Page 29 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘They’re Sweaty Betty,’ the second woman said. ‘Very sculpting. They do amazing things to your arse.’
‘They really do,’ Pippa said admiringly. ‘Though I like the Gap ones too.’
Pippa had found her people. If she didn’t have such a strong moral code, Mattie suspected that Pippa would happily dump her in favour of going to this singles’ spinning class. Mattie squeezed past the three of them with a vague smile, and investigated the huge pan of mulled wine simmering on the dirty hob.
Surely the heat and the alcohol would sterilise any germs? She helped herself to a mug and side-stepped a sprig of mistletoe hanging over the kitchen door as she went outside.
Mattie held her breath as she moved past the little coterie of smokers standing on the patio and ventured down the surprisingly long garden towards the end where most of the partygoers were standing around a bonfire that was burning with great gusto. She took a cautious sip of her mulled wine and nearly spat it out. There was nothing mulled about it; no Christmas spices, not one lousy cinnamon clove. It was just cheap red wine heated up.
She surreptitiously poured the contents of her mug in a nearby and very overgrown flowerbed, then her nose twitched as she smelt the scent of sausages. As she got closer she could see two Banter Boys (possibly Bantdaddy and another one she didn’t recognise) manning a gigantic grilling station and hurrah! A plastic bin full of ice and bottles of lager.
‘Come on, girls, fancy a banger?’ the unknown Banter Boy called out to three girls shivering in tiny sparkly dresses as Mattie swooped in, snatched a beer and then swooped away, opening the bottle with the aid of the right attachment on her chef’s penknife. ‘And then after that, you can have one of these bangers.’ He held up a sausage on a long fork and the three girls groaned as one and moved away.
Mattie didn’t blame them. But the poor things had barely gone three steps when they were greeted by Phil and another man Mattie didn’t recognise.
‘Ladies! Looking lovely as ever,’ Phil said. ‘I’m Phil, but my friends call me the Archbishop of Banterbury.’
The three girls all gave good side-eye to his T-shirt which said, ‘When I Think About You I Touch My Elf’ but Phil didn’t seem to notice. ‘And this is Costa. Like Costa Coffee.’
‘It’s why I like my women hot, dark and sweet,’ Costa said. He was wearing a T-shirt which featured a cartoon of a drunken reindeer and said ‘Brew-dolph’ in flashing letters. Mattie snorted into her beer and then stepped back into the shadows so she couldn’t be seen. She wished that Pippa wasn’t still in the kitchen, no doubt still extolling the virtues of butt-enhancing work-out pants, because this needed witnesses.
‘I only drink tea,’ one of the girls said flatly and her two friends giggled.
‘I take my tea like I take my women,’ Phil said. Mattie willed him not to say any more, but he wasn’t done. ‘Um … strong and erm, strong …’
‘You already said strong.’ These girls were a tough crowd.
‘Strong and er, brewed to perfection.’
Two of the girls rolled their eyes hard enough to detach their corneas while the girl who’d made the mistake of saying that she preferred tea, fixed Phil with a dead-eyed stare that made him visibly wilt.
‘That doesn’t even make sense,’ she said. She gestured with her thumb in the direction of a dilapidated potting shed. ‘Do one, mate!’
Mattie winced. Phil didn’t deserve that. He was actually quite nice when you got to know him, but these girls were never going to get to know him because he disappeared as fast as his legs would carry him, Costa bringing up the rear.
‘Lame.’
‘So lame.’
‘Who even was that?’
‘I’m so sorry that you had to be the unwilling recipients of the worst chat-up lines ever,’ said a familiar voice and Tom was there, in the space so recently vacated by his good friend, the archbishop. Mattie shrank even further back, so she was practically inside the overgrown hedge and invisible in her all-black ensemble unless you were looking for a stealthy beer-drinking ninja.
‘Right, and what hot drink do you like your women to resemble?’ Tea Girl asked challengingly.
‘Not really a big fan of hot drinks,’ Tom said, which was a total lie, Mattie thought as she adjusted her scarf to ensure that most of her face stayed hidden in the shadows. ‘And please don’t confuse me with thoseboysyou were just talking to.’
It was Tom’s stern voice, the one that made his menopausal fanbase flush when he told them that he absolutely wasn’t going to try on one of the Happy Ever After T-shirts so they could see what size they needed to get for their husbands.
It seemed to be having a similar effect on Tea Girl, now quite wide-eyed. ‘No, you’re really nothing like them,’ she said in a breathy voice.
‘Quite. They wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if they lived to be a hundred,’ Tom said in a husky voice, leaning closer to the girl, close enough that Mattie would bet his breath was tickling her earlobe. There was something about the timbre of Tom’s dark, deep tones that caused Mattie to shiver slightly, even though it was quite mild for early December. Mattie wasn’t the only one affected: as Tom took his leave of the three girls with an apologetic smile, touching his forehead in a farewell salute, all three girls swooned slightly.
‘Whowasthat?’ one of them asked in a dreamy voice.
‘Only the man I’m going to marry.’
Mattie had heard quite enough and followed Tom at a distance. He walked down the garden, skirting around the bonfire so he could stand slightly to the side, while she skulked in the darkness just beyond the light of the fire. Daquon, in a T-shirt featuring devil horns and the proud proclamation, ‘I’m On The Naughty List’, was trying out some of his world class banter.
