Escape for Christmas (16 page)

It was Christmas, a time for being with the people you loved, and she loved Cal. What else could possibly matter more?

Scooping some decorations from the baskets, Gemma wove her way through the Great Hall towards Cal, willing him to look up and give her that sexy sleepy-eyed smile that always melted her heart, but Cal was engrossed in a discussion with his family. He seemed to be holding Dougal’s phone out of reach and staring at it intently while Mammy South harangued him, her mouth opening and shutting like a koi carp’s. Several other South siblings were also clustered around, including the twins, who were shrieking that they needed to see.

For some reason a fingernail of unease scratched its way along Gemma’s spine. Something was up – not because the Souths were squabbling (squabbling was like breathing to that family), but because Cal’s mouth was all twisted and funny looking and he was actually shouting back at Dougal now. Her pulse skittered. Cal never shouted. Usually he was the typical cliché of being so laid back he was horizontal. Something must really be wrong. As she drew nearer to him the Souths’ conversation rose above the cheerful strains of “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”. A boom mike hovered nearby like some malevolent bird of prey. It was flanked by two members of the crew armed with Steadicams – but the Souths were far too busy to realise. Gemma was actually starting to wonder whether Cal even noticed the cameras anymore.

“Where the feck did you get it?” Cal was shouting, the iPhone held just out of Dougal’s reach.

“Give it back, you fecker!” Dougal shouted back. His face was puce with rage. “That’s mine, so! And anyway, it’s all over the Internet! It’s not my fault. Our Bernie showed me.”

Cal whipped round and pinned his gangly sixteen-year-old sister with a furious stare. “And is that so?”

Bernadette South shrugged and put her hands into the universal sign for “whatever”
,
loved by teenagers across the globe.

“Is it?” hollered Cal. Gemma didn’t think she’d ever seen him so upset, not even when the Dangers
had lost the FA Cup to Chelsea.

“Don’t go picking on your sister,” boomed Mammy South. “Sure, she’s a silly eejit, but Bernie’s not the one peddling
filth
on the Interweb.
If you want to be angry with anyone, Callum, then it’s
her
!”

She spun on her heel and jabbed her finger at Gemma, who’d stopped dead in her tracks. Cal ought to be angry with her? Why? What had she done?

“Is everything all right?” Laurence was asking. Beautifully dressed in a DJ and with his long hair caught back at the nape of his neck, he looked as though he’d stepped out of one of the paintings of Elliott ancestors that lined the walls and rose in measured intervals up the stairs.

“If this is about the, err,” Laurence flushed and his pewter-grey gaze couldn’t quite meet anyone else’s eyes, “the unfortunate handcuffs incident in this week’s episode, then I assure you that we had Callum’s permission to use it.”

What? Gemma’s attention snapped to Cal. “You let them use that?” A hot wave of humiliation broke over her. Even her palms prickled with shame. The whole of Britain would know that she’d had to resort to tacky red fluffy handcuffs and glittery body paint to get her boyfriend to look twice at her. “Cal how could you? That was private.”

“Nothing’s private under the contract Cal’s signed for
Bread and Butlers
,” piped up Dwayne.

“So I see,” said Gemma bleakly. She couldn’t believe how hurt she felt. “Thanks a lot, Cal. It’s nice to know where your loyalties lie.”

“Gem, I’m sorry,” said Cal. He stepped forward to reach for her but Gemma held up her hands.

“No, don’t try and make out it’s all fine, Cal, when it bloody well isn’t! ‘The contract, the contract’ – you’re like a broken record. I’m sick of always hearing that excuse! If it hadn’t been for you and your bloody contract we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Aw, Gemma, not again,” said Cal. He looked close to desperation. “You know I’ve committed to it. I can’t break a contract.”

“Don’t you dare blame my boy for anything when you’re no better than you should be!” Mammy South reared up like a striking cobra and, snatching the iPhone from Cal’s grasp, thrust it triumphantly under Gemma’s nose. “Now what do you have to say for yourself, my girl?”

Gemma stared at the screen in horrified disbelief. There was a weird rushing in her ears – which was possibly the flapping of chickens’ wings as they came home to roost, for here on the iPhone, in full and glorious high-definition technicolour, was a picture of her, wide-eyed and clutching a bright red vibrator in a very suggestive way.

Oh. My. God.

