Chapter 17
It was through pure mischief that Roo did a U-turn on the way to the stores in ‘Yongle’ because she decided, on a whim, to help Tim with the clearing-up first. She’d force him to engage.
That could be her distraction for today, because sure as hell she needed one.
As she passed it, the beautiful wooden clock on the wall in the lounge started revving up to announce the hour.
A door opened underneath the face and a lady sashayed out holding a bell, then a man met her from the other side with a hammer in his hand to strike it – ten times. Two hours to go.
Roo had learned from someone once that sometimes the most effective way to really piss off an enemy was to be nice to them; they couldn’t handle it.
Even when you were itching to leap on them with your nails curled into tiger claws, you should rise above your instincts because then you robbed them of claiming any moral high ground.
It had been a lesson learned too late, though, with Aaron.
She was lucky he hadn’t had her arrested for assault, but in mitigation she hadn’t realised her aim with a football trophy would be quite so accurate.
He ended up with a very impressive black eye – a ‘poor me’ Insta pic saw him looking like half a panda, but the trophy survived.
AARON EWERIN, TOP SCORER OF THE YEAR, the engraving had said. They weren’t wrong there.
‘Here I am to help you, Tim,’ Roo burst into the galley and announced her arrival in a manner so bright and breezy she made Anne of Green Gables sound like Wednesday Addams. He didn’t respond. Knob.
She picked up a tea towel from a stack in a drawer, all of them special Yorkshire Belle issue.
The name was plastered everywhere from the carpets to the ceilings; she was only surprised it wasn’t printed on the loo rolls.
Jane came through carrying some cups and Tim, voice as soft as the tissue of those luxury loo rolls, asked her to just put them down on the work surface and he’d sort them, so Roo knew he hadn’t gone temporarily mute.
He rubbed the first plate over with the cloth and put it on the draining board, not even attempting to make conversation with her though. It was going to be a long five minutes, Roo concluded.
Elizabeth went forward into the ‘Liberty’ carriage, to stoke up the lovely fire Roo had built. It was still going but a touch hungry.
‘Here, let me,’ said Vincent, who had followed her there on his way to fill up the log basket from the stores at the front.
‘Don’t want you burning yourself.’ Then he hesitated.
‘Not that I think you aren’t capable of doing…
I don’t want to insinuate that… Oh hell, these days, you’re scared to have manners in case you insult… I…’
He was getting himself in a knot and she rescued him, smiling inwardly.
‘I’m very happy to be in the company of a gentleman, always, Vincent. If you had a seat on a bus and stood up to allow me to sit down, I’d thank you and take it.’
The thought of Elizabeth on a public bus tickled him.
His parents had always raised him to be a gentleman and it threw him when women passengers more or less slapped his hand away when he lifted up their suitcase to load into the boot, snapping, ‘I can manage.’ More often than not then, as he was standing back and watching their bodies buckle with the strain, they’d drop it, relent and say grudgingly, ‘I suppose you should do it.’ What a palaver.
Vincent put the log on the fire with the tongs.
‘Yeah, I guess you could have done that without killing yourself.’
Elizabeth laughed. ‘You did it better than I could have though. A very masculine technique.’
‘Flatterer.’
His grin was lopsided, she noticed. She could easily imagine him as a small boy with a smiley, cheeky face on his school photos, his light-brown hair thick and defying his mum’s attempts at taming it with her brush.
Girls at her school weren’t allowed to smile on the annual photos and, coupled with the frilly collared blouses that were standard uniform, the result was they ended up looking like dead people on Victorian post-mortem photos.
They were stuck in a drawer somewhere in the family home, still in their envelopes.
They’d never been out on display once. Had she been her mother’s horse though, she’d have been in a silver frame.
‘Not got any better out there,’ said Vince, standing by the window, straining his eyes to see anything beyond the fog other than more snowflakes falling.
They were fine ones first thing that morning, now they were fat again.
‘I think I might be in trouble with your fiancé for not delivering you to Durham.’
He made her sound like a parcel, a commodity. Maybe that’s because she was.
‘I really shouldn’t worry, Vincent. You can’t be expected to work miracles. It’s not your fault I’m not there.’
It was all her fault though, that’s what they’d be saying, the whole of the Pennington family.
She could have travelled with her father had she not been so pigheaded and now look at the debacle she’d caused.
She wished she had a magic mirror, like Beauty, to see what was going on up there.
Her ears felt as if they were burning as much as the logs in the grate.
‘Looks like you might have to spend Christmas with a group of strangers and not with your loved ones,’ said Vincent, sighing on her behalf.
Loved ones. If, by some miracle, she did get there for Christmas dinner, she’d be in the company of an old curmudgeon who was pleased by nothing, his intolerable snob of a wife who would no doubt be wearing a wig that would dwarf a King’s Guard’s bearskin and be caustic as lye with her.
Elspeth-Ann’s sister would be there too: ‘Namedrops’ as Elizabeth had nicknamed her, for her constant name-dropping.
As I said to Lady Collingwood, we can’t come to you in Cannes this year as we’ve been invited to Monaco with Prince Albert and I really must catch up with William Gates… we never call him Bill.
The future best man would be present too, someone Elizabeth just didn’t feel comfortable around.
