One Perfect Christmas (8 page)

‘Hang on,’ Bridget snaps. ‘We’re in Key bloody Largo! You can’t tell me that’s not the ocean.’

‘Okay, you win,’ I concede. I told you, it’s hard to care about much these days.

Four white sails project out of the mangrove swamps as they make their way towards open water. We pass a bank of houses on stilts and I can see the water glinting beyond them. The houses and
shop fronts are painted in colours of blue, green, aqua, yellow and cream; in front of some flies the American flag on a gentle breeze. Polystyrene buoys hang like garlands over fences and outside
bars. There are lots of scuba diving and bait and tackle shops – and hundreds of boats. I keep catching flashes of the ocean through the lush, tropical vegetation. And all the time, the long,
straight road goes on. How strange that it will come to a permanent stop in Key West, the southernmost point of the USA. Then all that will be left in two weeks’ time is for us to get back on
this same road and come home again. The thought depresses me. Maybe I’ll hitch a boat ride to Cuba instead.

Marty lets out a loud – and I mean LOUD – snore, and Bridget and I crack up laughing.

‘What?
What
?’ Marty jerks awake.

‘You were snoring,’ Bridget says.

‘No, I wasn’t,’ Marty scoffs.

‘Yes, you bloody were! You sounded like a whale. Didn’t she, Laura?’

‘Whales don’t snore,’ Marty retorts, before I can answer.

‘A pig, then,’ Bridget says.

‘I’d rather be a friggin’ whale!’ Marty exclaims.

We all crack up and then Bridget lets out a huge snort at the end of one guffaw, which only makes us laugh more.

‘God, I’m tired,’ she says when we’ve all calmed down.

‘Do you want me to drive for a bit?’ I offer.

‘No, it’s okay.’ She brushes me off. ‘I slept on the plane, so I’m alright.’ She yawns loudly. What a martyr.

‘What have I missed?’ Marty demands to know, as she wriggles in her seat.

‘Bridget spotted the ocean first,’ I tell her as we drive onto a massive bridge with ocean all around us.

‘Wow, exciting stuff,’ she replies sardonically.

I guess this is why they call it the Overseas Highway, I think to myself as I look out the window. The Atlantic on our left is choppy and sparkling, while the Gulf of Mexico on our right is
glassily still. Two pelicans glide over the road ahead, huge and grey with an enormous wingspan, and then we’re back on land again.

We pass a dolphin rescue centre with a sign out the front saying, ‘Have you hugged a dolphin today?’

‘I want to hug a fucking dolphin!’ Marty shouts at the top of her voice, making Bridget jump out of her skin. Marty and I giggle. And then I see another sign on someone’s front
gate, saying: ‘Wish you were here’, and for a brief moment I imagine Matthew sitting on the empty seat beside me and I miss him so desperately, it hurts.

Suddenly the urge to get out of the car overcomes me.

‘Can we stop for a moment?’ I ask, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

‘What’s wrong?’ Marty whips her head around to look at me.

‘Sure,’ Bridget replies, nonplussed, indicating left. She pulls off the road into a small car park next to a white sandy beach. A middle-aged couple sits at one of the picnic tables,
but other than that it’s deserted.

‘Don’t know if there’s a loo here, though,’ she adds, misunderstanding my needs.

‘I just want some air,’ I explain, opening the car door and climbing out. I hear the sound of Bridget’s car door opening too, but Marty says something to her in a quiet voice,
so they stay in the car. My oldest and dearest friend knows me too well.

Head and heart pounding in unison, I walk to the water’s edge and kick off my shoes, stepping into the cool, clear, turquoise-coloured water. Then I take a deep breath and momentarily
close my eyes before opening them again and staring out at the nothingness of the vast blue ocean.

On his stag do, my husband-to-be got wasted beyond recognition and ended up kissing a random girl at a club. He didn’t tell me this before marrying me a week later. Nor
did he think it would be wise to confess to it during our first six months of marriage. He probably wouldn’t have confessed to it at all, except that two weeks ago, I saw a message on his
Facebook page from a pretty girl called Tessa Blight. It soon transpired that she’d been messaging every Matthew Perry she could find – trying to track down
my
Matthew Perry.
My Matthew Perry, whose kiss with a random girl at a club called Elation had somehow developed into dirty sex in the club’s toilets. And now that random girl is having Matthew Perry’s – my Matthew Perry’s – baby in less than two months.

My husband is going to be a father to another woman’s child for the rest of his life. There is no getting away from that. No getting away from the crippling humiliation of all of our
friends and family knowing that he had sex with another woman a week before marrying me, the so-called love of his life. He’s sorry, of course he’s sorry. He’s not a terrible
person, but he made a terrible, terrible mistake. He didn’t mean to hurt me, he didn’t mean to do it at all – he was so drunk, it just happened. And he will do anything he can
possibly do to make it up to me.

But he will never be able to make it up to me. I will never forget. How could I when this baby will be a constant, lifelong reminder?

I feel like he has ripped my heart out from my chest and thrown it to the sharks. And in this moment I want to hurl myself into the water to join it.