The Secret Santa Project

Chapter 27

‘Looks like the rest of the elves made it,’ said Diane, peering down towards the capsule below them. ‘I can see the kids jumping on top of them. Jesus, I hope they’re all right.’ She looked around at the kids enraptured by the view. The teacher had them fully under control and spotting the main sights, such as Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s and the Shard. The mayor was busy talking to Barbara, which was good. Hopefully that would keep them both busy. Diane allowed herself to heave a sigh of relief. Everyone was in their place and they would get the photo op that the mayor was so desperate for. She could relax just for now. That had been quite hairy for a moment.

‘Is that a donkey?’ gasped Jerry, appearing at her shoulder and pointing down into the next capsule. ‘It can’t be, can it?’

Diane followed his gaze and there, in the next capsule, appeared to be a donkey, a real live donkey.

Diane gasped. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Who on earth brought a donkey?’ She looked nervously over at Barbara, who thankfully for now was still talking to the mayor.

‘Looks like Yang,’ said Jerry. ‘What the hell is he doing?’

Diane shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Is that a donkey?’ said Stacey, appearing next to them. ‘Tell me that isn’t a donkey.’

‘It’s a donkey,’ said Jerry.

‘Oh God,’ said Stacey, burying her head in her hands. ‘It’s bound to be Grace. She’s obsessed with donkeys. I mean obsessed , but how? She does stupid stuff all the time, but a donkey …?’

‘Looks like Yang is feeding it carrots,’ said Jerry. ‘I think Yang is responsible for the donkey.’

‘What!’ said Stacey, looking up startled. ‘Yang. What is he thinking? He’ll have done it to impress Grace. Honestly, those two. It’s like watching some love affair going on. I mean, he decorated the flat with Chinese lanterns, just for her. It looked amazing. But a donkey? That’s insane. And for what? Just to impress a seven-year-old girl?’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t the seven-year-old he was trying to impress,’ said Jerry, raising his eyebrows.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Stacey.

Diane nodded. ‘Do you know what, very perceptive, Jerry. I think you might be right.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Stacey.

‘Look, we need to focus,’ said Diane. ‘We have to make sure Barbara doesn’t see the donkey. Why don’t you go and keep Barbara and the mayor distracted,’ she told Stacey. ‘We’ve half a chance of getting the donkey off the capsule without her noticing if you can keep her on that side of the capsule.’

‘OK,’ said Stacey, breathing heavily. ‘I’ll do what I can. Yang owes me for this.’ Stacey went to sit next to Barbara and the next thing they heard was her complimenting her on her coat.

‘Yang likes Stacey, doesn’t he?’ said Diane.

Jerry nodded. ‘The donkey really does make it totally obvious, even if it doesn’t to Stacey. What a guy, going to those lengths,’ he said, peering at the other capsule again to check on the donkey. He stepped back in astonishment. ‘That’s weird,’ he said, looking over at Diane.

‘What? Weirder than seeing a donkey on the London Eye?’

Jerry peered through the glass again. ‘What’s he doing there?’

‘Who?’ said Diane, also peering out.

‘Coffee-shop man,’ said Jerry. ‘You know, the guy I told you about. He’s there in the capsule. So weird.’ He started to gesticulate wildly to grab the man’s attention.

‘Where is he?’ urged Diane, straining to see. ‘I can’t see any men apart from Yang and my husband, who came with the elves.

‘There he is, look. There. I’d know that red scarf anywhere.’

Diane did a double-take. She looked towards the other capsule again, just to check there wasn’t another man there wearing a red scarf. But there was only Leon. Her husband.

She felt her heart pound instantly and her breath quicken. All the blood drained from her face. She felt faint. She looked again for another red scarf but couldn’t see one, and in any case, it all made perfect sense as she looked back at Jerry. Well, kind of. The world spun around her whilst she spun around the world on the capsule in the greatest capital city in the world. Jerry stared back at her and she felt the world stop as they gazed at each other. She tried to process desperately as they looked into each other’s eyes. Jerry? Jerry was the mystery woman.

‘The man in the red scarf is your husband?’ said Jerry.

Diane nodded. ‘The man in the red scarf is coffee-shop man?’

Jerry nodded.

Diane knew the capsule must be noisy – they were with over a dozen kids, for goodness’ sake. But she couldn’t hear anything. The world had gone silent. Her body had gone numb. She turned back to look out at the other capsule. Leon was staring straight back at them. He was gently shaking his head as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

‘How?’ Jerry had mentioned the gentle courtship in the coffee shop. She had thought it had sounded so romantic, so very understated. So mature. She’d almost been jealous. The person she had pictured, however, wasn’t her husband. It was someone younger, better looking, in fact; someone who had his life sorted. Certainly not her husband who appeared to be in a complete emotional turmoil.

