Page 63 of The Night Before Christmas
‘Yes, I know the penguin guy. Penguin Man, I mean. But how do you know him? I mean James, his name is James.’
‘Oh, I met him once,’ said Bex, vaguely. ‘I popped into the centre looking for you one day and he was there. He’s gorgeous, by the way, but I think you’re missing the point rather, darling.’
‘Fine, okay, we’ll come back to that. Anyway, James doesn’t know Adam. I mean, he has met him, but I wouldn’t say he knows him.’
‘Oh.’
‘What do you mean, “oh”?’
‘Oh, well it must be my mistake. I could have sworn I recognised him the other day.’
‘And?’
‘And…’ And here, Bex took a long slurp of her latte, presumably to eke out the drama. She did love a drama. Felicity rolled her eyes in mock jest at her friend, but her heart rate had definitely increased.
‘And what?’
‘And he was sitting in the pub. With Adam. I have been trying to tell you this, darling. You do keep ignoring my messages.’
There was a pause in the space-time continuum as Felicity processed this.
‘He can’t have been.’
‘He was. I’m sure of it.’
‘But he can’t have been.’
‘I know. You’ve said that a few times now.’
‘But he can’t have been sitting in the pub with him. They don’t know each other. I mean, they’ve met in passing but that’s it. It must have been a mistake. You must have made a mistake.’
‘Fine.’ Bex lifted her hands in surrender. ‘I made a mistake.’
‘When was this, exactly?’
Bex gave a long sigh and drained the last of her coffee. She picked up her phone and started scrolling idly, her beautifully manicured purple and silver nails tapping lightly on the screen.
‘Like I said, it was a while ago.’
‘But. What. Day. Was. It?’ said Felicity through gritted teeth.
‘I have no idea, a Friday, maybe…’ Bex said breezily, while Felicity contemplated throttling her with her own Liberty scarf.
She put her head in her hands. ‘It’s important,’ she said quietly, through her palms. ‘It’s really important. Can you remember anything else?’
Bex stopped staring at Facebook and made a show of concentrating. She pulled up her text messages.
‘Okay, um, I don’t know… I guess it was probably about two weeks ago.’ She scrolled for a moment and then poked at her phone with an elegant finger. ‘Look,’ – tap tap tap on the screen – ‘here’s the first time I texted you. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’d nearly forgotten about it, it’s been so long.’
‘Two weeks ago,’ said Felicity, flatly. ‘The Friday night, you say?’
‘Yes. At least, I guess so.’
The night before the Saturday no-show.
‘They didn’t look friendly, that’s what made me wonder. I didn’t think they knew each other at all so it was surprising to see them together. And, well, James didn’t exactly look comfortable.’
Felicity lifted her head and looked at her friend. ‘How not comfortable?’
