One Week 'Til Christmas Read online

  ‘Isobel!’ he called.

  I gave him one last apologetic look, shook my head and walked into the cloakroom.

  All the way home, I looked at Tube posters through blurry eyes and avoided eye contact with anyone and everyone.

  So much for that adult conversation I’d planned.

  * * *

  ‘Estelle?’ I tapped quietly on the lounge door.

  I didn’t feel much like sitting on my own and overthinking things tonight. The trip home had been enough. As much as I used social media as a distraction, it was becoming less and less of one. My Instagram post from the winter market only reminded me of him. So did the one from earlier tonight, and all the comments that accompanied it. All roads currently led to him, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to prolong that pain by being constantly reminded.

  I knocked on the door and stepped into the lounge. It was toasty warm; perfect for a late-night brew and chat. Estelle’s head appeared over the back of her recliner.

  ‘Hey, you. How was your night?’ she asked.

  I blew my cheeks out. ‘I kinda blew it. Well, I mean, I learned to ice skate, we danced, I fell over, he started talking about what would happen if he took me home for Christmas.’

  ‘That’s good though, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘It was, until I gave him the going home speech and ran away.’

  ‘Oh.’ She offered me a sympathetic look. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I sank into the sofa. ‘So am I.’

  ‘Want to talk about it?’

  I gave my head a short shake, my eyes drawn to the shadowy images on the television, a small boy being slapped around the head. ‘What are you watching?’

  ‘It’s bloody awful,’ she said. ‘It’s A Wonderful Life? It’s not exactly looking wonderful for this boy, I have to say. It’s making me altogether uncomfortable.’

  ‘Shall we pick something else?’ I asked.

  ‘Absolutely. Let me grab the wine glasses and we’ll find something more uplifting and joyous to watch.’

  With the click of a button, an electronic program guide scrolled across the screen.

  ‘Die Hard?’ I asked.

  ‘Why not.’ Estelle returned, the glasses between her fingers dangling from their stems. ‘After all, it’s not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from Nakatomi Plaza.’

  ‘Sounds perfect.’

  Chapter 8

  7 Days ’til Christmas

  If it weren’t for the photos clogging up my camera roll, I’d have thought last night was a bit of a dream slash nightmare slash niggling mistake. Smiling faces against a backdrop of Christmas trees and old buildings lent themselves to the dreamy feel. I could almost feel the chill rising from the ice in the photos. I could also still taste the tears that blurred my trip home. I pulled the duvet higher around my ears and picked the sleep out of my eyes.

  Running out on Tom really wasn’t my best idea. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d handled it differently, a little more calmly. Perhaps with a glass of wine in hand and some dry joke about how I was doing him a favour. But I hadn’t, and what made it worse was that he was already growing on me.

  I could tell myself time would take care of it, that I’d done the right thing. Even if things didn’t go quite as planned, at least I’d been honest. Whatever happened now, I had that in my corner. But it didn’t make me feel any less of a pillock. I sank back into my pillow and began running through a list of things I could do today.

  My phone screen illuminated, and Edwin’s number flashed up. Holiday Isobel told me not answer it. Professional Isobel told me maybe there was something wrong with my article and it was best to sort it now rather than having to deal with an angry manager when I landed in Melbourne. I crossed my fingers and answered.

  ‘Good morning, Isobel.’

  ‘Hey, Edwin,’ I said. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Everything’s great,’ he said. ‘How about you? Just wanted to check in with you. Want to tell me what it was like spending time with Tom?’

  ‘Tom was fine,’ I said. ‘The interview was even bearable. Despite the fact you sent everything through way too late for me to do any research. I went in blind, Edwin. I looked like a fool.’

  ‘But there you were, thinking on your toes like you always do,’ he countered. ‘I’m proud of you.’

  ‘Look, I’ll be honest, I’m not happy about being thrown in the deep end. It’s okay for you, you’re not the face of the paper, but it makes me look completely unprofessional. I’m lucky I wasn’t tossed out the door.’ Pushing the bed covers away, I wriggled my toes against the cold hardwood floor. My eyes caught on the skating ticket tucked into my diary.

