Page 84 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
Judging from the suddenly gormless expression on Daquon’s face as he tried to process Pippa’s positivity philosophy, he was going to have to get back to her on that one. ‘Um, right, OK. I hope you choose to have a happy new year,’ he garbled at last and then hurried after his friends who were being ushered through the gate by Tom, like a mother hen counting her chickens home.
Just before he followed Daquon through the gate, Tom paused and looked back to where Pippa and Mattie were standing in the mews. It was too dark and Tom was too far away for Mattie to see his face, though she imagined that his expression still resembled a bulldog chewing on a wasp. He lifted his hand in a salute, but before Mattie could return the gesture, he was gone.
Then Mattie looked down at her bowl. ‘Oh. I think I’ve overworked my dough.’
‘Yes, you probably have,’ Pippa said, looking over at the spot where Tom had been standing. Then she glanced down at Mattie’s bowl. ‘Are you really talking about your dough or are you using your dough as a metaphor for your relationship with Tom?’
Mattie tried to stare Pippa down, but it didn’t work. Pippa was also great at returning eye contact. ‘You know, sometimes dough is just dough.’
‘Of course it is,’ Pippa said as if she were merely humouring her friend. ‘Now, put that dough in the fridge. Table’s booked for nine – I’ve just done a Boxfit class and I’m starving.’
When Mattie didn’t need to be rescued from Paris, she and Pippa had a Christmas Eve eve tradition of curry and presents. Then Pippa would drive all the way to her parents’ stone cottage on the outskirts of Halifax. She said she’d rather drive through the night and beat the traffic. The only downside was it meant that Pippa refused all alcohol and had one eye on the time, exhorting Mattie to ‘eat up, I want to get going before ten thirty,’ resulting in Mattie choking down her king prawn chilli so fast that her eyes watered and she had to chug her bottle of Cobra beer in record time. She felt distinctly unwell as she walked Pippa to Sebastian’s offices in Clerkenwell where Pippa’s car was parked, the fierce wind scouring their faces.
In every shop window, Christmas lights twinkled back at them. There were even flashing fairy lights entwined around the top of each lamp-post, courtesy of Camden Council. How festive, Mattie thought to herself, like some kind of Christmas-loving loon.
‘Thank you for my new boxing gloves,’ Pippa enthused as Mattie tried not to burp. ‘And I’m so glad that you’re choosing to have a merry Christmas this year.’
‘I wouldn’t say that I was particularly merry at this precise moment,’ Mattie said: she was pretty sure that the roof of her mouth was minus a couple of layers of skin.
‘Well, you just need to make some more dough and not overwork it this time,’ Pippa said sagely but with a glint in her eye. Once she got an idea into her head …
‘Pips, when I said I’d overworked my dough, I had an actual bowl of dough in my arms that I’d just overworked. It wasn’t a metaphor and it didn’t have anything to do with Tom …’
‘I never said it had anything to do with Tom and yet here you are, bringing up Tom’s name,’ Pippa said, taking out her car keys. ‘Interesting. Very interesting.’
‘Annoying. You’re being very annoying.’
But Pippa simply smiled obliquely. ‘Well, to be completely transparent, Posy told Sebastian, who can’t keep a secret so he told me, that she’s glued to the webcam,’ Pippa said as she beeped her key at her car, which obligingly beeped back.
‘That’s hardly news. She doesn’t stop texting to complain about our queue wrangling techniques and to ask how much we’ve taken every half hour,’ Mattie said wearily.
‘Sebastian said that she’s much more interested in watching you and Tom flirting than your queue wrangling. Although I did read a study where an ice-cream parlour in Venice Beach gave out free water to the people queuing …’
‘Never mind that. Rewind!’ Mattie demanded, physically blocking Pippa from getting into her car. ‘Flirting? Tom and I don’tflirtin the shop.’ (Though Mattie was still undecided if they flirted out of work hours when they were leaning against each other on the sofa.) ‘Mostly we fight in the shop. About Posy’s precious tote bags, among other things. She should have been complaining about that instead of gossiping and making up stuff.’
With her superior strength from her Boxfit classes, Pippa moved Mattie out of the way. ‘Posy thinks the fighting is just the snapping of courtship,’ she cheerfully reported as she got in her car. ‘Says she and Sebastian were exactly the same and that going by all the recent romantic activity in the shop, you and Tom will be engaged before Valentine’s Day.’
‘What?’ This was typical of Posy. Typical of someone who’d read so many romantic novels that she had difficulty in telling the difference between fiction and real life. Not to mention all those pregnancy hormones.
Also, Posy had no way of knowing about the kiss that Mattie absolutely wasn’t going to think about. Anyway, Tom didn’t feel that way about her. If he did, then he’d be clear with his intentions, wouldn’t he? And he couldn’t even remember that they had kissed.
‘Then Posy told Sebastian that you and Tom would have to plan your wedding for after she’s lost the baby weight,’ Pippa said with a grin. ‘This is such a breakthrough on your personal development, Mattie! You said that you thought it was time you gave Paris another chance but you never said that you were going to give love another chance too. And with Tom!’
‘That’s because I’m not,’ Mattie said, now bodily preventing Pippa from closing the car door. ‘I mean, I’m not violently opposed to love any more. In fact, I think that I deserve to be loved.’
‘I’m so proud of you,’ Pippa said, grin gone, and with great sincerity. ‘You are absolutely deserving of love. Now, please, let go of the door, I want to be in Halifax by three at the latest.’
Mattie stepped aside. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, though. This love, it’s not going to be with Tom,’ she said but Pippa had shut the door and from her little wave then a jaunty thumbs-up, Mattie wasn’t sure that she’d heard her.
Mattie was woken on Christmas Eve not by her alarm clock, but by the unmistakable sounds of someone throwing up at the exact same time that her mobile started ringing.
The early caller – and if it was someone who wanted to know if she’d been mis-sold PPI, then God help them – took precedence over the early vomiter. Especially as it turned out to be Sandrine.
‘Mon ange!We’ve been queuing to getintothe supermarket for two hours,’ she lamented without even aGood morning, sorry to be calling before six.‘What will we do if there are no pigs in blankets left?’
‘I thought we weren’t having pigs in blankets on account of the fact that I never want to see another pig in a blanket until at least next November?’ Mattie asked, her mother’s panicked tones waking her up just as effectively as a very large cup of black coffee.
‘Well, everyone else likes them,’ Sandrine replied implacably. Mattie heard Ian swear in the background and wish a long and painful death to the driver that had just cut in front of them. ‘So, you are coming home for Christmas then, instead of spending the day in bed?Très bien!Do you want to come over after work or shall Ian come and pick you up tomorrow?’