“Oh bollocks!” breathed Angel, who’d shimmied down the ladder and was peering over Gemma’s shoulder. To Cal she said, “Some girls snapped us when we were in Truro. You know what it’s like.”

Cal nodded and smiled hopefully at Gemma, his special sleepy-eyed Cal smile that was just for her – or, more accurately nowadays, her and several million viewers.

“Sure, I’m not complaining about your visit to that shop, Gem. I was just a little put out, so, when I caught Dougal with the picture.”

“Can we get rid of it?” Gemma asked Dougal. God, she looked awful. There were at least three chins, and why hadn’t anyone told her that in her favourite pink Puffa coat she resembled Miss Piggy? That was going straight to Oxfam.

“No way. The pictures have gone viral,” said Dougal, grabbing his phone back from Gemma and scrolling through it with great excitement, “There’s a hashtag on Twitter now and chat forums and everything, so! It’s way cool.”

Gemma did not think that a picture of her holding a dildo was cool in any sense of the word – and neither, judging from the acid-drop-sucking expression on her face, did Cal’s mother. Their family priest would have a fit. It would be Hail Marys until the second coming.

“It’s all fantastic publicity,” Dwayne pointed out helpfully.

Angel nodded excitedly. “This will really boost interest in the live show. Maybe Gemma could even get a lingerie deal with the store? That would be great marketing.”

“Jaysus, I don’t want my girlfriend blazoned all over the country in her knickers!” Cal exclaimed. “Feck! No way.”

“But it’s fine on
Bread and Butlers
?”
Gemma shot back. “And I’m here, by the way! Don’t talk about me like I don’t exist!”

“The show’s totally different and you know it,” snapped Cal. “Jaysus, Gemma, just relax so, will you? It isn’t such a big deal anyway.”

Gemma shook her head. Had everyone gone completely bonkers here? Or was it just her who cared because, as always, she’d ended up looking like a total idiot?

“It’s a big deal to me,” she said.

Mammy South gave a martyred sigh. “Sure, Cal, and if you’d only taken your chance with Aoife when you had it. Aoife wouldn’t parade around with such filth and shame her family. She’s a good girl. When her mammy told me you’d had lunch with her the other day in London I must admit we both got our hopes up.”

“Mammy! Jaysus! Will you give it a rest about Aoife?” Cal responded so furiously that his mother paled with surprise. Gemma was amazed too. In all the time they’d been together she’d never once heard Cal stand up to his mother.

“You had lunch with Aoife?” she asked, shocked beyond belief.

“Gemma, she’s talking bollocks,” Cal said frantically. “It’s the South gobshite gene!”

Gemma was no fan of Mammy South but in this case she owed her. The gobshite gene was at least telling the truth.

“You lied to me,” Gemma whispered to Cal. There was a dreadful ache where her heart used to be. “You were seeing Aoife all along.”

Cal’s face was a dead match for the marble staircase. He’d been well and truly dropped in it, and just one look at him told Gemma that he was as guilty as they came. He really had been secretly meeting the beautiful Aoife in London. Gemma hadn’t been unjustly suspicious, or going mad or paranoid or any of the other things that he and even Angel had teasingly accused her of. Instead, her instincts had been spot on.

Cal had been lying to her for weeks. Maybe even months. Now it all made sense.

“Gemma, please,” Cal said desperately. “It’s not what you think.”

As she stood in the hall, with carols playing and mulled-wine spices hanging heavy in the air, Gemma realised she’d reached the end of a very long and very hard road. The phone calls, the secrecy, the cleared history, the mysterious trips to London…

“It’s exactly what I think,” she said sadly.

She spun around and walked away as fast as she could – but Cal, although no longer Premier League fit, was still fast enough to sprint after her. Gemma had only just set foot through the huge doors and into the chilly night when he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her around to face him. His eyes burned down into hers.

“Gemma, I’m asking you to trust me.” Cal spoke with an urgency that was at odds with his usual calm demeanour. His hands on her shoulders were holding her tightly as though he was afraid to let her go. “I swear on my life that I have never cheated on you. Yes, I saw Aoife in London but it was for a reason, a really good reason. Jaysus, Gemma, I love you! Please, please trust me. Just for two weeks more.”

He was blurring and shimmering in front of her eyes.

“So tell me why you were meeting her,” Gemma whispered. “Go on, Cal, tell me.”

“I can’t,” he said.

Gemma swallowed. “Can’t? Or won’t?”