  ‘I do apologise,’ he said and, for once, he almost sounded sincere. ‘I do appreciate the effort you went to. I mean, the hits are already coming through. It’s brilliant. The powers that be are thrilled. I know we said not too smarty smart, but they loved the ‘thinking woman’s man’ angle you went for. So did I, in fact. It almost made him mildly attractive.’

  Right now, all I could see in my head was Edwin, hands on his hips so he looked like a human teapot. If I knew him at all, he’d have switched to pacing his chipboard Laminex office. Its speciality was the peeling fake brown wood grain, the plant gnawed at by caterpillars that had seen sense and fled the office long ago, and his yellowing journalism diploma that he lauded over everyone like King Arthur wielded a sword.

  ‘I’m glad you’re getting readers,’ I said. ‘That’s what we’re after.’

  ‘Now, look, there is a reason for my call.’

  ‘Naturally.’ I said, feeling the anxious skip of a heart about to be asked to put holiday plans on hold. Again.

  ‘What will it cost to get you on board for another article?’

  ‘A million dollars, a hot guy, neverending Tim Tams?’ I quipped. I couldn’t lie, it’d be great to land on Christmas Eve with some extra cash in the bank and I could always return to London next year for the festive season, but the idea of rolling back into another piece now just made my heart cry.

  ‘Right, well, the thing is, I was on Instagram at lunchtime.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And, well, it seems Tom has some eagle-eyed fans,’ he said.

  ‘And?’ I asked. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘I’m glad you asked,’ he said. ‘See, from where I stand, it looks like you’re spending a bit of time with him. You’ve been photographed together at some market … Southbank, that’s right. Then there was the ice skating. I think that was last night. Was that last night? It’s so hard with all these time differences.’

  ‘Edwin.’ I could feel heat flush through my cheeks. ‘That wasn’t Tom.’

  Now, lying was not one of my strong points. I mean, what kind of journalist would I be if I embraced the dark side of it all? Stretching the truth for a grabby headline was one thing; downright lies were a line in the sand too far. Let us not forget defamation laws. However, I hoped that the benefit of distance meant that he couldn’t pick up my tells – like that eyelid that was blinking like a strobe light.

  ‘I think you’ll find it was.’

  ‘Even if it was, that was my personal time,’ I conceded. ‘I know what you’re about to ask for and the answer is no.’

  Dead air stretched out over Chelsea, flashed along the Thames, under the bascules of Tower Bridge, and did a U-turn all the way back out to Heathrow where a baggage handler tossed my suitcases from the back of his little buggy into a massive puddle. Surely he could not be serious? I’d toss a tennis racquet if I had one.

  Then again, it was Edwin.

  He’d want a full exposé in 4K HD with Dolby 7.1 soundbites for podcasting, too, if that were possible.

  ‘No?’ he whined. ‘But don’t you think it would make a great read? My Week with Tom? Tom’s Christmas? Tom’s London? Think of the readers we’d get. It would be exclusive and could even launch you right up into that stratosphere.’

  It would launch me straight into the bi
n. Realistically, if I did do this, which I wasn’t going to, I’d be on the sidelines forever. People, especially celebrities, would stay so far away from me I’d have my own exclusion zone and people would be buzzing Geiger counters in my face. There was no way this would help my career at all. If I thought last night destroyed my odds of launching my own blog, this would be the lead-lined coffin to dump it all in.

  ‘The answer is still no. He only ever agreed to one interview. You have that, so it’s end of story. Plus I’m not seeing him again, so you can forget about it. You can have a Top Ten London Christmas if you like, but nothing to do with Tom.’

  ‘Can’t you just write it anyway? You know, Michael did that just last week with some reality star blow-in who was in town.’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to the powers that be.’

