Page 1 of I’m Dreaming of a New York Christmas

Chapter 1

He looked up at me from the foot of the sofa, his pleading eyes impossible to resist. I pulled him into my lap, his throat vibrating with pleasure as I scratched his jaw exactly how I knew he liked it.

‘I swear that bloody cat loves you more than he loves me.’

My flatmate Tabbi’s voice boomed as she swung open the front door of the flat, switched on the overhead spotlights and dropped her handbag next to the breakfast bar. The commotion startled Jason off my lap, and he dashed underneath his big blue IKEA bag next to the radiator. Confusingly, the name tag on Jason’s collar was etched with Tabbi’s own name, instead of his, which meant everyone who met this weird orange feline for the first time assumed she’d named her cat after herself. To be fair, I wouldn’t have put it past my flatmate.

Stop saying ‘flatmate’, Flora. She owns the place, remember? You’re just her lodger.

‘I think he favours whoever happens to be prepared to tickle behind his ears at any given moment,’ I said, hopefully with enough tact to disguise my certainty that Jason definitely preferred my company to that of his owner. Like me, he was a jumpy little soul, who preferred to quietly exist in the company of people who wouldn’t judge him for his more peculiar habits.

I switched off the cheesy Christmas movie I hadn’t really been paying attention to, picked up my phone from the coffee table and stretched, keen to silently communicate that I planned to vacate the living room in favour of the relative sanctuary of my bedroom – and my noise-cancelling headphones. She watched TV so loudly that the first time I’d heard the theme tune of one of her favourite shows conducting through my bedroom wall I could’ve sworn she was playing her own instruments along to the music.

‘You’re not going to bed already? It’s not even nine! You’re having a drink with me, no arguing.’

Shit, it must be Friday.

Keeping track of the days of the week had always been one of my least-developed skills, and going freelance as a speechwriter a few months ago hadn’t done anything to help me improve it. Plus, ever since the day that should have been the happiest of my life had turned into the worst six months ago, most subsequent weeks had merged into a single messy mass of months and minutes. Currently, the only weekly event that kept me on a vague Monday-to-Friday schedule was the online publication of The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest every Monday morning. The regular ritual of trying to find the wittiest words to accompany their selected cartoon each week had become one of my brain’s greatest comforts – and distractions – for the second half of this year.

I conjured up a small smile in place of a self-indulgent sigh as Tabbi poured us each a glass of generic red wine, somehow managing to distribute the entire bottle between two glasses. She handed me my rim-lapping drink, flopped down on the opposite end of the – her – sofa before donning her Friday evening foot-peel socks, stretching out her long legs and resting her chemical-absorbing feet on my thighs.

Trapped. With alcohol I didn’t want, under the glare of the Big Light and my ears feeling like they were being violently attacked.

The thing with Tabbi was that she loved to talk. Whereas I loved to not talk. Not out loud to people who didn’t get me, anyway. The voice inside my head, on the other hand, was ceaseless: constantly reminding me of all the things I needed to do, all the ways I was forgettable and all the lyrics to whatever earworm I’d latched onto that day.

But whenever Tabbi spoke, it was impossible to focus on anything except her. Tabbi’s voice was louder than any other I had encountered in an unamplified human being – and that was saying something given the extroverted nature of the rest of my family. Tabbi’s voice was no doubt useful in her job as a call centre manager, but very much not useful for my noise-sensitive ears in a compact two-bedroom flat.

The first time I’d stepped inside Tabbi’s attic apartment on the outskirts of Bath, I’d known I wanted to live in it. The front door opened directly into the open-plan kitchen-living space, tastefully decorated in muted sunset shades of peach and pink. Houseplants adorned every available nook, and Jason the cat was curled up on what would eventually become ‘my spot’ on the teal Chesterfield-style velvet sofa. The views over the city from what would be my room – a cosy double with a desk next to the window – were stunning, Bath’s limestone buildings shining like new pound coins whenever the sun came out. And I’d already discovered a friendly, non-hipster café over the road I could see myself working from if I ever felt like a change of scenery.

‘Haha, “Jason” because he’s orange, right?’ I’d enquired, after she’d pointed the cat out on a cursory tour of the place, a soap opera paused on the telly. Keen to establish a connection with my older potential live-in landlady, I’d delved deeply into the archives of my mind, grateful that my mum and older sister’s mutual love of nineties British boybands had finally come in handy.

She’d frowned slightly, and replied in a slower voice, as if she was talking to a drunk London Underground passenger trying to navigate their way to Covent Garden. ‘No… I named him after my uncle Jason?’

This was the moment I should have realised that Tabbi and I were never destined to become anything more than landlady and lodger. That she’d never become the kind of friend I’d be able to open up to about the shittest year of my life. About everything and everyone I’d left behind. About the wedding that never was.

But then I’d wondered whether that was yet another positive aspect of moving in with her. After all, I was coming here for a fresh start, and living with someone who’d likely never know the ins and outs of the last twelve months of my life was as fresh as they got. The all-inclusive rent was more than fair thanks to Tabbi’s decision to bypass a rental agency. Plus, I’d always fancied living with a cat, which had never been possible before thanks to Will’s allergy. Most importantly, though, my best friend, Laurie, lived just a twenty-minute stroll away.

‘Move to Bath, even if it’s just a stopgap,’ Laurie had pleaded a couple of months previously, at the end of yet another phone call that had involved me crying so much I couldn’t speak.

So pathetic.

‘There are people here who love you,’ she’d continued. ‘It’s not far from your mum and sister and – most importantly – we can have these chats in person.’

I’d hung up from that conversation more hopeful than I’d felt in months. Because moving to Bath from South London – where, back then, I only had a few weeks left to get out of the rented maisonette Will and I had shared for the best part of a decade – wasn’t a terrible idea. I’d always loved visiting Laurie, Ben and the kids after they’d moved to Bath a few years ago. The city was gorgeous, and I had visions of reinventing myself as one of its artsy residents who trickled in and out of their favourite haunts on cobbled backstreets once the coachloads of day-trippers had left for the day. I signed the rental contract in September, and moved in a few weeks later.

As Tabbi’s foot peel chemicals absorbed, I glanced at my phone, counting down the minutes until I could retreat to my room, put my noise-cancelling headphones on to drown out the TV and give my latest speechwriting project a final read through before sending it over to the client first thing tomorrow.

‘Oh! News! I’m going to be away for Christmas,’ Tabbi said.

My ears pricked up in the same way that Jason’s did whenever I opened a Tupperware container.

‘Wow, that’s last minute. Visiting family?’ I asked, suspecting her answer would be…

‘Fuck, no.’

There it was.

‘Couldn’t think of anything worse. No, I’m off to Thailand for a fortnight with Crystal.’