‘Not too bad, I managed to get out earlier than I expected,’ Dev answered with a polite nod, seating himself on the arm of my chair, his hand absently curling around the back of my neck. ‘Thankfully, not that many poorly hearts to take care of this Christmas.’
‘You’re so good, you make me sick,’ Manny said as Dad handed him a glass of red wine.
‘I love you too, Manny,’ Dev raised his glass in his direction before turning to me. ‘Is that your giant suitcasein the hall?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on, you planning to move in?’
I fingered my necklace, a very special silver sixpence on a chain that I never took off.
‘I wanted to be prepared for all occasions,’ I replied, nodding. ‘Just in case I ended up stuck here for a while.’
‘Seems unlikely we’d get two white Christmases in a row,’ he said. ‘Have they forecast it?’
I kissed him gently on the lips and smiled.
‘Stranger things have happened, trust me.’
It really had been an eventful year. I didn’t go back to Abbott & Howe. I sent in my resignation and was informed by HR that I had more than eight weeks of rolled-over holiday allowance accrued so I wouldn’t need to work my notice. For the first few weeks, I didn’t do very much at all other than read books, watch films and spend as much time with my friends and family as humanly possible. It was incredible. Then a friend of a friend asked if I was interested in taking on a maternity cover position at her law firm, still corporate but in the charity sector, and I said yes. Ten months later, I was still there and in two months, when the contract was up, I’d find something else. Something closer to Cambridge, I thought, looking up at Dev.
Kind, patient, brilliant Dev. We took things slow at first, so slow we were practically moving backwards. It was several weeks before I invited him to stay at my flat, weeks we spent really getting to know each other, as time ticked by for both of us. Thankfully, he was all the things he’d shown himself to be and so much more besides. Not only was Dev a good cook, he knew what a toiletbrush was and wasn’t afraid to use it. He loved to read almost as much as I did and I’d lost track of the number of weekends we’d spent lying at opposite ends of his settee, our legs entwined, lost in our books. And not that it was themostimportant thing but teenage Gwen would have been delighted to know the sex was ridiculous. It was so good it made me want to make new friends just so I had more people to talk to about it over brunch. Cerys was certainly sick of hearing me go on and Manny had barred the subject altogether. For someone who had been so dedicated to getting me a shag, he really hit his maximum quota of sex chat very early on in my new relationship. But regardless, it was immense. Who knew talking to each other inside and outside of the bedroom was the key to a happy and fulfilling relationship? Such a wild and unthinkable concept. But it wasn’t all lazy Sundays and excellent sex, Dev worked long hours, his schedule was unpredictable and he brought new meaning to the term ‘hangry’. Technically, it was more like ‘hamotional’. I once found him sat in front of his fridge, practically in tears, because I’d eaten the last KitKat while he was at work and he didn’t know how to cope. It turns out it’s tricky to snack in the middle of open-heart surgery and when the boy got home from a long hard day of saving lives, he needed his KitKats. It was fair. So no, he wasn’t perfect. He was a real human being with faults and flaws and an inability to close a cupboard door after he had opened it instead of a dreamy teenage crush who only lived in the pages of my diary. This Dev was real, and even better, this Dev was mine.
‘Now that we’re all here,’ Dad stood up and raised one finger in the air. ‘I’ve got a surprise.’
‘Not fireworks?’ I replied, sitting bolt upright and searching the room for flammable material.
‘Even better.’
I watched as he lowered himself carefully to his knees and crawled underneath the Christmas tree. With his backside waving in the air, he backed out, dragging a large, solid-looking black box with him.
‘Gen 3 Personal Wonder Wand?’ Manny guessed.
‘You’re joking but I got some real use out of that,’ I replied, pinching at my tight shoulders. ‘Dad was right, it is a bloody good back massager.’
‘Steven, sit down before you give yourself a heart attack,’ Nan ordered as Dad dragged the box merrily across the room to the TV. ‘I’m not spending Christmas visiting you in hospital, especially not the Northern General. That place was practically a gulag.’
‘It’s one of the best hospitals in the country,’ Dev murmured in my ear.
‘Don’t say that any louder or you’ll be spending Christmas in the garage,’ I advised in a whisper.
‘Come off it, Myfanwy, fit as a butcher’s dog, I am,’ Dad insisted as he opened the box with a ‘ta-da’. Inside were what looked like hundreds of discs, all in little clear plastic cases, all of them labelled. He pulled one out and carefully placed it in the brand-new Blu-ray player that Cerys also got in the divorce (along with the flat-screen TV, his stereo, his record collection and anything else that might have brought Oliver joy). ‘I had the rest of the family films transferred to DVD! And I thought we could watch one tonight, new Christmas Eve tradition.’
The TV blinked into life, Mum and Dad’s living room filling the screen.
‘Oh Christ, it’s the nineties,’ Cerys groaned as she appeared on the screen. ‘If I see my Rachel cut, I’m leaving the room!’
‘I bet you looked great,’ Drew insisted as the camera panned around the rest of the family. Mum, Dad, Uncle Jim and Aunt Pauline, Granny and Grandad Baker, followed by Nan, and Grandad Collins.
‘Such a handsome man,’ Nan said as Gerald took her hand.
‘A lucky man,’ he replied and they shared a smile, Gerald looking at her as though all his Christmases had come at once.
‘Not done yet,’ Dad said, tapping the TV screen. ‘Here comes the main event.’
‘Oh no,’ Manny gasped, all the colour draining from his face. ‘It can’t be.’
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked as my mother and Cerys began to laugh. ‘What is it?’
‘You don’t remember?’ he said, holding his hands over Drew’s eyes. ‘Get Dev out of here, before it’s too late.’
‘No chance,’ Dev replied as he scooted off the arm of the chair and onto the floor next to my dad. ‘Whatever this is, I’m not missing it.’