  What sort of person would it make me if I went behind Tom’s back and did do a write up? Even if everything was done and dusted, he was allowed the right to privacy. He was, after all, a private citizen and it would only be fair to assume everything we’d said and done was one hundred per cent off the record. So, to go ahead and write an article about it after all? Even if I never saw him again after last night, my stomach turned at the thought.

  ‘Uh … no.’

  ‘Sorry, what?’ Edwin sputtered.

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ I said defiantly. ‘He’s my friend, and I don’t treat friends like that. Let alone the fact it’s completely unethical.’

  ‘Friends? Unethical?’ he balked with a laugh. ‘Jesus, I’m just asking you to write about the places you go with him. Don’t tell me you actually like him?’

  ‘Okay then, I won’t.’

  ‘Bloody two-bit post-Shakespearean McKellen wannabe.’ Look at Edwin, turning on me like a drunken game of Twister. ‘You’re going to be home again next week, so just get in and get out. He’ll be long gone when restructures come through next year – and there you’ll be with the reader numbers against your name.’

  Wow. I puffed my cheeks and blew out a heavy breath. It’s one thing to be cranky about a ‘no’, it’s another to be completely rotten about someone’s looks or occupation. Turning my ice skating ticket over in my hand, I slipped it back inside my diary and closed the cover. As for threatening my job with that jibe about restructures, well, I hung up on him. For the first time in my history of Edwin-littered conversations, I’d shut him down. No closure, no promise of more words or photos. Nada.

  Sure, stories like this only ever came along once in a blue moon. A week, hell, a night with a celebrity was the stuff of dreams for a lot of reporters, and there were examples of it happening all the time. The difference was, it was consensual; everybody knew where they stood from the outset.

  For me, however, it was time with a friend. Something had clicked during our interview and in the hours after, it had evolved into something deeper than a throwaway conversation. It was something I was prepared to honour as such. Plus, at the heart of it, friends didn’t do that to each other.

  And if that cost me my job, was that really the worst thing in the world?

  Chapter 9

  As much as I hadn’t taken the leap with my own blog yet, there were still infinitely worse things in the world than losing one’s job. It wasn’t a huge secret that I didn’t enjoy working for Edwin. While I loved the travel, I hated missing family functions, and requests like today’s were just so far against what I believed in. He was so completely unethical that any article was sure to start a raging public debate about celebrity privacy and what the public thought they were entitled to.

  I hated Edwin’s ethics. There, I’d said it. Right there, tucked away in a tiny kitchen in inner-city London, I decided I didn’t care if I lost my job. Nobody with any sense would hold my decision against me.

  I sighed to myself. Look what you made me do, Tom.

  I was certain I’d blown things completely last night. There were fireworks, but then the entire barge caught alight without any chance of a reprieve. I was the barge.

  Telling him I was leaving was nothing short of a Ralph Wiggum freezeframe moment. One second, he’d had eyes full of hope, rattling through a playlist of places we should visit. The next, they were wrinkling in the corner like some deep-seated pain had just been scratched to life. I was sure the last time I’d seen a look like that on someone’s face, a magpie had just burst a balloon my niece had been carrying. I felt awful.

  My version of licking my wounds involved cleaning, so my morning began with me elbow deep in suds, handwashing dishes instead of using the dishwasher, dragging wet clothes from the washing machine and shoving them in the tumble dryer.

  Most of my clothes were clean and everything else I had with me was already packed neatly into my suitcase. Perhaps it was premature but it kept me preoccupied. I could tell myself that tucking everything away, compartmentalising, was a great idea but, really, I’d probably burn through all these clothes before I got to the airport anyway.

  Which was exactly how I was dealing with Tom, too. Everything was boxed up neatly with ‘I’m leaving’, or ‘He’s too busy’. And if things did happen with us, would we ever be in the same place at the same time?

  My stomach twisted and I looked around for something else to keep me occupied. I found a wreath Estelle had left beside a tool bag behind the front door. If I imagined the nail I was belting into the door was Edwin, perhaps I’d feel a bit better. I popped upstairs to put some warmer clothes on.

