The Great Christmas Breakup (14 page)

I realized that lately, I’d been a rubbish friend. L
olly wasn’t dating anyone – and hadn’t in ages
. At least I had a family, and if you excluded the feral
Teeson element, they weren’t half
bad.

‘Are you alright
, Lols
? Maybe
you
need to
go after him? I mean, who wouldn’t want
a piece of good looking corporate
arse
?
’

It was a joke but my friend
wasn’t laughing.

Then
Lolly nu
dged me and I turned to find the man in question
standing directly behind us.

Sod it
.

‘Oh, Robert,’ I mumbled, self-consciously
pulling at the lo
ng sheer top Lolly had provided, suddenly wondering if, despite the image I’d seen in the full-length mirror
moments before
,
I was
way
too plump to be wearing black jeggings.

I needn’t have worried.

‘Wow, Scarlet! You look amazing, better than I remembered.’

‘Really?’ This from Lucinda. ‘
Hugo
Boss?’ she added, i
ndicating his grey flecked suit just visible beneath a heavy wool overcoat with a velvet collar.

I looked at his face and noted his eyes wer
e bluer than I thought. Contact lenses
?

Surely not?
What man would wear
colored
contacts? C
arson wouldn’t even wear boxers to comply with fashion, let alo
ne poke a differ
ent hue onto
his
eye
balls
.

‘Zegna,’ Robert
replied
to Lucinda
proudly.

‘Oooo,’ Lolly and Lucinda
duly
nodded
their appreciation
.

Carson would ne
ver know one brand from another; at that
moment
in time
he couldn’t tell his own wife from a piece of furniture.

An awkward silence followed, broken only by a brunette even shorter than me shoving into the shop and demanding someone sell her one of those ‘darling sheepy things in the window, immediately!’

‘Shall we?’ Robert said
to me
,
holding open the glass door.

Behind us, Lolly was tactfully telling the woman
that
the sheep weren’t for sale, but the jumper it was wearing would look great on her.

Following Robert
into the st
reet, I was hit by two thoughts. One:
this could be the start of a great new career; and
two:
I’d left my coat behind and a thin layer of silk and a bra provided absolutely no protection from the elements.

Ironically, similar thoughts had run through my head on my
very
first date with Carson.

- C
ue cute
first date story:

I’d
arranged to meet
Carson
in
midtown because I had to get something decent for my parents for Christmas. Every year I sent a homemade item from the stall, but I suspected that there were only so many puce berets Royal Mail would deliver bef
ore it reported me to the local constabulary
for parental neglect.

So I stood looking in the huge glass-fronted windows
on Fifth Avenue
, wondering who on earth could afford to pay three hundred dollars for a weird box with a couple of stones on top, or many hundreds more for a pen set from Switzerland.

New York City was at its best at Christmas. Even though I couldn’t afford to skate myself,
it was magical
wa
tching people who could whizzing about
on the rink at
the
Rockefeller
Centre
. Even
jumpi
ng
up and down
to see over the crowds to catch sight of
Tiffany’s window displays
was now part of the delights of the festive season for me.

I couldn’t image being back in Bath, with its sedate decorations, and quiet peace.

And its secrets:
Mum baking treats lovingly while all the while Dad wasted his cash on
his
‘
bit on the side
’
.

Pushing thoughts of Bath aside,
I spied a delic
ate little candlestick
on special for forty dollars.

Reduced from one fifty.

Mum would love that, and she had the perfect spot for it: the corner table near the downstairs’ loo.

Walking into the store I was hit by the blast of hot air from the heating system. Immediately, I began to swelter – how was it possible to ramp up the heat to such an extent that you could comfortably get about in a bikini?

Not wanting to ruin my first date with a Harvard graduate by smelling of dried sweat, I slipped out of my coat.

‘Hey, love that!’ the sales assistant said, coming over and taking up the thick brocade coat lined wit
h fox fur. The boy
had thick black glasses, a round cheery face and the tigh
test trousers I’d ever seen on a
man
–
or woman.

‘Real
fur, but recycled,’ I told him. ‘No foxes were
recently
killed in the making of this
coat.’

He fingered the brocade
lovingly
.
‘I’ve got someone who’d love this for Christmas – will you sell it?’

‘
How much did you have in mind?’ I
had
no attachment to it.
The coat had been hanging about on the stall for over a
month, and no one had so much
sniffed at it.

‘Two hundred
,’ the assistant said, stroking the collar
. ‘Cash’.

