The Great Christmas Breakup (19 page)

I couldn’t bear to call her back right then.

I
knew I couldn’t tell Mum
the truth
about why I wasn’t already on a plane. She’d no doubt
have
already guessed Jessie wasn’t as ill as I’d made out, mostly because I kept refusing to elaborate on the exact cause of my daughter’s illness.

The whole thing was
so
unbelievably sad – i
t was too late to tell Dad I knew
about his indiscretions
; to tell him to make things good with Mum before . . . well, before it was all over.

M
y phone
binged
.

Robert.

Great.

Another problem.

Was it a problem? Or a delicious secret?

I was so tired that I didn’t really care, I told the evil voice in my head.
I read the message:

Lunch tomorrow? Or the day after? Can’t wait to see you again. R. x.

Had he real
ly signed that text with a kiss?

Was
n’t
it too soon
for that
?

Was
n’t
it
a tad in
appropriate?

‘Who was that?’ Carson asked,
turning over in bed, absorbed
in trying to
mark some poor kid’s English assignment.
There we
re lots of red crosses scattered over the page.

I didn’t answer. Why should I? How dare
he
question
me
?
If he thought I’d bought hi
s lie about being in Manhattan he was sorely mistaken.
Cecily 2 might be insane but the insanity didn’t usually manifest in seeing things, or people, that weren’t there.

Why was
Carson
in Manhattan in the middle of the afternoon?

For the second time in a week.

Bastard.

Sod him.

I returned a text.

Sounds good.

As an afterthought, I added the ‘x’.

And then, looking at Carson,
brow furrowed as his hand flew across the page, crossing and ticking,
I deleted the ‘x’
.

‘Did you listen
to
the messages from your Mom?’ Carson
voice was snappy.

‘’Yes.’

‘What’s up?’

‘What do you care?’

He looked over, pretending to be bewildered.

I longed to tell him to drop the act,
that I knew he was up to something,
but I didn’t.

When he didn’t answer I gave up. I was far too exhausted to have to argue.

I’d call Mum tomor
row, I promised myself, as I put a pillow over my head to block out the light from Carson’s
bedside
lamp, and tried to fal
l asleep.

At least, with the window
dressing job, I ha
d something pleasant
,
and
true
,
to tell Mum
.

CHAPTER NINE

Tuesday, December 5

‘Life is fun. Get naked.’

Jocelyn Priestly

NO ONE
HAD BETTER get
naked today, I told my calendar, reading the latest rubbish
Ms Priestly offered as inspiration for the day
.

Since I’d taken the kids out
for dinner
, putting my foot in the sand in terms of our abject poverty, things
actually
seemed to be going my way.

For a start,
both Carson and Cecily 2 were
trying their best to appease me. I put this down to the fact that Cecily 2’s ‘assignment’ had been extended until Christmas, so they needed me to agree to her continued presence on my sofa.

When I didn’t agree straightaway, Cecily the First had called me up and the word ‘please’ had been used.

I was so shocke
d by
my mother-in-law’s unnatural politeness
that I stupidly agreed.

Meanwhile,
H
ammetro’s uncle had agreed to recreate my
boxes, and Rober
t Simpson had no problem with extending the time taken to do
the job. ‘As long as it is done a couple of weeks before Christmas,’ he’d said, relieving me of a mountain of worries.

I still had to find the boxes – that was proving difficult, but other than that, my plan for the
Chocolato
windows was coming together nicely.

If only the remaining part of my relationship with Robert was so easy to assess.

- Cue recent memory of
awkward
lunch with Robert Simpson
:

‘Do you take sugar?’ He’d lashed out on a coffee and sandwich at some place in Greenwich Village
that
he insisted was trendy, but
I felt
looked more like the dying days of a salmonella diner.

The sugar had lumps of something unidentifiable in it. ‘Um, no, thanks.’

‘So, how’s the job going?’

I wanted to keep it a secret until the big reveal, mostly because if he said he hated the idea, an
d passed the information onto the
ultimate client,
it would
scupper the whole project
.

And there wasn’t a Plan B.

Robert seemed
on
the verge of wanting to say
something
th
e entire lunch but didn’t.

I figured he wanted to follow on from our conversation of the other day.

To follow on from that ‘x’.

And he did. In a way.

A horrible way.

‘I like those tight leather boots you’re wearing.’

