The Great Christmas Breakup (22 page)

‘My daughter
did that one too,’ Mum told her proudly.

‘Mum,’ I said, embarrassed, but the two women nodded their congratulations before moving on.

Robert m
arc
hed around the corner.
On seeing a tiny, elderly woman with the same frizzy hair as me (only white) Robert skin went paler than his eyes.

‘What do you think?’ I asked him as he approached. Before he could reply, I turned to Mum. ‘This is the owner, Mum. He’s here to pay me, aren’t you Robert?’

If Mum thought my business acumen less than finely honed, she didn’t say. Holding out a hand, she waited for Robert to shake it.

‘Pleased to meet you – you should be paying her double for this. Look at the crowds!’

Clearly, people had never seen so many chocolate animals heading into an ark before.

‘Yes, well, Scarlet is certainly talented. Perhaps we will never know how much.’

What was he implying? I looked at him over the top of Mum’s curly grey head. He smiled – a nasty curl
of thin
lip
s
.

‘You know . . .’ He took Mum’s arm and began leading her towards the nearby coffee shop, ‘. . . Scarlet and I have become quite close.’

I guess it was to be expected. I could outsmart Robert, but he wasn’t a successful banker and entrepreneur for nothing, was he? If I demanded money, he’d tell Mum we were having an affair.

It was no
nsense, of course, but given she knew of all
my other lies, there was no way Mum wouldn’t
believe I was shagging Robert Simpson.

Not if he told her I was.

Moving quickly, I pulled Mum from Robert, and told him we would get together to discount the issues later. ‘Mum and I have a pressing engagement?’

‘We do?’ Mum was baffled by my behavior.

‘I’m sure you do,’ the nasty smile was still firmly in place.

So that was it.

No money.

But at least Mum didn’t
think I was a slut on top of everything else.

At least not yet.

‘See you later Scarlet,’ Robert’s sing song voice called after us.

‘He seemed nice,’ Mum said.

Hmmm.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Christmas Eve,
December 24

‘This year, pick a present that means something to you both;

a reminder from the past.

And make it sexy!’

Jocelyn Priestly

GRINNING TO MYSELF, I
considered the calendar’s missive as I sat in t
he overheated mobile home of my
in-laws.
Trust m
e Jocelyn, Cecily will definitely
feel the love when she opens my gift!

It was tradition to open a single
present befo
re the ‘big day’, as the Teeson
s called
Christmas.

Howie lumbered over to the stack by the tree near the fridge, and chose the biggest one. It didn’t have his name on it.

‘Howie,’
Cecily
2 admonished
loudly
. ‘That’s for Jessie.’

‘No it isn’t.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Isn’t.’

‘Is.’

‘Isn’t.’

‘How come
s
he gets the biggest one?’

‘Because Jessie and J
come from a poor family,’
Cecily
2 said, burp
i
ng
loudly to underpin her point. ‘N
ow behave.’

‘No,’ said Howie.

‘Yes,’ said
Cecily
2.

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

Cecily
patted her favorite grandson’s head fondly
, promising
she would get
him the very same gift as J’s
when ‘Spike with the truck’ came around
.

Then she told Howie to find her a gift to open. Seeing me watching her, she pointed out the wrapped circu-boosta.
‘Let’s see what
Aunty Scarface
has for me this year.’

Everyone tittered as
they always did when she called me Scarface. It was a term of endearment, Carson whispered
to me, silently pleading for me not to react
. I ignored him, like I had been doing since he arrived
home at 3 a.m. the night before last.
I had been livid, because Mum needed to be taken to the docks for her trip home, and I wanted to be able to relax and have a meal out with her alone (her treat, of course) before having to literally ship her off.

‘It
’s from all of us, granny,’ J
reminded her.

‘Of course,’
Cecily
said to him, patting
Howie’s head again.

J
passed over the gift and
with Rufus
leaning in over her shoulder, jollying her along with ‘oohs’ and ‘what could it bes
?
’,
Cecily
revealed the re-gifted circulation booster.

For a good five minutes she was speechless.

‘That looks familiar,’ yelled Cecily 2.

‘That’s a shit present,’ Howie said.

‘Is not,’ said J.

‘It is J,’ I said, shutting both boys up.

‘Fuck me, I recognize it now!
’ Cecily 2 said, taking a step back to avoid being trampled but a raging mother.

We all waited, but Cecily simply
turned to me and C
arson and smiled.
‘This is the nicest gift
I’ve ever been given.’

I could see from he
r eyes that she knew
.

She knew what I’d done.

And somehow, she was going to pay me back.

