Sequins and Snowflakes Read online

  Perfect is a momentary state for Alice. I knew it was too good to last.

  ‘Bells? Of course, thanks for reminding me, Alice.’ Johnny appears to be forcing his smile. ‘Sera and I will pick some up when we’re out later.’

  My ears prick up at my name. ‘Out?’ This is news to me. ‘Doing what, exactly?’

  ‘Shopping.’ He says that word more enthusiastically than any straight guy I’ve heard. ‘Given the size of the ballroom, I reckon we need to buy every fairy-light string in Cornwall. Candles might be good too. But we need to get a move on or we won’t be ready for the wedding.’ At last someone else seems to have woken up to the fact that the wedding is only days away.

  But just for a moment I’m wishing I’d stayed on that desert island.

  22

  Wednesday, 21st December

  Shopping in St Aidan: Candy canes and too much Sambuca

  Let’s face it, I brought it on myself. If I hadn’t got rat-arsed on the island, I’d have been able to drive myself around the DIY stores in search of every last fairy light. They’ve mostly got huge car parks and one tends to run into the next, after all. If it had been a choice between going on my own, or being run around by Johnny, believe me, however much I hate bay parking, I’d have managed.

  ‘So you think we need candles as well as lights?’ I ask, shivering and turning my collar up against the biting cold. It’s almost dark. As we hurry towards the entrance of the first shop and make our way past a huge pile of Christmas trees out on the tarmac, the brightness of the shop is warm and inviting.

  ‘The extra glow of candlelight will help make up for lost sparkle.’ Johnny sounds decided. What’s more he’s showing a shedload of decorative insight, for a guy. It’s less surprising that he’s done that man thing and taken charge of the trolley. He looks up at the lights dangling over the entrance canopy, being whipped around by the wind. ‘Would Alice go for multi-coloured icicle chasers like those, then?’

  Maybe take back what I said about the decorative insight. ‘Absolutely not. She wants single white bulbs, as tiny as possible.’ And as many as we can lay our hands on.

  While the upside of shopping this close to Christmas is that most places have home-grown Santas handing out complementary sweets, the downside is that stocks are low. And while there are aisles of display lights, flashing like bad migraines, the shelves are far from full. By the time we hit the sixth shop, I’ve already devoured five free chocolate tree decorations and a candy cane, but we still haven’t found enough lights. We’re met at the door by a pensioner in a dayglow elf costume, whose huge stick-on ears are so impressive I can’t say ‘no’ to the lolly he’s giving away. As I twist off the wrapper Johnny stops pushing the trolley and stares at me for a second.

  ‘What were those lollies you used to eat at uni?’ He scratches his head as if that’s somehow going to help him remember.

  Thus far we’ve both kept strictly to the ‘here and now’, and I’m taken aback by the abrupt departure. I carry on walking, in the hope he’ll follow. ‘Chupa chups?’ I used to buy them in industrial quantities because I always had one in my mouth to suck on when I sewed at my machine. Which was pretty much twenty hours a day.

  His legs must have started working again, because he draws level with me. ‘Yes, you’d fight anyone to get a cola flavour.’

  Bloody hell. I’d almost forgotten. ‘They were the blue ones.’ Although I’m laughing, I’m wary. Somehow even if we are only discussing confectionary, the past is a dangerous place to go. But now he’s crossed that invisible barrier into forbidden territory, I might as well ask what I’ve been aching to find out. ‘So how come you’re so good with horses?’ One tiny question, and then I promise we’ll go back to discussing road layouts and local trivia.

  ‘Horses?’ His tone suggests he can’t quite work out how we got here. ‘I worked with a blacksmith in the village where Dan and I lived when I was at school. I wanted to work with metal, but I learned how to handle ponies too. I moved on to cars later.’ So that explains why he was mending the carriage.

  ‘You just never said.’ I stick the lolly in my mouth, to make sure that comes over as a passing comment rather than the start of an interrogation. Two years of drinking and student parties and crossing in the hall. Not to mention cups of tea in our kitchen if I could ever tempt him in. Although maybe those teatimes were mostly filled with me talking about my dreams. My obsession to travel the world. Lists of must-visit beaches.

