Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Jumper Read online

  “Oh no! Is she all right? Have you heard from them?”

  “She’s fine. I got a message a little while ago. It’s a boy – healthy and loud and pissed, apparently.”

  “A boy,” replied Maggie, unable to keep the smile from her face despite the circumstances. “She’ll be gutted.”

  “Yeah, for about a minute or so. Anyway, before she was loaded up, she grabbed my hand, and dragged me along with her. And she told me, Maggie. Between the screams and the swear words – boy, that woman can swear – she told me. About you, about Ellen’s birth. And suddenly, a lot of things fell together. A lot of things made sense. Mainly, why you’d left me. It made sense – but it still hurt.”

  Maggie nodded, keeping her eyes downcast. She couldn’t meet his gaze, she just couldn’t. She knew she’d hurt him, but she’d had her reasons – reasons he now knew. Reasons that still existed, and would never, ever go away.

  “And why are you here?” she said quietly. “In hospital again. In Oxford again. How did you even get here?”

  “I took a cab,” he answered, as though it was the most sensible thing in the entire world.

  “You got a cab? All the way from Scotland? In the middle of the night, at Christmas?”

  “Yeah,” he said simply. “I took a cab. Driven by Derek over there – the one with his leg in traction.”

  She followed his gesture to the bed opposite, where a middle-aged man with a grey-haired crew cut was reading the Mirror, apparently oblivious to the mechanism he was hooked up to. He saw her looking, and gave her a nod.

  “Evening, sweetheart,” he said in a heavy Scottish accent. “Crappy weather we’re having, no?”

  He went back to his paper and turned the page, as Maggie frowned in confusion.

  “We were fine until we got to that place where Gaynor had her wedding,” continued Marco. “What’s it called, Fruit Tree or something?”

  “Peartree,” she replied automatically, pretty much able to guess the rest of the story.

  “And then you had a crash?” she asked.

  “Yep. Spun right out of control on black ice and into a streetlight. Could’ve been a lot worse, I suppose, though it didn’t seem like that while we were being cut out of the damn car…”

  “And now you’re here again,” said Maggie, her tone serious and subdued. “With a broken arm to match your broken leg. I don’t think I’m very good for you, Marco…every time we meet, another part of you gets shattered.”

  She finally looked up and met his hazel eyes. He had a whopping bruise on his cheek, which clearly wanted to be a black eye when it grew up. There were cuts and grazes across his collarbone, peeking out of his hospital gown, and his forehead was still smeared with blood where the nurses had tried to clean him up.

  But worse than that, worse than the broken limbs and the blood and the scars, was the look on his face. The look that told her it wasn’t only his body that was shattered – that she’d done even worse damage to a part of him that nobody could see; that by running away, she’d broken something that would never show up on an X-ray. The fact that she had matching internal injuries herself didn’t seem to make her feel any better about it. What had she been thinking? She could at least have left a note, or replied to one of his many messages, or even waited until morning and left like an adult instead of a child hiding from the consequences of her actions.

  She might have told herself that she was doing the right thing – that she was protecting him – but the way she’d done it had been selfish. Cowardly. And just plain mean.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I should have stayed, and talked to you, and explained. Then you could have avoided all of…this!”

  “Yeah,” said Marco, holding her fingers so hard it hurt, knowing she would try and wriggle out of his grasp at any moment. Seeing the guilt and pain and confusion flowing over her lovely face. “You should have. But I know why you didn’t.”

  When she failed to reply, and responded only with a quick, desperate breath, he continued.

  “You did it because you were scared. Because what we have? What we’ve built over the last month? It’s big. It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever felt, and I’m damn sure it’s bigger than anything you’ve ever felt. It’s called love, Maggie. I love you, and I know you feel the same way about me. If you say you don’t, you’re straight out lying.”

