Page 81 of The Night Before Christmas
‘No, it didn’t mean anything.’
‘No, it definitely didn’t mean anything.’
There was an awkward pause. Felicity tasted blood in her mouth and hastily stopped chewing.
‘Can I see it?’
‘Um… okay…’
Felicity stood up slowly and found herself mechanically walking through to her bedroom and retrieving it from its recently recovered spot in her bedside drawer, even though there were a million alarm bells going off in her head.Pretend you’ve lost it. Pretend you gave it back. Maybe now’s the time to actually throw it out of the window?Instead, she handed the box tentatively to Bex and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Just todosomething. She fussed around in the cupboards for some biscuits even though she knew there weren’t any.
There was silence from the living room.
‘What do you think?’ asked Felicity, over the noise of the kettle.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Bex.
‘What?’ said Felicity. ‘Sorry, I can’t hear you over the kettle.’
‘I said, it’s beautiful,’ said Bex a little louder.
‘That’s what I thought you said.’
Another awkward pause while they listened to the kettle finish bubbling.
‘But it doesn’t mean anything,’ said Felicity, into the ensuing silence.
‘No. It doesn’t,’ said Bex, still staring at it.
Felicity felt slightly panicked. She poured the water over two decaf tea bags – it was late, after all – and furiously stirred the milk in, buying herself precious seconds to consider what she might do next. As she carried the tea through to the lounge, she noticed Bex was still staring at the ring. She had silent tears running down her cheeks.
‘Are you okay?’ said Felicity.
Bex wiped one eye with an elegant finger.
‘There’s something else I need to tell you,’ she said.
‘Go on then,’ said Felicity with a sigh. ‘But you’d better not be pregnant.’
CHAPTER FORTY
‘Actually, it’s two things,’said Bex. She was still clutching the ring box.
Felicity sat forward in the armchair, holding her very favourite battered velvet cushion for comfort or protection, she wasn’t entirely sure which. The fabric was soft and worn and she ran her fingers across its surface as she waited.
‘Firstly, you know how you said this was rather out of the blue? Well, it’s not really. I lied when I said it had never happened again.’
‘You’ve been sleeping together?’ blurted out Felicity.
Bex nodded and looked up at her friend. ‘It’s happened a few times. We’ve… well, quite a few times actually. I’m so sorry, Fliss. I never meant to deceive you. I just, well, I couldn’t bear to lose you. And besides, he’s always been so mad about you that I honestly didn’t think it ever meant anything to him. Please don’t kill me.’
Felicity nodded slowly. She felt as though she was watching this conversation at a distance. Neither the Felicity sitting on the armchair nor the one watching from a distance had any idea how they should react.
‘You’re the reason he split up with Tabitha,’ she said, when she’d recovered the power of speech. ‘Adam told me he met some girl in a bar. The lying little toad.’
Bex winced, then nodded. ‘I was always the one he turned to, I guess. You know, his second choice. Sometimes third or fourth.’
It was Felicity’s turn to wince now.
