The Christmas Party (29 page)

Chapter Thirty-seven

‘We’re here,’ Kirsten said, pointing at her house. ‘The one with the black door.’

It had taken them a little over an hour to get back to Hampstead. Despite the increasing snowfall, it hadn’t yet settled on the main roads and as they got past Watford and nearer to London it had petered out altogether.

They’d talked about little on the way home. She’d mostly kept her eyes closed, resting back against the seat, revelling in the warmth, listening to the music and letting her mind rove over the fact that she’d finally left Tyler. There was also a certain amount of marvelling that she was here with Simon once more. His solid strength next to her was comforting. He kept his hand on hers and neither of them seemed to mind the silence.

At this time of night, when everyone else was tucked up in bed, all the cars were lined up neatly in the street. ‘Parking is always tricky,’ she said, trying to keep the conversation at the level of the banal, uncertain of what might come next.

Simon drew in to the kerb as near to the house as he could. ‘Nice.’

It
was
nice. This tall Georgian townhouse in a leafy side street had been home to her and Tyler since their return to England. She’d thought they’d stay here until Fossil Oil decreed otherwise. Now it seemed to be her choice to be leaving.

‘It’s like your house, I expect: all chosen and paid for courtesy of Fossil Oil.’

‘A perk of the job.’

‘Or a golden handcuff.’

‘Now what?’ he asked softly. ‘I don’t want the night to end here. Now that I’ve found you, I can’t bear to let you out of my sight again.’

She gazed at Simon. Even the air between them was charged. ‘Then you’d better come in.’

He brushed his lips against hers. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice husky. ‘I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.’

Together they climbed out of the car and walked hand-in-hand back towards the house.

‘What about Tyler?’ Simon ventured as they reached the door.

‘I don’t think he’ll be chasing after me, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’ll be burning up the dance floor at the Christmas party for hours yet. He probably doesn’t even realise I’ve left.’

‘I don’t want to cause trouble.’

She laughed, and her breath created a little cloud in the cold. ‘I thought that was
exactly
what you came back to do.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he conceded with a grin. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

She let them both into the house. It was cold now that the heating had gone off and she flicked on the controls just inside the door.

This had been one of the better houses Fossil Oil had provided for them. The position was enviable. The garden was big but they had a gardener come in for a day every week to look after it. Their own furniture was still in storage somewhere as this one came fully furnished. It was done so tastefully that Kirsten hadn’t fought to change it as she had so often had to. Or perhaps the fight had simply gone out of her.

She went through to the kitchen, switching on lights as she did. Simon followed. Her skin tingled just because he was near.

The kitchen was one of the best spaces in the place. A few steps took you down from the end of the hall and then it opened out into a room that held every state-of-the-art appliance you could think of. There was a large range cooker fit for a hotel, a complicated coffee maker, a breakfast bar with a handful of tall stools around it, and full-length folding doors that looked out on to the garden.

If only she’d been a decent cook, then she could have fully embraced it.

‘Coffee?’

Simon nodded. He sat on one of the stools as she went about making them both some espresso. While the machine hissed and burbled, she could feel him watching her movements, but they said very little. She was tired now and wanted something to enliven her while she considered how her future might unfold. It was all very well to have plans, have dreams, but you never knew what curve-balls life was going to throw at you.

Without asking Simon if he was hungry, she also put some bread in the toaster. There were times when only the comfort of carbs would do.

He’d stripped off his dinner jacket, which was slung over the stool next to him. The lighting in here was too harsh, but he still looked handsome under the glare. Tyler had to do everything in a frenzy of excitement and chaos, but there was a quiet energy about Simon. There always had been.

Turning, she saw him studying her intently. ‘What?’

‘I just like watching you,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe I’m with you. Come here.’

She went to him and he pulled her into his arms. They held each other tightly, so many words unspoken between them. Well, maybe there would be time for that now.

They stayed entwined, her head resting on his shoulder, until the toast popped out of the toaster and the coffee machine hissed that it was ready.

She pulled herself away from him to butter the toast and pour the coffee. ‘We should go through to the living room. It’ll be warmer in there.’

