Page 68 of Christmas Is All Around
Her dad sighed. “I guessed you’d say that. You really should reconsider, though, Charlotte—Tom sent us averynice fruit basket for Christmas. Think of the pears you could be eating!”
“I can buy my own fruit, Dad,” Charlotte said, but then, miraculously, the most incredible thing happened: she wanted tolaugh. She couldn’t stop herself imagining the expression on Graham’s face if he overheard even a fraction of this conversation, and the urge to laugh was almost impossible to suppress. Her parents were absurd, but they were hers, and she was stuck with them, and they were going to continue behaving like absolute lunatics even from eight time zonesaway, so she may as well get used to it, and stop letting every single thing they said work its way beneath her skin.
“I suppose,” her dad agreed, a bit mournfully, and Charlotte, suddenly, was gripped with the wildest desire to throw him a bone.
“Hey, Dad?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“Ifyouwanted to send me some pears… I wouldn’t hate it.”
There was a long pause, and then, softly, her dad said, “I think I’ll do that, Charlotte.”
And Charlotte really believed that he would.
BETWIXTMAS
CHAPTER TWENTY
In a charity shop the day after Boxing Day, Charlotte found the mask.
She was in the back of the shop, past the clothing, rummaging through the odds and ends—mismatched dishes, single candlestick holders, novelty mugs from long-ago vacations—when she spotted it, tucked almost behind a chipped vase. It was black velvet, studded with paste jewels. It was campy and dramatic andfun, and it would look spectacular with the black dress she’d stolen from Ava’s closet the week before, assuming that she had somewhere to be on New Year’s Eve.
Without thinking too hard about it, she bought the mask—it cost only three pounds, after all—and shoved it in her bag, then took it back to Ava’s flat, tossing it in her suitcase beneath a couple of sweaters, carefully out of sight. She felt far too aware of its presence, however, in the days that followed—as she spent time with Ava and Kit, lazing around in the weird liminal time between Christmas and New Year’s that she’d learned the Brits referred to as “Betwixtmas.” This involved a lot of sitting around the living room, trying to hold Alice without her screaming bloody murder as if she’d just been handed toa convicted criminal, and eating leftover mince pies, which Charlotte had decided were somehow disgustinganddelicious at the same time.
During all that time, the mask haunted her with its presence, with its reminder of what sheshouldhave spent this week doing instead—namely, savoring every last moment with Graham, before her flight home on New Year’s Day.
Eloise had texted her on Boxing Day, just a simple message apologizing for complicating things between Charlotte and Graham. Charlotte could tell just from reading it how carefully it had been considered—there was none of Eloise’s usual breezy charm, but instead a cautiously worded apology, and then this:
Graham doesn’t know that I’m sending this, but you should know that he was very reluctant to do anything that would benefit Eden Priory if it involved asking anything of you. He’s the most honourable person I know, and I just want you to know that.
Charlotte had stared down at the message for a long time, despite the fact that it hadn’t contained anything out of the ordinary. One part of her brain argued that Eloise was just a sister trying to make up for accidentally having royally screwed up her brother’s love life, but another part, one that she was having a hard time ignoring, was very well aware of the fact that until Christmas Eve, Charlotte herself would have agreed with that final sentence from Eloise.
She hadn’t responded to the text—had let it sit on her phone for hours, glancing at it and then setting it aside, as she tried to work out how, exactly, to reply. The thing was, she liked Eloise. But she didn’t feel particularly warm toward someone who apparently had set her up to be used solely for her name and her temporary viral infamy. The whole thing left a bad taste in her mouth—like everything she’d left New York to try to escape had followed her here instead.
That evening, she FaceTimed Padma, who was staying with Andrew’s parents in Pennsylvania and apparently slowly dying of boredom, and explained the entire situation. She’d been attempting to keep her up-to-date via text, but finally sent her an SOS, feeling that a face-to-face session was required.
By the time she had finished talking her through everything, Padma’s expression was a combination of outrage mixed with… delight?
“Why do you look so happy?” Charlotte demanded, after a silence of several seconds had fallen, during which Padma seemed to be struggling to formulate a reply.
“I’m not happy,” Padma said hastily. “I’m full of righteous indignation on your behalf. I’m furious. I think we should burn Graham at the stake, on the grounds of his extremely large and historic country estate.” She didn’t even try to keep a wistful note from entering her voice at this last bit, and Charlotte knew immediately that she had lost her ally to that most ancient of lures: property.
“Padma, we don’t sympathize with rich English people who inherit houses,” she said sternly. “It’s in the Constitution somewhere.”
“Speak for yourself. I read a lot of romance novels, I’d be a complete hypocrite if I disliked Graham just because his ancestors were rich enough to build a big house.”
Charlotte wanted to take issue with this argument, since she was pretty sure that this line of reasoning would crumble under the slightest provocation, but she decided to keep her attention focused on more important things. “We don’t hate him because of the house,” she reminded her friend. “We hate him because he spent a whole month lying to me while also making me f—”
She broke off abruptly, alarmed at where that sentence had almost led.
On-screen, Padma had crossed her arms over her chest and was regarding her with a severe expression, which was extremelyeffective since she rarely deployed this weapon outside of work. “Charlotte Rose Lane. You are not going to run away from this problem using the same excuse you always use,” Padma said, her voice stern.
Charlotte crossed her arms in turn. “I don’t think that’s really fair, unless I’m forgetting another time that someone tried to cash in on my name and face without telling me, all while using sexual sorcery to ensure that I wouldn’t realize what was happening?”
“Sexual sorcery, is it?” Padma asked excitedly. “Does he take his glasses off?” she added, without missing a beat.
“I’m not answering that.”
