Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Fuck.
‘Svetty,’ I said sweetly, my palms suddenly damp. ‘Can I have a quick word with you?’
‘No.’ Desi remained where she was, arms wrapped around a cushion in her lap.
‘Upstairs,’ I ordered. ‘I need you to help me bring the presents down.’
Predictably, she sprang to life at the sound of the ‘P’ word.
‘You brought presents with you?’ she asked, bounding after me as I raced up the stairs. ‘I haven’t got yours. I thought we agreed we’d do gifts when you got home?’
I pushed her into my room and closed the door. ‘We did and I haven’t but, looking at that tree, Lizzie has gifts for all of us and I’ve got nothing to give her. We need to find something ASAP.’
Rather than answer, her eyes raked over the room. The messy bedsheets, my discarded underwear, the empty condom wrappers I’d promised I wouldn’t need but had made excellent use of.
‘I knew it!’ she howled and I clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her volume. It worked until she licked the inside of my hand and I pulled it away, deeply grossed out.
‘I bloody well knew it,’ she crowed. ‘I said to Joel, they’re shagging, and he said, no, they aren’t, she’s not that stupid, and I said, oh yes she is, and he said—’
‘All right, Widow Twankey,’ I scowled. ‘Congratulations, you’re right. Is that what you want to hear?’
‘Better than any other present you could’ve given me,’ she nodded happily. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘We haven’t got time to get into it now.’ I pawed through my open suitcase, raking through my colourful clothes, my meagre makeup bag. ‘We need to find suitable Christmas presents for Derek, Lizzie, Elsie and Rory.’
‘Elsie can have a kick in the puss and like it,’ Desi sniped. ‘And the rate Joel’s going, Rory should be getting his Christmas present as soon as his parents’ backs are turned. They’re panting for each other worse than you and the other one.’
‘All things we can discuss later. Do you think Lizzie would like this?’
I held up a slightly dog-eared edition of Onyx Storm I’d been carrying around all year and still hadn’t had time to read. Desi shook her head.
‘What if she hasn’t read the first two?’
‘Good point.’
‘Even if she has, what if it gives her the mega horn and she shags Derek into a heart attack?’
‘Less helpful point.’
‘I don’t understand why you need to give them anything,’ she said, combing through the suitcase she’d watched me pack, in her flat, where I’d been living for six weeks, as though she’d never seen a single one of my possessions before. ‘Isn’t the entire objective of this trip to make them hate you?’
‘It was,’ I replied hesitantly. ‘There might be a shift in direction on the horizon.’
‘Oh, Laura,’ she groaned, cutting herself off, hands held up in surrender. ‘Nope, I’m not going to say it. I don’t need to. You’re a grown-up.’
‘That’s right, I am,’ I said. ‘As soon as we’ve come up with presents, you can call me every name under the sun if it makes you feel better. Are you going to help me or not?’
‘Not?’
‘Wrong answer.’ I planted my hands on my hips and let my head fall back in frustration. ‘This is useless. Have you got anything?’
‘Nothing I’m prepared to give you. And don’t look like that, you’re not going to change my mind.’
‘Des,’ I clutched my hands together in prayer. ‘Please, for me. For Christmas.’
‘Nope.’
‘If you help me, I’ll buy you a pony.’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘I might. We’re on a farm, Derek might have one going cheap. We could tie it up outside the flat, next to the electric car charger and the bollard everyone uses as a urinal.’
‘Laura, stop.’
She placed a hand on my back as I held up a packet of co-codamol, wondering how inappropriate it was to give your potential future brother-in-law prescription medication.
‘You slept with Callum?’
‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘And it was very good. I came twice last night and twice again this morning, he went down on me without asking and what else do you want to know?’
‘You know I have a full checklist of questions but we’ll get to that later,’ she replied, looking relatively impressed. ‘All I need to know right now is, are you OK?’
‘OK?’ I repeated. ‘Do you mean am I sore? Because yes, a little bit, but obviously I peed afterwards. Even though did you know there’s no real evidence to connect UTIs with using the toilet after sex? I looked it up. It’s good practice, flush out any potentially harmful bacteria but—’
‘Again, good information to have but not what I was getting at,’ Desi said, pulling a face.
‘I meant, are you all right? Emotionally? Like, what does this mean? Is the whole Caroline thing cancelled now? Are you going to tell his parents the truth? Are you two dating? Was it more of a one-off thing?’
A one-off thing. The idea of it stopped me in my tracks.
‘We haven’t really discussed it.’
Her brown eyes widened until I could see the whites all the way around her irises.
‘You haven’t really thought about it?’ she said. ‘You, Laura Pearce, had multiple orgasms with a man and didn’t think to have a quick chat about whether or not you might do it again?’