So Simon picked up the cups and she led the way, taking the plate of toast. In the living room she put the plate down on the coffee table and switched on the Christmas-tree lights. They sparkled out in the darkness. There was something so soothing, so welcoming about a Christmas tree. It instantly made the room feel homely.

‘Very pretty.’

‘Not my own work,’ she admitted. ‘I drafted in a company that Melissa Harvey recommended.’

Kirsten wondered how she would spend Christmas this year. She knew she couldn’t face sitting across the table from Tyler for Christmas lunch, that was for sure.

She turned on the wall lights too and lit the gas fire while Simon settled himself on the sofa.

‘It feels really strange being here,’ he said. ‘Surreal.’

Kirsten sat down next to him, curled into his side and relaxed into the cushions with a sigh. She tucked her legs beneath her so that she could snuggle in closer. ‘For me too.’

‘It’s nice though.’ He stroked her face lovingly. ‘Who’d have thought the evening would turn out like this? It’s just like old times.’

She nodded, choked by the flashback. It was, indeed, like old times. Her and Simon, easy in each other’s company, snuggled down on the sofa. It was as if the past decade had simply been deleted.

She pushed the plate of toast towards him and took a piece herself.

‘Thanks.’ Simon bit into it gratefully. ‘This is good.’

‘My culinary skills haven’t got any better, I warn you.’

He looked down at her. ‘Is that something that might be concerning me in the future?’

Shrugging, she answered, ‘That depends.’

He took another piece of toast and waited patiently for her to continue.

‘I’m leaving Tyler,’ she said when she was sure her voice was steady enough. ‘I caught him tonight in a compromising position with his assistant, Louise. One in a long line of conquests.’

His look said, Typical Tyler.

It was true enough. Everyone knew what an unfaithful bastard he was. They couldn’t go on like this. Or, more accurately,
she
couldn’t go on like this. Tyler, on the other hand, seemed perfectly happy with the status quo. But it wasn’t what she wanted any more. She wanted a partner, someone she could envisage being with as they were growing old. Someone she could share a life with in comfortable companionship. At the age of forty-two she didn’t want to be still sparring like lovesick teenagers. She’d wanted them to work on their relationship, on trying to save their marriage – yet Tyler didn’t seem able to see that his constant lying and deceit were slowly killing her inside.

She’d been sure, until tonight, that, deep down, she still loved Tyler. That they might overcome their difficulties. Now, with his latest infidelity, she was finding it hard to even like him. If she never clapped eyes on him again, it would be too soon.

‘I’m done this time, Simon.’ She let out a weary sigh. ‘I can’t cope with Tyler any more. The pressures of work and his obsessive need to be at the very top of the corporate tree have taken their toll on our marriage. It’s exhausting. He leaves here at first light as he has to be first in the office in the morning, and the last to leave at night. Which means I rarely see him at his best. Mine has always been the bad-tempered, exhausted bit that’s left over.’ She sighed wearily as she poured her heart out. Maybe Simon didn’t need to know all of this, but she felt it was better out in the open. ‘Life was never going to be easy with Tyler. I accepted that the day I signed up, and you know him as well as I do. He’s always been a challenge and, goodness knows why, that was probably some of the attraction.’

‘Why
do
women like a bad boy?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t all dreadful though. Initially. I did love him, Simon. Not like I loved you. Never in that way. But we did have our moments. He was there for me – now we know why, of course. Yet I admired his single-minded ambition and urge to succeed. Now it’s tainted with a selfish need to smash everyone else out of the way in the scramble. It’s as undignified as it’s unnecessary.’ She sipped her coffee, enjoying the warm buzz it sent through her. ‘In the beginning, Tyler’s worst excesses were countered by a fun-loving nature and a desire to live life to the full. He can be great company when he wants to be.’

‘I know only too well. Remember Toby’s stag weekend?’

‘I never did get the
full
details,’ she said ruefully.

Simon raised an eyebrow. ‘Probably just as well.’