And yet she wasn’t surprised. Not really. Not surprised that it was a man who had captured Leon’s heart. It was a cliché, but he did work in the theatre and had been surrounded by gay men all his life. He’d always been in touch with his feminine side in an understated and subtle way. But if he was gay then why had he married her? Why had he gathered her into his life? That was what she needed to know. Somehow she could totally fathom the why of Jerry and Leon, but she could not fathom the why of Diane and Leon. That she would need help with.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jerry, trembling. ‘I … I … had no idea. I … I only found out he was married last week. If I’d have known, I would have walked away sooner, so very much sooner. I never in a million years would have put you in this position. I … I don’t know what to say.’ She watched as he looked down towards Leon. Leon was pacing up and down. Diane looked back at Jerry.

She was waiting for the feeling of relief that she was set free. The feeling of relief that she had been disappointed not to get when Leon announced that he had been tempted by an affair and was not planning to take it up.

But the relief wasn’t coming. The shock of it being Jerry was too much to process right now.

‘You’ll have my notice on your desk in the morning,’ Jerry said Diane. ‘At the very least, I can take that problem away from you.’ He turned and walked to the opposite side of the capsule and joined in the game of trying to spot where Santa lived. Diane turned back to look at Leon. He was gazing up at her.

‘Sorry,’ he mouthed.

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The capsule host announced that their flight was nearly over and maybe they had arrived at the North Pole and Father Christmas would be waiting. All the children jumped up and down in excitement. They had walked onto the capsule in central London and miraculously arrived thousands of miles away, where Santa lived. Diane considered that she had travelled the greatest distance of all. From wife to … well, had she ever really been a wife at all? What had they been doing all these years, the pair of them? Had they ever been a proper husband and wife? Had they merely been a convenient pairing? What had she ever meant to Leon?

‘Hope you all enjoyed your trip,’ shouted Jolene as everyone filed off. ‘Time for a special photo with Santa Claus.’

Diane spotted that there were a couple of photographers waiting and Jolene was desperately trying to herd everyone into one spot so she could deliver on the all-important photo op for the mayor.

‘This way, everyone,’ said Diane to the party from her capsule. She figured the sooner they got the photo over with, the sooner she could tackle the great big fat elephant that had suddenly descended into her life.

But the donkey was having none of it.

‘Can we have the donkey in the middle of the photo with the mayor and Santa?’ asked one of the photographers as Yang struggled to guide the donkey away.

Diane looked over to see that Barbara seemed to have muscled her way into the photo opportunity, standing right next to the mayor. She was beaming from ear to ear. The mayor seemed to have completely charmed her, or perhaps she had charmed the mayor, making sure he was on side for any future developments the visitor attraction might want to make. She didn’t seem to be fazed by the presence of a donkey; she must have assumed that it had arrived purely for the photo shoot. Thank goodness.

‘We need to get this photo done quickly,’ Diane said to Jolene. ‘We should get these children out of the cold.’

Jolene did a brilliant job of getting an almost complete Nativity scene to surround the mayor, alongside Father Christmas, his elves, the General Manager of the London Eye and a donkey. Two of the shepherds and a sheep gave a flat refusal, but hopefully no one would notice their absence. The mayor beamed in a weird fashion and, the minute the picture was taken, grabbed the photographer and proceeded to give him chapter and verse about all his achievements as mayor that year.

Diane watched as Jerry studiously ignored Leon by keeping himself busy helping Jolene with the children before herding them into the main building.

The time had come. Leon had stood to one side, his hands firmly in his pockets whilst Diane supported her team, but now it was the time to confront the matter.

She stood still. There was no way she was walking towards him. He needed to come to her. He walked towards her and they stood facing each other as the festive cheer swirled around them.

‘I’d like to say that I can explain, but I’m not sure I can,’ said Leon. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that this is happening and if I could have done anything to stop it I would, but I met Jerry and somehow my life fell into place.’

Diane stared back at him.

‘Did that not happen the day we got married?’

‘Oh God, it did,’ said Leon. ‘Of course it did. Well, at the time it did. Me and you … well we felt inevitable.’

‘Inevitable? Bad things are inevitable.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I just meant that us two getting married – it made so much sense.’

‘Like choosing a solid career path?’

‘No, just, well, we were in the same industry, we understood each other, we got on, we fit.’

‘What about we loved each other?’

‘I did love you, I do love you, really love you,’ said Leon, ‘but … but …’

‘Somewhere along the way you fell out of love with me?’ said Diane.

‘I guess,’ replied Leon, looking away ashamed, ‘or started to love you differently.’

