Page 31 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
Tom groaned. ‘Posy must never know about the comedy Christmas T-shirts, it will only give her ideas. Agreed?’
Mattie couldn’t help but shudder at the very idea. ‘Agreed.’
They’d reached the safety of the patio, where Pippa had found Phil and was enthusing about the personal growth workshop she’d attended the week before. Pippa wasn’t the type of person to worry about being left unattended at a party – she could always find someone to talk to, then make a connection with them on a deeper, more personal level. Or so she claimed, and Mattie wasn’t one to doubt her.
‘I think it’s really good to give your self-esteem a regular health check,’ she said while Phil nodded and stared at her in dumbstruck awe. ‘Like, having a smear test or getting the oil changed in your car.’
‘Right,’ Phil said uncertainly. ‘What’s a smear test?’
‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ Tom said quickly because he’d met Pippa on a number of occasions and, like Mattie, he knew that she never shied away from the difficult questions. On the contrary, she ran towards them.
‘That’s a very good question, Phil. I’m so glad you’re showing an interest in women’s health,’ she said now and Mattie had no choice but to take her by the arm so she could whisper in her friend’s ear, ‘If you tell Phil what a smear test is, I’m withholding cake for the foreseeable future.’
‘But women’s reproductive health impacts everybody’s health,’ Pippa said, earnestly.
‘Phil’s not emotionally strong enough to be able to cope with you explaining speculums to him,’ Mattie said a little desperately. ‘And it’s a party! Woo-hoo! Oh! Look! Fireworks!’
‘Oooh! I love fireworks,’ Pippa exclaimed.
Mattie found herself sandwiched between Tom and Pippa as they watched a slightly chaotic display, which contained all the crowd-pleasers. Catherine wheels and rockets and Roman candles which lit up the sky over Cockfosters with a colourful shower of sparks and bursts. Happily, someone in the next street was also having a late-in-the-season firework party with no expense spared, so they could happily ‘oooh!’ and ‘aaaah!’ their fireworks in the long pauses when Sean or Mikey would announce that there’d been a malfunction with a Roman candle and they were just going to check what had happened to it, accompanied by warning shouts of ‘Leave it! Justleaveit!’
After twenty minutes and a third bottle of lager, all that was left was Mattie’s sparkler, which Tom lit so she and Pippa could pose for selfies.
‘Come on, Tom!’ Pippa said, pulling him in between the two of them. ‘You have much longer arms than us, which makes for a much more flattering angle. And you too, Phil.’
Mattie instantly pulled her selfie face – face tilted to the right, chin down, eyes wide. Pippa opened her mouth wide in a silent joyous scream, Phil did a wacky thumbs up and Tom stood there like he was posing for his last photograph before being sent off to fight in the trenches of World War One.
‘I do hope these pictures aren’t going to appear on any form of social media,’ Tom said gravely. That was an interesting point: he’d managed to never appear on the Happy Ever After Instagram, even though Nina constantly shoved her phone in people’s faces as they were trying to work.
But it was a really good picture of Mattie. Far too good to waste. ‘Sorry Tom, I’m putting it on my Instagram,’ Mattie insisted, already scrolling through filters. ‘I have hardly any followers, it’s not a big deal.’
She actually had quite a lot of followers, nearly five thousand at the last count, who came for the daily cake shots.
‘Except I just asked you not to,’ Tom said, but Mattie was immune to Tom’s stern voice.
‘You shouldn’t have agreed to be in the photo if you didn’t want to be on social media,’ Mattie said, as she now went hashtag happy with:
#fireworks #bonfire #sparklers
#christmasparty #bahhumbug
#justignoretherandomguywiththemardyexpression
‘There’s no law that says you have to put photos on social media,’ Tom said in a manner that made Mattie instantly take offence at his self-righteous tone.
‘But why would you bother taking a photo then?’ Pippa asked, genuinely perplexed, because when she wasn’t posting sunsets and inspirational quotes on her Instagram, she was posting #fitspo shots from her daily workouts or #ginoclock selfies from whatever fancy pop-up bar she’d read about on The Londonist. ‘What would be the point?’
‘Exactly, if you don’t post pictures on social media then how can you even be sure that you’ve taken a picture?’ Mattie said, because she’d had three bottles of lager in the space of an hour and apparently when she was tipsy it really brought out the urge to rile Tom, who was very tight of lip. But it was more than that. Much more than that. She’d sworn to herself that she would nevereverlet a man tell her what to do, ever again. It started off innocently enough, with them expressing a preference for a certain dress or a perfume and then one day you realised that your life wasn’t your own any more because it had been completely taken over by someone else’s preferences. ‘Like a tree falling down in a forest and all that jazz.’
‘I think the fact that the picture would be sitting there on your phone would be proof enough that it existed,’ Tom said, peering over Mattie’s shoulder as she tagged Pippa in the photo, which was very annoying. ‘For goodness’ sake, Mattie, can’t you just respect my wishes?’
‘I would if your wishes made any kind of sense,’ Mattie said, looking up from her screen. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t click “Post”?’
Tom raised his eyebrows. ‘Because I asked you not to.’
Oh, how that made Mattie want to click on ‘Post’ even more. But Phil was looking like he might cry (for a man who styled himself as the Archbishop of Banterbury, he didn’t seem to like confrontations very much) and Pippa was doing her ‘I’m not cross with you, I’m just disappointed in you because you’re behaving like a bit of a dick’ face. Pippa only pulled out that expression when she really had to.
‘Fine,’ Mattie capitulated with a sigh, holding out her phone so Tom could see her click on ‘discard draft’. ‘But this whole shunning the twenty-first century shtick of yours is deeply weird. Shady, even.’