I was w
earing t
en-year-old scuffed knee-lengths
.
I couldn’t date them exactly because they were from a charity shop. Thanks to the size of my calves, the boots were quite floppy
around the ankles
.
I hated them, but they were good for walking in wet and icy conditions.

‘Really?
These?
’

A strange dark frown clouded his face for a moment, but quickly disappeared.

What was with him?

‘Just trying to compliment you. Women like compliments, don’t they?’

Depends on what they are.

‘Sure, thanks. I think.’

‘So, tell me about your kids . . .’

With that
segue into a
change of subject, Robert Simpson moved the conversation back to more acceptable territory, but I began to feel that any attraction I had originally felt might have been misplaced.

He really was
more than
a little odd.

While I worked in Manhattan on the shops, Robert Simpson managed to
pop up
at least
every second day, usually at the front of whate
ver store I was working on.
And h
e always
offered to buy me a meal.

My penury meant I never refused, even if I couldn’t stop thinking about the weird boot comment of the other day.

Apart from that
awkward
early conversation
during which we’d
dodged around our feelings,
he hadn’t mentioned the issue of
us
being more than friends again, and I was glad.

So, a few days a week w
e ate and talked and laughed. He seemed to know a lot about the chocolate business – but
I figured
that was
because he was friends with the owner of
Chocolato
.

‘Have to know your market,’ he told me.

T
he initial allure I
’d
felt for Robert Simpson
eventually
faded
completely
. Yes, he was George Clooney-esque, but there
was something about Robert that
made me shy away; something not
completely
trust
worthy
.

And after all,
I did love Carson.

Once.

I may not love
him in the same way now, or love
how he treated me
or the kids, but if I tried hard, I could believe that things would get easier.

So I put any illicit
romance with Robert out of my mind and concentrated on my work.

The shop windows were coming together. I was assembling
the look in the rear of Store Three
, which, being
downtown, had the most space out back.

Hammertro’s uncle had done a
marvelous job, not only cutting
my boxes
into
ark
s
but sourcing them, too.

I’d looked and look
ed and looked, but had no luck.

When Uncle Rabbit saw the modern light beech squares I’d finally found online, he told me to send them back and that he had the perfect thing.

‘Legal,’ I warned him, picturing some irate owner banging on the windows of the
Chocolato
in anger, claiming theft.

‘I swear,’ Uncle Rabbit said, giving me a semi-toothless grin.

And he’d come good, providing a
uthentic, 1920s
’
orange boxes, with satisfyingly faded labels.

‘Where on earth did he get them?’ I asked Hammertro
, on sighting the tantalizing
find
.
Well, tantalizing to me, anyway.

‘You don’t ask with Uncle,’ my neighbor told me, which made me so cautious that I
had to ring Uncle Rabbit
again
to get confirmation that the
boxes were in fact from his deceased mother’s storage shed and not knocked off from some antiques emporium.

‘I think my scheme is going
to look amazing,’ I told Robert, after we’d met for yet another chaste lunch.
‘All I need are
a few
final touches, which I think I might get at some place in Queens, and we’re done.’

Instead of replying,
Robert
leaned down and
kissed me.

It was i
n front of the window of Store Two, near 49
th Street.

There was no warning;
he just
grabbed my face, and stuck his tongue in my mouth.

I’d like to say that it was pleasant, and that it gave me options for a better life, but it was
n’t and it didn’t.

It was
completely sleazy and
entirely
weird.

‘What are you doing?’ I pushed him away.

‘I thought we
’d
discussed this?’ He
seemed confused.

‘Did we? When?’ My voice was even – I hoped to be able to do
more windows for friends of Robert Simpson
. Lolly said he’d told her there was the possibility of more work if I did a good job.

This situation had to be managed
carefully
.
Mum was still completely distressed about Dad, and
despite denying it, I knew she was
waiting for m
e to say I was boarding a plane.
Carson still had no idea Flindes
had sacked me – the money I’d had from Robert so far was helping make ends meet.

I had to tread carefully.

Trying to regain his composure at being rejected,
Robert went red.
A deep, unattractive purple color that caused me to take a couple of steps back.

‘I hope you understand, Robert. I
am
married.’

‘So what? You gave the impression of being up for it.’

Up for it
?

But i
f I’d thought the worst was over, I was a fool.
Robert seemed to be having some
sort of
mild breakdown.