She suspected he was jealous of her relationship with Gregory; it would certainly explain his cattiness, though it didn’t explain his overfamiliarity if they were ever alone – and she made sure she avoided ever being alone with him.
There were the schmoozing ‘minor royals’ as she thought of them: the extended family who were always invited, who sucked up to the principals for glory by association.
And then there was her father who would be in his element, greasing, networking, circulating among everyone except his own flesh and blood who was in his blind spot.
But he would give a rousing speech at some point to a captive audience about how thrilled he was that his beloved daughter had found her match.
There would be copious amounts of champagne and caviar on blinis, birds stuffed into other birds and roasted together, golden candlesticks on the tables, more festive flowers than Elton John could have thought decent.
And there would be Gregory, who she knew would be in a foul mood because, no matter what the extenuating circumstances were, the stress she had caused them for fucking everything up would be grounds for sending her to Coventry on a business-class ticket.
Of course he would be charm personified with everyone but her and she would have to withstand feeling his ire discharging from him like radiation from a leaky nuclear power plant.
Getting there at this stage in the proceedings would afford her no brownie points; no one would be pleased to see her, the damage was done because of her selfishness in insisting she put a friend she hadn’t seen for years above them.
Maybe they had a point. It would be a contest to see if they could beat her up more than she could herself.
Loved ones. Vincent had no idea. But she nodded and said, ‘Yes, I just might have to.’ She sat down on one of the sofas, nudging aside the notebook that was there.
‘What about you? Where were you spending Christmas before all this happened?’
‘By myself this year,’ he replied. ‘Not that I haven’t had my fair share of invitations, but…
naw.’ Last year he’d gone to a friend’s house.
He’d had a wonderful dinner with them, a jolly time playing charades and party games, the beer, wine and spirits had flowed but it had just been too much being part of the happy family scene, watching their gorgeous kids open their presents, feeling the love bounce between them, feeling on the outside edge.
Feeling alone in the midst of them, like the maypole around which all the players danced.
‘Oh.’ Elizabeth hadn’t been expecting that. He’d definitely said ‘we moved in’ when he was talking about his farmhouse. She couldn’t really probe further though for it might sound too flirty asking if he had a partner. She didn’t want him to think she was enquiring out of intimate interest.
As if he had heard her internal machinations, he said, ‘Just me and the cat: Snowball, appropriately enough. Luckily, she goes round to the old lady nearby if I’m ever away on a job and she gets spoiled rotten on salmon.
I mean, who always keeps salmon in the fridge in case the neighbour’s cat fancies it?
I’m thinking about moving in there myself. ’
Ahhh… a cat – hence the ‘we’. Well, that was rather sad that someone as nice as Vincent Diamond had no one to spend the holiday with.
Her imagination threw up a picture of what a Christmas with Vincent might be like in his country farmhouse.
She bet he’d have a real tree and loads of lovely things in to eat.
There would be a fire much bigger than this one and Home Alone on a massive TV and he’d be the type who’d want to snuggle up on a squashy sofa… Stop that, Elizabeth.
She picked up the notebook at her side to distract her wayward thoughts and opened it. It was half-full of scribblings, crossings out, notes in margins, couplets. She guessed it belonged to Roo.
Santa Claus
Wanker Claus
Jolly old St Prickerlas
Foreskinterklaas
Piss Kringle
Welcome as a pus-filled pimple
Mr Jingle bell-end
Father Shitmas
Don’t kid yourself, you’re not my friend
Please stick your presents up your ass
Hardly a typical Christmas verse, thought Elizabeth, her eyebrows raised at the vitriol.
‘What’s that?’ asked Vincent.
‘Roo’s poetry, by the look of it,’ she replied, turning the page, reading to herself.
Lovely Lizzy with the long, golden hair
Are you aware…
You have sad grey eyes
Wearing the ring of your not-really prince
If it came to a vote, who’d be your dreamboat
I think we’d all quote, ‘Dump him and pick Vince’
He’s caring, protects
It’s not that complex – try him for size
Don’t marry a man who puts clouds in your eyes
I bet you’d have great sex
Before it’s too late, Lizzy, pack your suitcases
Your kids would be gorgeous – but with smiley faces
‘Let’s have a look then.’ Vince held out his hand. Elizabeth shut the book quickly.
‘We shouldn’t really pry,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it down to the cabin for her.’
‘Who do you think the phantom pie-scoffer is then, Tim?’
In the galley, Roo tried yet again to engage him in conversation but Tim was resolutely sticking to monosyllabic answers.
‘No idea.’
Ooh, a two-syllable word there, she thought to herself. He was defrosting.
‘You must feel a bit better that there is nothing you can possibly do about missing your Santa gig?’
‘Yes.’
Tim opened one of the cupboards above his head to put the last mug away.
‘I get it, you don’t like to let kids down on one of the most important days of their year. Their parents are just going to have to do a bit of work instead, aren’t they? Let’s face it, some of them just can’t be arsed so it won’t kill them to push themselves for once.’
Roo saw Tim freeze in the action of closing the cupboard door, then he shut it with undue force and strode out of the galley, leaving Roo wondering what inference he had taken from her words that she hadn’t put in them.