  Once I found out he had a soft spot for apple cake, he came round quite a lot. All those late afternoons putting the world to rights over the kitchen table, and yet he never mentioned working with a blacksmith. Although, come to think of it, he was probably way too hung up on the future too. Of everyone I knew, he was the most focused and obsessed with where he was heading next. Although maybe it was because he was older and already on his second degree. Plus he was the only one around who was sponsored and getting paid to be there.

  He rests his elbows on the trolley. ‘It’s strange at uni. Everyone’s so busy with the study and the social life. You live with people for two or three years and end up knowing nothing more about them than what degree they did and what their favourite shots were.’

  He makes it sound like a lifetime ago. Which it almost is. And we didn’t even share the same flat. We only used the same front door and hallway. Which is probably his way of gently pointing out that I didn’t know him. Don’t know him. At all.

  A half-smile passes across his face. ‘Do you still drink Sambuca then?’

  Bleughhh. Even the word makes me feel queasy. ‘Hell no. One really bad drunken night and I’ve never touched it since.’ Which just goes to show how we all change. And we all move on. Although I’m pretty embarrassed to admit that back in the day I’d volunteer to go on the party booze-buying trips, just to see how it felt to push a trolley around the cash and carry with him. To try out how it felt to sit in the passenger seat of his car. Another bleughhh to that thought. That’s the kind of cute-yet-silly thing you do when you’re twenty-one. Looking back, those trips were the closest I ever came to coupledom. Thank heavens I came to my senses.

  Right now I’m making damn sure I stand far enough away from the trolley and make my body language stiff and hostile. I want to make it perfectly clear to the rest of the store that we’re definitely not a joined-at-the-hip pair, this time around. Although, to be honest, my trashed shorts and snagged tights hardly look like they come from the same washing basket as his sharp navy chinos. And my baby-pink wool jacket with the bald patches is so far away from his North Face jacket, I probably look more like a bag lady he’s taken pity on than anyone more significant.

  He turns the trolley into the Christmas lights area. ‘I was forgetting, you’re more of a champagne woman now, aren’t you?’ he quips, referring to my boozy picnic earlier.

  Ouch! How cheap is that? Especially since my lunchtime hangover headache is starting to kick in. I scrunch up my face in disgust, but at least it’s brought us neatly back to the present. I’m saved having to look for a suitably barbed reply, because suddenly I come to a rack, fully stacked with boxes of lights.

  ‘Yay. I think we’ve struck gold.’ I bend down to read from the shelf label. ‘Here we go, “Indoor outdoor. LED string. Warm white. Five hundred. Christmas party.” And a shedload too.’ So there is a god of twinkly ceilings after all.

  23

  Wednesday, 21st December

  At Rose Hill Manor: Amnesia and baking trays

  ‘Looks like Robinson Crusoe got lost again.’

  We’re back from St Aidan, carrying candles and fairy lights into the ballroom. It doesn’t take a genius to work out Johnny’s referring to Quinn here, who, between us, has made no progress at all while we’ve been away in town. When Johnny flicks on the lights and illuminates the outside terrace, we can see the branches are still in a pile in front of the French windows, where we left them this morning.

  I glance at my watch. ‘It feels late
r than seven. Maybe I can fit in another job.’ Especially given the alternative is going back to the cottage, to be told off by Alice, no doubt. Not that I’ve done anything wrong since getting stuck on the island. But she’s so stressed, there’s not much she doesn’t find fault with. We called in for a pizza on our way back from St Aidan, so it’s not as if I’m rushing back for dinner.

  Johnny puts his hands in his pockets. ‘We could carry on decorating the big tree in the hall?’

  I was planning on working on my own, so the word ‘we’ comes as a jolt. Although ‘we’ are currently firmly back in real time again, the conversation tends to make unnerving quantum leaps. One second we’ll be chatting about something completely innocuous, the next it’s toxic. Sentences begin by being cosy and safe and then move somewhere excruciatingly uncomfortable. And all without warning. To be honest, it’s easier without the stress.

