Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘I don’t think I can listen to any more of this.’
In the back of the car, Joel put his hands over his ears and groaned. ‘By the time we get to “Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” I’ll be ready to drive us off a cliff.’
‘When you’re driving, you get to pick the music,’ Desi shouted over the bridge of ‘Down Bad’. ‘This is for Laura. She needs this, it is therapy.’
‘I really don’t,’ I assured her from the passenger seat. ‘I’m really fine.’
‘Oh, did you hear that, Joel? She’s fine.’
‘Excellent news,’ he leaned forward to turn off the stereo and Desi slapped his hands away, almost steering us directly into the central reservation. ‘Makes me even happier to be spending Christmas Day trapped in a Mini with you two freaks.’
There was a beat of silence in the car.
‘Can we stop?’ he asked. ‘I need a wee.’
Desi gave him a look in the rearview mirror.
‘We’ve been in the car for seventeen minutes.’
‘I didn’t have time to go before we left!’ he protested. ‘I was too busy packing up your stuff!’
‘Too busy having another go on that bloody Rory more like,’ she muttered. ‘Honestly, I can’t take you anywhere.’
‘You’d like him if you got to know him,’ Joel pouted in the back, arms and legs crossed.
‘What are you basing that on exactly?’ she replied. ‘You don’t even know him.’
‘I’ll have you know it’s very difficult being the only gay member of the family at Christmas,’ he declared. ‘You wouldn’t understand the amount of pressure we’re under to be incredibly hot and charming and funny.’
‘What’s that got to do with you sticking your tongue down his throat in the kitchen in the middle of the night?’
‘Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘He’s just really, really hot.’
‘Des, turn in here,’ I cut in on their bickering before I was forced to slap them both. ‘There’s a petrol station, they’ll have a loo.’
‘No.’
‘And an M&S Simply Food.’
Her eyes lit up at the promise of a cheddar & onion twist.
Joel’s head suddenly popped up between the passenger seats, making me jump.
‘It’s a mirage,’ he whispered. ‘It won’t be open. Don’t get my hopes up.’
‘Let’s all pray for a Christmas miracle.’ Desi pulled off the road and screeched into a parking space. ‘Because if I don’t come out with a freshly baked chocolate chip muffin at the very least, I’m going to burn this place down to the ground.’
Luckily for all M&S shareholders, the shop was open, and luckily for us, it did have a bathroom. Joel ran through the aisles while Desi made a beeline directly for the bakery. I followed Desi, dutifully carrying the basket, my mind very much elsewhere.
‘Do you want a pain au chocolat?’ she asked, scanning the baked goods like she was searching for her one true love. ‘You’ll have to eat it before we get in the car, flaky pastry is a bastard to hoover up.’
‘No, thanks,’ I replied. ‘I’m not hungry.’
I wasn’t. The adrenaline and CRH released during my confrontation with Callum had obliterated my appetite.
But knowing the scientific reasons why I couldn’t stand the thought of eating, why my face looked so blank in the reflection on the glass bakery case, didn’t help.
Empty was the best I could hope for. Numb.
‘We should get the Christmas sandwiches, since, you know, it’s literally Christmas.
’ She dropped several paper bags into the basket before moving over to the refrigerated section of the store, me trailing along behind her.
‘Do you want the turkey or the veggie? I’m assuming turkey since you don’t have to pretend to be a vegan any more. Small mercies, eh?’
‘Whatever.’
Desi peered at me out the corner of her eye.
‘We probably don’t need any crisps.’
‘Probably not.’
‘And I won’t bother getting any biscuits or anything. One sandwich each is enough for an eleven-hour drive.’
‘If you think so.’
She turned to face me, five different sandwiches balanced in her arms.
‘Right, let’s get in front of this before it becomes a problem,’ she said.
‘You are officially you again. You eat salt and vinegar twists like they’re going out of fashion and if anyone tried to take an Extremely Chocolatey biscuit out your hand, you’d surgically detach the offending appendage.
I know you’re pissed off and upset, and he can break your heart and ruin your Christmas, but Laura Pearce, with Marks and Spencer whoever they may be as my witnesses, I will not stand idly by and watch him take away your desire to eat carbs. ’
I reached into the sandwich cabinet, pulled out the first thing my fingers touched and dropped it in the basket.
‘Seriously?’ She looked at me with disgust. ‘Egg salad? In the car?’
I shrugged and Desi growled.
‘Would it help if I slagged him off a bit?’
My eyebrow quirked with involuntary interest.
‘Couldn’t hurt. What have you got?’
‘He’s too tall, for a start.’
