It Happened on Christmas Eve Read online

Chapter Two

  Christmas Eve 1:30 p.m.

  Oh, but of course the first snow of winter starts to fall in soft chubby tufts the minute I leave work. I step out onto the street and pull my gigantic purple scarf more tightly around my neck to ward off the sharp chill in the air.

  Portobello Market is even more crammed than usual as disorganised, yet totally psyched, looking people purchase last minute gifts that, let’s face it, will probably get thrown away by the recipient within six months or stuffed in a drawer for six years. An old lady in a woolly hat exclaims to her husband about the fledgling snowfall. She laughs and hopes for a White Christmas. In response, her husband starts to sing the Bing Crosby song to her. I feel a weird aching tug inside my chest and hurry away. As I round the corner towards where Marcy’s car is parked, I sort of skid on a patch of ice, tumbling down onto my bottom with a thud. Ow! I take a moment to get myself together, before getting back up and looking around to see if anyone saw.

  Many people saw. Like, ten. One of them shouts ‘Are you alright, love?’ To which I wave and mutter ‘yeah, thanks’. One teenager is filming me on his mobile phone. To him, I give the middle finger.

  Well this day just gets better and better. Red-faced and with the pain in my bottom throbbing, I open the door to Marcy’s car and slide in, wincing as my ass makes contact with the seat.

  Unlike my fourth-hand Fiat that takes three goes to start up, this car purrs immediately into life. I press my foot down on the pedal and carefully navigate my way through the streets of Notting Hill.

  An hour later I enter the airport to discover a scene of carnage. It’s heaving; full of happy fools, hugging and exclaiming and helping one another with luggage. Tinny Christmas music rings out from somewhere, the roomy departure lounge acoustics amplifying it way too much for my sensitive ears. The departures assistants wear reindeer antlers, or halos or silver tinsel in their hair. It looks like a scene from that Richard Curtis film or was it a John Lewis advert? Same difference.

  I hear a delighted whooping from my left and see a pretty woman running into the arms of a stocky, handsome man. The besotted couple walk past, gazing at each other adoringly.

  ‘Natalie Butterworth, you are the love of my life,’ The man says, taking the woman’s hand and swinging it.

  ‘Aw, cheers Riley. Ditto.’ She laughs, full of glee and love.

  Their joy is too intense for my sad sack mood, so I look away until the couple exit the airport, fingers laced together.

  I’m thinking about what Mitch is doing right now and trying to mentally repress the sound of Mariah Carey bawling through the airport speakers, when I spot a laughing man in a wheelchair being rolled out of the gate by what can only be described as an entourage of cabin crew. There are loads of them, fussing over him, laughing at something hilarious he’s apparently said. One of the cabin crew shouts into the crowd. ‘Make space, please. Make space, everyone.’

  I recognise Adam Westbury’s dark curls and olive skin from Marcy’s picture. His left leg is in a thick cast from toe to just below his knee, sticking out on the wheelchair footrest. One of the cabin crew is clutching a small on-board bag, another carries two crutches wrapped in tinsel.

  ‘I’ll get your luggage, Adam! It’s the red suitcase with the black straps, yes?’

  ‘No, I can get it!’ another argues. ‘It would be my pleasure!’

  Adam doesn’t seem to be in the least embarrassed by all the fussing – in fact he seems to like it.

  I head over to him with a sigh.

  ‘Adam Westbury?’

  He looks me up and down, giving me a big open grin as if he’s known me all of his life. ‘Hello there!’

  ‘I’m Phoebe, Marcy’s PA,’ I say efficiently, holding out my hand for him to shake. ‘Unfortunately your mother had to—’

  ‘—Ah yes, Phoebe!’ Adam interrupts, his smile becoming even wider. ‘We met briefly last year.’

  ‘We did? I don’t remember.’

  ‘No, I don’t expect you do.’

  What the hell does that mean?

  He takes my hand with both of his and pumps it up and down so strongly that it sort of makes my whole body wobble. His eyes sparkle as if he’s genuinely excited to see me. Is this a trick? He’s at a loud, cram-packed airport with a broken leg…

  I throw a look to one of the cabin crew – a gorgeous skinny lad with an angelic blond curtain cut. He simply gazes down at Adam’s conker brown curls with delight. He gives me a grin as if to say isn’t he something?