  ‘Alice wants that tree white.’ Waiting for Alice’s decision on what to do with the tree is the perfect get-out. It’s still as it was when she came in and stopped me – was that really only yesterday? ‘She needs to decide whether to strip off everything it took me hours to put on, paint the tree white, let it dry. Then re-decorate from scratch. Or to leave it as it is and end up with – horror of horrors – a tree with green branches under the thousands of white decorations. But only Alice can say.’ And I’m sure if I locate my wedding manual – which should be with me at all times, so how do I not know where it is? – I’ll be able to find another, equally pressing, job to do instead.

  Johnny sighs. ‘I’m going to make an executive decision on this one. Realistically, it’s too late to have the tree white. We’ll finish decorating it now and I’ll take the consequences with Alice.’

  That’s one brave man. And put like that, I’m not going to get out of this. I hope he realises that just because he’s been Alice’s favourite person today, there’s no guarantee for tomorrow.

  ‘Okay then, rebel, are you going up the steps or on the floor?’ I ask.

  A moment later I’m looking up at him.

  ‘Pass me some deccies, then,’ he says. ‘This reminds me of the Christmas the guys brought that tree into the hallway at uni. We couldn’t get it up the stairs, remember?’

  Here we go. Why does Christmas make everyone so bloody nostalgic? As I pass him a handful of sparkly cones hanging on white-and-cream gingham ribbon, my heart is sinking to new lows.

  In a bid to keep control, I throw in my own bit. ‘And someone sawed the branches off so we could get past. We were still walking the shavings and the pine needles around the flats when we moved out the summer after.’

  ‘I did the sawing.’ He says it proudly, reaching down for more decorations. ‘And we had that massive Christmas dinner that went on all night. Someone served up Paxo stuffing raw. Remember that?’

  Shit. He’s nailing every detail.

  ‘As if anyone could forget.’ I hurriedly grab some hearts and shove them up at him.

  He takes them from me, but instead of stopping and concentrating on what he’s doing, dammit, he carries on. ‘You made the rum sauce, and the guy with pink hair fell into it – was it Graham?’

  ‘Grant,’ I say, only because I’ve got a good memory for names. ‘Curvy Sally from the top floor brought him. Remember her? Film-star face, beautiful figure; all the guys adored her.’ She’s imprinted on my brain too, if only because she had the kind of pneumatic boobs I’d have loved at the time. Still would. Although these days I’m more resigned to how I am. Boob-free and hip-free, that is.

  ‘Those red lips didn’t do it for me.’ Johnny pulls a face. ‘I was a “less is more” guy back then. Still am really.’ He hooks on another heart. ‘Anyway, didn’t Grant overdose on aperitifs, pass out in his rum sauce, then nearly suffocate when he inhaled?’

  And there I was, I remember, flushed and trying to make a roux for twenty-four, when there weren’t any pans left, and nothing like enough milk. All so I could impress damn Johnny. Which was an epic fail, because he ended up leaving with Sally. Which was the same epic fail that happened every evening out with Johnny. He always went home with someone else. The only difference was the girls changed. I pass up a handful of baubles.

  ‘Sally could barely walk, I had to haul her all the way up to the attic,’ he says, sorting out the silver balls from the white ones. ‘I was fifty minutes late for the nine o’ clock tutorial I was giving.’ He’s looping a silver bauble over a branch when he stops and curses. ‘Damn, we forgot bells. For Snowball’s harness. Alice will eat us for breakfast.’

  Strange how we both forgot something from an hour earlier and yet we can remember things down to the last minute from years ago. But if Johnny can remember this particular Christmas in so much detail, what about the Christmas after? When I’d left uni, but for some unknown reason he asked me back to the department ball. After that whole weekend went tits up so spectacularly, I comforted myself by erasing it from my mind. And then I went off travelling. And afterwards, when it was obvious we weren’t ever going to meet up again, somehow I assumed he’d erase the whole thing too. But if he can remember raw stuffing, I suspect he’d be able to recount the whole ball weekend back to me word for word too. Minute by cringey minute. And, believe me, that thought is pretty appalling. If there’s a good-luck charm that saves you from having your significantly embarrassing moments and mistakes shoved in your face, mine’s gone badly AWOL.

