The Night Before Christmas (16 page)

‘Here you go,’ Joanna said. ‘Irish coffee. Want one, Lyds?’

Lydia nodded. ‘Would you like me to get the kids to bed?’ she asked Katy, who shook her head.

‘No, thanks, Lydia. I think that, before they go to bed, these guys need me and their dad to make up. I don’t know what came over me.’

‘I do,’ Joanna said. ‘It’s Christmas, you see, people put all this pressure on themselves to be happy and …’ Joanna caught sight of Lydia’s pursed lips just in time. ‘And you are tired and a bit drunk and it’s been quite a day, what with Lydia chucking Stephen and having a hot sexy handyman already in her sights.’

‘What does sexy mean?’ Tilly asked, her red little face appearing from amongst Katy’s curls.

‘It means really lovely and cuddly,’ Joanna told her.

‘Like Vincent?’ Tilly said.

‘In many, many ways,’ Joanna said.

‘And anyway,’ Lydia said, ‘Will is really nice and I really like him, but there is no way I’m ready for another relationship. Not for months and months, and especially not him, he’s not …’

‘Your type?’ Will said appearing in the door.

‘Does everyone always have to come into a room like a bloody Ninja?’ Lydia exclaimed. ‘And he’s not into me that way, I was about to say,’ Lydia said.

Will nodded, as ever with that playful little smile threatening the corners of his very kissable mouth, Lydia thought, realising at the moment that she was very drunk and couldn’t be trusted to say another word to anyone about anything, ever again.

‘Look,’ Will said. ‘Do I have to go back in there with the men? They are dickheads, no offence.’

Katy giggled. ‘Stay here and have an Irish coffee with us, Will.’

‘I said I’d deliver coffee to those two,’ Lydia said, looking down the long dark hallway to where the last two drunken men were standing, no doubt commiserating with each other.

‘I’ll take it,’ Joanna said, winking at Lydia and blowing silent kisses to Will behind his back. ‘Then I might actually get to see my boyfriend for a bit tonight and find out what’s eating him.’

‘Trouble in paradise?’ Katy asked her, repeating the question Joanna had asked her earlier that day.

‘I don’t know, he’s just been really quiet today, a touch distant. Do you think it was too soon to bring him home to meet the relatives? Do you think you lot have scared him away with your mentalism?’

Lydia bit her lip. She had barely seen let alone spoken to Jackson since that moment between them in his and Joanna’s bedroom, and so much had happened since then. What if he thought that what happened between her and Stephen was something to do with him? What if he was planning to do the same with Joanna? She had to talk to him as soon as she could, to tell him nothing had changed.

‘Listen, if a few whiney women scare him off, then he’s no man worth keeping,’ Will told Joanna, breaking into one of his rare, breathtaking, full smiles, so ravishing that for a moment all the women and the one dog in the room were quite overcome.

‘What he said,’ Katy chuckled, nodding at Will.
‘Come on, guys, let’s help Joanna take Daddy coffee and all have a big, big hug, okay?’

Left alone with Will, and remembering that she couldn’t trust herself to be sensible, Lydia decided to wash up.

‘So I’m not into you that way?’ Will asked her casually.

‘That’s what you said.’ Lydia glanced at him over her shoulder. ‘It’s cool, I don’t expect every man I meet to fall down at my feet in love!’

‘Makes a change from most women,’ Will said. ‘And I
am
your type, you say?’

‘Now if anyone is acting like a girl, it’s you, fishing for compliments!’ Lydia laughed, turning round, her wet hands glittering with soap bubbles.

‘You’ve caught me out.’ He grinned and Lydia thought it best to turn her attention back to the roasting tin, trying to think of something witty and erudite to say.

‘How did anyone ever survive without a dishwasher?’ Not exactly what she’d be hoping for, but still.

‘So what are you doing now?’ Will asked her. ‘I mean, I’m starving. It’s very hard to get through a whole meal in this place without someone kicking off.’

‘Cheese sandwich?’ Lydia offered.

‘I’ll make it,’ Will said. ‘You finish the washing up.’

‘And that, right there,’ Lydia said happily, ‘is equality of the sexes in action.’

* * *

The house was quiet when Lydia finally said goodnight to Will, choosing not to follow him upstairs to her big empty room but to return to the still cosy sitting room, where the last embers of the fire still glowed in the grate and Vincent was more than willing to share a corner of the sofa with her in return for a tickle behind the ear. Lulled almost to sleep by the animal’s rhythmical breathing, Lydia felt her lids grow heavy, and she settled back into the sofa cushions, the room warm despite the snow drifting down outside the window.