  There’d been a light dusting of snow last night and it clung to the glazing bars of the windows, making the apartment look and feel like a snow globe. Along the street, bells and wreaths hung from front doors, and lights not yet switched off bounced around window frames. Made of twisted twigs, tiny red berries, pinecones, and sprigs of mistletoe, the wreath would add to the classic feeling of Estelle’s front door, a brass knocker front and centre.

  I pulled a measuring tape from the bag and unfurled it against the door. If it was hung an inch either side of the middle, Estelle would notice. I swore she had calibrated eyes. I marked off the centre of the door with a pencil and reached for the hammer.

  A few quick taps later, I stood back and admired my handiwork. It had gone up easily, if a little low on the door, but that was fixed with a knot in the ribbon and holding my mouth right. Stepping back again, I ignored the crunch of footsteps approaching. In all my visits here, I’d never really had a chance to speak to the neighbours and didn’t feel like starting now.

  ‘Hello there.’ Tom approached from stage right. He was rugged up in a puffy jacket, beanie on his head and backpack over his shoulders.

  There it was again, that fluttering leap inside my chest. I could feel my chin threatening to collapse on itself. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Good morning.’ He stopped a few feet from me and wrung his hands. ‘Are you … what are you, hanging a wreath?’

  ‘Guilty.’ I grinned. ‘Hopefully Estelle likes it.’

  It was something she’d picked up on her travels last night. Apparently, the rustic charm of a handmade item made it more acceptable than ‘one of those cheap plastic things’. At least that’s what she’d said in a text message when I’d told her my plan to hang it. ‘Otherwise it would’ve gone in the oven like a Shrinky Dink’. That was fair reasoning, I thought. Although, if it did shrink, it’d make a great souvenir keyring.

  When I looked back at Tom, he looked a little pallid, like he was ready to break out into a sweat.

  ‘I’m a little surprised to see you here this morning,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, so …’ He took a deep breath and concentrated on a spot close to my feet. ‘I realise that this might seem a little strange, me turning up out of the blue instead of calling, but I thought it might just be easier to come and see you.’

  ‘To be fair, it might’ve been creepier had you not walked me home the other night,’ I said. ‘You’ve got that in your favour.’

  ‘There is that.’ A hand jerked nervously. ‘Anyway, I was thinking about what you said last nig
ht, and I have a few things I’d like to say about that, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You know, I spent all night debating knocking on your door, and all morning rehearsing what it is that I wanted to say, to try and impart how I was feeling. Now that you’re standing here, I’m afraid it’s all evaporated.’ I watched his fingers tremble as he scratched at his forehead.

  ‘I can go away if it’ll help you remember?’

  ‘Isobel,’ he said, his shoulders slumping. ‘I was never under any illusion that you were going to be here long term.’

  I lifted my gaze to him, surprised. ‘You weren’t?’

  ‘No.’ He smiled gently. ‘When you use words such as “where I’m staying”, or “Christmas at home”, or, you know, the really big, “first London Christmas”, it becomes clear very quickly that you don’t live here. Otherwise, you’d use words like “I’m living” or “when I lived at home” instead.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,’ I said. ‘I feel like a bit of a goose. Well, my word du jour was arsehole, but goose sounds nicer.’

  ‘Be that as it may, the truth is we’re both travelling salesmen, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘I mean, I’m not going to stay put forever. After this play finishes up in March, I’m in Belgium for six weeks. I get a week home and then it’s eight weeks in America to try my hand at a superhero franchise, so your being in Melbourne really isn’t that big a deal, is it?’

  Until then, I hadn’t realised how tightly I’d been holding myself. Something in me unwound, like shoelaces snapping one by one, and it was a giddy relief. ‘It’s not?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head once. ‘It’s just one of life’s hurdles to get over. And what’s life without a few side quests along the way?’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ I asked.

  ‘How many days have you got left?’ he asked. ‘How much longer have we got you?’

  ‘Ah, today is five,’ I said. ‘Five days to go.’