Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Christmas Day 9:05 a.m.

I wake up after having the best sleep I’ve had in months. Despite the fact that I awoke on the sofa at 3:00 a.m. and dragged myself into bed with a hell of a crick in my neck, I’m feeling pretty refreshed.

As I lumber into my living room I wonder whether to keep the curtains closed as I vowed to. I pull one open a tiny bit and peek out.

Wow.

The entire street is covered in a blanket of Daz white fresh snow. The sun is high and bright, there are families and dog walkers and hungover people mulling around, all of them chatting to each other. Over there is a young kid trying out his shiny new bicycle, being cheered on by his proud parents. Yesterday all this would have made me scoff. But today, well, it makes me smile.

I slide the curtains open all the way and tell myself off for having been so stubborn and ridiculous about the festive season. It’s Christmas morning and I have nowhere to go, nothing to eat and nothing to do. Oh! But I do have a gift!

I hurry over to my handbag and take out the brown-paper wrapped box that Marcy gave me yesterday. A long lost excitement runs through me as I tear open the paper and discard it on the carpet.

Ooh! It’s quite a large jewellery box. I open it up to see a little golden key nestled on a dark velvet display pad.

‘A key?’ I say aloud, totally confused as to why Marcy has given me a key and what on earth it opens.

I pick up the little matchbox sized card beside the key and flip it open.

My part time trainee designer/part time PA is going to need her own office if she’s going to get all her work done.

Oh my God! Marcy’s taking me on as a trainee designer? And I get my own office? I laugh out loud. This is the best gift ever! My heart leaps as I picture myself, designing amazing spaces to make people happy.

And then it occurs to me that Marcy gave me this gift yesterday. So technically I’d already gotten what I wanted without having to accompany Adam around all day.

But then if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have gotten to sing in the private park, or eat two hot dogs in a row, or tell a snotty bookseller that she fancied her horse, or smell every single perfume at the pharmacy, or pick out the most beautiful tree star I’ve ever seen, or gotten closure with Mitch, or kiss Adam and see the possibility that I could one day find someone to love.

I smile sadly as I think of Adam. I wonder what he’s doing right now? Probably in bed with Danielle, the pair of them having made up with an all night sex session just in time for a perfect loved-up Christmas morning.

I’m scowling at the very thought when my doorbell rings three times in a row, making me jump.

Who the hell is that? Mum? Did she come back from Australia to see me?

No. She would never do something so frivolous.

I hurry down the hallway, my too long pyjama bottoms making me trip and stumble on the way.

I open the door to find Adam. He’s wearing a Santa hat, red faced and wobbling precariously on his crutches. There’s a large shopping bag hanging from his arm and the tree we bought yesterday is tied to a piece of rope and resting on the ground beside him.

‘Fuck! It’s taken me twenty minutes to hobble one hundred metres through that snow with all this stuff. Let me in, I’m freezing!’

Laughing out loud at the sight of him, I pick up the tree and head back inside, Adam hopping in after me.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask once we’re in the living room.

‘I missed you,’ he says, looking me up and down like he wants to undress me right here, right now. ‘Nice pyjamas.’

‘Yeah, yeah. What about Danielle?’

Adam takes my hands in his, and my heart starts to flip and dance. ‘It’s over. It was over months ago. She was just the first one to do something about it. I needed to tell her last night that we were never getting back together, which is why I let you leave.’

I nod slowly, taking it in.

‘I would have come over last night but Danielle and I were talking until late and I didn’t want to wake you up.

‘What about your mum?’ I ask. ‘Doesn’t she want you to spend today with her?’

Adam laughs and shakes his head. ‘Well, apparently she suspected this of happening.’ He gestures between us. ‘She saw how I reacted to you last year at your office and it seems that she played matchmaker yesterday.’

‘What?’

‘I know.’

‘So… Jemima Crossley Jones’ design emergency at the Oxo Tower?’

‘I think she embellished the urgency of it a little bit…’

‘I can’t believe it!’

‘It was a pretty punchy move.’

The pair of us sit down on the sofa. I start giggling to myself.

‘Why are you laughing?’ Adam asks. ‘I’m all red aren’t I? Walking on those crutches and carrying a Christmas tree is no easy feat.’

‘I’m laughing because I feel happy,’ I say, moving closer so that I can kiss Adam’s lips. ‘And that’s a relief.’ He kisses me back and it feels better than anything has felt in a very long time.

Adam nuzzles his cold nose against mine. ‘You’re nice,’ he murmurs, pressing his lips to mine again.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have any Christmas food in the house,’ I say pulling away.

‘Aha!’ Adam digs into the shopping bag he brought, and after pulling out the baubles and the copper Christmas star from yesterday, emerges with a bag of dried noodles and a jar of sweet and sour sauce. ‘Found them in the back of my cupboard.’

I laugh in delight. ‘Noodles! Perfect! But not very traditional.’

Adam takes my face in his hands and searches my eyes. ‘Maybe it’s time to start some new traditions. Just for you and me.’

You know what? I think he’s right.

THE END

Dear Beloved Reader,

I hope you enjoyed this festive tale and that it warmed your cockles a little. I used to live in Notting Hill and it was lovely for me to spend time there again by way of Phoebe and Adam’s long Christmas Eve. I hope it was lovely for you too!

If you read on there’s an exclusive early sneak peak of my next full length novel. It’s called Nora Tucker and The One and it’s about Nora Tucker (of course) a bookish nerd from Sheffield who believes that Hollywood’s hottest young actor is her soulmate. So she goes to Los Angeles in an attempt to convince him that they belong together… It’s quirky and funny like my other books, and with a very memorable cast of characters that I think you will love. It will be published in early 2020. If you want to be alerted when it’s released you can sign up for my newsletter right here. I don’t send out many newsletters but when I do, and I don’t mean to brag, they’re pre-tty good.

Okay, I will let you get back to your day, or night. Thank you for reading this, and thank you if you leave a review and thank you for all your lovely emails and photos. They make me very happy.

Until next time,

Kirsty xxxxxxx