The Night Before Christmas (5 page)

‘I love Ted, I do. But I just needed a little bit of Latin spice to get me through the endless discussions about duchess satin. When Ted and I get married, I’m not going to have any bridesmaids, just … swans, with ribbons round their necks.’

‘Nice, well, I’ll see you later …’ Lydia had attempted to exit, a little too hastily.

‘Hang on, why are you neglecting to lecture me on my alley cat morals, and where are you going looking
so lovely?’ Joanna asked her, gasping as the realisation of Lydia in a pretty dress on a Saturday night hit her befuddled brain. ‘Oh my God, Lydia’s got a date! Where’s my phone, I need to text everyone.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ Lydia cried, grabbing Joanna’s phone before she could. ‘It’s not a date. It’s a business meeting.’

‘Do you normally get your knockers half out on display for a business meeting?’ Joanna asked her, nodding at Lydia’s cleavage, which she had secretly dusted with a little bit of bronzer and just a smidgen of glitter.

‘It’s the fashion,’ Lydia replied.

‘In the porn industry!’ Joanna pressed her fingers to her forehead, and groaned. ‘Oh, God.
Never
, ever drink tequila. Not even with a mixer, it’s death. Okay, you may go, but only because I am too poorly to get the details out of you now. But I shall when you return, you mark my words, missy.’

‘Fine,’ Lydia said, handing Joanna back her phone and giving her a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Give my love to Ted, oh, and Enrique.’

Lydia was fairly certain that Joanna had thrown her phone in the general direction of her head, just as she closed the door.

The hours of self-doubt and uncertainty had been wasted because Jackson was waiting for Lydia as she’d arrived, himself looking utterly delicious in a pair of
dark chinos and a black T-shirt that was not so formfitting as to indicate a vain and body-obsessed man, but was tight enough to show that what lay beneath would be worth a lick – a
look
, Lydia corrected her unruly train of thought, stifling a giggle as she went to greet him.

‘Wow, you came,’ Jackson said, a slow smile spreading over his face.

‘Did you doubt me?’ Lydia asked him, channelling Lauren Bacall cool to hide the fact that she was a bag of nerves.

‘Sure I did, I had to practically beg you to meet me tonight. You are one cool customer.’ Lydia smirked, thinking that she so wasn’t, but rather liking the perception of her that Jackson had somehow formed. ‘It’s okay, though, you know us guys. We always want what we can’t have.’

‘So what you’re saying is that, if I want to keep you interested, I’ll have to keep turning you down?’ Lydia asked him. Jackson’s smile was wry as he shook his head, his eyes growing suddenly intense as he looked at her.

‘We could do this all night, this banter and flirting, back and forth. And if you want to, I don’t mind. I like it. You’re smart and funny as well as beautiful. But here’s the thing: I like you, Lydia, I like you a lot. Maybe that’s not the cool thing to say, but it’s how I feel. I don’t want to play games with you because, well,
I get the feeling that this could be the start of something … So, how about you let me buy you dinner and we just talk? I want to know everything about you. I want to know what makes you smile, and see you laugh, and hold your hand and kiss you some more. Would that be okay with you?’

Lydia paused for a moment, mentally running the scripts of all the romantic movies she had ever seen in her whole life, which was many, just in case Jackson had memorised that impossibly romantic speech.

‘I’ll have a gin and tonic, please,’ she said, sliding into the seat next to him. ‘Well, let me see, where shall I start? I was born in Broadstairs to the world’s least compatible couple …’

It had taken about another hour for Jackson to kiss her again, standing outside an Italian restaurant on Waldorf Street. They had kissed for a long time, such a long time, in fact, that they were a little late for their reservation, which was at the very restaurant they were standing outside of. Eating very little and kissing very much, they hadn’t been able to keep their lips apart for more than a few minutes, their kisses growing so fevered that the waiter came over and very politely asked them if they would like their bill, even though they hadn’t made it to dessert yet.

Giggling like teenagers, they fell out onto the street, and Jackson kissed her again, in exactly the same spot as where they had been standing on the way in.

‘So what now?’ Lydia asked him. ‘We’ve only got up to the time I was thrown out of ballet for swearing … You’re never going to hear my whole life story at this rate.’

‘How about we skip to the next instalment?’ Jackson grabbed both her hands in his. ‘Come home with me, Lydia, I want to make love with you.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Lydia had giggled.

