‘Oh shit,’ I whispered as they all looked over in our direction at the exact same moment.
‘What’s wrong?’ Cerys leaned back in her chair, glass in hand, temporarily without a care in the world. ‘Worried they’ve come to take you away?’
‘You’re going to think I’m joking but yes, I am,’ I replied, scooping up my coat and bag. ‘I’m going to nip to the loo, if they come over here, tell them I went home.’
‘Gwen, what are you talking about? Where are you going?’ Cerys asked, eyes wide with alarm. ‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing.’ I slipped out of my seat and onto my hands and knees, crawling around the back of her chair. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘You just asked me to lie to the police and now you’re on your way to hide from them in a pub toilet that is quite frankly unsanitary to say the very least,’ she hissed, snatching at the collar of my dress. ‘Tell me what is going on.’
‘Gwen Baker?’
I looked up to see the two police officers, one man and one woman, glaring down at me. The woman looked slightly more stern than the man, but he looked more annoyed to be working at all on Christmas Day, so it didn’t really feel as though I had a friend in either of them.
‘Yes?’ I squeaked from the floor.
‘We’d like to speak with you in regard to a break-in at Chatsworth House this morning, would you mind coming with us?’
‘You broke into Chatsworth House?’ Cerys bellowed. ‘Gwen Baker, are you on drugs?’
‘No, Cerys,’ I replied before smiling broadly at the officers as I rose to my feet. ‘I am not on drugs and what’s more, oh no, what’s that outside the window!’
I was the clever one. The one who always had a plan. Except when it came to choosing what to do with her life, recognizing problems in her relationships and running away from the police. Everything flashed bright red as I hurtled towards the toilets, skipping around pub tables with hastily delivered ‘excuse me’s and ‘beg your pardon’s.
‘Stop!’ called the policeman. ‘Stop right where you are!’
But I couldn’t stop, momentum had got the best of me. Just as I reached out my arm to open the door to the ladies, the door to the ladies opened out towards me, knocking me off balance and sending me flying across the room.
Fantastic, I thought as I toppled backwards. Not only am I going to be arrested, I’m going to be arrested in the pub on Christmas Day in front of the women from my mother’s aqua-aerobics class and I’m going to fall flat on my arse before they carry me away in handcuffs.
Only, instead of hitting the floor, I carried on spiralling backwards as though the ground had opened to swallow me up. It was only when I caught a flash of the terrified face of the policewoman on my way down, I realized what had happened. I had fallen through the open door to the steps to the pub basement.
Just like Cerys had said, they were a death trap.
Before I even had time to cry out for help, everything went black and Christmas number six was over.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My hands were still shaking when I woke up in bed the next morning.
‘What are you doing still in bed, chicken?’ Dad asked, popping his head around the door. ‘He’sbeen.’
‘He can’t bloody stay away!’ I shouted, throwing off the covers and leaping across the room. ‘No, sorry, absolutely not. I’m not doing this again.’
‘Doing what?’ Dad stood on the landing, utterly nonplussed, as I pulled a jumper over my pyjamas and grabbed my handbag off the chest of drawers.
‘All of it!’ I replied. ‘Christmas is cancelled!’
Not stopping to explain further, I dashed downstairs, grabbed a bacon roll and my dad’s car keys and flew out the back door.
With my foot flat on the floor and hunched over the steering wheel like a less stylish (but more puppy-friendly) Cruella de Vil, I hurtled around the Peak District in my dad’s car, aimless and directionless, both metaphorically and literally, since I hadn’t bothered to bring my phone. The roads werepractically deserted as I sped up hill and down dale, circling reservoirs, occasionally honking at terrified ramblers with bits of tinsel woven around their walking sticks, and blasting Steven Baker’s in-car CD collection out of the open windows. Nothing said confused, angry and possibly trapped in an eternal time loop like two Coldplay albums, The Best of U2 and the soundtrack toThe Greatest Showman. The perfect soundtrack to my mental state.
What was I going to do? What if I was stuck here forever? There was so much more I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to fall in love again, I wanted to see the world, I wanted to know if The Rock would ever be president. This couldn’t be it for me, it just couldn’t. After three hours of driving, singing, laughing maniacally and occasionally sobbing, the car began to slow down. I jammed my foot on the accelerator but nothing happened. The engine sputtered, the car lurched forward for a few feet more then rolled to a complete stop.
Note to self, cars need petrol, I thought, cringing at the sight of the little orange needle hovering accusingly over the bright red E on the fuel gauge. High tech, high speech, Hyundai, my arse.
There was only one thing I could do and that was throw a tantrum.