  ‘God, my mum adores you,’ Adam continues. ‘She adores everyone, of course, but particularly you! Where is she?’

  It takes me a moment to form words, I’m a bit, well, thrown off by this guy’s energy. Is he high on pain medication? Delirious from jet lag? What’s his deal? Nobody can be this cheerful after a seven hour flight. It’s not decent.

  ‘Er… Jemima Crossley Jones, the er, the actress, had a design emergency at the Oxo Tower and your mum went to help her out. I’ve come to pick you up and take you home.’

  ‘What an exciting change of plan!’ Adam grins. I blink, completely confused. Is he being sarcastic? He doesn’t appear to be.

  ‘Um, okay. Well, the parking ticket is running out so we should get a move on,’ I mutter, heading around to the back of his wheelchair and taking the handles.

  The blonde boy crew member lays Adam’s crutches across his uninjured knee lovingly. Another appears with his suitcase.

  ‘You guys have been epic,’ Adam beams at the crew members, as one leans down to snap a quick selfie with him. ‘Hey, Gemma, remember – you must watch that film I was telling you about. It’s just your cup of tea.’ He points at the blonde lad with the curtain cut. ‘@JohnInFlight on Twitter, yes? I’ll follow you as soon as I get home.’

  The crew cluck around him, waving goodbye as I wheel him off towards through the airport towards the car park. One of them wipes a tear from her eye as if she’s saying goodbye to her best friend in the whole world.

  Who is this guy and what the hell did he do on that aeroplane?

  ‘Mum let you use her Jaguar?’ Adam says in disbelief when we reach the car.

  ‘Of course,’ I say breezily as if this is a normal occurrence and Marcy didn’t use it as a bribe to make me come and pick him up when I’d much rather be at home on my own.

  ‘She really does trust you,’ he laughs. ‘She’s never let me drive it and I’m her flesh and blood.’

  I glance down at the broken leg that is entirely the result of his own daft behaviour. I wouldn’t trust him to drive my car either. And my car is worth about fifty pounds. And that’s because it’s got a sat nav in it that cost me fifty pounds.

  I shove Adam’s luggage and crutches into the boot and then wait for him to get out of the wheelchair and hop into the passenger seat, but he doesn’t move.

  After an awkward moment of silence he coughs. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Oh, of course!’ I say, flustered. ‘Sorry.’ I lean down and he slings his arm around my shoulder, using it to support himself as he rises from the wheelchair. I don’t like being in close proximity to people at the best of times, never mind a complete stranger.

  ‘This is nice, isn’t it?’ he chirps. ‘Oh! Your hair smells like apples.’ He leans in and gives my head a big unabashed whiff.

  I frown. What a weirdo.

  ‘Right.’ I mutter, lowering my shoulder and quickly shrugging Adam off into the passenger seat. ‘Are you comfortable? Good. Let’s get going.’

  I jog round to the driver’s side, open the door and let myself in, being careful not to plop down too hard on to my now bruised bottom. I turn the heating up full blast and fasten my seatbelt. By the time I’m settled in, Adam’s already switched on the radio and found the most Christmassy Christmas station that ever existed. Without a word, I switch the radio off. I can’t stomach that for the next hour. No, thank you.

  Adam leans over and switches the radio back on.

  ‘Do you mind if w
e don’t?’ I ask, turning it back off.

  ‘Fine,’ he says with a slightly disappointed shrug.

  I drive out of the airport and get myself onto the motorway, in peace and quiet. I sigh with rising content. Not too long until I can get home and close my curtains and wait this shit show out.

  Less than two minutes after switching the radio off I hear a low humming sound. It is Adam. He is humming Jingle Bells.

  I throw him my icy stare. He peers over at me. My icy stare doesn’t seem to affect him – maybe it’s not icy enough... I try again, even icier. Nope. No effect. With a tut, I switch to using actual words.

  ‘Please don’t hum those dumb Christmas songs,’ I mutter, switching the windscreen wipers up to a quicker speed as the flurry of snow begins to stick.

  Another five seconds of silence.

