“No!”
“Yep, want to see a photo?” Ryan flicked through his phone, then handed it to her.
She studied the picture; seven children of varying ages, from preteen down to toddlers, grinned out at her. “These aren’t all Rab’s?” she asked.
“No, four of them are Benj’s. I think my parents have given up hope of getting any grandchildren out of me.”
“You don’t want to have kids?” She placed the phone on the table between them.
“I’d love to—all I need to do is meet the love of my life.”
“No pressure, then.”
“Luck hasn’t exactly been on my side thus far.”
“Tell me about it!”
He bit his lip and held her eyes with his. “I was sorry to hear about your job”—he left a beat—“and everything. That sucks. I mean, it more than justsucksobviously, it’s deeply shit.”
She broke his gaze, her jaw clenched. Three years ago, she was living with her partner, Tim—a university lecturer—in a house in Highbury, and working in advertising at the company she’d been with for five years. Now she had no Tim, no house and no job; she was washed up at thirty-five.
“Don’t pull that face,” Ryan scolded, trying not to smile.
“What face?”
“Your pissy face; the one where you clench your teeth and half squint your eyes. Your situation isn’t common knowledge, so you can relax; Aggie told me in confidence because she thought you might need a friend.”
Oh. Right.His words took some of the wind out of her sails, but she was slightly miffed that her tells hadn’t evolved with age.So much for returning as a woman of mystery!
“Thank you,” she said. Her broken heart over Tim had mended reasonably quickly, but the imprint his behavior had left on her self-esteem would take longer to smooth out. Losing her job hadn’t helped. “Sorry. I get spiky about people knowing my business.”
“The hazards of growing up in a small town.” He gave her a smile of solidarity and she returned it. “But you’re doing okay?” he asked.
“If you define ‘okay’ as moving back in with my mum and barmy aunties.”
“I thought you were only perching?”
“I am. It’s a long-stay perch situation.”
“A holi-perch?”
She smiled despite herself. “My choices were limited.”
“It could be worse,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Listen, I get it. Five years ago, I was where you are, though for slightly different reasons,” said Ryan. “I burned out at work and had to leave my job before they fired me, then my girlfriend dumped me for a man whose career hadn’t taken a nosedive, and…well, the point of my oversharing is to let you know that you’re not the first person to hit a slump. And as a recovering slumper, I’m happy to lend a listening ear should you need one.” He twanged his elf ears, and she couldn’t help but smile.
For some reason—perhaps due to him being dressed as one of Father Christmas’s elves—it hadn’t occurred to her that Ryan might have a grown-up life with grown-up problems. He’d always been the joker at school, never taking anything seriously, and unconsciously she had expected him to remain in that same mold. This seemingly wiser version was going to take a bit of getting used to.
“I’m sorry you had a hard time. I didn’t know that,” she said.Is that true?It was ringing bells somewhere in the back of her head. Did her mum tell her and she was so caught up in her own dramas that it simply didn’t register?What does that say about me?
He shrugged and the jingle bells attached to his multi-petaled green collar jangled sweetly. “It’s okay. I was feeling pretty down on myself for a while there. My pride forced me to hide away from the people who could have helped me out of my hole a lot sooner.”
“Are you talking about your family?” When she was a kid, Martha and Diggory were everything she imagined“proper” parents ought to be. She found it hard to imaginenotturning to them in a time of need.
“Yeah. I know you always had them up on a pedestal—and they are great, don’t get me wrong—but sometimes having your parents swoop in and fix everything only makes you feel like even more of a loser.”
