I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,109
Robin. ‘Now let’s go downstairs and feed you. It must be ten minutes since you last ate.’
* * *
‘He said what?’ Bridge asked Mary, as they were changing out of their snow-wet clothes upstairs in the bedroom.
‘He wished me luck and shook my hand,’ said Mary. ‘After I turned down his pay rise.’ She imbued the two words with all the contempt that they could carry.
‘I have no words. Well, I have a few, but I wouldn’t want to shatter your eardrums,’ said Bridge. She had really started to take to Jack, but he was such a limp lettuce.
Mary shrugged. ‘C’est la vie,’ she said, her voice wavery. She sat down on the bed, wiped a flurry of involuntary tears from her eyes, beyond annoyed at their appearance. ‘I’m dreading the journey home. It’ll be filled with awkward, horrible silence.’
‘I’ll drive you home,’ said Bridge. ‘It would only be a short detour for me. No arguments, it’s settled.’
Mary wasn’t even going to put up any resistance. ‘He said I didn’t need to work my notice if I didn’t want to.’
‘Oh, Jack, you fucking arsehole,’ said Bridge to the wall, as if the words would travel through it and into his posh twit earhole.
‘I’m not expecting you to set me on as soon as we get back, Bridge, I just said I wanted to start straight away because it came out of my mouth before I could stop it.’
‘Mary, when you’re ready. My PA will welcome you with open arms because you’ll take loads of pressure off her. And you can always stay with me for a while until you’re sure you want to move permanently; try us out, so to speak. I’ve got six bedrooms in the house. I don’t want to push you and yet at the same time I do, because I think you’d be a marvellous addition to my team.’
‘Thank you, Bridge.’ Despite her grateful smile, Mary both looked and sounded as felled as a spruce cut down for Christmas.
* * *
Bridge and Luke were designated cooks for the evening. Their snowman was by no means the ugliest, which had to be snow-Kimberley with the icy knockers and slit mouth, but Bridge volunteered them to save Mary being trapped in the tiny kitchen with Jack. Before they commenced cooking, there was one job to do upstairs, in private. The signing of the letters of intent so their divorce could go through uncontested. They had both agreed to a no-fault split, neither was claiming anything from the other.
‘I thought you’d shaft me somehow in the eleventh hour,’ said Luke, handing over his signed sheet with one hand, taking Bridge’s from her with the other.
‘I have. I signed it Donald Duck,’ said Bridge.
Luke’s head jerked and Bridge laughed, ‘As if,’ she said and Luke patted his heart in relief, grinned back at her.
They both looked down at the signatures on the forms. After five long years of a tornado-grade war, the winds of rage had softened to a gust, a breeze, a mere ruffle in the air. They were here, at the end of the ride. The end of an era.
‘The deed is done,’ said Bridge. She felt inexplicably sad, empty. A fat teardrop plopped out of her right eye and ran down her cheek. She flicked it away, aware that he’d seen it. ‘Sorry, I don’t know where that came from.’
‘I feel it too,’ said Luke, snapping a pale pastel tissue out of the box on his dressing table and handing it to her. ‘We’ve been part of each other for so long.’
‘The first cut is the deepest and all that.’
‘Precisely.’
Bridge blew her nose. ‘Thank you for all the love you gave me.’
‘Thank you for kicking me up the bum,’ said Luke, which made Bridge laugh. ‘We are where we are now because of who we were then.’
‘We are the manure on each other’s prize-winning orchids.’
Luke took Bridge’s hand, held it between his own. It felt so small, delicate, fragile.
‘Bridge.’ A sigh. ‘I’m going to be a dad. No one knows yet. Well, obviously I do and Carmen and probably her family by now because we were going to make the big announcement yesterday. I wanted to tell you to your face before the news got out.’
Bridge smiled, a fresh flurry of tears falling at the same time. ‘Ah, that is the best news, Luke. You will make a… a brilliant father. I’ve always thought so. Even when you didn’t. I couldn’t be happier for you both.’