Питер Джеймс - Short Shockers - Collection Two

‘No, she didn’t — she didn’t have a head injury. I’m afraid, in the collision with the ferry, your daughter was cut in half by the propeller.’

Susan took the black lace-trimmed teddy from the bottom drawer of her pine chest, where it had lain carefully washed and neatly folded for twelve months. The satin trickled through her fingers as she held it to her body and she was shocked how rough her hands felt in contrast to its softness, and by how drawn and tired her face looked in the mirror against its sheen.

She was frightened that Tony would not come back tonight, and she could not bear the thought of spending Christmas without him. They had never spent Christmas apart before, but she had a feeling this year was going to bring some break with tradition, and she was uneasy.

Thirty-three and growing old. Growing old and frightened , she thought as she parted the curtains and stared into the darkness, watching the fairy lights on her neighbour’s tree through the ghost of her own face at the window. A mist of fine rain clung like a swarm of midges to the glow of the street lamp, and tears clung to her eyelashes.

She looked up, wondering if he was up there now beyond the canopy of clouds. There were times on clear nights when she had seen navigation lights winking beneath the stars and had wondered if it was him, returning. The clouds frightened her, made her think back… but she suppressed the memory. It was Christmas Eve and he always managed to make it back, somehow.

She had had no message from him, although that was not unusual, and she understood how the wives and girlfriends of hostages must feel, never knowing, never hearing; except Tony wasn’t being held captive, unless it was by temptation. He was one of those mercurial and unpredictable men, with an aura of the untamed adventurer about him and an appetite for life that women found attractive. She had noticed his eyes roving at parties.

And yet he swore he had never been unfaithful. Until recently, Susan had believed him. Her friends had tried to tell her to forget him, to move on, and his long silence and her feeling about the break with tradition were beginning to convince her also. The stewardesses on the small private airline were chosen for their looks. Tony flew the world with them. It was hard to believe he could have always resisted.

Even so, she kept her hope and prepared the bed, let her long brown hair down because he liked it that way, put on his favourite perfume, moisturized her hands and ran them down her slender, freshly waxed legs, savouring their smoothness. She slipped out of her clothes, shivering from the cold air on her naked skin, and put on the teddy, which he had bought her for Christmas five years ago, and which it had become a tradition for her to wear in bed on Christmas Eve.

The first time they had made love was on Christmas Eve, up in her attic bedroom at her parents’ home in Wembley whilst they were out at a party. Afterwards they had lain in silence, the windowpanes drenched in the darkness of the night, wrapping paper rustling at the end of the bed when they moved their feet. She could still remember vividly how they had held each other tightly, urgently, pressing against each other for warmth and reassurance, and they had made one of those vows that young people in love make, and in time can so easily forget.

They vowed that whatever happened in the future, they would always make love on Christmas Eve.

So far, in fourteen years, neither of them had broken the vow. It had become a tradition between them, a night of intense sensuality that grew stronger each year, fuelling in Susan a sense of the magic of Christmas that she remembered as a child but once thought had been lost forever.

Tony had usually managed to wangle the rosters, and on those times when he had not been able to, and all looked impossible, fog had come down and grounded the aircraft, or there had been a mechanical problem and he had been released from duty. Once, in an act of sheer bravado, he had borrowed his boss’s plane and flown in from Monaco at midnight. She remembered that Christmas well. A tear rolled from her eye; her lashes crushed it and she smiled — she did not want him to arrive home and find her in tears.

She lit a candle, as she always did on Christmas Eve, placed it on Tony’s bedside table, slid his card beneath it, and slipped into bed. She read for a while, waiting, listening. It was ten past twelve. At half past she switched off her bedside light. The flame of the candle burned steadily, undisturbed. He liked to make love with a light on, liked to watch her, liked to unclip the fasteners of the teddy himself. ‘You’re my Christmas present,’ he would say, and then lean forward to kiss her. Everywhere.

For a long time they had given each other a stocking, but that was a tradition she had stopped, concentrating instead on the children. Christmas had been special to her childhood and she wanted it to be special to theirs too. But she had never dreamed that it would one day dominate her every waking moment. That it would become a point on the horizon to which each year was anchored. The port in the storm. The magical time when wounds could be healed and sadness forgotten and hope restored.

She had never dreamed that it would be memories of Christmases past that gave her the strength to get up each morning, to get through the spring and into the summer. And that August and September would be months of deep doldrums in which the memory had faded and doubt would seep into her like acid from a corroded battery, eating away, leaving wounds and pain and scars.

Then with the first crisp snap of an autumn chill the memory would come alive again and hope would wrap itself snugly around her with the knowledge that Christmas lay just beyond those first long nights of the autumn and the fierce equinox gales that would vandalize the landscape. Christmas would follow with calm, with serenity, with carols and games of Monopoly, with long walks and mince pies, with the laughter of old friends and the pleasure of old traditions. One very special tradition.

She closed her eyes, but knew, like all the Christmas Eves of her childhood, this was one of those nights when she could not even remember how to fall asleep. In the silence of the house she could hear the insistent rustling of paper, and she smiled — the kids already rummaging through their stockings. They wouldn’t actually open their presents tonight — she had taught them they must not until the morning — but they would be feeling the shapes of the packages, wondering, trying to guess. Then she heard the faint click of the front door and her breathing quickened.

It clicked again, shut. She waited for the next click of the deadlock, and the final clank of the safety chain, then his footsteps. Routine, she thought; she knew his routine so well and you had to be careful in marriage not to turn traditions into routines.

She lay and waited and it was the expectation that gave her her deepest arousal. He moved slowly, hanging up his coat then going into the kitchen and sifting through the mountain of post she had left waiting for him. Her stomach felt like a snowstorm that had been shaken inside a glass paperweight.

He was moving up the stairs, his pace lighter and quicker with every step, as if he sensed her excitement and it was charging his own. He opened the bedroom door and the candle jigged in the sudden draught, and shadows danced beyond her closed eyelids. Her lips released the smile they could no longer contain as she sensed his shadow in front of her now, felt the fresh sheets sliding back and the sudden cold air on her skin, and she knew he was watching, knew he was lowering his head to kiss her; she felt the caress of his hands, then his fingers, fumbling clumsily, as they always did, with the fastener.