‘Please, please come home and spend the night with me. I don’t want this evening to end with having to say goodbye to you.’

Suddenly a little more sober, Lydia had hesitated. Quite what she had been planning when she left Joanna that evening, she wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t this. She wasn’t even entirely certain that she had ‘acceptable for sex’ knickers on, never mind the fact that it had been a very long time since she had engaged in sexual congress with a man. Self-doubt and anxiety engulfed her once again.

‘I’ve asked too much, haven’t I?’ Jackson said, abashed. ‘You’re not the sort of girl who likes to be rushed.’

‘No, no … you haven’t, I am … um.’ Lydia touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. ‘No, you haven’t asked too much, I don’t want this evening to end, either. It’s just that I’m … I don’t usually … The thing is, I’m not entirely sure I know what to do any more.’

Jackson smiled at her, picking her hand up and kissing it.

‘Come home with me and I’ll show you,’ he said, so softly, so sweetly, that Lydia felt her knees momentarily buckle.

‘Okay, then,’ she said, flinging what little caution she had so easily to the wind. ‘Yes, I will come home with you.’

Jackson had hailed the next black cab and given the driver his West London address. Looking out of the window as the cab drew away from the curb and merged into the traffic, Lydia felt the tips of Jackson’s fingers touch hers as they rested on the seat between them, and that is where their hands remained until the taxi pulled up outside an impressively large, rambling old rectory.

‘Wow, this is amazing,’ Lydia breathed, looking up at the old house. ‘All this is yours?’

‘Sort of, I’m a custodian tenant,’ Jackson told her, as she followed him through the front door and into the hallway. ‘It’s owned by the diocese, but there’s no rector in situ now. So, to keep squatters and vandals at bay until they work out what to do with it, they let it to me on a short-term basis for a fraction of what I’d pay for one room around here. They can throw me out any time, of course, but until they do, I have this whole amazing house. And practically no furniture except for a futon …’

‘A futon?’ Lydia echoed, suddenly feeling very nervous.

Before Lydia could ask any more, Jackson, his hand on her waist, manoeuvred her against the wall and kissed her hard on the lips, his hungry mouth tracking its way down her neck. Pausing for a moment to look at her, he whipped open the knot that held her wrap dress in place, exposing her flesh to his gaze. For a second longer, his eyes devoured her, pinning her to the spot with their desire, and then in one deft and practised move, he unhooked her bra, tearing it from her.

Shy no longer, Lydia pulled at his T-shirt, thrusting it upwards so that she could feel her hot skin pressed against his. In a frenzy, they undressed each other, right there in the hallway, and then in one movement Jackson picked her up in his arms and carried her upstairs.

Afterwards, they had slept for a little while, his arms entwined around her, his lips nestled into the back of her neck. A few minutes or hours later, Lydia didn’t know which, she felt his fingers tracing a delicate journey over her breasts, rolling her over to kiss each one, and then every part of her as the whole wonderful experience began again.

Some time just after dawn, Lydia found herself crying a little as she re-told him the plot of one of her favourite films.

‘And it’s just so sad, because they know this is the last time they are ever going to see each other again.
And they know they are doing the right thing – that she has to stay with her husband and he has to go and do doctor things abroad – but they love each other so much, even though they can’t be together. Every time I see it I weep and weep!’ Lydia sniffed and giggled simultaneously. ‘Look at me, what an idiot.’

‘Sounds intense,’ Jackson said, wiping her tear away with the ball of one thumb. ‘I know, let’s rent it.’

‘Rent it?’ Lydia laughed.

‘Yes, there a really good Blockbuster down the road. As soon as it opens, let’s get down there and rent it, and we can watch it together.’

‘You’d sit and watch all of
Brief Encounter
with me?’ Lydia remembered asking, thinking that might have been the very moment she’d fallen in love with him.

‘I’d do more than that, I’d make you breakfast to go with it.’ Jackson smiled, picking up his watch and peering at it. ‘Now, let’s see, Blockbuster opens at ten, which give us a whole four hours to kill, what
shall
we do?’

‘I could explain the plot of
Casablanca
to you, if you like?’ Lydia teased him.

‘Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon … right after I’ve kissed you again.’

