‘Well, we can’t sit outside in the freezing cold for an hour.’ She checked the heating dials on the dash and groaned when she saw they were already at full blast.
‘I have a suggestion.’
We both turned to receive Joel’s wisdom.
‘Pub?’ he suggested.
‘Pub,’ Desi agreed. ‘We’ll come back in an hour, hopefully interrupt their bloody Christmas dinner.’
‘First round on Laura,’ Joel said, rubbing his hands against his arms. ‘I could use a hot toddy to warm me up.’
I braced myself against the dashboard when Desi spun the car around on the driveway, barely missing the not-a-moat.
‘Alcohol only warms you up temporarily,’ I said. ‘In the long term it actually makes you lose body heat faster.’
‘Remember that first night in the student union when we couldn’t find a table?’ Joel said to Desi over the loud crunch of gravel. ‘And you said, let’s go and sit over by the redhead, she looks all right?’
‘And I’ll never live it down,’ she muttered. ‘As long as I live.’
The Clach was booked and busy. Desi went first, elbows out and practically fighting through the crowd to getthe only empty table left, so far away from the roaring fire I couldn’t even see it, let alone feel it.
‘Two scotches and a Diet Coke?’ I said, pointing at my two friends as they struggled out of their coats.
Desi pulled her sleeves down over her hands and draped her faux-fur coat over her knee for warmth.
‘I thought you didn’t like Diet Coke because aspartame is bad for your brain or something.’
‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘It’s for you. You’re driving, remember?’
‘Fuck.’ She blanched, wide eyes staring blankly. ‘I have made a terrible mistake.’
Weaving through the packed tables, I saw happy people everywhere, smiling and laughing and hugging each other. Even as a card-carrying Christmas resistor, I had to admit I’d always liked this part. The way one day out of the year brought people together and gave them a reason to feel joy that was often so sorely missing on the other three hundred and sixty-four of them. There were couples and families and groups of friends, and a big table full of older gents who were cackling at each other like they’d sat around that same table every Christmas for the last fifty years and had no intention of changing that fact any time soon.
‘Excuse me, thank you, excuse me, thanks.’
I said the same words again and again as I ricocheted down the entire length of the pub until, just a few feet from the bar, I froze.
Sat at a table beside the fire and staring at their phones, were Elsie and Shiv.
If I thought I could’ve escape without them seeing me, I’d have turned tail and run, but no. Shiv saw me first, her blue eyes popping open and for a very stupid minute, I thought she might give me the grace of aspeedy exit, but no. She nudged Elsie, nodding to the spot where I stood.
The sounds of The Clach faded away and my body bypassed my brain, slipping straight into flight, fight, freeze or fawn. This time, it chose freeze, all my muscles seizing up as though I might somehow become invisible as long as I didn’t move. Then I remembered that was a tactic to use on dinosaurs,not people, and since they were very extinct, we didn’t even know if it actuallywouldwork on dinosaurs but I doubted it. If anyone were to ever clone them successfully, the potential for a class action lawsuit againstJurassic Parkwas huge.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
The sound of Elsie’s voice set my teeth on edge when she rose to her feet, hands on her hips, and it took every ounce of self-restraint in my body not to knock her spark out. Not that I’d ever hit anyone before, let alone knocked them out, and I knew only too well how dangerous concussions could be, but still, the heart wants what the heart wants and my heart wanted Elsie McClay unconscious for the foreseeable.
‘Elsie,’ I began, searching myself for something clever, witty and incisive, so savage it made her question her very existence. ‘Piss off.’
It wasn’t perfect but it would have to do.
‘No, I mean it, what the fuck are you doing here?’ she said again, strangely enough surviving my verbal assault without so much as a scratch.
‘Just happened to be in the area, thought we’d pop in for a quick pint.’
‘Very funny.’
I attempted to move around her, only to be cut off by a speedy side step.
