‘Gwen, wait!’
I was almost back to the Volvo when I heard Michael call my name. I turned to see him, the man I’d woken up next to every day until I didn’t. His drainpipe trousers didn’t suit him any better than his new haircut and I watched his chest heave from the exertion of running after me, a slight sheen of sweat on the recently revealed extra inches of his forehead. Was this really my Michael?
‘Whatareyou wearing?’ I asked, holding a hand over my eyes to shield them from the sun.
‘What? It’s – it’s an ugly sweater,’ he replied, pinching the synthetic fabric and pulling it away from his body so he too could gaze upon Rudolph’s glory, the reindeer surrounded by fairy lights and candy canes. It was too weird.
‘I can see that. I suppose I meantwhyare you wearing it?’
‘It was a present.’
No need to say from whom. He wouldn’t even wear a pair of festive boxer shorts I bought for him a month after we met because he thought Christmas-themed clothes were tacky. That was when realization number two hit home. He was wearing the jumper because it came from her. Justine wasn’t a rebound, it was the real thing.
‘Why areyouwearing pyjamas?’ Michael asked, more than a little defensive. ‘And isn’t that Manny’s coat? Is he here too?’
‘No, he’s not.’ I shook my head and wished that he was. ‘He says to tell you he hates you, by the way.’
He made a derisive noise I recognized, his ‘I-suppose-you-think-that’s-funny’ scoff, the one that sat on the shelf next to his ‘yes-I-suppose-so’ grunt and ‘OK-but-I’d-rather-not’ sigh. I wondered if Justine recognized those noises yet or if he was still treating her to full sentences.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, blunt and to the point. To think his straightforwardness was something I used to admire about him. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I’m trapped in a Christmas time loop and the only way to break it is to grant a wish and my nan really wants us to get back together?’
Apparently I was starting with that one.
He opened his mouth to say something then changed his mind and shook his head.
‘That’s not even funny.’
‘You’re telling me …’ I looked down at my wrist and gasped. ‘One o’clock already? Oh well, must be off—’
‘No!’ Michael exclaimed, taking a big step forward. ‘You don’t get to show up at my hotel, scare a table full of pensioners, castrate Father Christmas then leave without an explanation. What is going on?’
‘Firstly, they scared me more than I scared them,’ I replied, digging my hands into Manny’s pockets. ‘And secondly, why can’t I leave without an explanation? You left me for someone else without an explanation.’
When he ended things, I didn’t know how to feel and even if I’d read every book ever written on the subject, I wouldn’t have been prepared. The pain was constant, sometimes big, sometimes small, but it was always there. All this time I’d convinced myself the best way to make it stop was to pretend it wasn’t happening, building temporary dams out of work, Netflix binges and entire selection boxes eaten in one go, but as I stood there, watching him squirm in a hotel car park, I knew I was going about it the wrong way. The only way to get through the pain was to let it in and ride it out. Every ounce of agony I’d held at bay for the last three months seeped into my bones, all the way through to the marrow. I let it burn and sting and settle, and much to my surprise, I survived.
‘You hurt me,’ I said, rolling back my shoulders and standing up straight.
Michael looked back at me, shocked. He was used to peacekeeper Gwen, the non-confrontational woman whoalways acquiesced for the chance of a quiet life, but that Gwen was gone and from the look on his face, he didn’t quite know where to put himself in front of the new one.
‘I can’t believe you ended things the way you did,’ I said, pacing up and down in front of Manny’s knackered car. ‘Four years over and done in five minutes. I can’t even believe I’m stood talking to you now, I was starting to think I’d imagined you.’
‘Clean breaks are always best,’ he said, pausing for a moment as though he didn’t have anything to add, even though he always did. ‘If you love something, set it free. Better to let you go and all that.’
‘Thanks, Sting,’ I replied, flinging my arms out wide. ‘I’m a person not a battery chicken, you didn’t send me to live out my days on a nice organic farm so I wouldn’t peck myself to death, you dumped me!’
‘Battery hens don’t usually have beaks,’ he muttered. ‘They cut them off.’
He looked over his shoulder at the hotel, checking to make sure me raising my voice hadn’t upset it somehow.
‘I didn’t come to argue about battery hens.’ I wiped my hands over my face, trying to remember exactly why I was there. Oh. Right. The wish. Bugger. ‘Things weren’t perfect between us, whatever that means, but I loved you,’ I started, feeling my way around a conversation we needed to have even if I doubted I’d ever be ready for it. ‘If you weren’t happy, you should have said something. You don’t wait until you’ve got someone else on the side to bin off the person you’ve spent the last four years of your life with. What you did was cruel.’
Michael shuffled around on the spot with his eyes casttowards the gravel, the lights on his jumper twinkling merrily as he moved, completely out of sync with his mood.
‘OK, that was wrong,’ he said eventually. ‘But what about what you did? Wasn’t that cruel?’
‘Me?’ I squinted at him, dumbfounded. ‘What did I do?’