I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,23

to me in all the time I was working for him.’

‘Rude pig,’ said Bridge. ‘I hate that sort of entitlement. I worked in a factory where the quality-control boss used to slap your bum when you took his morning coffee in.’

‘No way.’ Mary gasped.

‘Notorious for it. He only did it once with me, mind.’ She could still see a slo-mo mini video of his blubbery cheeks wobbling when her nineteen-year-old self twirled around at speed and slapped his face. She was never sure who was more shocked – him or her. He was extremely frosty to her after that, but he never put a hand on her again.

‘Reg wouldn’t have done that,’ said Mary, with certainty. He gave off a vibe that he didn’t like women. Especially brunettes. She was told by someone when she first joined that if she’d had dark hair, she would never have got the job.

‘I was working at that factory in the early noughties and you would have thought it was the 1970s the way some of the bosses carried on,’ said Bridge.

‘Where was it?’ asked Mary.

‘In Derby. A massive place that manufactured plumbing parts.’

‘That where you live now?’

‘Yes, but at the other side of the county. I live in the countryside, it’s lovely.’

‘Is… your husband there too?’ His name temporarily escaped Mary.

Husband? It was funny to think she was still married to Luke. Bridge had shifted him into the ‘ex’ box in her head long ago, but legally they were still very much husband and wife.

‘No, he moved to Manchester. Have you heard of Plant Boy?’

‘Oh yeah. I’m vegetarian, well, pescatarian if you’re going to be pedantic. Does Luke work for Plant Boy then?’

‘Luke is Plant Boy.’

‘No way.’ Mary sounded well impressed. ‘I buy loads of their stuff.’

‘You’ve helped to finance his Aston Martin in that case,’ said Bridge. She remembered their first car – a red fifth-hand Ford Fiesta with a replacement blue passenger door, more rust than paint. It never let them down though, not once.

‘Jack’s got a magnificent Maserati.’

‘I bet he has,’ Bridge said. ‘How come he’s single, presuming he is?’ She had known Mary only a couple of hours, yet she didn’t seem like the sort of girl who’d be lovestruck over a taken man.

‘Oh, Jack’s married to the job,’ replied Mary. ‘He’s had plenty of girlfriends over the years but they haven’t lasted very long. I think…’ She paused, was about to say something that was bordering on the indiscreet.

‘What?’

‘Nothing… only that he hasn’t found the right woman yet,’ Mary said.

‘Oh come on, you were going to say something else. What’s his usual type? No – let me guess. Glamorous, great figure, big lips and tarantula-leg eyelashes,’ said Bridge.

Which was pretty much spot on. Leggy, pretty women with a ton of make-up and flicky hair extensions, heels that hurt Mary’s feet just to look at. Trophies, all in the same mould. They occasionally called in to the office, some friendlier than others, and every one stabbed her a little in the heart in case this would be the one who hung around longer than a month. They never did though, because they were more attracted to Jack Butterly’s cash, house and car than they were to Jack Butterly. He was a castle full of goodies with the portcullis firmly down and she’d been at Butterly’s long enough to have heard via the gossip machine why that was.

Mary knew that he needed someone who saw past the Hugo Boss suits and the successful businessman image because at his core there was still a lonely boy frightened of having his heart mashed. It was clear to her young, but incisive mind that Jack Butterly put all his emotion and effort into the business when really he wished he could find a person to put it into.

Mary didn’t want to talk about him any more. This road trip had so far told her everything she needed to know in order to do what she had to, and that would make her crumple if she thought about it too much.

‘That’s his type in a nutshell,’ she said and shifted the spotlight away from him. ‘So, are you and Luke managing to keep things civil, then?’

Bridge laughed, a hard, brittle sound, before she spoke.

‘This is the most civil we’ve been in the five years since we split,’ she said, as a vision visited her of throwing an A4 file at him four years ago, a point in her life when she had considered getting