Somehow it wasn’t the devastating blow that she expected it to be. Somehow she wasn’t surprised. She figured it was because she knew that she had also somehow fallen out of love with Leon.

‘Have you always been gay?’ she asked.

Leon bit his lip. ‘The honest answer is, I’m not sure. I guess I grew up having feelings for men but I also had feelings for women and so I guess I suppressed the liking men part because, well, it just made life easier. Times were different when we were in our twenties, weren’t they? I suspect if I had been born in this generation then I would be classed as pansexual – attracted to the person and not the gender – but that sounds like such a weird thing for a fifty-five-year-old man to be saying. It’s what the kids say, if they bother to define themselves at all. Doesn’t seem to matter any more, does it, but we just didn’t have the language back in the day.’

‘So you did fancy me?’ asked Diane. She had no idea why this was important, but somehow it was.

‘Of course I did,’ said Leon. ‘You were Diane fucking Shenton, the whole world fancied you. Even the gay men.’

Diane had to smile. It was a relief to hear. She remembered that when she was all dressed up in her theatre garb Leon would often refer to her as a gay icon. Perhaps that’s what had appealed to him when he married her. Anyway, she couldn’t bear the thought of being married to someone who hadn’t fancied her for all these years.

‘But now you fancy Jerry more?’ said Diane. It was a question she never in a million years thought she would be asking.

‘As totally unbelievable as that sounds – and I cannot believe I am saying this, and the twenty-year-old Leon would think I’m insane – but yes, yes, I do.’

‘And I cannot believe I’ve been competing with my colleague all this time. He told me about you,’ she told him. ‘I know about your coffee-shop courtship. How I didn’t guess, I have no idea. For Christ’s sake, he even told me that Wicked was your favourite musical. How that didn’t give it away I have no idea.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

‘He told me how you made him feel. How when you talked to him he felt like the most important person in the universe. He told me that no one had ever made him feel like that.’

The conversation she’d had with Jerry about her husband came flooding back as she stood in front of Leon, their marriage disintegrating around them.

‘He told me that you never touched,’ she whispered. ‘You never touched and yet he felt really close to you. Is that how you feel about him?’

‘I do,’ said Leon, after a moment’s pause. ‘I thought I was going to tell you, when I came home the night Chloe was back.’

‘After you’d been to his carol concert.’

‘Of course, yes, you would know all about that. I was going to tell you, but you were so upset about Chloe leaving us for Christmas I couldn’t leave you too. I was so confused. I decided I would wait until after Christmas. Spend Christmas with you so you weren’t alone, and then tell you.’

Christmas, thought Diane. She’d forgotten about Christmas. The relief had been starting to appear at the edges of this catastrophe. She’d just begun to feel the signs of some sense of freedom, and then the prospect of Christmas was presented to her in all its gloom. The last-minute jobs reared their heads. She had to decide who to put out of a job, she had to sort out a bloody Secret Santa, she had to wave goodbye to her daughter, and on top of all that, deal with the dissolution of her marriage. If her head wasn’t swirling before then it really was in turmoil now. The Christmas period just got a whole lot harder. She felt close to tears and it wasn’t because of this evening’s revelations – although those no doubt contributed – it was because of bloody Christmas.

‘I also had another reason for waiting to tell you,’ said Leon. ‘See, I realised, when you sang on stage the other day, and when we talked the other night, just how much you’ve sacrificed for my career.’

Diane bit her lip hard. Now there was something to mourn. Her lost career. She looked away.

‘I wanted to try and do something to make up for that,’ he said.

‘How can you? My time is up. To be honest, it was up before I had Chloe. No one wants mothers in the theatre. Bringing up children and the theatre just don’t match.’

‘But you’re not bringing up Chloe now,’ said Leon.

Diane laughed. ‘The second least wanted type of person in musical theatre is a middle-aged menopausal woman.’

Leon looked at his watch.

‘Am I keeping you,’ asked Diane bitterly.

‘I’m sorry, but I’m supposed to be meeting someone.’

‘Someone else?’ fumed Diane. ‘Sorry if your wronged wife is holding you up.’

‘Will you come with me?’ asked Leon.

‘What do you mean, come with you?’

‘I didn’t want to tell you before I had it in the bag. This was not how I planned it but I’m meeting someone about your Christmas present; well, about your future, really.’

‘What do you mean, my future?’

Leon looked pained. ‘I don’t want to promise anything, but if you come with me it might help. But we have to go now. Look, I’ll explain on the way, but it might just make your Christmas.’

‘What? Drag it out of this shit show of a Christmas where none of my immediate family want to spend it with me.’

Leon nodded. ‘It just might.’