Page 99 of Counting Down To You

Tell someone you love them—because we don’t say it often enough. This latest challenge has followed me around since yesterday. It should be easy. I could get up off the couch in the living room, where I’m currently curled up under a blanket, walk into the kitchen, where Mum is humming while she cooks, and tell her I love her. I could do that right this instant, and there would be another challenge completed.

Instead, I have been trying to concentrate on the book I’m reading for a solid hour. Trying and failing, given I’ve managed to read the same paragraph about five times and not taken in a single word. I keep looking at the window, at the rain lashing down outside, like I’m expecting to find something out there.

This should be an easy challenge. I don’t know why I keep putting it off. I don’t know why I keep thinking of someone else, whenever I bring out the slip of paper, currently tucked into my jeans pocket.

I snap the book shut. I need to stop this. It’s a stupid direction to let my thoughts go in. We said goodbye. Yes, he said he’d stick around for a few days, but he’s very much leaving the ball in my court, which is where the ball should stay.

“Everything okay, love?” Mum calls from the kitchen.

“All good!” I shout back, getting to my feet. “Be back down in a sec.” I run upstairs, intending to swap the book for another on the bookshelf. Maybe I need a really dark thriller, where loads of people get murdered. That should be a good distraction.

Instead, I sit on the bed, pulling the calendar over to me. There are only two squares left. I touch a finger to each of them in turn. Two more squares, until this connection with Robyn is over. Will that be when it’s time to say goodbye? Because I won’t have any choice but to do so?

I don’t want it to be over. I don’t want to have to face the new year without her—the first New Year I’ll go into without Robyn. But still, with trembling fingers, I open the next challenge.

Go to the Ritz for champagne on Christmas Eve.

Despite the emotion churning in my chest, the corners of my mouth lift. Robyn and I used to talk about spending Christmas Eve at the Ritz all the time, about being one of those people who could afford to have Christmas lunch there. I’m just glad Robyn didn’t instruct me to stay overnight, given I’m going to have no income soon. If I don’t lose my nerve, that is.

I remember Robyn hooking her arm through mine as we walked past the hotel. “Someday I’ll be famous enough that they’ll be begging me to spend the night there, just so photographers can take photos of me leaving.” She nudged me in the ribs with our joined elbows. “Then they’ll be wondering who my sexy friend is.”

I snorted. “If you ever get famous enough for that, please warn me in advance when you think the photographers will be out.”

“Can’t guarantee that, Al,” Robyn said breezily. “You know what the paparazzi are like.”

I smooth the paper out on top of the calendar. I don’t want to put this one off for a whole year, but I can’t think of anyone to go with at such short notice. My mum and Graham are going to a neighbor’s party; Cal has gone back home and is now hours away from London, as are the majority of my university friends. James and his girlfriend have a fancy dinner booked, and I’m not sure I’m up to spending Christmas Eve with them anyway, given I’ve committed to spending the whole day with everyone tomorrow.

There is one person I could ask. One person I want to ask. But I can’t. I shouldn’t. No. I need to stop thinking about him. I need to put it behind me and move on.

Besides, I think, standing up determinedly, who says I need to go with someone else, anyway?

—

I wake on Christmas Eve with a weight in my stomach that I don’t immediately understand. I switch on the bedside lamp, blink to adjust to the light, then roll onto my side, looking at my calendar. Looking at the one small square left to open, under the number 24.

This is it. I’ve made it to the end. Okay, yes, there may be one or two challenges that I haven’t managed to do yet, but I’ve done a pretty good job, haven’t I? And now, after I open that last little square, that will be it. No more challenges to keep me moving. No more Robyn, guiding me. What if I lose a part of Robyn then too? What if I start finding it harder to call her voice into focus? I couldn’t bear it, if that happens.

So I don’t open it. Instead, I get dressed, then head into the kitchen, where Mum is already up, making pancakes—a tradition from when James and I were younger, pancakes on Christmas Eve morning. The fact that Mum is doing it now makes me smile. Graham is there too, in his dressing gown and slippers, getting cutlery out of the drawer to set the table.

Mum beams as I come up behind her, wrapping my arms round her waist. “Happy Christmas Eve, Mum.”

She pats my hand, the other wielding a spatula. “Happy Christmas Eve, my darling.”

“Happy Christmas Eve, Ali!” Graham calls, louder than perhaps necessary, from the other end of the counter, where he is juicing a lemon. It’s nice that he’s in here, helping. My dad claimed to love the holidays, but he never got involved in all the Christmas prep, leaving everything to Mum. I’ve wondered more than once if he ever actually knew what the presents from him under the tree were, until they were opened in front of him. I wonder now if he ever thinks of me and James on Christmas Day. A fleeting thought, before I push it away.

“You think you might come to the party with us later, Ali?” Graham asks, as Mum expertly flips a pancake. His voice is friendly, warm—I can tell he would genuinely be glad to have me there. I’ve not spent much time with Graham. Maybe I ought to rectify that.

“I wish I could, but I’ve got plans this evening, sorry.”

“Not at all, not at all.”

“That’s nice you have plans, love,” Mum says, tipping a cooked pancake onto a plate. “Where are you going?”

“Ah…to the Ritz.”

“The Ritz.” Her eyes widen a fraction, and Graham lets out a whistle and a “Fancy.”

My automatic reaction is to want to brush it off, to make up some vague reason for it. But I think of sitting across from Mum at the kitchen table the other morning, of the two of us saying we would try harder to talk to each other. So I smile, and for once I don’t mind all that much that the smile is a bit sad. “It’s something Robyn and I always wanted to do.”