The Twelve Dates of Christmas (3 page)

‘HE SHOULD KNOW I’VE SEEN HIM!’ she declared, standing and knocking her stool over onto the polished floor. The sedate diners looked up from their gelati and vino.

Claudia swayed and fixed Billy with a hard stare. ‘I AM A WRONGED WOMAN.’

Billy smiled and passed her a shot of limoncello. ‘Yeah you are. Drink this and go and kick his arse.’

She knocked back the limoncello, gave Billy a salute and stumbled out of the restaurant. Wow, that wine had hit fast. That’s what you get for gulping it.

In the cold night air Claudia contemplated throwing up and then settling down for a nap, but instead she slicked on a fresh coat of red lipstick.

Yeah, powerful red lipstick.

She stood next to the bronze statue of a ballerina, sitting serenely opposite the Opera House. ‘Young Dancer’ she was called.
Younger Claudia
, she thought miserably, allowing herself a full thirty seconds of melancholy before the limoncello burned the inside of her chest and she felt her temper bubbling again.

She glared at the Young Dancer. ‘You cheated on me?’ she accused the statue, picturing Seth’s laughing face. ‘You cheated on
me
?’ There were millions of things she wanted to say to him.

She jabbed the statue. ‘I hope you have the worst life, absolute crap, because you don’t have me any more.’ Claudia put her face close to the statue and sneered into her ear. ‘Good luck telling your family what an idiot you’ve been. They love me. But you messed it up.’

The ballerina gazed impassively at her foot.

Claudia’s whole body shook and despite the cold her skin prickled with heat. ‘You’re a nasty, crap cheat!’ she seethed.

And he’d blamed
her
for this breakup?

‘You’re no man, you’re a boy, a coward. With a very small willy.’ She glared at the ballerina, who sat, indifferent to the verbal abuse.

‘I’m going to punch you in the balls.’

But she didn’t, because a couple exited the restaurant and gave her a look.

Even in her haze of wine and limoncello she was at least partially aware of how crazy she must seem, going off on one at a defenceless statue. She gave it one last glare, hissed ‘You’re making me look drunk’ into the Young Dancer’s ear and straightened up.

‘Right then.’

Claudia’s head was held high as she approached the pub, and she marched with the determination of a soldier. But the closer she got, the more the hundreds of emotions she was feeling tried to pull her backwards.
Don’t do it
, they warned,
you’re not ready
.

Her pace slowed and she stepped quietly. Truth be told, she didn’t want to do this. Correction, she wanted to do this, but she didn’t think she
could
.

She stopped a few metres away from Seth, her voice caught in her throat. How had it got to this, where she was scared to speak to her own boyfriend? They were a happy couple three hours ago; they had a whole past of experiences, memories, in-jokes and intimacies. She’d assumed they had a future.

She looked at his face. The face she knew as well as her own. She knew the feel of his eyebrows and his ears, the colour of his eyelashes, the smell of his skin.

Would this really be no more, just like that? Would she never know those things again?

A silent sob escaped as a puff of air. Did
she
know those things? Had
she
felt his browline and smelt his skin?

The group fell silent and Seth turned to face her. She met his eyes and his hand dropped from the back of the girl’s jeans.

They were locked together in that moment. Claudia searched his eyes and searched for the words she wanted to say, but nothing came.

Seth cleared his throat. ‘Claud—’ He reached for her and she came to life, jumping back from his touch. She looked from his hand to his face.

‘That’s been on her bum!’

Seth glanced around at his group, his eyes falling on the girl. He looked back at Claudia. ‘Look Claud, like we talked about earlier, we just need some time apart. You go and enjoy the Christmas festivities, it’ll do you good.’ He smiled at her.

Those damned tears were back, rolling like melting icicles down her cheeks. She scraped them away.
Come on Claudia, be strong. Don’t you dare be a walkover. Tell him what you told that statue.
Anger prowled inside her that she couldn’t put into words. Nothing made sense now that she stood in front of him. She begged him with her eyes and her tears to make it better, to fix this horrible misunderstanding.

He shuffled his feet. He looked so uncomfortable.

The girl sniggered: ‘This is awkward.’

