The Night Before Christmas (2 page)

‘We’re not that bad, are we?’ Lydia asked him, although she knew that, when she and her friends were all together, they seemed to simultaneously regress about ten years and drown out any other noise within a five-mile vicinity, each one clamouring to be heard above the others, just as it used to be on a daily basis in their overcrowded student house.

‘No.’ Stephen looked a little chastened. ‘No, you are not bad at all, not even Joanna, I suppose. It’s just … it’s just that I thought this year it would be different,
no family, no friends, just you and me. That was how I pictured it.’

‘I know, and that would have been lovely, it really, truly would,’ Lydia said, suddenly consumed by guilt at her deliberate decision to avoid spending anything that could be described as ‘potential romantic proposal time’ alone with Stephen, just in case he popped the question and she wasn’t ready to answer yet.

Here he was, sulking because she’d persuaded him to let them spend Christmas with her friends, but little did he know that she was doing this for him. Far better for her to be able to answer confidently when he finally proposed to her, rather than, ‘Um, well … the thing is, I’m not sure, can you give me a month or year or two to mull it over?’ Most of all, before Stephen produced that beautiful ring, Lydia wanted more than anything to have talked herself into saying yes.

Yes, because Stephen was certainly handsome, with his Nordic good looks, pale blond hair, light blue eyes and square manly jaw, and he would make a splendid contribution to the attractive children Lydia had vaguely pictured herself having one day. Yes, because he was genuinely a nice man, the kind of man who cared about what happened in the world and worked to make it a better place. But, most importantly, yes, because she loved him.

This hesitation wasn’t at all like Lydia. When it came to love, she usually rushed in where even fools
turned back. After all, she’d met Stephen out of the blue, allowing herself to free fall into a relationship with him without a second thought, and she’d been content enough with their relationship for over a year. So why pull up short now?

Perhaps it was the memory of her mother’s face, staring unseeingly at the burnt turkey languishing in the sink on the day her dad had finally left home, that was putting her off making that final commitment to one man. Or the string of boyfriends Mum had brought home, in the years before she’d finally met Greg. It seemed at the time like there was a new one sitting at the head of the table every Christmas, while her mum fawned over him with unseemly gratitude, expecting Lydia to treat him like a member of their tiny, disjointed family. Her mum had always been so sure that the next one was
the one
, that this time she would be happy. In reality, though, it had taken her a great deal of broken eggs to make her omelette, and if her mother never knew when she was making her latest monumental mistake, then how would she?

If she were being strictly honest, though, Lydia knew that it was her more immediate past that was holding her back. Not least of all the fact that, when she’d first met Stephen, she had been horribly, utterly – and very dramatically – on the rebound.

Chapter Two

Lydia had met Stephen on a breast cancer charity fun run. She hadn’t wanted to go on a fun run, because as far as Lydia was concerned, the words ‘fun’ and ‘run’ never, ever belonged in the same sentence. In fact, on that very day, she had made plans to take herself to Selfridges to spend far too much money on a pair of shoes she would never wear, but which, knowing they were there, even in a box in her cupboard, would made her feel better. It was her usual time-honoured tradition of getting over break-ups. Less fattening than drowning herself in the vat of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream that would otherwise be needed to take her mind off her troubles, and a ploy that had never let her down so far.

Alex, however, had had other plans for her. Good, sensible, tell-it-how-it-is Alex, who even now was also heading up the M6 in her husband David’s ancient VW Golf. Back then, Alex had told Lydia that healing and self-worth were not to be found in the bottom of a Jimmy Choo box, and that doing something good for other people was the key to soothing Lydia’s bruised, if not quite broken, heart. Besides, David had escaped by going to speak at some ancient history convention
in Rome, and she needed someone to thrash. Lydia hadn’t been totally sure she agreed with her best friend on this, but one thing she had learned in all the years of knowing Alex was that you never said no to her.

Alex was a good person in every respect. She ate well, and exercised daily, running about thirty miles a week, relentlessly pounding the streets of London in every spare minute. She cooked from scratch – actual vegetables and fruit – not meals that she heated up in a microwave to eat in bed. Since graduation, she’d worked as a corporate fundraiser for a breast cancer research charity, basically frightening rich businessmen into giving her their money, a cause close to her heart as the disease had robbed her of her own mother in their final year at college.

Those had perhaps been Alex’s darkest days, when grief had worn her to a mere shadow of herself, and all she’d wanted to do was go home to a father who could barely help himself and had no idea how to comfort his bewildered, angry daughter. In those first awful months, Lydia had sat up with Alex every night, sometimes all night, holding her friend while she cried, talking when she wanted to, not talking when she didn’t. Downing cheap wine, matching each other glass for glass, and putting on inches with every shared bar of Galaxy. It wasn’t that Joanna and Katy hadn’t been there for Alex too, they had, but the severity of her loss seemed to scare them a little; they were afraid they would do or say the wrong thing.

