Page 10 of The Night Before Christmas
Bex swung her long legs out from underneath her and strolled casually to the kitchen while Felicity desperately tried to think of how she could backtrack. She could tell them another time. It didn’t need to be now. It was no big deal.
Sophie, meanwhile, was studying Felicity’s face from the other end of the sofa.
‘It was a man,’ she said, calmly. Felicity didn’t reply but she could do nothing about the huge smile that arrived on her face without warning.
‘What?’ said Bex, rather too loudly given she was only on the other side of the room.
‘It was a man!’ yelled Sophie.
‘I bloody knew it!’ said Bex, slamming her fist on the melamine kitchen counter in triumph.
Felicity ducked behind a cushion.
‘I don’t know anything about him, really,’ she said, when they had exhausted playing their new favourite game,Twenty Questions about Penguin Man, in record time.
‘You really don’t, do you?’ said Sophie, narrowing her eyes.
‘He’s not a psycho or anything. At least, I don’t think he is. Fair enough, I thought he might be a murderer when he turned up on Christmas Eve banging on the door and I was on my own and everything.’
Sophie’s eyes were nearly closed, they were so narrow now.
‘But obviously he wasn’t. A murderer, that is. He’s nice. At least, I think he is. He seemed like a decent human.’
‘It’s a good job he wasn’t though,’ said Bex, through a mouthful of toffee penny. ‘A murderer, I mean.’
‘You think?’ Sophie shot her a look.
‘He saved a kitten,’ said Felicity, and she could feel her voice rising a little. ‘A tiny little kitten. You should have seen him, he was dressed as a penguin, for a start, and he was all soaking wet and he had no shoes on and yet he didn’t seem to mind comingwith me to rescue the mother and… what are you both grinning at?’
‘Wow,’ said Bex.
‘Yup,’ said Sophie.
‘What?’ said Felicity.
‘Your face,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s bright pink.’
‘That’s just the alcohol. Honestly, you two.’
‘Honestly nothing. I can’t remember the last time I saw you gooey over a man.’
Felicity stood up suddenly from her chair. ‘I am NOT gooey,’ she said, one finger in the air, all the alcohol rushing to her head at once.
‘Woah.’
She paused as the room swung around her head once or twice, then seemed to behave.
‘I am NOT gooey,’ she announced for the second time. ‘And I’m going to the toilet. So there.’
Her dramatic exit was hampered somewhat by the fact her armchair had been pulled too close to the coffee table and she had to sort of shuffle along the edge of the chair for a bit before she was free and clear. Sophie and Bex watched her go and as she manoeuvred her way out of the room, she knew they’d be exchanging one of their ‘looks’. Eyebrows raised to the heavens.
‘Well, this is a turn up for the books,’ said Sophie.
‘I heard that,’ said Felicity from the bathroom.
‘If you can hear us, we can hear you,’ replied Sophie.
Felicity couldn’t think of an adequate response to that.
