Chapter 26
Sam and Liz moved through the building, spirit and stock replenisher following their progress on the screens, Kerry having sprinted past them on her way to the lift. Casey noticed she’d had her hair and makeup done and was doused in Dior J’adore.
They watched Lauren, the bookshop manager, greet Sam in the café kitchen while his adoring fans filtered into the small book department.
It was standing room only; the mazelike shelving had made it impossible to set out chairs.
A rope cordoned off a section near the café entrance, behind which stood a lectern—where they would do their reading and Q and A—and a desk and two chairs.
The desktop was piled high with copies of their books, and a knot of jealous yearning twisted in Casey’s stomach and pulled tight.
Kerry and Dave stood just in front of the rope like bouncers outside a nightclub, arms folded. On the outer cameras, fans not lucky enough to have snagged a ticket congregated at the front of the store hoping for a glimpse of Sam when he left the building.
“I have to say I thought you were exaggerating when you told me how popular he was,” said Margo.
Casey let out a weary sigh. “Sadly not.”
Lauren walked to the lectern and began to speak into the microphone and Margo huffed, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s get some sound on these things.” She tapped the TV screen and the office filled with the sound of hushed excitable chatter.
“So, without further ado,” came Lauren’s voice, “it gives me great pleasure to welcome Sam Moon and Liz Barnard to Coopers and Co.!”
Oohs and aahs of anticipation whisked through the book department, and then the door to the café kitchen swung open and Sam and Liz strode out toward the eager throng.
The combined sound of quick sharp inhalations around the room reminded Casey of the sea sucking at the shore.
Sam flashed his signature cheeky grin and waved, and the crowd swooned, then began to clap and whoop.
“Give me strength,” Casey muttered. She looked back over her shoulder to find Margo mopping her brow, her cheeks pink. “Oh, come on!” she groaned. “Not you too!”
“It’s not my fault!” Margo snapped. “I’m the Spirit of Christmas Present; I am naturally and necessarily sensitive to vibrations in any given environment, and this lot are pushing out horny vibes like a hen party at a dildo convention.”
Casey made a retching noise. “And that is my cue,” she said.
“Now that I know he’s settled in the book department, I can crack on with work anywhere but there.
” She looked at Margo, who was fanning herself with a laminated blueprint of the building.
“Are you coming or are you going to stay here swooning?”
“Moan at them, not me,” Margo snapped, motioning to the assemblage on the screen. “I’m a victim of this audience’s sex drive.”
Casey tutted and left the office, and in another moment Margo was beside her and they started down the staff staircase together, Casey hastening her speed as they neared the second floor, as though Sam might suddenly burst out of the door.
Together—though Casey would use the term loosely—they replenished the champagne truffles, boozy jams, and fancy boxes of shortbread in the food hall; anything under a tenner was always a big hit at Christmas.
Then they worked their way through the rest of the floor, restocking the Scandi-style sherpa blankets and tidying the Christmas department, which looked as though it had been ransacked by drunk Christmas elves—the fairy lights were in disarray, and the bauble display had been deconstructed.
Casey was happy to be distracted from the event three floors above.
When they reached the ground floor, where several boxes of newly arrived hats and scarves waited for her to unpack them, it became harder to pretend that Sam and Liz weren’t upstairs.
Waves of muted laughter and clapping drifted down, making her feel queasy and annoyed, and by the time they’d worked their way up to the first floor she could make out snippets of words.
As much as she didn’t want to know what they were saying, not being able to make out what they were saying was somehow worse.
She found herself completely distracted, straining to catch their conversations.
After fumbling and dropping the same cardigan for the third time, Margo took it from her and said, “Why don’t we go and see what’s happening upstairs? ”
Casey shook her head vehemently. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“I don’t mean confront him. I’m thinking more stand at the back behind a bookcase and peep at him. Not knowing is clearly driving you cuckoo.”
She had a point. “Okay,” she said. “We can sneak in through the bookcase door in the furniture department.”
“Now you’re talking!” Margo trilled, throwing the cardigan over her shoulder, where it landed on a rack of velvet party dresses.
Pushing the door as carefully as she could to avoid it creaking, the store replenisher and the spirit crept into the furniture department and quietly made their way to the back of the book department.
Liz and Sam were sat on the comfy armchairs borrowed from the café, holding hands as they chatted with each other and the audience. They smiled dreamily into each other’s eyes and then into the crowd, looking like movie stars at a press junket.
“They make a good-looking pair,” said Margo. “If those two haven’t got mirrors on their bedroom ceiling, I’ll eat my hat.”
Casey stifled a snort.
The audience listened raptly as first Liz, then Sam, read out excerpts from their books. “It was almost Christmas,” began Sam. “In my jacket pocket was a box that contained not only a ring, but my heart and all my hopes and dreams for my future happiness…”
Casey gritted her teeth and watched through narrowed eyes as Sam misrepresented the events of two Christmases ago.
She didn’t feel a shred of jealousy toward Liz; Liz was welcome to Sam—and good luck to her.
In fact, Casey wouldn’t be surprised if their rekindled romance was at least partially a canny publicity stunt.
Her bitterness toward Sam, however, burned in her stomach.
He had wronged her in so many ways and yet here he was, a bestseller in the bag, basking in the glow of fame while she’d been forced to skulk in the shadows.
She was so tired of regret. She realized, as she stood there watching her ex-boyfriend spill pretentious shit to a hungry audience, that everyone she knew had moved forward, but she had remained stuck in that one point in time: frozen in frustrated impotence.
Margo was right. Her clock was ticking. She’d wasted nearly three years stuck inside her own head trying to rewrite a moment that had already been and gone.
