Page 45 of The Night Before Christmas
‘And this? What was this ring for? My birthday, I suppose. Or was it never meant for me at all?’
Adam went pale and looked down at the box. She could see his mind doing some very rapid panicky calculations.Let’s see you smooth talk your way out of this one.
‘Tell me…’ she said slowly, unable to look at him now, ‘…tell me you didn’t buy this ring for someone else.’
Adam actually squirmed in his seat like a small boy and Felicity’s stomach fell through the floor.
‘I didn’t… I mean, I did but not in the way you think. I made a mistake. I…’
Felicity felt more and more cross with every word. Beyond cross.
‘Adam, tell me the truth.’
‘I’m trying. Really, I am. I don’t know what you want me to say. Whatever I say is going to be wrong here, isn’t it?’
That old chestnut. Felicity was ready to throw something at him.
Instead, she drew breath into her lungs and then, very slowly and very clearly, enunciating every word, fingers and thumbspressed together for extra emphasis like an Italian nonna, she said: ‘Just. Tell. Me. I’m. Not. Your. Back. Up. Plan.’
Adam looked pained but, unbelievably, he still didn’t seem to be able to find the words. She didn’t need him to. All the pieces were thudding into place, like iron weights. How could she have been so stupid? The girls were going to have a field day with this.
Felicity stood up sharply, so sharply that the table flipped upwards and what remained of their drinks ended up in Adam’s lap. He leapt up with a cry of indignation as the ice soaked his crotch, but she was already halfway out of the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Felicity’s fatherwalked out when she was six years old.
On Boxing Day.
Right between the cold cuts and the leftover Christmas pudding, to be exact.
Her memories are hazy, of course. She was only tiny, but in her mind’s eye when she thought about it now, it was like something out of a surrealist French film. She supposed there must have been more to it but it felt to her – if she ever permitted herself to think about it – inexplicable. The kind of moment that makes your brain hurt if you try to make sense of it.
One minute, the family was sitting around the table together, munching away in (relatively) companionable silence, and the next – the very next minute it seemed – the atmosphere had altered in a flash. A black shadow had passed across her dad’s face, that much she would swear to, and then he stood up without a word and walked out of the front door. In her memory, he was still wearing his Christmas jumper and the partly ripped yellow paper hat from his cracker.
Perhaps there was more to it that she didn’t remember. Perhaps her mum had said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing. Perhaps she didn’t buy the right brand of piccalilli, orshe hadn’t made the bubble and squeak the way Nana used to. Perhaps she’d glanced at him wrongly or not glanced at him at all. Whatever it was remained a mystery. Her mother never spoke of it directly, but Felicity had gleaned enough over the years to assume that was just what he was like. Unpredictable. Always on edge.
Mainly, though, Felicity just knew him by his absence, by the dad-shaped hole he left not only after he physically walked out on them but also in The Before, when he was present but absent. When he ‘forgot’ to go to her first nativity play. When he ‘forgot’ to collect her and her brother from nursery and left them sitting on the drive with the nursery manager for over an hour. More than once. When their first-ever family holiday ended up being just her, Tristan, and her mother because something had ‘come up’ at the last minute.
But they had always thought he loved their mum more than life itself. They’d never dreamed he would walk out and leave her. And despite his many failings as a father, her brother Tristan (not Tris, never Tris) had doted on him. It was inexplicable, really, looking back, but at the time no one had been surprised when, as soon as he was old enough (or not quite), Tristan had walked out of the door, too. Sought out his father. Begged his new woman and their new children to let him into their new, shiny life. Begged them to let him stay. Presumably never even looked back or wondered what had become of Felicity, now eleven, or her mum, who was by this time working very hard at pickling her insides and not much else. The bloody traitor.
Tristan always had been a terrible judge of character. Their father was a case in point. There was no way to sugar-coat it. And while Felicity knew – in her head, at least – she was not like him, still deep down there was always the cold hard fear that her dad’s flightiness, his propensity to run and run hard whenever thingsgot difficult… that those things lived in her too. That they formed part of her identity in some way.
Was it possible to escape your own genes? Could someone with a father like hers ever do anything other than let people down? Was she doomed to be just like him?
Certainly, it was true of Tristan. He was an absolute disaster area, currently on his third serious boyfriend in as many years, as far as she could glean from Facebook. Reputedly leaving severely damaged and broken hearts in his chaotic wake. They didn’t talk. Hadn’t talked since the day he left, in fact. But she had learned enough to know that he had made a monumental mess of several relationships and friendships too. ‘Toxic Tris’, that’s how one of his ex-boyfriends described him. The words had sent a cold shiver down Felicity’s spine.
This was all buzzing round and round in Felicity’s mind for the millionth, gazillionth time as she stormed home after that dinner with Adam. She had never felt so cross in her entire life. No, not just cross. She was livid.
At Adam, of course at him, but even worse, at herself. To think, she had spent three whole years feeling guilty for how she had behaved. When, in fact – and it was obvious now, of course – the fault was not hers at all. Adam was the bringer of doom in this situation. Of course, he was. How had she not seen it?
It was almost funny, except it really wasn’t funny in the least.
She marched up the stairs to her flat and threw open the door with unnecessary force, then felt the need to apologise. It wasn’t the door’s fault, after all. The cold night air and having to apologise to a door managed to dissipate a modicum of rage but only a modicum, and when the march continued into thebedroom, and she remembered the ring in its stupid blue box it was all she could do to stop herself hurling it from the nearest window. But she didn’t. It was Tiffany after all. There was probably some kind of law against throwing a Tiffany ring out of a window even if it was only the second floor. Instead, she took it out of her bag and proceeded to march round and round her flat with the ring gripped in her hand, until her knuckles were white, and the ancient old carpet was starting to develop a groove.
How could he?
Her phone buzzed.
