Joel
We survived it! Had a great day and Mum managed to spin out a single glass of sherry for nine hours. Must be a record huh? How are you?
Then, while he waits for a reply, he goes to Carmel’s Facebook page. He gazes at her profile picture and fiddles with his phone, seized by an urge to text her. What should he say? He doesn’t want to seem maudlin because actually, he’s feeling pretty sanguine now. If she’s dumped him for whatever reason then he’ll be cool with that. Maybe, Joel figures, he should turn over a new leaf and start to behave like a decent human being. Life would be a lot less stressful for one thing. And maybe, if they both made an effort and Shelley stopped wearing those nan-curtain pyjamas, they could resurrect some semblance of a sex life.
Joel drinks more wine and ponders on this. Then all in a rush, before he can overthink it, he types out a message:
Joel
Hey babe happy Christmas! Haven’t heard from you since our sleepover and wondering if all ok? You were magnificent that last time. Like a goddess on top of me. Understand if you want to cool it but I think we should talk as I’d like closure. xxx
He rereads his message and thinks yeah, that’s good. That’s pretty eloquent considering he’s sunk something in the region of two bottles of red wine over the course of the day. Then he wanders through to the kitchen figuring that he might guzzle some leftover roast potatoes to soak up the booze.
Funny, he muses as he shovels in the cold spuds, that leftovers are often the best part of Christmas dinner. Perhaps next year they should cook double the food so there’ll be acres of leftovers to keep them going for days? Joel decides he’ll suggest this when Shelley comes home. He’ll help of course. He won’t have her doing all that by herself.
Thrilled with his genius idea – to go leftovers crazy! – he strides back to the living room and grabs his phone, intending to share it with Shelley. His vision is a little squiffy as he frowns hard at the text he sent her just fifteen minutes ago. No, no, no. This isn’t right. He is sweating now and shaking too. He thinks he might actually throw up. It’s not the wine or the undercooked chipolatas or his usage of the word ‘closure’. It’s the fact that he was so wrapped up in getting the words right that he wasn’t paying full attention as he sent it.
With sickening horror Joel realises what he’s done. In his sozzled state, he didn’t send Carmel’s message to Carmel. He sent it to his wife.
38
‘I’m sorry,’ Tommy is saying. ‘I know it sounds mad but I just didn’t know how to tell you. It just sort ofhappened.I took Daisy out last night, like I always do on Christmas Eve. And she said, “Why not come to us?” Then her mum opened the door and Daisy blurted it out and Catherine said?—’
‘Tommy, it’s not that,’ Lena cuts in, although itisthat. It’s all of it. ‘It’s the fact that we’ve been messaging and even spoken today. We spoke this afternoon! And you said it had all been lovely and I just assumed?—’
‘I know, darling. I’m an idiot. I just didn’t know what to tell you.’ He stops then, saying nothing more. And Lena shivers in her jumper in the darkness of Michael’s garden and remains silent too.
Moments stretch. A light wind rustles the trees. Lena picks up a handful of snow, barely noticing that it numbs her hand as she scrunches it into a tight lump.
Because really, all of her feels numb now. Tommy spent Christmas Day with his ex-wife and her beautifully coordinated baubles and his parents loved it. Of course they did. They would also love Tommy and Catherine to reconcile, and perhaps this isthe first step towards it? With a start, Lena realises she is crying. She tries to wrestle her emotions under control, but as a russet hen juts her head out of the little wooden house, she emits a sob.
‘Lena, you’re upset,’ Tommy says, sounding choked himself. ‘Please don’t be upset.’
‘Don’t tell me whether or not to be upset!’
‘Okay, okay! I’m sorry…’
She rubs at her face but can’t stop crying now. Briefly, she wonders why, when it’s so extremely cold out here, her tears aren’t forming speckles of ice.
‘I don’t want to talk any more tonight,’ she murmurs, stomping back to the cottage now.
‘Please don’t go. Please talk to me, Leen. I just wish you were here with me now?—’
‘Where are you?’ she asks, although he has already told her he’s back at the flat, and that his parents are spending the night at Catherine’s. But she wants to hear him say it again.
‘I’m here at the flat by myself.’
She rubs at her cold nose. ‘What happened to all the Christmas food you’d ordered?’
‘I took everything over there this morning. And then when I came home tonight I poured myself a whacking great drink.’
‘Right.’ He’s trying to lighten things, but she isn’t biting.
‘And I’m sorry but I had a cigarette in the garden,’ he adds.
‘Did you,’ she says flatly. She bites her lip. ‘It hasn’t just been today, has it? There was your lunch date too?—’
‘That wasn’t a date!’ he protests. ‘I told you, it was just?—’