  Maggie sucked in air, desperate to escape now. To get away from this hospital, with its smells and its sadness. To get away from this man, big and battered and brutally honest. Mainly, to get away from the truth – the fact that he was right. That she did love him. And that loving him, she knew, still changed nothing.

  She tugged her hand away, so ferociously he almost toppled over with her, finally freeing her now-numb fingers and standing up. She grabbed her bag, her coat, prepared to leave.

  “Then I won’t lie to you, Marco. But I won’t stay either. The reason I left – the reason this thing between us will never work – still stands. It’s not going anywhere. The problems aren’t going to magically disappear with one stupidly romantic gesture. Love won’t heal what’s been hurt. I made my peace with it all a long time ago, but I won’t drag you down with me. You need to get better, and then leave. Go home. Back to Chicago, and away from me. Because like I said, I’m just not good for you.”

  Before he could reply, she turned, and fled, tears streaming down her face.

  Chapter 28

  Maggie couldn’t deal with going home again. Nothing there felt safe any more. There was too much of Marco left; too many reminders of the Hot Papa from the Park. Once the bed and the chair had been packed up and sent back to the hire company, she would have to give some serious consideration to getting an exorcist in to deal with the rest of it. Maybe some holy water and Latin chants would work.

  Instead of driving back to Jericho, she managed to find a service station on the outskirts of the city that was still open. A bored sales assistant barely out of adolescence was doing a brisk trade in non-festive sausage rolls for the disenfranchised Christmas losers, and she’d bought herself a steaming plastic bucket full of hot chocolate and a multi-pack of Mars Bars. It was clearly the closest she was going to get to a slap-up Chrimbo dinner this year.

  She found a parking spot for the car on St Aldates, and stood for a moment in the empty street, glancing at the bright lights still on in the Christ Church windows. The building itself looked like a Christmas decoration, shining so brightly in the dense darkness of the night. The only sounds were the beeping of traffic crossings and the occasional swish of a lone car wheeling slowly through the slush.

  It was, she thought, as she made her way down the footpath and to the bench at the side of the river, a very white Christmas. The snow was glistening on the rooftops of the boathouses, and the banks were mounded with it. It was only, in fact, her mood that was black.

  She used the carrier bag she’d got from the service station as a make-shift seat cover, and took her place on the bench, realising that it wasn’t really up to the job as soon as moisture started to seep into the bottom of her jeans. Oh well, she thought, sipping her hot chocolate and opening up a Mars Bar, what’s one wet arse compared to the rest of my problems? Problems that were nowhere near so easily solved.

  Marco had been right, about so many things. About why she’d run. About the way she felt. But the fact that he was right didn’t mean that she was wrong – it could never work. She’d finally fallen in love, after so many years of wondering what the fuss was all about, and frankly it felt awful. Life would have been much simpler without it; without seeing the rainbow and going back to living life in shades of grey. Without realising what she was missing out on. Without understanding, for the first time ever, that being content wasn’t the same as being happy.

  She was a coward, she knew. She was scared – of the way he made her feel. Of the way it could turn her whole existence upside down. Mainly, if she was honest, of it being taken
away from her – of a future, a few years down the line, when Marco’s need for children finally overwhelmed his need for her. Of becoming dependent on that buzz, on that joy, and then losing it, being left like a drug addict without a fix. Of seeing him walk away when the paternal instincts, which he so clearly had, became too much to fight.

  She had thought she was ending things for his sake – but she realised, as she sat alone in the dark, starting on her second bar of chocolate, that she was also ending them for her own sake. She couldn’t take the risk, not when the outcome was so uncertain. Better to choose the time and place of her emotional death than wait for the axe to fall, as she knew it inevitably would.

  She’d hit rock bottom, she realised – and now the only option was to try and claw her way back up. If she was lucky, she’d get to ‘not entirely miserable’ by next Christmas. Or possibly she’d just eat herself into a coma, stay on this bench, get covered in the still-falling snowflakes, and be found the next morning by a passing dog-walker. She’d be completely brittle by then, and snap in two when the police tried to move her, like a frozen ice mummy.