‘I can imagine it though,’ she went on. ‘It made for a rollercoaster relationship, but sometimes it was exhilarating to hang on for the ride and see where he would take me. Now the balance is gone. The highs are too far apart to be worth waiting for and there are way too many lows.’ She looked up at Simon. ‘I’m telling you all this, spilling the beans on my marriage, because I want you to know how my relationship with Tyler has been. If I’m going to break free, I never want to replicate that.’

‘I understand.’

‘Unfortunately, his quest for happiness, for fulfilment or whatever it is that Tyler wants in his life, wasn’t being sated by work. It wasn’t long before he started turning to more and more forbidden fruit to get his kicks. Women, booze. I don’t know what else. That’s what’s taken him further and further away from me. That’s what hurts. Really hurts. I’ve tried to pretend it doesn’t. But it does.’ She let out an unsteady exhalation. ‘Now it’s going to be sorted out once and for all. There’ll be no more rearranging the deckchairs as the
Titanic
slowly sinks.’

‘I feel as if I came back just in time.’

‘You probably did,’ she acknowledged. ‘I need a fresh start, Simon. I’m going to draw a line under all this. I want honesty. I want uncomplicated love. No more lies, no more deceit. I want someone who’s going to be there purely for me.’

‘I can fill that role,’ he said.

It was her turn to glance at him. ‘I know.’

‘We
can
rebuild what we had, Kirsten. I promise you. I want to do that more than anything.’

‘I’d like to say we should take it slowly. My head tells me that I shouldn’t be going straight from one relationship into another.’ Yet she had to admit to herself, her heart was urging her to do just that. ‘There’s so much that’s happened to both of us in the last ten years. Are we still the same people that we were?’

‘I guess there’s only one way to find out. I, for one, hope that I’m not only older but considerably wiser.’ He reached out and took her hand. ‘As I told you before, there hasn’t been a day in all this time that I haven’t thought of you. Every night I’ve gone to sleep thinking of you, wondering where you are. I haven’t forgotten a single thing about our time together. I just bitterly regret that, through my own foolishness, it ended. When I received your email all those years ago, I shouldn’t have called Tyler. I shouldn’t have listened to his side of the story. That was stupid of me. I should have got on a plane right away and headed straight back to change your mind.’

‘My mind didn’t need changing. I still loved you. Adored you. Perhaps I should have done the same when I got
your
email. But I was so devastated, I wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘Me neither.’ Simon’s handsome face darkened. ‘I could kill him for doing this to us. We both let Tyler dictate the course of our lives. I’d like to think we’ve learned from that, at least.’

She nodded her agreement, still unable to grasp the extent of her husband’s manipulation of them both. It was cruel and unforgivable.

‘I’m so glad I came back, Kirsten. I wish I’d followed my instinct years ago instead of fighting it. Now I have a chance of putting it right. Until I did that, I was going to live for ever with “what if?”’ He smiled at her sadly. ‘Then I saw you tonight and nothing had changed. I was filled with such overwhelming feelings of desire, and love, and the need to take care of you, I don’t want to let you go again.’ He tilted her chin to make her look at him. ‘I want nothing more than to make you happy.’

Her engagement ring and matching diamond-studded Tiffany wedding band sparkled in the overhead lights. She slid them both off and let them sit on the coffee table in front of them.

She was near to tears. ‘I feel as if I’ve wasted so many of the good years of my life that I
do
want to throw caution to the wind and get on with living.’

‘Me too.’

‘Can I really trust you, Simon Conway?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want my heart broken all over again.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘Do you swear you still love me as much as you did?’

‘I do.’

His eyes met hers and the sincerity in their depths made her breath catch. ‘Then take me to bed.’

Chapter Thirty-eight

I glance up at my parents’ house. The lights are still on upstairs. That will be Dad, restless and wakeful until I’m home. Some things don’t change. He was just the same when I was a teenager out on a date. He’d never go to bed until I was safely home.

The street my parents live in hasn’t changed all that much since I was a child either. They bought their house when they were first married and have lived here ever since. It has been my rock throughout my life. They had uPVC windows put in a few years ago and the kitchen was upgraded shortly afterwards. There’s a fancy water feature in the garden, but the front door is still the same colour it’s always been. My parents aren’t big on change.