‘Are you okay, Lydia Grant?’ Jackson’s whispered voice in her ear startled Lydia awake. Sitting up, she blinked a few times and realised that Vincent’s less than fragrant heat and warmth and been replaced by Jackson’s thigh pressing along the length of hers.

‘What are you doing up?’ she asked him, still confused by sleep.

‘I’ve been desperate to talk to you all day,’ Jackson said, ‘and all night, ever since I kissed you again. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop thinking about you, Lydia.’

‘Jackson, stop it.’ Lydia was firm, edging away from him. ‘We had our moment. Back then, I fell for you hook, line and sinker. If you’d asked me to go to the ends of the world for you, I would have. And I’d have done it economy class, too. But you didn’t, you left. You didn’t phone, or e-mail, or send a pigeon, you disappeared and now you are with my best friend. And even
if I did still feel anything for you, that would rule you out completely. Do you understand?’

For a moment Lydia held his intense gaze, the visceral memory of the summer they’d spent together building on the heat the seemed to flow so freely between them. Feeling it was safer, she slid down off the sofa and onto the rug, where Vincent eyed his usurper resentfully.

‘I’m not saying that I got it right, I didn’t,’ Jackson said. ‘I messed up about as badly as I could have. But does that mean I don’t get a second chance? Especially now when the reason I left you alone is gone.’

Lydia shook her head. ‘And what about Joanna? What about her in all this? I’m pretty sure you’ve romanced and seduced her, just like you did me, and that you have given her every reason to believe that what is happening between you is real and has a future. You’re even taking her home to New York to meet you mother!’

‘What?’ At Jackson’s barked question, Lydia turned sharply to look at him. He seemed genuinely surprised by the information. ‘Look, I like Joanna, I like her a lot, she’s a great fun girl,’ he said, ‘but even before we got this far, taking her home to Mom was not on the table. I mean, I might have mentioned it in passing, perhaps as a joke, but we’ve only been together for two months. I didn’t mean for her to take it seriously!’

Lydia studied his face. In the dim light of the dying
embers, it was impossible to tell if he were lying, but it didn’t matter: whether he’d been serious or not, Joanna believed it was a sign of the importance of their fledgling relationship. ‘Joanna thinks it’s true,’ she said firmly. ‘And, anyway, you’ve come away with her for Christmas. Everyone knows that once you’ve spent Christmas together you might as well get married!’

Jackson shook his head, plumping back into the sofa cushions, exasperated. ‘Like you and Stephen? Look, I had Christmas all planned out – dinner with Mom at our favourite Italian on East 55th street – until the snow came in down south, and there were all the severe weather warnings. Mom and I talked about whether I should risk spending Christmas in a departures lounge and we decided I’d go out to the States when the weather cleared, in the New Year. As soon as I told Joanna about it, she begged me to come up here. She said it would be fun, she didn’t want me to be alone, couldn’t wait to show me off. She threatened to stay with me, if I didn’t come along.’

Lydia stared at him. None of what he said sounded like Joanna at all – she just wasn’t needy or clingy. Why on earth would she make up the trip home to meet his mother, though, or anything else, for that matter? And yet he seemed very convincing. Then again, he was good at that, making her believe in him. He’d had her convinced from the moment they met.

‘Anyway,’ Jackson said softly, reaching out to touch
her face, even as Lydia backed away from him, ‘even if any of that were true, it doesn’t make these feelings that we have between us imaginary, does it?’ He leaned forward a little. ‘Are you really telling me that you don’t feel it too? You don’t feel your heart racing, the hairs standing up on the back of your neck, your skin on fire, longing to be touched, your lips aching to be kissed? You don’t feel any of that, Lydia?’

‘I … I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it. I think it’s just some sick game you’re playing. You’re probably a sex addict. You should go to a clinic for that.’

‘I am addicted to you, that’s true,’ Jackson said, inching closer to her. ‘You’re the one thing I find I can’t give up.’

Tired, weak and confused, Lydia let Jackson pull her up to him without resistance, dragging her body between his knees and his arms encircling her torso. As he kissed her, just then she was lost, utterly lost in the oddly surreal moment, powerless to resist his persistent mouth devouring hers, succumbing to his searching hands as if in a dream as he pulled up her dress, the heat of that long ago summer burning between them.