  That, she knew, shivering in her coat, was a distinct possibility. The temperatures were definitely going sub-zero tonight. She might never see Boxing Day if she stayed here much longer. She didn’t even have gloves – she’d dashed out to the hospital without them – and only the sensation of the hot chocolate through its plastic cup was keeping her fingers from frost-bite.

  Eventually, she would have to go home. Start to un-Marco her house. Possibly call Nanny McPhee for an emergency de-frosting session as well. At the very least, call her dad and Ellen back, and pretend she was in Scotland drinking champagne. She wondered briefly how Leah was getting on, and felt an extra layer of sadness that a life without Marco also meant a life without Leah – a woman she had truly liked. A woman who, even in labour, had been thinking about her and Marco. She may have shared – possibly screamed – Maggie’s secret, but she’d have done it for all the right reasons. Leah, after all, had found her happy ending – and she just wanted the same for them. I must at least send flowers, Maggie told herself. Maybe some alcohol.

  The hot chocolate was rapidly cooling, and a third Mars Bar seemed physically impossible without some serious repercussions. It was time, she knew, to drag her very wet bottom back to the car, to fall into bed again, and to get on with the rest of her life. Tempting as it was just then, she couldn’t give up. If for no other reason than if she died of hypothermia, Ellen would kill her.

  She scrumpled the chocolate wrappers up into a ball and popped it into the plastic cup, sealing it all up with the lid, her fingers so numb it took her several attempts.

  As she did it, she sighed, staring out at the sleek black surface of the river. It was still peaceful here, no matter how much turmoil she was feeling inside. As she mentally prepared herself to make a move back to reality, back to the car, she became aware of a new and alien sound reaching her ears.

  The sound of someone swearing. Loudly. With an American accent. Of feet slipping on the snow, and a worried voice saying: “Maggie? Are you there? If not I’m probably gonna die…”

  She jumped up, spilling the cup down onto the floor, and whirled around. It was him. It was really him. The crazy, insane, hobbling idiot. He was making his way along the footpath, one crutch propped under his good arm, his double plaster casts shining white in the moonlight, a bag swaying from his fingertips. With every precarious step, she imagined him falling, and rolling right into the river. She’d have to leap in after him, and Baywatch him back to the bank before they both froze solid.

  “Marco! For God’s sake, be careful!” she yelled, running in his direction and just about catching him as he took a tumble forward. Her arms ended up around him, his face grimacing in pain as they collided and did a half-slide, half-walk dance routine back down to the bench. She helped him lower himself on to the seat, while she stood, staring at him in disbelief. He was still wearing his hospital gown, his padded jacket on top of it – one arm in, the other hooked over his cast, the bag on his lap. His bare legs were goosebumped, his feet wearing a pair of now very soggy socks and nothing else. His poor battered face was coated in a cold sweat from the effort, and she whipped off her scarf, wrapping it around his neck.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, kneeling down in the snow and rubbing his legs as hard as she could, hoping to pass on what warmth she had left. She knew the emotional shock of seeing him again would catch up with her soon – but just then she was more concerned with keeping him alive.

  “It seemed like a nice night for a stroll,” he answered, the glib tone doing little to disguise the fact that he was freezing, in pain, and had clearly lost his grip on sanity.

  She pulled a face at him, and decided to whisk off her own coat and wrap it around his lap and legs. The night air swamped her body with chill pinching fingers, and she felt her teeth start to chatter in immediate response.

  “We need to get you out of here,” she said. “Back to the hospital. I can’t believe you did this. Will there be search parties out looking for you?”

  “Nah,” he said, taking hold of her hand and pulling her up to sit beside him. “I signed myself out. Against doctors’ orders, but hey, what do they know? Give me a cuddle. We need to share our body heat.”

  She felt his good arm go around her shoulders, and she snuggled in closer to him. He was, at least on that point, right.