Lydia, though, knew something of what it was like to lose for ever the very person you couldn’t imagine living without. Even though she still had both her parents, clinging on to what remnants of family she had left had sometimes felt like a full-scale battle. Alex had lost her mum, and she could never get her back, but Lydia knew exactly what her dear friend had had to do to make sure she didn’t lose herself in the process. Together with Joanna and Katy, she had kept Alex together, kept her focused on her studies, told her to remember how happy her mother would be to see her graduate, and to keep going come what may. It had been a difficult final year, but when the four of them finally flung their mortar boards in the air on that July afternoon, Alex had taken Lydia aside and thanked her for never letting her go, for helping her have the guts to make her mother proud. And from that moment, Lydia had watched her friend go from strength to strength.

A six-foot-tall Amazonian of a woman, Alex embodied the term formidable; throwing herself out of planes or charging up mountains was all in a day’s work for her, as long as she was being sponsored to do it. And with her wedding day only a few months away, she had gone into exercise overdrive, demanding that Lydia, her chief bridesmaid, join her for at least some of the torture. So when all Lydia had to do was a piddling little 5K, as Alex described it, to help find
a cure for the disease that had killed her mother, it was frankly impossible, and would have been fruitless, even to attempt to refuse. Dutifully, Lydia had donned a pink T-shirt and a feather boa, got as many colleagues as she could to sponsor her, and lined up with an assortment of runners, variously wearing fairy wings and cow costumes, for what she anticipated was going to be the worst hour of her life.

And then she had caught Stephen smiling at her. Far too handsome to be straight, was Lydia’s first thought, admittedly not helped by fact that he was wearing a neon pink tutu and tiara. His face was friendly and open, though, the kind of face that was hard not to like. He looked, Lydia remembered thinking, uncomplicated.

The starting gun had sounded, and predictably Alex shot off like a rocket into the wild blue yonder, leaving Lydia floundering in her wake, desperately wishing she’d worn her brand new trainers at least once before attempting to run in them. It was a hot day and, as she’d suspected, her training programme of taking the stairs instead of the lift was not quite up to scratch. Just as she was considering ducking out to a Starbucks she’d spotted outside the park, the handsome man in the tutu jogged back and started running alongside her before saying hello.

‘You suit pink,’ he said, managing a relaxed grin as he easily kept pace with her. Suddenly Lydia was
regretting her decision to apply full make-up that morning; she could practically feel her mascara travelling down her cheeks, and probably looked like a drunk transvestite, but perhaps that was why he was talking to her.

‘So do you,’ she tentatively, nodding at the tutu.

‘I know.’ Stephen laughed. ‘But the guys at work said they’d double their sponsorship money if I wore it, so what I could do? They say that only a real man can wear pink, don’t they? Well, I figure that this must make me the manliest man in the world! The tiara’s my own, though.’

Lydia laughed too. ‘Seriously, it’s such an important charity, I’m more than happy to make a fool of myself, if it helps.’ He continued, ‘Although if I’d known a stunning girl like you was going to be here, I might have thought twice.’

‘Oh … really? Well, um, yes – it is a very important charity.’ Lydia had nodded, supposing that already being the same shade as a post box was, in this instance, a good thing, as he wouldn’t be able to tell she was blushing.

‘Have you lost someone to breast cancer?’ Stephen asked her. ‘I lost my aunt, when I was younger. I was devastated. She was the definition of a cool aunt, I could talk to her about anything, she always inspired me – I still miss her every day.’

‘No, not me, not personally,’ Lydia said. ‘But my best
friend, Alex, the one up there at the front, she lost her mum when we were at university. It almost destroyed her. I wouldn’t normally …’ Just in time, Lydia stopped herself from saying ‘ever do anything like this, I’m far too lazy’, and instead finished with, ‘… let her do anything without me. Skydiving, abseiling – you name it, we’ve done it. Together. We’re a team. A fundraising team of good deeds. Plus, I’m scared of her.’ Lydia smiled brightly at Stephen. It was then that she noticed his ice-blue eyes, sparkling with laughter.

‘You must be a very good person to have on side,’ he said.

‘Oh, I am, I’m a barrister. I’m like the Wonder Woman of the legal world, helping the needy, putting away the baddies.’ Lydia remembered feeling delighted at how impressed Stephen was by her claim.

‘Really? I’m a solicitor, actually. I do divorce, family law, mainly to pay the bills. But I also do as much legal aid as I can, representing asylum seekers, travellers, homeless people – you know, the sort of people who never have anyone on their side. I just think it’s so important to stick up for those people who so often don’t have a voice, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lydia said. ‘Yes, I do too.’

They had jogged on in silence for a few minutes, while the sun rose in the sky, the August heat intensifying as the day wore on. Lydia found herself wondering if Stephen would notice her checking her
face in the compact she’d slid into her pocket, desperate to know exactly how bad she looked, with her make-up sliding inexorably south and her thick hair plastered with sweat to her head. None of her usual weapons of seduction were available to her. Alex had insisted she take off her favourite plunge bra and put on a proper sports bra, and not even she had thought about running 5k in the sort of killer heels that made the best of her legs. Which was why she had been surprised and delighted by what Stephen said next.

‘Er … would you, you know, like to go for a drink afterwards? Doesn’t matter if you don’t, no worries,’ he told her, awkwardly backtracking, which made it all the more charming.

