I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,112
and friends
Chapter 33
Bridge was woken by the clank-clank of the old radiator alongside her on which her washed pants were warming. She swung her legs out of bed, pulled back the curtain and saw large patches of grass where yesterday, there’d been snow.
She heard muffled voices coming from next door, Jack and Luke talking. She wished some of her soon-to-be ex-husband’s audacity had rubbed off on Jack and that a miracle had occurred and he’d grown a pair overnight. She had considered taking Jack to one side and telling him a few home truths, but no; why should she? If there was one thing she’d come to know over the years it was that life was about learning lessons and the things hardest to get were the most satisfying to own. Mary deserved someone who didn’t disappoint her, a knight on a white steed, not a shite on a seaside donkey. Besides, she was really looking forward to working with Mary. She prided herself on being a good boss, a kind boss. She was grateful, in hindsight, for the school of hard knocks having given her all that she had now. But she felt for Mary and the first chance she got to fix her up with someone who had balls the size of coconuts, she would.
‘Morning,’ said Mary, stretching. ‘My, I’m going to miss this bed.’
She’d slept unexpectedly well, took that as a sign she was now set on a road she should be travelling.
‘Morning,’ said Bridge. ‘Take care before you look out of the window. I think we’ve become snow-blind; the sight of a bit of green sent my brain into a spin.’
Mary crossed to the window. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Grass and road and car colours.’ She took a deeper meaning from the sight. The end of something monochrome, the beginning of something vivid.
She showered quickly, dressed and stripped her bed as Bridge had, left the sheets folded up on top of the mattress, began to pack.
‘Do you want a diary?’ she asked, holding up the one that Jack had put in her Christmas stocking.
She didn’t want to keep it, didn’t want the reminder.
‘If you’re sure you don’t, I’ll take it off your hands,’ said Bridge.
Mary tossed it over. Bridge flicked through it, admiring the quality, spotted the entry next to the second Saturday in January.
Dinner with Jack. Firenze.
‘Did you write this, Mary?’
‘I haven’t written anything in it.’
‘Someone has,’ Bridge said. ‘What’s Firenze?’
‘A fabulous Italian restaurant. Why?’
Bridge showed her the page. Jack’s writing. Mary could pick it out of an identity parade of two hundred fonts. She felt a flutter in her heart, for one split second, before an angry boot stamped on it and crushed it. She looked as cross as it was possible for Mary’s delicate features to look.
‘What does that even mean, Bridge? Is that a message for me to discover? And when – as now – I have, what was I supposed to do about it? Go up to him and say, “So, I see we have a date?” and give him the chance to say, “I don’t know what you mean,” because he possibly wrote it when he was pissed and now he’s sobered up? Or was I supposed to turn up at Firenze and wait for him to arrive at some point?’
Mary’s hypothetical questions kept flying out of her and Bridge couldn’t answer any of them. Jack had totally blown it. Faint heart never won fair lady and his was fainter than an exorcised ghost in an invisibility cloak.
‘Are you going to do anything about it?’ asked Bridge, cautiously.
‘No I am bloody not,’ said Mary and zipped up her case in a manner that told Bridge exactly what she thought about that.
* * *
‘I hear stirring from next door. The girls are up,’ said Robin to Charlie, who was lying in bed, face up, eyes closed. He went over to the window. ‘I can see our Range Rover again.’ The brilliance of their car colours, the road, blue sky, the grass all seemed to pop with further brightness after days of seeing only a vista of white. The snow clung on where it could, but it was fighting a losing battle against the warmer currents of air winning the temperature war.
He checked under the bed and in the drawers to make sure he’d packed everything. ‘I expect the landlord will be visiting this morning. I hope he’s not too cross about finding his larder raided and his emaciated alcohol supplies.’