  And then the sound of I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas sung at full pelt in a surprisingly accomplished baritone.

  I throw him an icy stare so glacial, I’m surprised his whole body doesn’t turn into an iceberg.

  ‘Ah, that’s your scary look, is it?’ Adam asks, with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘My mum told me. This look you do. She calls it the “Don’t mess with Phoebe” glare. Says it’s a great weapon in the company’s arsenal. Keeps the team in line.’

  I lift my chin at the compliment by proxy. Marcy notices that I keep the team in line. Maybe an office of my own isn’t that far out of reach.

  ‘Now I’ve seen it, I think mum was over-egging how scary your scary look is,’ Adam says. ‘It certainly doesn’t scare me.’

  ‘It’s totally scary,’ I sniff.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I checked it in the mirror once.’ I immediately clamp my mouth shut because that is not information that should be made public. Phoebe, you bonehead.

  Adam bursts into laughter. It’s an annoying laugh, way too loud, making his face all crease up and turn red. He claps his hands with mirth. ‘You checked it in the mirror. That’s amazing!’

  ‘I was joking!’ I huff.

  ‘You were not.’

  ‘Look, can you just stop singing Christmas songs, please? Or any songs for that matter – I have a headache.’

  ‘You said no humming. You didn’t say anything about singing.’

  ‘Well, now I am. I don’t like it.’

  ‘You don’t like my singing? I have a great voice. People tell me so.’

  ‘It’s not that good.’

  Adam snorts. ‘You shouldn’t be mean to me, you know. I could tell my mum. Your boss.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’ I glance over at him nervously. His mouth is in a very serious line.

  I imagine Adam telling Marcy that I was mean to him, her precious angel son, and I see the chance of training to be a designer exploding into a million pieces. Me staying an assistant forever. Sitting in that open plan office with the other fools.

  I clamp my mouth shut and seethe at the road.

  Adam Westbury is a total weasel.

  Chapter Three

  Christmas Eve 3:20 p.m.

  The hour it takes to get back to Notting Hill turns into an hour and a half as traffic jams up on the motorway. Even when Adam refrains from turning on the radio, or humming and singing, he is still annoying by way of the fact that his phone buzzes and dings with messages every thirty seconds. And then there’s the dramatic noise of self-pity he makes every time we go over a bump in the road that slightly nudges his leg. I refrain from complaining, however, in case he does make true on his threat to tell Marcy of my unwillingness to tolerate him. That would cap off this horrible holiday, this horrible year, this turning out to be a horrible day, just perfectly.

  I breathe a sigh of relief as I pull up at Elgin Crescent. There. Job done. Prince Adam has been safely delivered home. I’ll help him out of the car and back into his chair, wheel him into his flat and he can hum and sing and be a weasel on his own time.

  I open up the door and unpack the wheelchair from the boot, helping him into it. He sniffs my head again as he scrambles into the chair. What a weirdo.

  ‘It really is an awesome smell. Granny Smiths. A superior apple.’

  I start to push Adam towards number one hundred and twenty when he asks me where I’m going.

  ‘I’m dropping you off? I thought you said one-twenty Elgin Crescent?’

  ‘Um, well, the thing is I have a couple of errands to run before I can go home.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So… I need someone to help me. I can’t get in and out of places, or even down the street by myself.’ He gestures at his leg. ‘And with the snow. It’s really coming down now! I could use my crutches, but the ice will make it dangerous…’

  Is he kidding me? He wants me to push him around to do errands at half past three on Christmas Eve? After I’ve just done a two and a half hour journey to pick him up because he was foolish enough to break his leg? I want to say this to his face but I can see that the threat to tell his mummy over me is right there on the tip of his tongue. I yank my hat further down over my head so that it covers my eyebrows, and pull my coat further around me, buttoning it right up to the neck. I am very cold. My house is very warm. I want to be at my house.

  ‘Don’t you have friends who can take you on these errands?’ I ask, my teeth chattering a little as I do so.

  ‘Are you joking? It’s Christmas Eve. They’ve got plans.’

  ‘I’ve got plans!’

  ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘Just… stuff. None of your beeswax.’

  ‘Stuff! Sounds thrilling.’