Claudia tore her eyes from Seth and whipped around to face her. ‘What? What? I don’t care if this is awkward for
you
, you … complete … cow!’

The girl laughed, like any good woman-hating female would. ‘You don’t get to be involved,’ Claudia spat, and turned back to Seth, frantic to salvage something from this confrontation, and too demeaned to risk looking at her again.

Seth was chewing his lip.

Claudia felt desperation seeping from her and hated herself for it. ‘Why don’t you care?’ she implored, searching for some kind of reassurance that he did, and at the same time acutely aware of how embarrassingly needy she sounded.

He said nothing. He just looked at her, a sad expression on his oh-so-familiar face.

‘You don’t care … ’ she whispered. ‘It’s all just … okay … SCREW YOU.’

‘Claudia,’ Seth purred half-heartedly, ‘of course I care.’

She turned her back on them all. She was humiliated. She walked away from the person who knew her the best and cared about her the least.

Turning the corner, Claudia’s legs carried her just far enough down the road that she could no longer hear the noise and revelry from the pub. Then she crumbled against a wall, her face in hands. She felt like an idiot. She’d wanted to come across as strong, to give him a piece of her mind. Instead, she gave them all a good laugh.

She vowed that she would not let her fear of confrontation humiliate her like that again. She was going to change, never again be a scared little woman, and next time she saw him she’d let him know.

The alcohol, pain and confusion made her head swim. Her body needed to buckle with tears but her eyes were dried out, and all she could do was take deep, unsteady breaths, inhaling the sickly-sweet smell of wine gums and limoncello.

There was too much in her brain. She hated Seth for everything he’d done and for everything he hadn’t lived up to. So how could she love him as well, and desperately want this all to go away and for him to come back, to choose her and for them carry on with their life?

Her phone tinkled with the sound of reindeer bells; her festive text message alert. Seth?

She dragged her phone from her clutch bag.

It was Nick.

You’re ace, you know that, right?

She smiled. Maybe – not now, but in the future – she’d be okay. She had Nick. And Penny.

Every inch of her still felt beaten, but Nick’s message was like some strong arms lifting her upright. It was time to go.

Claudia sprawled her way through Covent Garden Tube station, her pink-rimmed eyes looking blankly ahead but hiding a runaway train of thoughts. She made it to the platform with just enough time to shove all her anger against one of the train’s closing doors until it huffed, conceded and sulkily let her in. The carriage was
nearly
empty; Claudia plonked herself down in the middle of a line of blue seats and let out a massive sigh.

The train was nearly empty.

Diagonally across from Claudia a late-teenage couple canoodled shamelessly, coming up for air only to glance smugly around the carriage to see who was jealous of their steamy relationship. Urgh. Claudia glared at them.

Their pointy, pale faces and matching floppy haircuts also made them look like brother and sister. The girl giggled coquettishly as the double-denimed hipster dribbled on her neck.

Claudia wanted to vomit on their heads. She really wanted to. She sighed again, loudly.

With the smug look of Angelina Jolie bagging Brad Pitt, the girl fluttered her hair in the boy’s face and he stroked it.

It sent shivers down her spine and Claudia curled her upper lip. Why were they so annoying?

‘Urgh,’ she grunted.

The boy looked over and flicked his Bieber-hair out of his eyes. The girl whispered something and licked his ear.

Claudia held his gaze and tutted.

He went back to staring at the girl’s jawline from two centimetres away, and she spanked his be-jeaned bottom with her Oyster card.

Claudia, the wine, and her emotions couldn’t take it any more. The three of them clubbed together and gave her a voice.

‘Get out of her neck, man!’ she slurred. The couple looked up, deer in headlights, before he struggled to regain his cool and narrowed his eyes. ‘Personal space,’ Claudia hissed.

‘What’s your problem?’ he squeaked.

‘Your face,’ Claudia replied. And then hiccupped.

‘At least it’s not old. Like your face,’ the girl piped up, before sinking back behind her curtain of hair.

Claudia snorted. Her eyelids were becoming heavy and she was beginning to wonder why she’d picked a fight with a couple of teenagers. ‘At least my face isn’t being sucked on in the middle of the Tube. Sooooo romaaaaaantic.’

‘Well your face probably isn’t going to be sucked on at all this Christmas. Because it’s crap.’