But now she had an end in sight. On Christmas night, thanks to Margo, she’d have a second chance.
The thought almost made her hate Sam a little less. Almost.
When the rapturous applause had died down, Lauren said, “Okay, let’s have some questions.
” A hundred hands shot into the air. Lauren pointed to a twentysomething audience member who was stood on tiptoe, her arm stretched high into the air, waggling her fingers to be seen above the crowd.
“You look keen,” said Lauren, which elicited tittering from the gathering. “What would you like to ask?”
The woman kept her arm in the air as she spoke, her voice hesitant and embarrassed. “Um, hi!” she gushed, causing a ripple of laughter. “My name’s Saskia, and I wanted to ask: Did Casey put you off proposing to anyone ever again and do you think Liz might be the one to break Casey’s curse?”
Casey’s mouth dropped open in indignation as the audience broke out into excited whooping and clapping. “Casey’s curse?” she hissed.
“That’s what he calls it in the book,” said Margo helpfully. “He blames you for his fear of being able to love or be loved. He also called you a— Are you snarling?”
Casey was indeed snarling and vibrating with rage. In the makeshift stage area, Sam gave Liz one of his heart-stopper grins and Liz giggled, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.
“Well, now, that’s two questions, Saskia”—Sam gave her a wink—“but since I see you’ve already bought a copy of my book, I’ll allow it.
” There was a ripple of laughter. He sat up straighter in his chair and let his eyes wander over the faces in the audience, as though to bring them all into his confidence.
“You know, it’s funny. When you’ve had your heart ripped out and stamped on for the whole world to see—I think we know who I’m talking about here.
” He left a pause for people to nod and make noises of assent, and Casey heard her name whispered on breaths.
She bit her lip and dug her fingernails into her palms. “Well, I guess you can imagine how that kind of betrayal might make you shy away from letting yourself be vulnerable. Especially when all I’d ever wanted was to be loved—”
“Oh, what a crock of shit!” The words were out of Casey’s mouth before she could stop them, ringing out loud around the packed book department.
“I tried to love you. I did love you! But you spent the whole time we were together telling me how much you loved your ex-girlfriend. I was never good enough. You treated me like shit, and I took it because you’d made me feel like I was shit!
” She wasn’t sure she could stop now if she tried.
She was vaguely aware of Margo regarding her with an impressed expression.
“And then you cheated on me with Liz!” she went on, her voice reaching a fever pitch.
Liz had paled and pressed herself into the armchair as though hoping to be absorbed into the fibers.
Casey’s outrage was an avalanche—fast, cold, and unstoppable.
“Even after we were finished you wouldn’t let me go.
You made my life a misery. Did you know that, Liz?
And then you proposed! We weren’t even together!
But you always want what you can’t have, don’t you, Sam?
You are never satisfied—it will never be enough.
Your book isn’t a memoir; it’s a work of fiction, you fucking narcissist!
” She was panting like she’d been running, her own breaths loud in the silence that had fallen over the room as the audience stood agape in stunned delight.
Sam was leaning forward in his chair, squinting into the crowd. “Casey?” he asked. “Is that you? Where’s your hair? Are you wearing slacks? Those are not flattering.”
She ignored him and instead fired at Liz. “You were my friend!” The accusation seemed to strike Liz like a slap and she recoiled.
“Casey, I…” Liz began to reply, but Sam, seemingly recovered from his shock, cut across her.
“You’ve got some nerve, turning up here on my night. Now who can’t let go, huh? Stalker much?”
“I work here, you dickhead!” The crowd tittered at this, but Casey was only vaguely aware of their presence.
Her vison had tunneled to a pinprick where there was only Sam and three years of bottled-up resentment churning in her stomach, hot acid flowing through her limbs.
“And you’re one to talk about stalking,” she said with a humorless laugh.
“I had to threaten you with a restraining order.” At this the audience gasped as one.
Sam seemed to realize that he was in danger of losing the sympathy upon which he had built his career and shouted in an agonized wail, “You broke my heart!” in as good an impression of Michael Corleone remonstrating with his brother Fredo as Casey had ever seen.
His fans reacted accordingly, hands fluttering to mouths, the swell of their feelings palpable in the too-warm room.
“It’s all an act,” Casey said, her voice quieter now.
She shook her head as her thoughts slotted into place.
“I didn’t break your heart. You’re not a hopeless romantic, you’re an emotional vampire.
The only way to fill the void inside you is to feed on the adoration that you instill into women with your insidious passive aggression. ”
She became aware of people looking between them as they tried to fathom who was telling the truth: the man with the angelic good looks or the woman whose face they’d become accustomed to seeing frozen into a scrunched scowl in the meme.
Liz was looking at her hands folded in her lap.
There was a shift in the general atmosphere, a questioning that suggested the tide might not automatically swing in Sam’s favor, and Casey knew he could sense it too.
He looked at her, shaking his head sadly.
“I’m sorry that your life didn’t turn out the way you’d hoped, Casey,” he said, placing one hand over his heart.
His tone soft, as though she were a petulant child.
“And I’m sorry that your jealousy is eating you up.
I did love you. I asked you to marry me, but you turned me down and that’s on you.
I won’t apologize for your mistakes, but I hope that you can move on and be happy for Liz and me. ”
“What the fu—” Her outraged retort was cut short by a clicking noise.
The familiar and dreaded sounds of a camera shutter that had haunted her dreams for two long years.
Each click was followed by a blinding flash, and she knew in that moment that her past had finally caught up with her. Her goose was well and truly cooked.