  “How did you even get here?” she asked, feeling some of the warmth of his body seep into the side of hers, using her free hand to tuck her coat more securely around his knees.

  “I took a cab. Again. Marco Cavelli, Patron Saint of Taxi Drivers. We went to your house, but it was all locked up. I tried the shop, but that was closed too. This was…the only place I could think of where you might be. The place you said you always come to think. I was pretty sure dropping the whole I love you thing made you want to think – so I followed my instincts.”

  “You could have tried the pub,” she replied, slipping her frozen fingers beneath the padding of his jacket, feeling the faint warmth of his skin through the thin cotton of the hospital gown. “It was a close second. Look…we need to leave. I’ve got the car up the road there, let’s get you back to hospital…”

  “I’m not going until we’ve talked,” he interrupted. “Talked properly. You can’t make me move, and if you leave me, you’ll be responsible for the untimely death of a man in the prime of his life. I’ll stay here until I look like that snowman out of Frozen, and you’ll have to deal with that guilt trip for the rest of your life.”

  “I could just leave you and call the police,” she replied, feeling the world’s most unlikely smile creep onto her shivering lips. It felt good to be holding him again – but it felt even better to be having a ridiculous conversation with him. “Report a pervert sighting down by the river. I’ll tell them there’s a flasher in a hospital gown sitting here, scaring young women who only want to be left in peace to eat their Mars Bars and feel miserable.”

  “Well, that’s just the thing,” he said, leaning his head against the top of hers, inhaling the scent of her hair. “I don’t want you to be miserable. There’s no need for you to be miserable. This can work, Maggie – I know it can.”

  She sighed, feeling the sting of tears that always seemed to hovering at the back of her eyeballs these days, as though she had some sort of lachrymose medical disorder. If they came now, they’d freeze solid on her eyelashes.

  “No, Marco. It can’t. We were sitting here, that time, and we discussed it then. I asked you if you wanted children, and you said yes. And you’ll be a great father – I won’t be the one to deny you that. No matter what you think you feel for me now, that will change. It’ll fade. You’ll meet someone else. Someone…whole.”

  “You’re remembering wrong,” he said calmly, reminding Maggie of the fact he argued for a living. “The words I actually used were ‘maybe’, and ‘probably’. I never said ‘
yes, that’s the single most important ambition in my whole life’ – you’re just choosing to remember it like that, because it suits this reality you’ve constructed in your own mind.”

  “What do you mean, constructed? There is only one reality. This one. The one where it’s all so completely messed up that I feel like my head’s going to explode.”

  He wrapped his hands around her face, pulling her in for a kiss that she couldn’t even feel.

  “You’re the one who’s making it so messed up, Maggie. I’m right, sweetheart. You’re so scared of what’s happening with us – so scared to take a chance on it – that you’ve built a whole world of objections around one single problem. You need to admit that to yourself. I’m not going to sit here and pretend it’s not an issue – that things will be easy for us – but I’m not going to let you write yourself off like that either. Jeez, what do you think I am? Just some prize stud looking for a fertile cow to impregnate? There’s more to me than that. More to us than that. I love you, Maggie – I love you, as you are, right here, right now. To me, you’re perfect. The only thing that isn’t whole is me…without you.”

  Maggie pondered his words, words spoken with such certainty and conviction and passion, as she wrapped herself even more tightly around him. Partly for warmth – and partly because she hoped that this belief he had, this absolute confidence, would somehow seep into her bones, like some form of magical emotional osmosis.

  Before he’d arrived, she’d been thinking exactly the same thing. That she was scared. Cowardly. But that the obstacle was still real, and still not one they could easily overcome. Now, listening to him talk, hearing the complete faith he had in them, she was starting to wonder. To feel a fractional crack in the armour she’d been coating herself with. To allow herself a moment of fantasy – a moment to imagine a world where they stayed together. Where they both stayed whole.