  ‘And there was that time we went brambling down the waste ground and when we ate the crumble all our teeth went purple.’ He’s on a roll with the baubles now. ‘And what about that apple cake you used to make?’

  I shake my head and push a whole load more decorations his way, to try to shut him up. ‘It was all a very long time ago, Johnny.’ I throw up a fistful of stars, then follow with a handful of angels.

  ‘But surely…?’ He’s refusing to believe I’ve forgotten.

  ‘Sorry, I gave up baking when I was twenty-two.’ True, in a way. After that my gran was the one who cooked. I rattle through the boxes and piles, scooping up the last few toys. ‘Here, this is for the top.’ Something pretty to take his mind off cake. ‘A fairy bride and groom, how cool is that?’ All the more so if it brings us back to what we’re doing. Rather than what we once did.

  ‘Brilliant, if a little kitsch.’ He gives a sniff. This from the guy who paid to steal away our knitted bears when they weren’t even for sale? He takes the fairy couple and stretches to hook them into place. ‘That’s the finishing touch. Is it all looking white enough?’

  As I stand back to admire it, I have to say the effect is awesome. ‘Pretty damned white. We can always blast it with some fake snow spray from a can tomorrow if not.’ Why didn’t Snow Queen Alice think of that?

  He’s down on the floor again and folding up the steps. ‘It’s taken no time. Some jobs are way faster with two.’

  Whatever he’s hoping, I’m not joining in the congratulatory couple-fest. ‘Thanks for your help, anyway.’ And just because we’re so close to going, there’s one more thing I want to slip in. ‘Skid pans? Where do they fit in, exactly?’ I know I’ve surprised him, because he blinks. And takes a step backwards.

  ‘Remember that PhD in automotive design?’

  As if I wouldn’t. ‘But all over the world?’ I’m repeating Quinn here. ‘Weren’t you in Coventry?’ Back in 2008 he sounded like he would be there forever.

  ‘I moved on, to motor-racing teams.’ He gives a shrug. ‘Travel goes with the territory.’

  Not that I’m jealous, obviously. But back then he was only interested in engines. Seeing the world didn’t even figure.

  He picks up the steps, then hesitates. ‘Fancy a Winter Warmer now we’re done?’

  ‘I’d better be getting off.’ I’m stuffing the empty boxes into bags like a dervish, so I can make a run for it.

  ‘Pimms No 3 and hot apple juice?’ He’s staring at me, leaning on the door frame, a smile playing on his lips. ‘A great way to warm up and wind d
own at the same time. It might help your amnesia… about the cake?’

  I manage to ignore that last teasing comment. ‘As you said, I shouldn’t drink and drive – and as you also pointed out, I’m more of a champagne girl now, anyway.’

  It’s a relief when the door slams behind him. I sink onto the bottom step of the staircase and bury my head in my hands. I’m only halfway through letting out a long sigh, when the door bursts open again. I look up to see Johnny. Back. And obviously on the war path.

  ‘You know what…’ He’s staring at me, a tiny bit bemused, but mostly just annoyed. ‘For the last few years, I’ve been walking through airports, everywhere from Milan to Mexico. And that whole time I’ve been looking, somehow expecting to bump into you. And now I find out you’ve been in damned Cornwall all along. So what the hell happened, Fi? What went wrong?’

  Where has that come from? It’s hardly fair, when my question was only the tiniest query about skid pans. And why is everyone so opposed to living in Cornwall?

  The end of a long, long day is the last time you want to deal with a tirade like that from someone as up himself as Johnny. Especially when it rubbishes your whole life. Mostly I’d back down. Or step back and let Jess come in and fight for me. But maybe, because of my antsy champagne hangover, or maybe because this guy stuck his size-ten feet through my plans for the second time in as many days, I’m going to let him have it.

  ‘Wherever that came from, it’s pretty insulting.’ I stick my chin out, to make sure he knows how cross I am. And furious. And hurt, although maybe I’d rather he didn’t see that. ‘Just because you once knew me – though as you said before, you probably didn’t – and it certainly doesn’t mean you know me now. So back the hell off and stop judging what’s none of your business.’ I mean to hiss, but by the time I finish it’s pretty much a yell.