“Trust me,” Cal said softly. “If you love me, you’ll trust me. Don’t check my phone, my computer, my email, Gemma. Just trust me, like I trust you.”

“
I
haven’t been sneaking around with my ex,” Gemma said. “And if it’s so innocent then why don’t you just tell me the truth?”

“I can’t; not yet. Just give me until the show ends, Gemma. I’m begging you, so I am. Two weeks and then I promise everything will be fine. Just trust me.”

It was the same old refrain, over and over again, but this time Gemma knew she was hearing it for the final time.

“I’m sorry, Cal,” she said, and now the tears spilled from her eyes. “That just isn’t going to work anymore. How can I trust you when you’ve lied?”

“Gem,” Cal’s voice was hoarse, “this is
me
you’re talking to,
me.
I love you. You have to trust me. If we haven’t got trust, what have we got?”

They stared at one another. Snowflakes had started to fall, as cold and as unforgiving as the hurts that were falling between them.

“Nothing,” Gemma said sadly. “We’ve got nothing.”

This was the part where Cal was supposed to fight for her, to say that he was sorry, he’d been an eejit, he was only Christmas shopping with Aoife, and that he loved Gemma and couldn’t live without her. When he didn’t say anything of the sort – his hands sliding helplessly from her shoulders instead – his failure to fight only confirmed what Gemma already knew.

Cal was as guilty as sin.

Gemma fled, her feet skidding over the steps and scrabbling onto the cobbles. Cal didn’t make any attempt to follow her, and when she reached the top of the drive he was still there watching her, a curly-haired shadow against a doorway filled with dancing fairy lights. Tears ran down Gemma’s cheeks, as sharp as knives in the cold air.

Christmas or not, and even though she still loved Cal with all her heart, there was no way Gemma could stay at Kenniston Hall. If Cal couldn’t tell her the truth about what he’d really been up to, then as far as she was concerned they didn’t have a future.

They were finished.

Chapter 15

Gemma stormed back up the drive to the Lion Lodge, blinded by tears and snow, and hardly able to breathe by the time she opened her front door. She’d heard people talk about being heartbroken – it was a standard cliché, after all – but until the moment Cal’s mother had revealed he’d been meeting Aoife on the quiet, Gemma had thought it was just a turn of phrase. Now she knew differently; there was a dreadful ache in her chest, and a stabbing pain every time she pictured Cal with Aoife. Her heart literally was cracking into little pieces, each as jagged and as cruel as the barbed mackerel hooks the Cornish fishermen used. It was unbearable to know Cal had betrayed her; the worst pain imaginable that her lovely Cal, the man she adored with every fibre of her being, was seeing somebody else – and not just anyone, either, but the beautiful, sainted Aoife.

So much for just being “good friends”, Gemma thought furiously as she stormed up to their bedroom. To think she’d believed that old bollocks! How Cal must have been laughing behind her back. And as for telling her that she ought to trust him, as though
she
was the one in the wrong here! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. He’d just proved beyond all reasonable doubt that he was the one who couldn’t be trusted. Cal could talk about contracts and responsibilities and “wait until the New Year”
until he was blue in the face; it wouldn’t make any difference. He’d lied to her and he wasn’t prepared to explain why. That just proved he was as guilty as sin.

Gemma sank onto the bed. She was so tired; it was a deep, dragging exhaustion right down to her bone marrow. What on earth was she supposed to do now? She couldn’t stay here, not when Cal was in love with another woman. She’d have to leave. There was no way she could bear being near Cal knowing that he was lost to her forever. It was bad enough that his beloved contract bound him, and that no-areas-barred cameras would be following his every move and recording this drama for the open-jawed public to enjoy. She could see the headlines in
Closer
and
Reveal
already: “Cal’s Secret Love!”,
or maybe “Premier League Cheat!” But worse than all that, it would crucify her to see him and know that his love for her had died.

No. She had to get away, and she had to get away now. There was plenty of time to sleep once she was miles from Kenniston and Cal.

Gemma’s tears were still falling as she tugged her suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe. Maybe they’d never stop and she’d be like those people who started hiccupping and were still at it years later? Right now it certainly felt like a distinct possibility. Oblivious to the fine layer of dust and dead spiders, she flung open the lid of her case and began scooping random armfuls of clothes from her wardrobe and stuffing them in, little caring what she took, before grabbing her toothbrush, phone charger and the laptop.