‘I cannot keep up with what you want from me,’ I replied, lowering my voice to an undetectable hiss. ‘Don’t overthink things, do overthink things. Do date, don’t date. I like him, he likes me, the sex was great, whatever happens next, it’s not a big deal.’
It sounded hollow, even to my ears. We both knew I was lying.
‘When you agreed to this, you said it was OK because you had nothing to lose,’ my friend said gently. ‘I don’t think that’s true any more.’
‘What could I possibly have to lose?’ I asked, clutching the co-codamol very tightly. ‘I’ve known Callum for six days. How much impact could someone have on my life in six days?’
Neither of us said anything because neither of us wanted to admit the answer.
‘Come on, let’s get these presents sorted out,’ Desi sighed before gesturing for me to follow her back to her room. ‘And you are going to owe me. Big time.’
Looping my arms around her neck, I kissed her on the cheek.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
‘Saving the day as always,’ she grumbled. ‘Again, what would you do without me?’
It honestly didn’t bear thinking about.
‘Caroline, you shouldn’t have.’
Derek stared at the bag of shortbread I’d just presented him with and it was very obvious he wasn’t just saying it. From the look on his face, I really shouldn’t have.
‘It’s salted caramel,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘Try it.’
‘It’s an abomination,’ he muttered, scrunching the wrapping paper-slash-torn-out pages of Grazia magazine into the fire. Turning the box over in his hands, he squinted at the tiny print on the back then looked away in disgust. ‘Made in England. Shoot me now.’
I hadn’t asked Callum what they’d discussed the night before.
His argument with his dad wasn’t exactly top of my to-do list when he showed up in my room, but I could see now that whatever had been said hadn’t gone far to resolve the tensions between them.
Derek could hardly stand to look at his son and when Callum gave him his gifts, including a very nice replacement for the Dalmore we’d drank on the train, he barely murmured a word.
‘Interesting wrapping solution,’ Rory said as he shook a tube of Kiehl’s men’s moisturiser out of a red and green striped sock.
‘It’s environmentally friendly,’ I explained, choosing to ignore the bad vibes between father and son for now. ‘Most wrapping paper can’t be recycled. This is what they do in Japan.’
‘Why does that look like my sock?’ Joel asked, wrapping the new scarf he’d received from Lizzie around his neck.
‘Because it is your sock,’ I replied quietly through a big fake smile. ‘And your Kiehl’s, please don’t act out, I’ll replace it.’
His eyes popped wide open.
‘Too fucking right you will. Do you have any idea how much that stuff costs? I ought to strike you down where you stand.’
While Joel sulked, Lizzie tore open her own gift, wrapped in last week’s horoscopes.
‘Oh, lovely,’ she said, examining the contents. ‘What is it exactly?’
‘A lip balm,’ I offered. ‘It’s peppermint flavoured.’
‘Technically candy cane flavoured,’ a mournful Desi amended. ‘It’s a limited edition Rhode peptide lip treatment. Sold out. Worldwide. Literally impossible to get your hands on.’
‘Is that right? Thank you, Caroline.’
Lizzy turned it over in her hands then placed it on the arm of the sofa where it promptly rolled off without her even noticing.
‘What about you two?’ she said to me and Callum, sitting side by side on the floor in front of the sofa, thighs, arms, shoulders touching. ‘You’re not exchanging gifts?’
‘I’d say they’ve already exchanged enough,’ Desi commented, kicking me in the back.
‘Caroline doesn’t believe in gifts,’ Callum said quickly when I opened my mouth to tell them about my new brooch. ‘She thinks exchanging material possessions cheapens an emotional bond.’
‘She must not think much to us then,’ Derek commented, mouth already full of filthy English shortbread. ‘Although I’d say that’s obvious enough.’
‘I hope you won’t be offended but I have something for you,’ Lizzie said, fishing the last gift out from behind the tree. ‘If you don’t like Christmas gifts, think of it as a welcome-to-the-family token instead.’
She handed me a small quilted leather box tied with red ribbon, smiling beatifically. Callum’s eyebrows pulled together in a way that made me far too nervous.
‘Is it Elsie’s ear?’ Rory guessed and his dad threw a satsuma at his head.
The box was very light in my hand. It weighed almost nothing but with every second I sat staring at the thing, it became heavier and heavier.
‘For God’s sake open it!’ Joel wailed. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
‘We have though,’ replied a rueful Desi. ‘Literally twenty-four whole hours.’
I glanced up at Callum, whose shoulders pulled upwards in the tiniest shrug, then opened the box. Inside was a beautiful gold locket, sharp lines of intricately engraved flowers on its surface softened with age.