And that was how it started. Six perfect weeks: from the beginning of May to the middle of June. Of course, Lydia hadn’t expected it to end so soon, not ever, now
she came to think of it, but especially not the way it did. Six wonderful weeks during which she and Jackson had spent every possible minute closeted away together, watching movie after movie, reading to each other and kissing, always kissing, so much so that Joanna reported her missing in action and Alex almost fired her from her job as chief bridesmaid. And then, one evening, she had gone to meet him at the vicarage for dinner as planned, humming the theme music from
Love Story
to herself as she’d skipped up the stone steps and rang the bell. It had come as something of a surprise when a stranger opened the door.

‘Oh, hello,’ Lydia said, taking in the unkempt-looking old man, who didn’t look anything at all like he might be a friend of Jackson’s. ‘I’m here to see Jackson?’

‘Gone, love,’ the old man told her, and he would have shut the door in Lydia’s face if she hadn’t stopped him with her sandaled foot.

‘Gone? Where and for how long?’

‘I dunno, I’m not his mum,’ the man grumbled. ‘I work for the diocese. I’m the caretaker. They phoned me this afternoon and said he’d vacated the premises. I’ve just come to check the old place over before we let it to someone new, are you interested?’

‘Gone?’ Lydia repeated the world slowly. They’d spent the previous evening apart, for the first time since they’d met. She had an important case to work on, one that would keep her up all night, and now they had become
so close, now that she was so certain of how into her he was, she’d almost been looking forward to her first chance to miss him. He’d taken her for dinner and afterwards they’d spent a very long time kissing goodbye before catching separate cabs home. He said he’d see her the next day, at his place at nine, for dinner. How could he be gone?

‘What do you mean “gone”? Is he in hospital, or dead?’ Lydia asked, aware of how mad she sounded, but at a loss as to how to appear sane.

‘I don’t know, love,’ the old man reiterated irritably, nodding at her door-stopping foot. ‘I’ve got to get on, so if you don’t mind …’

Uncertain what to do next, Lydia had walked back down the steps and out into the busy street. Trying Jackson’s phone, she found it went straight to voicemail, then and for the rest of the night. After no sleep at all, she waited until nine the next morning, and, with her heart in her mouth, called his office.

‘Jackson’s not here,’ an efficient-sounding woman told her. ‘He’s on leave.’

‘What sort of leave? Why?’ Lydia pressed her, knowing she sounded desperate. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just I didn’t know he was going on leave.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s against company policy to give out personal information over the phone,’ the woman told her with more than a hint of pleasure. ‘I can put you through to his assistant, if it’s a professional matter.’

‘No, you see … you don’t understand. I’m his
girlfriend
.’

There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone.

‘Join the club, sweetheart,’ the woman said tartly, and then she hung up.

Devastated, confused and disbelieving, Lydia had sleep-walked through the next day, grateful that her current case was an easy one she could handle in her sleep; and then, in the middle of a tearful night, during what must have been the only few minutes she had actually slept, her phone had woken her with a text from Jackson.

‘Darling, so sorry. Had to go home, family emergency. Will call as soon as I can. xxx’

And that was it. He had never called. He had never texted again, and, hurt and humiliated by being so spectacularly dumped, Lydia had determined to forget him.

It had by no means been the first time in her life that a man had finished with her, but it was the first time ever that he’d moved house and left the country to do it.

After Lydia had cried for a solid week, she gradually started to get in touch with her friends again, explaining to them why she’d been so preoccupied over the six weeks and what exactly had happened with Jackson. Always there for each other when they’d needed to be,
they had taken care of her with as much wine and chocolate as she could stomach, and no difficult questions. And Alex, who reinstated her as head bridesmaid, enrolled her in a charity fun run for breast cancer care, to boost her spirits or break them, one or the other.

It had been beautiful and then it had been viciously, brutally over, and feeling utterly battered and totally foolish, Lydia had come to accept that Jackson Blake had seen the wide-eyed romantic in her and taken her for one hell of a ride. Still, Lydia counselled herself, determined not to give in to her aching heart, she’d had a wonderful time for as long as it lasted, and maybe it was just Lydia being Lydia to expect more than that in real life. Romantic heroes as perfect as she had thought Jackson was didn’t really exist and, after all, as Bette Davis would say, you can’t go expecting the moon when you’ve got the stars. So she’d locked those six extraordinary weeks away in her heart and got on with the business of living, knowing she was never going to see Jackson Blake again, and doing her very best to pretend she hadn’t fallen in love with the bastard.