‘A double Tia Maria and Coke?’
‘There was very little Coke.’
I gasped.
‘He’s upset then?’
‘He wasn’t jumping up and down and singing ‘Frosty the Snowman’, if that’s what you’re asking,’ Nan replied. ‘You caught him unawares, Gwen, no one likes to feel like a fool.’
‘There was no need for him to know,’ I said, my shoulders sloping at what I could only assume was the first of many tellings-off. ‘I can’t believe Cerys—’
‘Leave your sister out of it and clean up your own mess. It was hardly her finest moment but that’s not for you to worry about. Cerys has got her own troubles.’
‘Like what?’ I asked, incredulous. ‘Her rich husband, her private-school kids, the massive mansion they live in or her thriving business that pays for it all?’
‘You never really know what’s going on in other people’s lives,’ she answered. ‘Even the people you think you know best. I’d have thought you’d have learned that lesson this year.’
Pouting at my grandmother and her common sense, I stood up to examine the mess by the window. By some miracle, it looked as though I’d only knocked the rod off its brackets and not yanked it out of the wall completely and the curtains seemed to be intact. It was the first bit of luck I’d had since I opened the Gen 2 Personal Wonder Wand.
‘Speaking of people I don’t know that well,’ I said, wrestling the curtains and the rod up off the ground. ‘I saw Dev Jones outside.’
‘Dev Jones from next door?’ Nan’s left eyebrow flickered with interest. ‘Haven’t seen him in a dog’s age. Your mother tells me he’s a doctor,’ she added as I climbed on a footstool to heave the curtains into place. ‘And he’s engaged to be married?’
For a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on, my stomach plummeted at the news.
Dev. Engaged.
Somewhere deep inside me, thirteen-year-old Gwencollapsed in a fit of hysterics while playing ‘Hero’ by Enrique Iglesias on repeat.
‘He didn’t mention it,’ I replied in a squeaky voice. ‘Good for him.’
‘Good for him,’ Nan agreed before letting out a tiny gasp. ‘Oh, Gwen, your frock.’
Reflected back at me in the mirror on the front of Nan’s wardrobe was a long, clean rip, running from my waistband, all the way down the back of my dress. Dev was a successful cardiologist, engaged to be married, and I was a dumped, disgraced lawyer on disciplinary leave, walking around with my arse hanging out.
‘I told you it was too big,’ she said. ‘A nice pencil skirt wouldn’t have got caught like that.’
All at once I was very close to tears. My lovely dress, ruined.
Nan offered me a sympathetic smile, holding the velvet drapes in one hand and my skirt in the other. ‘Don’t get upset, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘I’ll make you a new one out of the curtains likeGone with the Wind.’
‘Thanks, Nan.’ I gulped down my tears. ‘After all, tomorrow is another day.’
Even though it was early, as soon as I’d used the bathroom, I shut myself away in the dining room and turned out all the lights, just a string of battery-operated fairy lights at the base of Mum’s bizarre centrepiece twinkling away in the darkness. My apology tour could wait until tomorrow, the best thing I could do tonight was stay out of everyone’s way. Lowering myself onto the camp bed with extreme caution, I stared up at the ceiling and replayed the events of the day in my head while theSylvanian Family Wise Men watched over me from the dining table. To think, only a few hours earlier I’d thought the worst thing that could happen was getting a sex toy from my dad.
So much for my plan, I thought sadly, the camp bed creaking beneath me. I was more worried about work than ever, I was definitely fighting with Cerys and now I was alone and squeezed between the furnace of a radiator and the dining-room table, all I could think about was Michael and how none of this would be happening if we were still together.
The best-laid plans of mice and Gwen.
‘This is why Christmas only comes but once a year,’ I whispered as I crossed my hands over my chest to keep them clear of the rusty, snapping springs. All I needed now was to lose a finger. ‘No one would survive it more often than that. Thank God this one is over.’
And with that, I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, I woke up warm and cosy in my childhood bedroom, the smell of Mum’s cooking wafting up the stairs.
‘Gwen? Are you up?’ Dad rapped on the door before poking his head into my room with a huge grin on his face. ‘What are you doing still in bed, chicken?He’s been!Don’t you want all your presents?’