Page 13 of Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
Jenna burst out a laugh, and the melancholy slipped back into the shadows. “Shit! I’d forgotten about your cringe-fringe!”
“The very one.”
“Whatwereyou thinking?”
“I was trying to look like Hilary Duff.”
“It didn’t work. So, what’s with Ameerah and the model?”
Nory shrugged. “Who knows! Maybe he’s her Christmas gift to herself?”
“I wouldn’t mind finding him in my stocking.”
“Jenna! You’re almost a married woman.”
“I know.” Jenna smiled like she had no control over it, a big wide smile that stretched across her whole face. “Can you believe it?”
“Actually, I can,” said Nory. “You two always had a spark.”
A shout from downstairs echoed through the house: “Oy, oy, let’s get this party started!”
Nory and Jenna looked at each other.
“Guy,” they said in unison.
Nory must have grimaced, because Jenna pulled a sympathetic face.
“Don’t worry about it, you didn’t know.”
“Everyone else did.”
“Not everyone. I didn’t.”
“I’m going to spend the whole time feeling like everyone’s watching how I react around them.”
“Relax, darling, no one will be watching you at all, they’ll allbe watching me. I’m on TV, you know!” She winked and pulled Nory into a hug, kissing her cheek. “Come on, you might as well get the hellos out of the way.” And linking her arm through Nory’s, Jenna pulled her from her nice quiet bedroom, down the stairs toward the noises of three grown men reverting to their seventeen-year-old selves.
Five
Everyone was instructed to meet in the drawing room for cocktails and canapés before dinner.
Guy hadn’t looked at all sheepish when he greeted her in the entrance hall earlier and introduced her to his wife, Camille—who seemed shy and unassuming, unlike her husband. Nory wished she was as shallow as he was, then she wouldn’t feel like a conniving harlot every time she spoke to Camille. It would be impossible to avoid her for the next six days, and she would look as guilty as she felt if she tried.
“Look,” said Ameerah, her voice a mite strained as she zipped Nory into a gold evening dress centimeter by centimeter. “If Guy’s pretending it didn’t happen, then just follow his lead. I know you’re cursed with an inflated sense ofdoing the right thing, but in this instance, honesty is definitely not the best policy. Let Guy fuck up his marriage on his own, you don’t want it on your conscience.”
Ameerah was wearing a square-necked, long-sleeved evening dress, with a side slit that almost met her knickers, in her signature black.
“It’s already on my conscience,” Nory said, sucking in her stomach as the zipper squeezed her torso. She reasoned that ifthey were to be dining like kings for the next week, it would be better to wear the tightest dress first, before the calories began to take their toll. She pulled the accidentally-escaped-on-purpose tendrils of hair that weren’t tied up in the loose chignon out of the way.
“Believe me, if you relieve your conscience by telling her, and the result is the end of their marriage, your conscience will be a hundred times heavier.”
“If it was me, I would want to know.”
“But it’s not you. And you don’t get to decide what’s best for Camille when you don’t even know her.”
“What if I get to know her and we become friends? What then?”
“Let’s leave the hypotheticals alone for now. At the moment, your only job is to smile and be friendly and not rip this dress. “Gaahh!” she exclaimed as the final inch of the zip came together.
