Page 6 of It Happened on Christmas Eve
Adam snorts. ‘You shouldn’t be mean to me, you know. I could tell my mum. Your boss.’
‘You wouldn’t.’ I glance over at him nervously. His mouth is in a very serious line.
I imagine Adam telling Marcy that I was mean to him, her precious angel son, and I see the chance of training to be a designer exploding into a million pieces. Me staying an assistant forever. Sitting in that open plan office with the other fools.
I clamp my mouth shut and seethe at the road.
Adam Westbury is a total weasel.
Chapter Three
Christmas Eve 3:20 p.m.
The hour it takes to get back to Notting Hill turns into an hour and a half as traffic jams up on the motorway. Even when Adam refrains from turning on the radio, or humming and singing, he is still annoying by way of the fact that his phone buzzes and dings with messages every thirty seconds. And then there’s the dramatic noise of self-pity he makes every time we go over a bump in the road that slightly nudges his leg. I refrain from complaining, however, in case he does make true on his threat to tell Marcy of my unwillingness to tolerate him. That would cap off this horrible holiday, this horrible year, this turning out to be a horrible day, just perfectly.
I breathe a sigh of relief as I pull up at Elgin Crescent. There. Job done. Prince Adam has been safely delivered home. I’ll help him out of the car and back into his chair, wheel him into his flat and he can hum and sing and be a weasel on his own time.
I open up the door and unpack the wheelchair from the boot, helping him into it. He sniffs my head again as he scrambles into the chair. What a weirdo.
‘It really is an awesome smell. Granny Smiths. A superior apple.’
I start to push Adam towards number one hundred and twenty when he asks me where I’m going.
‘I’m dropping you off? I thought you said one-twenty Elgin Crescent?’
‘Um, well, the thing is I have a couple of errands to run before I can go home.’
‘So?’
‘So… I need someone to help me. I can’t get in and out of places, or even down the street by myself.’ He gestures at his leg. ‘And with the snow. It’s really coming down now! I could use my crutches, but the ice will make it dangerous…’
Is he kidding me? He wants me to push him around to do errands at half past three on Christmas Eve? After I’ve just done a two and a half hour journey to pick him up because he was foolish enough to break his leg? I want to say this to his face but I can see that the threat to tell his mummy over me is right there on the tip of his tongue. I yank my hat further down over my head so that it covers my eyebrows, and pull my coat further around me, buttoning it right up to the neck. I am very cold. My house is very warm. I want to be at my house.
‘Don’t you have friends who can take you on these errands?’ I ask, my teeth chattering a little as I do so.
‘Are you joking? It’s Christmas Eve. They’ve got plans.’
‘I’ve got plans!’
‘What are your plans?’
‘Just… stuff. None of your beeswax.’
‘Stuff! Sounds thrilling.’
‘Can someone else not take you around? Where’s your girlfriend?’
‘We broke up.’
I see a flash of something darker in his jolly demeanour, but it lasts less than a second and then he’s smiling at me again.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, reaching out my hand to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder.
‘Yep. Was drowning my sorrows when I did this.’ He points at the cast on his leg and pulls and exaggerated face of self-pity.
Against my wishes I feel a tug of compassion for him. Getting your heart broken at Christmas is the worst and I should know. And the broken leg on top of that. That’s terrible luck.
I peek at my watch and sigh.