It took all of a second for me to respond. The rent was due
, plus we were only asking
one hundred
for it
on the stall.

‘It’s yours.’

The transaction complete, I headed outside
, purse full, into a blizzard
. Ten m
inutes later, when I met Carson
and saw his beaming smile and his
curls peeking out from under his
woolen cap, I thought two things.

One:
I was freezing and completely inappropriately dressed.

And
two:
this
night
might be the turning point in my life.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Monday, November 27
, p.m.

‘No one should blame a partner for one solitary indiscretion. Two, maybe, but no
t
one.’

Jocelyn Priestly.

I THOUGHT ABOUT THAT
quote
as we neared the café.
D
ear, deluded Jocelyn
might have point, I had to admit,
as rain pounded me.
For once I wasn’t completely
repulsed by her
advice. Carson was up to something, and while I hoped it wasn’t what I thought it was – an affair – I figured that
me having dinner
with an old crush didn’t constitute more than a minor blip on any average morality scale.

That first conversation with Cecily about law – and the law student that Carson had given up a glittering career for –
more than
occasionally crossed my mind. There had never been any reason to doubt his commitment, not in a physical sense. Even my increased weight hadn’t put him off wanting me.

Unlike his pathetic attitude to our home life, which definitely put me off him.

But that law student was always there, in the back of my mind.

What if they’d hooked up?

People found their way back to each other, didn’t they?

Like Robert and me.

‘Scarlet? You okay?’

Robert was holding the door to the
eatery
open, watching me with one eyebrow cocked, amused that I was daydreaming in the rain.

‘Sorry, just remembered something about Lolly’s window.
’

‘How conscientious.’

‘
Always work, work, work with me.’

‘Right.
’

Stop acting like a freak, Scarlet
and get inside.

‘
Look,
’ Robert pointed.
‘T
h
ere’s a table. Why not grab it
and I’ll
round up a couple of menus?
’

As I sank, squelching, into the overly designed high-backed leather chair, I took a better look at my coffee date.
Robert Simpson appeared to be
different to what I remembered, and not in bad way.

More like i
n a
bed way
.

T
he thought,
clearly
channeled by the foul-mouthe
d Cecily 2, was instantly pushed
aside.

I am married.

Unhappily
and, considering my family-in-law, unsafely, but still, I was married.

Robert was
clearly
one of those men who
had gro
w
n
into his looks, shrugging off the geekiness of youth and replacing it with a six pack and gently
gra
ying
movie-star
hair.

Lolly was right, he was definitely in the George Clooney mo
u
ld.

I’d thought he was completely out of my league
when I was in my early twenties and ogling him from afar
.
Even when he asked me out I kind of suspected Lolly might have put him up to it – sort of like a pity date.

Even now, i
t was
still
as if he was playing premier
league
and I was coaching the under 2s.

Pulling my gaze from Robert, I considered my surroundings.
The
café was one of those trendy places whe
re a coffee was an espresso
and
cost eight dollars. I was starving, having been put off my ‘con-flakes’ by
Hammertro and
Cecily 2’s
gross
behavior, but I suspected a sandwich
in the slick diner
cost more tha
n I earned working
a
whole
day at
Flindes
.

Robert would probably pay – his suit looked to be worth more than our yearly rent – but I didn’t want to be obliged to him.

Returning with the coffees and, joy, a little plate of pastries, he immediately said,
‘You look as s
tunning as I remember.’

That was more than a little
for
ward. He did know I was married, didn’t he?

I suddenly hoped that this wasn’t some one-night stand thing. Perhaps he was married
too
and needed some recreational sex? Well, he wasn’t going to get it from me.

My idea of recreation was a cream donut in front of
Homeland
.

‘I’m
not
sure your wife would
approve of you chatting up women in cafes,’ I
said, in an attempt to confirm my suspicion.

‘No, she wouldn’t. He grinned. ‘If I had one.’

So then
I felt like an over-r
eactive fool.

Time to get things back on a track I was comfortable with.

‘Let’s talk business. This chain of shops . . .’

I rested my chin on my palm, trying to look businesslike and intense, but
I missed and
my elbow sl
id off the molded glass table to
p and my chin cracked into the
shiny
surface.

‘Doof,’ I spluttered.

Robert sprang up. ‘Christ,
Scarlet? W
hat happened? Are you hurt? Is that blood?’

I saw the drops on the table. People were looking our way, and one of the waitresses
was si
g
na
ling Robert, asking if we needed help.