Claudia had no answer to that. The little shit was probably right. She stuck out her lower lip and thought about it, then flicked her eyes towards the girl.

‘You’ll find out, girly,’ she lectured, ‘that relationships and snogging is all well and good until your brother here’ – she motioned at the boy, who looked aghast – ‘puts his hands on your other sister’s bum and cocks it all up.’

‘
We are now arriving at Baron’s Court Road
’

Claudia used the pole to heave herself up and tottered clumsily to the train doors. She looked back at the couple, who were having a heated discussion about whether to stand up to the crazy drunk lady or let it go because she might be stronger than them. The doors opened and the cold night air rushed into the train.

‘I am a wronged woman,’ she declared, and fell face down onto the platform.

Ouch. Fresh tears trickled down Claudia’s cheeks. It wasn’t fair, she didn’t want to be hurt right now, she was hurting enough. She pushed herself up from the cold, gritty tarmac and hobbled down the long platform, feeling very alone. London is a noisy, crowded, energising city, but at night certain pockets can be as silent as the countryside.

Claudia exited the station aware that the only sound was the clacking of her high heels. She didn’t like this feeling. She was injured and alone, it was dark and really cold, and the damned wine was heightening her emotions even more. She could see her breath misting in front of her face, and a quiet, lazy breeze pushed crackly leaves and cigarette packets across the street.

Claudia stopped and stood still in the middle of the road.

A new fear made her heart thud. She couldn’t go home. She couldn’t bear it. What if he came back? What if he
didn’t
?

She was all alone, at night, on the streets of London, and she had nowhere to go.

Claudia unpeeled her face from the sofa cushion one eyelash at a time. Beneath her she left a zebra-print of tear-streaked mascara on the cream fabric. Penny would kill her, if Penny were one to care about such things and didn’t regularly lob red wine, pasta and hair dye all over her flat.

She padded to the bathroom and had a good stare at herself. She was still wearing last night’s make-up, but not one bit of it was in the place it started out. A false eyelash had nested above her top lip, giving her a Hitler moustache. She tilted her head.
If only I could be a boy
…

Her hair glittered faintly with hidden crystals, the few survivors cowering fearfully in her sunken up-do. She wore thick penguin-print pyjamas that belonged to Penny and were, if she was being brutally honest (which right now she felt like being), too short, too tight, less cute and more adult baby on her than they were on her friend the petite ballerina.

Claudia opened the shirt and looked at her breasts. She lifted one and let drop; it bounced in the manner of a yo-yo. The same result with the other. She stretched a handful of flesh away from her stomach as if it were bread dough.

‘You are sexy and exciting,’ she whispered to her reflection. ‘Just look at you.’ The bare-breasted, diamontéd Hitler in the mirror struck a prose.

Penny woke mid-morning to the sound of a thousand dying cats in her living room. Following her late-night performance she had found her best friend in a shivering, tearful frenzy on the doorstep of her building, and it took four hot chocolates and three episodes of
The Big Bang Theory
before she fell asleep on the sofa.

Flying out of her room she saw Claudia in the plank position, guttural, inhuman groans bursting out of her. On the TV was Penny’s
Insanity Workout
DVD.

‘3 … 2 … 1!’ yelled the presenter, and Claudia collapsed with a last dying wail.

Penny flicked off the TV. ‘Why is this happening?’ she demanded.

Claudia wiped her sweaty brow on the carpet. ‘This morning – well, last night, I suppose – I had the realisation that I am not considered a Sexy Lady. I am therefore becoming said Lady. Starting with a little exercise.’ If she just fixed herself everything might still work out.

Penny rolled Claudia over and glared at her. ‘You’re a very Sexy Lady. Seth is a total moron with no brain cells and shrivelly, cowardly balls. Don’t you dare change for him!’

‘I’m not – this is for me. I want to be a Sexy Lady for me.’ She peeped at Penny to see if she was buying it. ‘I’m sorry I got your pyjamas sweaty. And your sofa grimy.’

‘Don’t care and don’t care, but if you’re going to start an insane fitness plan then we’re going to do it together, because I want to be a Sexy Lady too.’

‘You already are a Sexy Lady.’