Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Jumper Page 13

It had been a hectic morning, and the last thing she felt like doing was walking into a room full of successful professional people who probably looked like they modelled for Stylish Lawyer Monthly on the side.

  Waving Ellen off had been harder than she imagined. Even her normally resilient daughter seemed to have switched off her sarcasm button for the occasion, and the two of them had stood hugging on the platform for long, weepy minutes as the train pulled in.

  “You’ll be all right won’t you? In Scotland?” Ellen had asked, swiping ferociously away at her tears as though it offended her to be caught out displaying some humanity.

  “Course I will, silly,” replied Maggie, “you just concentrate on having a good time, and learning as many French swear words as possible. Text me when you’ve landed, and call me on Christmas Day. And don’t worry about me – I’ll be fine with Marco.”

  Ellen had raised an eyebrow at that, a suggestive smirk settling on her lips.

  “Who’d have thought it, eh?” she’d asked. “That bloke you were perving over in the park – a wearer of festive knitwear, no less - has ended up as your hot Christmas date. Weird.”

  “It is weird, but it’s not a date,” said Maggie, rooting in her purse for an extra £10 note to hand over. Motherhood – the gift that kept on giving.

  “Whatever you say, mum,” answered Ellen, pocketing the cash and giving her a quick last hug. “Au revoir – and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

  Maggie had watched the train pull out, waving frantically at the window as her daughter’s face got smaller and smaller, wondering if she could chase it all the way to Paddington. When it had completely disappeared from sight, she wrapped her arms around herself – staving off the cold, staving off more tears – and trekked back to the car park.

  She knew that later, when the Ellen-shaped dust had settled, she’d be lost. She’d miss her so much, even if recently she’d only seen her for brief bouts of abuse each day. But right then, she’d decided, she had to hold it together. Get herself back to the shop. Get Isabel’s dress ready. And get the car round to the Institute to collect her non-Christmas non-date.

  Neither she nor Marco had talked much on the journey from his flat to the lecture hall. She’d settled on the leather sofa in the living room after he’d taken himself off for a shower, knowing he could call her if he needed help, but hoping like hell he wouldn’t. Seeing him undressed the once had been quite enough. She didn’t need to add ‘fresh from the shower’ to the image bank as well. She’d listened as he hopped around, uttering the odd expletive as he dressed himself, but never once shouting her name.

  When he walked back in – wearing a fresh white shirt, a pale blue tie, and his now traditional black running pants – she’d pretended to be reading a copy of the local free sheet that had been poked through the letterbox. There’d been a mini Christmas crime wave – wreaths getting stolen from front doors. What was the world coming to?

  “Ready to go?” she’d asked, getting up and clutching the car keys.

  “As I’ll ever be,” he’d replied. It was pretty much the last thing either of them said, right until she dropped him off at the ground-floor disabled access, and escorted him in with his laptop bag and notes.

  They’d been met there by a woman who looked like she never got her hairbrush stuck in her tangles. Introducing herself with some impossibly chic European sounding name, she’d gazed at Marco like he was hot chocolate fudge cake, and taken him away on her stupidly high heels, leaving Maggie standing there like the shabby spare part she was.

  The same woman, she noticed as she crept into the reception room, was with him now. The rest of the crowd was a mixed bag – some very sharp suits, some perfectly tailored dresses, but also a scattering of jeans and hoodies from the post-grad students. They definitely looked like they were having the most fun, already hovering around the table that was set up with glasses of wine.

  She fought the temptation to join them, and instead gave Marco a little wave as he caught her eye across the room. He looked right at home there, she thought, surrounded by glamorous and successful people. Probably because, outside the crazy world they’d co-habited recently, he was a glamorous and successful person himself. She knew him much better now – but part of her would always think of him as ‘the other’. As the stranger she saw in the park, who seemed to be encapsulated in his own bubble of health and happiness. As the man who’d flirted with her in the shop, and left her tongue-tied and blushing. As something entirely alien to her small, quiet universe.