*

In the car on the way back home, Carson informed me he needed
to collect
exam results
from work
first thing
tomorrow.

He had to be joking.
‘It will be Christmas Day
and school is closed.’

How stupid did he think I was?
If I wasn’t convinced he was having an affair before, I was definitely convinced now.

‘I won’t be long. The kids will want to know the results.
’

Immensely stupid, clearly.

And that’s when I decided to take the initiative. ‘Okay,
so
go there now. No sense in dropping us home first, is there?’

If he appeared rattled
by my suggestion, he didn’t show it. ‘Sure, but it might take a few minutes for Igo the groundskeeper to let me in. As you said, it
is
Christmas Eve.’

Then the kids began
moaning –
just
like Carson knew they would.

‘No, Dad, come on. Mum, tell him. It’s too cold. I wanna go home.’

‘Me too,’ said Jessie.

‘Want to. You are starting to sound like Cecily 2.’

‘Please Mum,’ Jessie put a cold hand on my shoulder. ‘We need to chill after spending all that time with Howie.’

‘He only tried to stab you with a fork twice this ye
ar,’ J told her. ‘It wasn’t so
bad.’

Jessie punched him and hair pulling and fisticuffs ensued.

There was nothing for it
I had to
let Carson take the kids home before they killed each other.

As he expertly parked the car, I mulled things over.
There was a way to find out.
Yes it was irresponsible,
because it cost money we didn’t have,
but one way or another, I needed to know.

And it was bloody well cheaper than a private investigator.

Tomorrow
,
I would hail a cab and follow Carson
to wherever he was slinking off to
.

If I had to,
I’d take a photo with my phone – which would be almost useless because there
was no zoom or flash – and
confront him once and for all. 

If he turned out to be a cheater,
I’d get the kids British passports and take them back to Bath to stay with Mum.

Sod him, and the rest of the Teesons.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Christmas Day, December 25.

‘Today is the day to
make peace with the past
and embrace the future.’

Jocelyn Priestly.

I AWOKE WITH A
start, and listened
for what had caused me to leave a dream that involved the real George Clooney and a waterbed. Carson! Through the pape
r thin walls, I heard Carson
on his
phone
in the bathroom
, mumbling quietly.

Bastard.

It was only seven in the bloody a.m.

I stared at the calendar for a moment, then grabbed the page, scrunched it up and threw it across the room.
When I left
my darling husband for good
, I would
finally tell him what I thought of that stupid excuse for a gift.

Next
I heard Carson sneaking
out
the door.
The
now
familiar creak as the top caught whe
re it hadn’t been hung property had me out of bed in an instant.

So he was planning on l
eaving to shag his mistress.

On Christmas
morning
!

Who did he think he was – Austin Bloody Powers
?

Checking
that
the children were asleep (they were teenagers, so I figured we had a
few hours before they headed in the direction of
the Christmas tree), I
raced upstairs, knocking loudly
on my neighbor’s door
.

Hammertro
appeared to have come of
f
worse in a title fight with some heavyweight. Saying he was fine – the other guy
‘had lost his shit’ and
was in hospital – he
tiredly agreed to look after the kids and
sleepwalked his way downstairs to reconvene his slumber on our sofa.

I said to let the kids open their presents if they
a
woke.

After all, i
f Carson was screwing that
disgraceful legal slut
from his past
, it might be some hours before they released me from jail after I attempt to kill them both.

‘No guns, no drugs, no calling Cecily 2,’ I told him sternly.

‘I still love her fierce
arse
,’ he murmured
, sadly.

Cecily 2 had decamped and headed for home seconds after arriving and spying a rat under Hammertro’s sofa. I hadn’t bothered asking how she’d been in a position to see a rat under the sofa in the first place. 

‘Then tell her
you love her
,’ I said.

‘You think?’
Hammertro’s bravado had vanished. The impossible had happened – Cecily 2 had ensnared another man in her web of horror.

At least Hammertro could defend himself rather more effectively than Rufus.

‘You’d be doing her long-suffering husband
and cousin
Rufus a favo
r, trust me.
’

Even before
I expelled the words were
I realized that Cecily 2 and
the argumentative
Howie might
move in upstairs if Rufus kicked them out of their mobile home.

Time for a quick back-track.
‘On the other hand, the husband is six five and built like a truck. He’ll pound your
head
into the concrete. And I hear,’ I added, ‘he works in
concrete
.’

The implication was clear. At least I hoped it was.

That should do it
.

Leaving Hammertro pondering Cecily 2’s
supposed
Mafioso husband,
I raced down the stairwell and out into the street.