.

  ‘You think everything is so easy.’ She stared at me for a moment, as though she was about to say something else, but instead she pushed straight past me and marched across the room to the French doors.

  It was below freezing and beginning to snow on the streets of Manhattan but behind the high garden walls of the wealthy, unseen outside heaters meant it was spring-like all year round, even as the snowflakes fluttered to the ground. Louisa barged past a group of smokers, not bothering to apologise. I followed, delayed by my footwear, and found her literally fuming. Louisa was smoking. An actual cigarette.

  ‘Lou!’ I hadn’t seen her smoke since Freshers’ Week, back when it was both big and clever. ‘You don’t smoke!’

  ‘I don’t do a lot of things, Angela,’ she pointed out. ‘And I’m sick of it.’

  ‘So you’re going to start smoking?’ I asked. ‘Couldn’t you start with something ever so slightly less carcinogenic?’

  Louisa stared back at me, a challenge in her eyes that I knew well. When you’d been bickering with someone for the best part of thirty years, you got to know their ‘you’re not the boss of me’ expression. But I wasn’t backing down. Instead, I countered with my hands stuck to my hips, lips pursed and eyebrows raised. Rather than say anything, Lou raised the cigarette to her lips and took a drag. She then erupted into an epic coughing fit and threw the cigarette onto the floor while she doubled over. I stamped out the amber tip and placed a hand on her back, rubbing gently and shaking my head. The other smokers looked over for a moment before deciding they were far more interesting than us and turning back to their conversation.

  ‘Nicely done,’ I commented once Lou had her breath back. ‘Very sexy. You should definitely take up smoking as your new hobby.’

  ‘Oh, piss off,’ she replied, catching her breath. ‘That tastes like shit. Why do people do it?’

  ‘Why don’t I go and get us a drink and you can sit there and think about the answer to that question?’ I suggested. ‘You silly cow.’

  A couple of minutes later, I was back with two glasses and a bottle of champagne. I really couldn’t cope going up and down in these shoes and there was no way I was taking them off outside – patio heaters or no patio heaters, it was still bloody December.

  ‘Before you start,’ Louisa said, holding out her glass as I filled it up to the brim. ‘I wasn’t doing anything, I was just talking to him. And I took my rings off because I didn’t want to spend the night explaining to people why my husband isn’t here.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just lie?’ I asked, topping off my own glass.

  ‘Ooh, that sounds like fun,’ she replied with a stern look.

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll give you that this isn’t an ideal situation.’

  She sipped her champagne, shaking her head.

  ‘But you are going to have to deal with it sooner or later.’

  Louisa sighed, looked up at the sky, an inky black smudged with hazy greys and yellows from the nearby skyscrapers of downtown.

  ‘Can it be later?’ she asked. ‘Or at least tomorrow?’

  I looked at my friend and saw the sadness in her eyes. She looked frustrated and tired.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do,’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t think any of us do,’ I replied. ‘Ever.’

  ‘In that case,’ she raised her glass and took a deep breath, pasting a smile on her face, ‘there’s only one thing to do. Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers,’ I replied with a smile. ‘And merry Christmas.’

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ she said with a grin. ‘Let’s show these people how we do a party.’

  It was difficult to say exactly how or when the party stopped being a civilised get-together and became a sixth form piss-up of epic proportions but I do know things escalated very quickly. One minute the main reception room was full of grown-ups talking about their holiday plans, their 401ks and assorted other topics I couldn’t even start to follow. The next, Jenny had stormed the liquor cabinet and was playing shot girl, encouraging the head of mergers and acquisitions at Merryll Lynch to do a body show from the coffee table and Louisa had found the stereo, replacing the delightful Bing Crosby CD with Now That’s What I Call Christmas. Most importantly, after two shots of tequila, my feet didn’t hurt anymore and that was in itself a Christmas miracle. Douchenozzle took a shot and started the dancing, tossing his tie across the room and even Sadie stood on the side of the makeshift dance floor and swung her hips moodily, entirely out of time with the music. I figured it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t grown up listening to Noddy Holder screaming ‘It’s Christmas!’, she didn’t understand.

  ‘Ange, babe, I’m so happy.’ Louisa bopped over to me, her blonde hair tied up in a quick ponytail on top of her head. She flung her arms round my neck and began to spin me around in a circle. ‘This is awesome. Totally what I needed.’

  ‘Me too,’ I shouted over the music. Alex was in the corner, his tie hanging loosely around his neck, playing DJ with my iPod. ‘I’m having the best time.’

  ‘This is what Christmas should be,’ she called back. ‘Just friends and fun and not stressing out about stuff.’

  ‘Who’s stressing?’ Jenny jumped into the middle of our dance hug, sending us all into shrieks and squeals. ‘Hey ladies!’

  ‘Angela’s stressed about everything,’ Louisa slurred, still shimmying from side to side. ‘And I’m stressed about Tim. Except I’m not because I’m dancing.’

  ‘So, you don’t be stressed about Tim and you don’t be stressed about everything,’ Jenny declared, a bottle of Patron in her hand. ‘S’totally cool. This is what we’ll do Christmas Day. It’
ll be awesome.’

  ‘But my mum,’ I whined, feeling and sounding just like a teenager. ‘I totally can’t cope with her coming out.’

  ‘Gimme your phone.’ Jenny took a swig from the bottle and then placed it behind her on a table that didn’t exist. Ignoring the thud as the empty bottle hit the carpet, she made beckoning motions with her hands, demanding my phone. Pawing through my evening bag, I pulled out the phone and handed it over. ‘Ew, Angie,’ she wrinkled her adorable nose at my ancient technology. ‘OK, so you just call and you say …’

  She scatter-tapped the screen of my phone before holding it to her ear, twirling a curl around her index finger.

  ‘Hey, Mom and Dad, this is Angela. I’m really, really freaking out about everything ever right now because, like, I have shit going on, you know? I have a job and I’m moving house and I have to get Jenny an awesome Christmas gift for being so awesome, so you can’t come over for the holidays. So don’t come. OK, I love you. Bye!’ she tossed the phone back in my handbag and snapped it shut with a flourish. ‘And that’s how we deal with parents.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Louisa was doubled over again but this time with laughter. ‘I so want to be there when you make that call to your parents.’

  ‘So this is where the party’s at?’

  ‘James!’ Throwing my bag onto the sofa behind me, I ran across the room and leapt into James Jacobs’ arms. ‘You came!’

  ‘You texted me and told me to,’ he replied. ‘You know I always do as I’m told.’

  ‘Did you get the job?’ I asked as he swung me around in a tight circle. ‘Did you?’

  ‘I got the job!’ he sang at the top of his lungs. ‘Are you excited?’

  I had no words and so instead I hugged him so tightly he began to choke. So I let go.

  ‘Where’s the hostess?’ James coughed. ‘I should say hello.’

  ‘Of course. Erin, where are you?’ I slithered out of James’s arms until I was on the floor, clutching his hand tightly in mine and pulling him across the room. But it seemed that the party had been all too much for the host. Erin was curled up on the sofa, seemingly fast asleep, my beaded evening bag resting against her legs where it had landed. ‘It’s OK, isn’t it Erin? I invited James.’