‘Christ almighty!’

Lydia and Jackson sprang apart as Alex stood in the doorway, her mouth open.

‘Alex!’ Lydia hurriedly pulled her dress back down over her hips, shock at the situation she found herself
in sobering her up like an ice-cold bucket of water in the face.

‘Look, it’s not …’ Jackson began, but Alex stopped him with the palm of her hand. ‘Get out, go upstairs and see your girlfriend. And you,’ she said, turning to Lydia, ‘stay put.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Jackson said, re-buttoning the shirt that Lydia didn’t remember undoing.

‘Jackson, go,’ Lydia said, her cheeks burning. ‘Please.’

‘Fine, but if you need me—’

‘You’ll be in bed with Joanna,’ Alex told him.

Lydia sat on the sofa, her hands folded in her lap.

‘Explain,’ Alex said. ‘Because the Lydia I know is not the sort of person who would go after her friend’s boyfriend, not unless there’s been some sort of invasion of the bitch snatchers going on and I haven’t noticed.’

‘I knew him before,’ Lydia said quite simply.

‘What do you mean?’ Alex asked her.

‘I mean that the last person I expected Joanna to turn up here with was the man I had that summer affair with just before I met Stephen, the one I was seeing when you nearly sacked me from being your bridesmaid. The one you were helping me get over by forcing me to go on a fun run.’

‘He’s
Jack
?’ Alex sat down with difficulty. ‘I swear if I don’t got into labour now, it will be a Christmas miracle.’

Alex listened while Lydia talked, the room growing chilly as the last remnants of heat died along with the
cooling ashes, and even Vincent gave up his spot, choosing to nose his way out of the narrow gap in the door and go in search of some warm, friendly child’s bed to sleep on. Lydia told her everything, how it had been between her and Jackson in London, how it had ended so suddenly. How she thought he’d just dumped her when in fact a family tragedy had kept them apart. She also told Alex how shocked she had been to see him arrive with Joanna, and how he claimed he still felt about her.

‘And how do you feel about him?’ Alex asked her, tartly.

‘I don’t know, Alex.’ Lydia sighed. ‘He left at the height of our honeymoon period. I didn’t have time to find out if he had any irritating habits, if actually after looking at him for three months straight I’d find his Roman nose repulsive. So I don’t know.’

‘But you do know that he is with Joanna, and that she’s crazy about him,’ Alex stated. ‘And you know that, despite apparently really being into her, he’s getting off with you while she sleeps upstairs. He might have had a good reason for leaving you but that doesn’t give him license to cheat on his girlfriend. I mean, that alone would be reason enough to leave him well alone, wouldn’t it? He’s obviously a pig.’

‘It’s always so clear cut with you, so black and white,’ Lydia said. ‘I do know that, of
course
I do. But I can’t help thinking, what if … what if he’s the one?’

‘Well, don’t,’ Alex said. ‘What ifs don’t get you anywhere. What you have to concentrate on now are facts. And the facts are that you’ve just been making out with Joanna’s man. You have to come clean, you have to tell Joanna everything.’

‘Are you crazy?’ Lydia asked her. ‘I’ve already brought this whole event to the brink of disaster as it is by splitting up with Stephen so publicly, and now you want me to push it over the edge and maybe wreck our friendship for ever?’

‘What if it had been Joanna who’d walked in on you just now? Then your friendship really would be over.’ Alex took a sharp breath, pressing a palm into her side. ‘Look, she will find out and I don’t know what will hurt her the most, that fact that he’s lied to her, or that you have. And if you don’t come clean, then I’ll be lying to her too. And I can’t do that, Lydia. Not even for you.’

Lydia buried her head in her hands. ‘Okay, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. We’re only here a couple more days.
Please
, don’t make me be the one who totally trashes this for Katy and the kids,
please
. I promise that as soon as we get back to London I’ll come clean, I’ll tell her everything.’

‘And you’ll stay away from Jackson in the meantime?’ Alex asked. ‘No more nonsense like that?’

‘Definitely not. I’ll stay as far away from him as I possibly can,’ Lydia said.

‘Then I suppose we’ll just have to ride it out.’ Alex sighed, leaning her head back on the sofa. ‘Fuck me, I only came down for some Gaviscon. I left it in my handbag.’

‘Here.’ Lydia reached for Alex’s bag and handed it to her, watching as Alex swigged the liquid directly from the bottle.