‘I fell in love with someone whowantsto give me the things I need. I wish there had been another way to do it but there wasn’t, or perhaps there was and I just didn’t care. I don’t know, all I wanted was for us to be over.’
‘And all I want is to go home,’ I said, all the air leaving my lungs at once, officially done.
‘Justine moved in,’ Michael said, turning away from the wind and scratching the corner of his eye. ‘And before you hear it from someone else, I’m going to ask her to marry me on New Year’s Eve.’
I didn’t move, I couldn’t. He was going to propose. I’d waited four years for something he was ready to give her after three months.
‘When you know, you know,’ he said with a smile, adding insult to injury.
My fingers curled around my car keys. ‘Congratulations,’ I replied. ‘I’m so happy for you.’
‘Really?’ he sounded surprised.
‘No, not really but I’m not as cruel as you so I won’t tell you how I actually feel.’
If I wasn’t sure before, I was now. I would rather live the same Christmas Day a thousand times over than go back in time and beg him to choose me over her. Whoever this man might be, in his skinny jeans and his ugly Christmas jumper, he wasn’t the man I’d loved. This wasn’t the same person who used to save me the crossword in the Sunday paper and put a bookmark in my book when I fell asleep on the settee, the man who ran me a bubble bath on cold mornings to ease me into my day. How had my wonderful Michael turned into this unpleasant stranger with such terrible hair? He was like a reverse butterfly, swaddling himself in a cocoon made up of nothing but malice and spite. And even though the idea ate me up inside, I had to wonder whether my Michael had ever existed in the first place. Was this who he was all along? Did I only see what I wanted to see? Somewhere along the line, I’d stopped paying attention and confused my idea of us with reality. I’d mistaken his rewarding my good behaviour for love and I felt terribly, terribly foolish.
‘I think we’ve said everything we have to say to each other,’ Michael sniffed, attempting to stick his hands in the pockets but only managing to wiggle them in up to his knuckles, his jeans too tight and the pockets too shallow. Still, he stuck out his chin in defiance, thumbs flapping by his unused belt loops, and all I wanted to do was laugh.
‘Almost,’ I replied, an unfamiliar emotion flooding through me and shining a light on parts of myself that had been lost in the dark for so long.
It felt like hope.
‘I’m truly sorry for making you feel as though I didn’t care about you because I did,’ I said as I unlocked the car door and climbed inside. If I put my foot down, I could make it most of the way home before the snow started. ‘And I hope Justine really is what you need and not just a reflection of your own bloody ego, for her sake.’
I slammed the door and cranked the engine, leaving him stood beside the car, mouth hanging open. It turned over on the first attempt. Hallelujah. Spinning out of the car park, gravel flying under my wheels, I turned the ancient stereo on and cranked the volume as high as it would go, tears of relief in my eyes.
‘If there was one moment I wouldn’t mind living over again …’ I said out loud, watching Michael grow smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror until he disappeared forever.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Ahh, makes you grateful to be alive, doesn’t it? The fresh air, the green grass, the friendly sheep.’ Dad raised his arms high over his head, waving his walking stick like a finish line flag. ‘Is there anything nicer than a brisk stroll on Christmas morning?’
‘Jumping in the bath with the hairdryer still plugged in?’ I suggested, marching slowly behind him, all wrapped up in Mum’s coat. ‘Fingers crossed those sheep aren’t too friendly.’
When I woke up the next day, same place, same time, same bloody Christmas, I knew there was only one person’s wish left to grant.
Cerys Cordelia Megan Baker.
So naturally I volunteered to join my dad on a five-mile hike to delay the inevitable.
Seeing Michael had changed things. I was still sad, but sad with a full stop. For months, he’d been draining all my battery, like an app left open in the background, and now I could delete him for good which left more energy for other things, like walks with my dad, avoidingmy sister and pretending my existence wasn’t defying the laws of space and time. I turned my face up to the soft shafts of sunlight that peeked through the clouds and for one brief, shining moment, with Jack Frost nipping at my nose, I felt good.
Right up until my feet slid out from underneath me and I landed flat on my back in a pile of sheep dung.
‘You all right down there, chicken?’
Dad stood over me, shaking his head as though I’d done it on purpose.
‘Grand,’ I replied without moving. ‘Thanks for asking.’
‘That’ll teach you to make fun of the sheep,’ he replied, poking at a pile of dung with his walking stick. ‘There’d better not be any on your mum’s coat or you’ll be buying her a new one.’
‘Thankfully I think most of it is in my hair,’ I said with a weak thumbs-up.
The silhouette of a man moved hurriedly towards us, his features blotted out by the low winter sun while a tiny white powder puff of a dog ran ahead, yapping loudly and dancing around me in a circle.
‘Mr Baker? Gwen? Are you OK?’