  Maggie looked on as he made his goodbyes, and as the woman in the heels held on to his arm for as long as possible. That, she was guessing, taking in the glossy dark hair and super-slim figure, was probably the kind of woman he normally dated. What a cow.

  She gave Marco a quick smile as he came towards her, using the crutches like a pro now, his leg barely slowing him down.

  “You can stay if you like,” she said, noting and really not appreciating the unintentionally shrill quality in her voice. “I can come back for you later – looks like you were having fun.”

  “Looks,” he said, frowning slightly in confusion, “can be deceptive. How are you? Did Ellen get off safely?”

  Maggie nodded, turning to leave the room, impossibly keen to get away from the polite chatter and the curious glances and the stink of other people’s success. It was small-minded, she knew – but that was the way her day was shaping up.

  “Yes, fine,” she replied, pausing by the doorway and waiting for him to catch up. “How was the lecture?” she asked, realising how petty she was being. None of the way she was feeling right now – missing Ellen, sad about Christmas, and about as attractive as a goat with leprosy – was his fault. He couldn’t help being what he was any more than she could help being what she was. Seeing him here, surrounded by his people, in what she knew was his natural element, had rattled her. Reality had come and given her a swift kick up the backside, and left a loser-shaped bruise on her arse.

  “It was good,” he said, holding on to her arm to stop her dashing away ahead of him again. “What’s wrong?”

  Maggie puffed out one long, frustrated breath, and tried to rearrange her face into something resembling a smile.

  “Nothing. Just having a bad hair day – anyway, sir, your carriage awaits.”

  He followed her to the car, and Maggie waited until he had settled in before sliding the door shut. She stored the crutches in the back, and got in next to him.

  “How’s the leg?” she asked, trying desperately hard to find her balance. It had been a shit of a day, really. Shower-gate had left her feeling empty and unsatisfied with her lot in life in a way she’d never experienced before. Ellen had buggered off to Paris. The shop had felt cold and deserted as she worked, and she’d even found herself crying quietly as she worked on Isabel’s dress, careful not to stain it as the tears fell pathetically from her eyes. But, she reminded herself again, none of that was his fault. What felt like a lifetime ago now, she’d told him off for taking out his bad temper on the male nurse who’d delivered him to her home – and now she had to try and suck down her own medicine.

  “Oh, you know,” he replied, dragging up the jogging pants and glaring at the cast. “Still there. Still useless. Still itchy.”

  Maggie looked at the cast, and the scrawled messages it had gathered during its outing at Gaynor’s wedding. Smiled at the shaky writing and neon pink love hearts. And then noticed the brand new addition. Huh.

  “Is that a phone number on there?” she asked, already knowing that it was. And already suspecting who had left it there. Even her handwriting was stylish.

  “Uh…yeah. That woman, the facilitator? Chantal? Said she couldn’t find any paper…”

  Yeah, right, thought Maggie, gritting her teeth as she fiddled with the car keys. She realised her grip on them was so tight her knuckles had faded to white, and that an absolute swear bomb was building up inside her. She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, and stared
straight ahead through the windscreen, desperately trying not to let the bomb go off in front of him. She felt angry and bitter and sad all at the same time, and had an almost irresistible urge to punch something. Or someone.

  “Maggie?” said Marco, taking in her stern expression, the clenched fists, the silence. “Are you okay? Are you…jealous?”

  His voice rose slightly with the last word, and she noticed he was smiling. Almost, in fact, laughing. Which only made her feel more helpless. If this was jealousy, it sucked big time. She sighed, and tried to force herself to climb down from the cliff that she seemed to be tottering along. God. He was right. She was jealous. So jealous she was possibly going to turn into the Incredible Hulk, and set off all the airbags.

  “Yes,” she replied quietly. “Of her shoes. Now put your belt on, will you?”

  He nodded, and held her gaze for a few seconds. He looked annoyingly pleased with himself, and Maggie allowed herself a brief fantasy where she delivered a karate chop to his nose. Or at the very least stamped on his big toe.