She removed my egg sandwich from the basket and replaced it with a Christmas club. She was right to do it.
‘You’d hurt your neck, always looking up at him. He’s even paler than you are so you’d be spending a fortune on SPF, and forget going anywhere sunny on holiday. What else?’
Turkey Feasts, a Pigs in Blankets sandwich and three bottles of Pepsi Max were added to the basket before she steered me towards the picky bits.
‘Who wants to go out with a chef? Everyone knows they’re untrustworthy. Too much opportunity to cheat, always shagging the servers in the back of the restaurant. And he wants to be a pastry chef? Not good for your health. Too much cholesterol.’
‘And high cholesterol already runs in my family,’ I said, reaching for a tub of picnic eggs despite the words that had just come out my mouth.
‘And it’s not just him, is it?’ Desi went on.
‘That man comes as part of a very complicated package. The mum is all right and, aside from him getting off with my fake husband, I did like the brother, but I think we all know how I feel about the sister and his dad always felt as though he was one drink away from starting a conversation with “You can’t say this any more but …”’
‘In Elsie’s defence—’
‘I’m going to stop you right there.’ Desi brandished a package of feta-filled falafels right in my face.
‘We’re not defending her today. Today she is worse than Satan.
Today she is getting coal in her stocking and no Christmas cards.
Maybe, somewhere down the line, many, many years from now, an old lady version of me might consider acknowledging her life isn’t entirely perfect but she decided to go full evil Jessica Fletcher on you at Christmas, so right now, I would happily sew prawns into her curtains and put itching powder in her unmentionables. ’
‘Do they still make itching powder?’ I pondered as I grabbed a pack of sausage rolls. Hungry or not, Christmas wasn’t Christmas without sausage rolls.
‘You can get anything on TikTok shop,’ she assured me. ‘You’re new to it but the best way to get through a situation like this is to be outrageously angry. Like, furious. Angrier than you’ve ever been.’
‘As angry as you were when Joel finished your Crunchy Nut Cornflakes last week and put the empty box back in the cupboard?’
‘Well, no, you’re an amateur. You’ve got to work your way up to rage like that.’
I clamped my lips down on my reply, another thing to add to my buried feelings box.
Joel’s head bobbed up and down behind the biscuit aisle, his bouncy stride considerably more relaxed, post-pee break.
‘And don’t get me started on the ex,’ Desi was still ranting as she tossed bag after bag of crisps into my basket. No point in me mentioning we were driving to London not climbing Everest. ‘What a wet weekend of a woman.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ I warned her. ‘We don’t blame other woman when things didn’t go our way. We’re not those people.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ she clucked, tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘Tomorrow can be for feminism, today is for blame.’
Joel rounded the corner, arms full of chocolate biscuits.
‘Who’s a feminist? I’m a feminist,’ he said, unloading them in the basket. My arms sagged at the considerable weight which neither of them made a move to relieve me of. ‘But just so I’m clear, why are we taking a day off?’
‘Because we’re slagging off Elsie and Shiv,’ Desi explained.
‘Oh, good,’ he replied joyfully. ‘That’s actually an important part of being a feminist. Recognising that women can, on occasion, be totally shit, but still supporting equality in general. I read it somewhere.’
‘You mean you saw it on TikTok.’
He slowly, deliberately, dropped an extremely heavy slab of Christmas cake into my basket while staring me straight in the eye. ‘And your point is?’
‘If anyone’s a bad feminist, she’s a bad feminist,’ Desi went on. ‘How could she take him back now? She’d have to be a masochist if she’s going to convince herself this nightmare was some sort of warped romance.’
‘Exactly. And what about him?’ Joel added.
‘If I’d known this was all some messed-up plan to get his ex back, I would’ve said, Laura, I would’ve said, do not go to Scotland with this man.
Have angry sex with him on his kitchen counter by all means but do not enable his macho mind games by pretending to be his girlfriend. ’
‘Just in case you were wondering if what Elsie saw last night was accurate,’ Desi muttered.
‘If Rory was straight, you’d have been on him like a rat up a drainpipe,’ he replied. ‘And that’s not important. What is important is that Callum should’ve been up front about the fact he’s still in love with his ex before he roped you into his mad little scheme.’
‘But he isn’t,’ I said, straining with the weight of our shopping.
‘Isn’t what?’ Desi asked, her attention somewhat consumed by the savoury snack options in front of us.
‘Callum isn’t in love with his ex.’
The muscles in my back ached, my biceps and triceps groaning. God, I was going to be one of those awful people who made a New Year’s resolution to join the gym, wasn’t I? Rolling my shoulders, I looked up to find Desi and Joel both staring at me.