  ‘Can someone else not take you around? Where’s your girlfriend?’

  ‘We broke up.’

  I see a flash of something darker in his jolly demeanour, but it lasts less than a second and then he’s smiling at me again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, reaching out my hand to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder.

  ‘Yep. Was drowning my sorrows when I did this.’ He points at the cast on his leg and pulls and exaggerated face of self-pity.

  Against my wishes I feel a tug of compassion for him. Getting your heart broken at Christmas is the worst and I should know. And the broken leg on top of that. That’s terrible luck.

  I peek at my watch and sigh.

  ‘Fine. But thirty minutes is all I have to spare and then and I’m bringing you back to your house.’

  ‘Hurrah! Thirty minutes is all I need.’

  Thirty minutes was not all he needed.

  We’ve been in Hatchett’s pharmacy for fifty minutes already, and Adam has only sniffed half of the perfumes in here in an attempt to find the perfect one for Marcy. I have already told him that she wears Chanel No. 5 and nothing else, but Adam reckons it’s time for her to wear something new. He doesn’t even want to use those little paper smelling sticks the assistant keeps giving to us. No. He wants to spray the perfume into the air and then have me roll him into the cloud of scent so that he can consider its merits and disadvantages. God knows what the pair of us smell like. I tried to widen my eyes at the pharmacist to try to get her to hurry him along – the place is heaving with people picking up last minute prescriptions and gifts, but she ignores my looks and seems genuinely happy to help. She’s practically swooning over Adam’s assessment of each perfume.

  I gaze out of the glass windows into the street. The sky is starting to turn dusky dove grey which means that all of the colourful flashing fairy lights are being switched on. Ugh. Now I’m going to have to walk home past everyone’s twinkling windows and smug trees and tacky light up ornaments.

  ‘This one has a cool name,’ Adam says, picking up a bottle of perfume called Bondage. It’s in a black leather phallic shaped bottle. ‘But hardly appropriate for mum.’

  ‘No.’ I agree. ‘Definitely not Marcy’s style.’

  ‘Shall we smell it anyway?’

  Adam doesn’t wait for my answer before liberally spritzing the perfume into the air
and frantically gesturing for me to roll him into it.

  ‘Yikes,’ he says after taking a big whiff.

  Yikes indeed. This perfume smells like a pair of worn leather undies that have been sitting in the sun all day. And now we are both covered in it. I sniff my arm. I smell horrible.

  ‘Enough!’ I grumble, coughing and spluttering over the disgusting fragrance. Argh! The scent seems to be getting stronger and stronger with each passing moment. ‘We’ll take a bottle of Chanel Number 5 please.’ I say firmly to the assistant.

  ‘But we still have more to test!’

  ‘I smell like an overworked, over-heated gimp, the fairy lights are starting to come on outside and I just want to go home and eat my noodles. Now give me your wallet.’

  ‘Home for noodles? Those are your plans?’ he asks, a look of disbelief on his face.

  I huff and ignore the question. ‘Just give me your wallet so I can pay and we can get out of here.’

  ‘She’s mean isn’t she?’ Adam says to the assistant who practically wobbles with horn for him.

  ‘Wallet.’

  Adam ignores me, smiling at the assistant in a way that makes her pupils dilate.

  ‘Fine!’ I reach down into his leather jacket pocket for a wallet. Nothing. He then gives me the same smile he gave to the assistant and though I admit it is a little disarming, mostly because it’s so intense, it does nothing for me in the swimsuit area. He raises an eyebrow cockily. He thinks I won't dig into his jeans pocket for the wallet? Ha! He doesn’t know me. Marcy once dropped her bracelet down the loo and I retrieved it for her, no problemo. I have zero fear. Hardcore bitch, remember? I reach my hand into Adam’s jeans pocket and he jumps in shock. I pull out his leather wallet.

  ‘Ha!’ I cry, holding it aloft triumphantly before pulling out a bunch of notes and handing them over to the assistant.

  ‘Hey! That’s stealing!’ Adam lifts his bum off the wheelchair slightly.

  ‘You don’t want to buy the perfume?’ I ask. ‘Marcy will be so disappointed, not having a gift from her only son.’