  She turned the keys in the ignition, and knew she was going to have a kick-ass drive all the way home. And if anyone so much as considered cutting her up or not giving way at a roundabout, she’d be out of the car and beating them to a pulp within seconds.

  Just as she was about to pull out of her parking spot, she heard the familiar ping of a text landing on her phone. Ellen, she thought, turning the engine off again. Letting her know she was still alive and had arrived. She grabbed her phone from the depths of her bag, and slid the screen on, expecting to see her daughter’s familiar icon: two raised fingers, with a mass of ginger hair behind them.

  Instead, she saw the message was from Isabel. She frowned as she read it, and felt the now-familiar sensation of more tears stinging the back of her eyeballs as they made a bid for freedom. She put the phone back in her bag, and leaned into the seat, screwing her eyelids closed so tight a few drops were squeezed from the sides.

  “What is it?” asked Marco, reaching out to take her hand. “Is it Ellen? What’s happened?”

  “It’s Isabel,” Maggie replied, accepting his touch and the comfort it offered. “Michael’s ill. He’s back in hospital. And the wedding…it’s going to happen there. Today.”

  Chapter 22

  The remnants of an apparently successful Christmas party still lingered on in the Morse Bar. Named after the famous literary detective, and tucked away in one of the city’s most elegant hotels, laughter and chatter echoed around the soaring arched ceilings, only falling flat when they reached the table for two in the window. The table that had no smiles, and seemed to be cocooned in its own bubble of quiet and reflection.

  Maggie and Marco sat opposite each other, glasses of wine on the table in front of them, both lost in thought as they watched the new flurries of snow swirling outside on the busy street. Shoppers bustled past laden down with bags that threatened to blow out of their hands; teenagers wandered by eating chips out of open bags despite the weather, and cars edged slowly and carefully along the increasingly whitened roads.

  Around them, in the cosy, wood-panelled room, were the sounds of joy and fun and the kinds of Christmas spirit that came straight from a bottle. On the table next to them, a young couple – fresh from the party and still wearing name tags – were leaning in close to each other, faces inches apart, the man resting an exploratory hand on the woman’s thigh. The woman smiled, and edged even closer.

  “Looks like someone’s in for a good night,” said Maggie, gesturing to them with a nod of her head. Marco looked on and smiled.

  “Good luck to them – and at least they’ll know each other’s names in the morning.”

  She managed to find a small laugh for that one; the rarest of sounds on the hardest of days. They had come here straight from the hospital, where they’d left the newly married Isabel and Michael to start their life together in the most difficult of circumstances.

  Michael had collapsed at home the day before, and after being rushed in for tests, was confronted with frowning faces and carefully phrased sentences that all added up to one unpleasant message: he was very, very sick. Nobody had spelled it out for them – they were waiting for his regular doctor to arrive – but nobody had needed to.

  Suddenly, a Christmas Eve wedding had seemed too far away. A distant shore they might never reach. Michael and Isabel had asked about getting married there, in the hospital, and the staff had miraculously made it happen.

  Maggie had emerged from the lift with the wedding dress, spotting Isabel and clutching her so hard she thought she’d never let her go. She’d been holding back tears, determined not to end up needing consolation herself. This was Isabel’s day – no matter how screwed up a day it was. After a year of fittings, of conversations, of getting to know this wonderful young couple, it was killing Maggie that this was the way it was going to end. Not in their village church like they’d planned, but in antiseptic corridors, in a small room with a hand cleansing dispenser on the wall.

  By the time Maggie and Marco had arrived, there was already a table laden with cake and champagne and boxes of confetti, as well as two perfectly dressed bridesmaids with tell-tale mascara stains beneath their eyes. Other patients on the ward had donated their get-well flowers when they heard what was happening, and Michael’s room was filled with vases of multi-coloured blooms.

  “Please, stay,” said Isabel, when she finally pulled away. “You and Marco. We’re trying to make this as happy as we possibly can – so please, share it with us. We’re not giving up – we have to hope that they’re wrong. For a miracle. That this is our beginning. Stay, if you can.”