‘Oh … um.’ After the heart-wrenching end to her last entanglement, Lydia had promised herself at least a year without men, to get her head straight. But it was such a nice day, and Stephen seemed so sweet, it would be churlish to refuse. ‘I would, thank you. But look at me – I’m all sweaty and bleugh.’ Lydia pulled a face.

‘You look great to me,’ Stephen said, with simple, easy charm. ‘But if you’d prefer it, I could meet you somewhere later? After we’ve both had a chance to spruce up.’ As the finishing line finally came into sight, they’d made arrangements to meet at a pub halfway between their respective homes, exchanging casual goodbyes just as Alex thundered across the field, looking as fresh a daisy, to question her.

‘Did you just pull on a fun run?’ Alex had demanded, half in admiration, half in horror, as if flirting might have somehow undermined the charitable act.

‘No! Yes!’ Lydia caved in instantly under her scrutiny. ‘Did you see him? He’s lovely.’

‘You are such a tart,’ Alex chided her mildly. ‘Seriously, Lyds – aren’t you supposed to be heartbroken?’

‘I am, but what’s the point in moping about?’ Lydia waved at Stephen as he walked away. ‘I could do with a nice, uncomplicated man to take my mind off things, and anyway, you met your soon-to-be-husband on a walk across Siberia!’ Lydia reminded her, thinking of sweet, shy David, who didn’t seem like enough man for a woman like Alex, but who somehow clearly was, as she had never been happier.

‘Well, it was cold, and he had a better sleeping bag than me.’ Alex smiled fondly. ‘So has this fun run made you feel better than shallow, pointless retail therapy?’

‘I would say that, on this one and only occasion, yes, the impossible has been achieved,’ Lydia was forced to concur.

‘Half marathon in Leeds next week?’

‘Not even if you promise me George Clooney at the finish line!’

That evening, Lydia had carefully selected a linen tea-dress printed with tiny pink and yellow roses, and
brushed her hair so it waved and rippled its way down to the small of her back. She’d thanked serendipity that she’d decided to have a spray tan the day before in the vain hope it would improve the sight of her thighs in Lycra shorts, and put on just a little bit of make-up, mascara and lip-gloss. The amount of make-up that a virtuous, fun-running, legal aid doing, heart of gold barrister girl would wear, she thought as she slipped on a pair of lemon-yellow mid-heeled pumps and went to meet Stephen.

Spending time with him that evening had been wonderfully soothing, like bathing in cool water after far too much heat. Stephen proved himself to be funny, charming, self-deprecating and gentle. He was, apart from Alex, the first person she had met who seemed positively evangelical about charity work, so much so that his day job was more of an inconvenience than a career. He really seemed to care about the world outside of his own little bubble of existence, and Lydia could tell that the compassion he displayed as he talked about the people he helped was truly genuine. It was humbling, inspiring and, rather unexpectedly, sexy. Sort of like going on a date with a super hero.

At the end of the evening, Lydia had let him escort her home to the flat she was sharing with Joanna, and then she had let him come up for coffee, safe in the knowledge that her ‘landlady’ would be out all night. The kettle had not even boiled when Stephen kissed
her. It was a polite kiss, barely there at first, so tentative that Lydia almost wondered if she was imagining it. Gradually – ever so slowly – a sort of consensus of enthusiasm had built between them, Stephen politely holding her waist with one hand, the other accidentally brushing the side of breast, as they endeavoured to get to know each other’s mouths. After quite some minutes of kissing, and uncertain of what to do next, Lydia – as impulsive as ever – had invited Stephen to stay the night. But he had refused her.

‘Would you like to see me again?’ he asked. Lydia nodded. There was something about Stephen’s reserved good manners that soothed and cooled the fiery ache in her bruised heart. ‘Then there’s no hurry, is there?’ Stephen had said, pausing to kiss her once more on the tip of her nose. ‘Besides, as far as I can tell, you seem to be my idea of the perfect woman. I’d be crazy to walk away from you. Let’s take it slow …?’

Those had been exactly the right words, at exactly the right time. Words that Lydia hadn’t realised how much she’d needed to hear until Stephen had said them. From that moment on, nearly a year and a half ago, they had officially been together. Everyone said how perfect they were for each other, how Stephen was a keeper, a charm, the kind of steady, loyal man that’s hard to find. And with all those plaudits ringing in her ears, Lydia had let herself slip, albeit slowly, into a full-blown, moving-in, sock-drawer-sharing, grown-up
relationship with Stephen, the first of that kind she had ever had.

Before finding the ring, she’d always vaguely supposed that the life she had made with Stephen would inevitably culminate one day in marriage. But the ring had made her supposition real, and forced her to focus on the tiny little cracks and fissures that, up until that moment, she’d done such a good job of glossing over.

Like the fact that for the last few months, she and Stephen had barely seen each other for more than two hours a day; that the last time they had made love, or even kissed more than in passing, had been on the long weekend away they had snatched last September, almost three months ago. The worst thing was that the stalling of their sex life didn’t seem to bother Stephen at all. He never even mentioned that he missed it.