evening, and I need to be wide awake to cook Christmas lunch tomorrow.”
“It’s nice, though.”
He turned to me and smiled. I thought he looked bone-tired, his eyes shadowed. “At work today I just kept thinking that tonight I was going to come home and get drunk.”
“Why?”
“Last Christmas was a bit crap, to be honest. I’m trying to get over it. Of course, getting pissed isn’t the answer, but I thought it might help.”
“What happened last Christmas?”
He poured himself some more wine and topped up my glass, although I’d only had a few sips. “It was when it all started to go wrong with Hannah.”
“Your fiancée?”
He nodded. “I made Christmas dinner. There were four of us—me and Hannah, and her brother Simon and his girlfriend Rosie. Simon was my best friend at college, that’s how I’d met Hannah. We’d just about finished eating and Han got a call on her cell. She wasn’t supposed to be on-call, but she told me it was an emergency and she was going in anyway. Simon had a real go at her, told her off, she told him to piss off and got her coat and she was gone. Simon was just so mad, I couldn’t work it out, I kept telling him to leave it. It got really awkward, they left a bit after that and I was on my own until she came home again, three o’clock in the morning. I fell asleep on the sofa waiting up for her.”
He turned to look at me, frowned at the memory. “Shit Christmas, it was, really. Turns out she’d promised him she was going to spend Christmas Day with him, the man she was seeing. Simon knew all about it. He was on the verge of telling me, apparently; that’s why Rosie made him leave. She didn’t want to spoil my Christmas.”
“When did you find out?”
“Not till July.” He leaned back on the sofa, finished the glass of wine. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he said decisively.
He washed the bowls while I watched the late news, then he fetched his duvet from the bedroom and wrapped it around me. It was huge.
“I’ve got a sleeping bag in the wardrobe,” he said. “You have this.”
“Thank you,” I said. I caught his eye for a moment and I felt my heart quicken. If he’d tried to kiss me again I don’t know what I would have done. But he just smiled and went back to the bedroom. I listened to him puttering around the flat, turning off lights in the kitchen and turning on the light in the hallway, and I lay back on his sofa under the warm soft pile of duvet that smelled of laundry detergent and, faintly, of his aftershave. I never thought for one moment that I was going to be able to sleep. I lay there and thought about not sleeping, right up until the moment that I slept.
Saturday 17 January 2004
Sylvia’s party was at the Spread Eagle, a favorite pub that had been the scene of many great nights out over the years. Sylvia had had an on-off relationship with the manager, more off than on, but they’d managed to stay friends in between arguments.
We got a cab to the Spread Eagle, and Lee was in a foul mood.
“Look, we don’t have to stay long if you don’t like it. Seriously. Just an hour or two, okay?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
If it hadn’t been for the fact that he looked so good, I might just have told him to fuck off. I couldn’t decide if he looked best suited up, shaved and smelling divine, or if I preferred him in jeans and in need of a wash. He was halfway between the two extremes tonight, jeans and a navy blue shirt that made his eyes look brighter and bluer than ever, and—at least—clean. And as we headed for the door, bracing ourselves against the racket that was emanating from within, he took my hand and gave it a squeeze.
It was all because of that stupid dress.
When he emerged from the shower, toweled dry and boldly naked, strolling into my bedroom with that swagger of confidence that only a man with his sort of physique could pull off, I was wriggling into my black velvet dress.
“Is that what you’re wearing?”
He slipped his hands around my waist, pressing the length of his body against me.
“Clearly,” I said, amused.
“Why not the red one?”
“Because we’re only going to the Spread Eagle. It’s a pub. And not