  And so they’d stayed. Maggie had helped Emma with the dress, and the bridesmaids had taken care of the hair and make-up, filling the nurses’ break room with the smell of perfume and hairspray and the delicate scent of roses that Maggie had spritzed on the inside of the dress.

  When they’d finished, Isabel looked stunning. The dress was perfect – a simple, fitted sheath style, satin overlaid with embroidered ivory lace, and a matching veil. As Maggie took pictures with her phone, off-duty nurses crowded around, ooh-ing and aah-ing and admiring. The hectic preparations were a true test of waterproof cosmetics, and by the time they were all ready to emerge and meet the chaplain, not a single one of them had failed to shed a tear.

  As they’d walked down the corridor – Isabel on the arm of her sombre-faced dad, bridesmaids behind, Maggie taking up the rear – patients and staff from the ward had appeared, lining the space around them, some in uniforms, some in pyjamas and robes, others in hospital gowns. They all applauded as the wedding party passed, all knowing what this meant. Knowing that a bed-side ceremony had its roots in the most uncelebratory of causes. Isabel, though, didn’t seem to be focused on that – instead, she walked down that corridor as though she was walking down the aisle, glowing, radiant, beautiful. Every inch the perfect bride.

  One of the nurses had borrowed Marco’s laptop and downloaded a version of Here Comes the Bride, and the traditional music was filling the room as she walked regally through the door, and over to the side of the man she loved.

  Propped up in his bed, wearing the wedding suit that was now too big for him, sat Michael. His face was drawn and weak, and his arm was connected to a drip by his side – but the moment he saw her, the moment Isabel walked into that room, he seemed to revive. To find a hidden reserve of energy that made him shine with happiness as he reached out his hand to hers.

  Maggie stayed near the back of the room, looking on as the chaplain started the service. She kept her hazy eyes on the couple, but felt Marco by her side, leaning up against the wall and putting his arm around her, pulling her in tight as the inevitable tears started to fall. She collapsed against him, glad of his strength, his comfort, his understanding. Glad to not be alone as she silently wept.

  By the time they were pronounced man and wife, and Isabel leaned down so that Michael could kiss his bride, even Marco’s eyes were g
listening.

  Against all the odds, it was completely perfect – without the church or the guests or the endless group photographs, but with everything that mattered. With love, with commitment, with joy. With absolute certainty that they were doing the right thing.

  Someone threw handfuls of showering confetti, and there was the sound of a champagne cork popping. Michael’s father led a round of cheers, then produced cigars they couldn’t smoke. Plastic glasses were dispensed to everyone – even the patients outside in the corridor – and the fizz was poured. The party, such as it was, had begun.

  When Maggie and Marco left, Isabel was still perched on the side of the bed, laughing and smiling as Michael grasped her hand with as much strength as he had. He didn’t look like he ever planned to let her go.

  It was, quite simply, the most beautiful wedding Maggie had ever been to – and it had left her emotionally crippled.

  The two of them emerged into the carpark of the hospital to find the snow had started to come down again, whirling in windswept flurries as they huddled together, making their way slowly and carefully back to the car, and back to reality.

  Maggie had quickly put on the heating, blowing into frost-tinged hands. The radio kicked into life – a carol service being broadcast from a local church; angelic voices bringing to life the melancholy tones of In The Bleak Midwinter.

  She’d looked across at Marco, who was leaning back in his seat like a rag doll, the strains of the day playing so clearly across his face. He’d barely known them – but it was impossible for anyone with a heart to have survived that ceremony without taking some serious emotional damage. And Marco’s heart, she knew, was bigger than most.

  “I don’t want to go home,” she’d said simply, staring out at the snow.

  “Then we don’t,” he replied, taking hold of her shaking hands and warming them in his own larger grip. “We go somewhere else. And we talk, or we don’t talk; and we eat, or we don’t eat, and we give ourselves the chance to just catch our breath. And we make a toast – to Isabel and Michael, and whatever future they have together.”