Fiona Harper: Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses

© 2008

Dear Reader,

Everyone has their own family Christmas traditions, don’t they? I discovered that all-important fact when I got married. In my family we used to rush downstairs on Christmas morning and tear open our presents before breakfast. Imagine the sheer self-restraint I had to show when I discovered that my husband’s family opened theirs after Christmas dinner, and only when all the washing up was done and everyone had a cup of tea in their hands. How I managed to hold out that first year, I’ll never know.

Anyway, my husband and I have managed to combine our families’ different Christmas cultures and have come up with a few of our own, too. One thing I absolutely cannot be without on Christmas day is bread sauce! It sounds odd, but it’s a traditional English accompaniment to roast turkey, and so easy to make!

First, fill a pan with a pint of milk. Stud an onion with three cloves and place in the milk, along with a bay leaf. Bring the milk to a boil, then remove from the heat. Discard the onion and the bay leaf, add four ounces of white breadcrumbs and season. Cook for five minutes, stirring until the sauce has thickened. Remove from the heat and stir in one ounce of butter and four tablespoons of single cream. Spoon into a serving dish, sprinkle with grated nutmeg and, voilà, you have a little bit of heaven to go with your Christmas lunch. Once you’ve tried it, you’ll never go back-I promise!

Christmas blessings and a happy New Year.

Fiona Harper

MOST women would have given at least one kidney to be in Louise’s shoes-both literally and figuratively. The shoes in question were hot off the Paris catwalk, impossibly high heels held to her foot by delicately interwoven silver straps. The main attraction, however, was the man sitting across the dinner table from her. The very same hunk of gorgeousness who had topped a magazine poll of ‘Hollywood’s Hottest’ only last Thursday.

Louise stared at her cutlery, intent on tracing a figure of eight pattern on her dessert spoon and eavesdropped on conversations in the busy restaurant. Other people’s conversations. Other people’s lives.

Her dinner companion shifted in his seat and the heel of his boot made jarring contact with the little toe of her right foot. She jerked away and leaned over to rub it.

‘Thanks a bunch, Toby!’ she said, glaring at him from half under the table.

Toby stopped grinning at a pair of bleached blonde socialites who were in the process of wafting past their table and turned to face her, eyebrows raised. ‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ she muttered and sat up straight again, carefully crossing her ankles and tucking them under her chair. Her little toe was still warm and pulsing.

The waiter appeared with their exquisite-looking entrées and Toby’s eyebrows relaxed back into their normal ‘sexily brooding’ position as he started tearing into his guinea-fowl. Louise’s knife and fork stayed on the tablecloth.

He hadn’t even bothered with his normal comments about the carbs on her plate. She was supposed to be getting rid of that baby weight, remember? Never mind that Jack had just turned eight. His father was still living in a dream world if he thought she was going to be able to squeeze back into those size zero designer frocks hanging in the back of her wardrobe.

But then Toby had emotionally checked out of their marriage some time ago. She kept up the pretence for Jack’s sake, posed and smiled for the press and celebrity magazines and fiercely denied any rumours of a rift. He hadn’t ever said he’d stopped loving her, but it was evident in the things he didn’t do, the things he didn’t say. And then there was the latest rumour…

She picked up her cutlery and attacked her pasta.

‘Slow down, Lulu! No one’s timing you,’ Toby said, eyes still on his plate.

Lulu . When they’d first met, she’d thought it had been cute that he’d picked up on, and used, her baby brother’s attempts at her name. Lulu was exotic, exciting…and a heck of a lot more interesting than plain old Louise. She’d liked being Lulu back then.

Now she just wanted him to see Louise again. She stopped eating and looked at him, waiting for him to raise his head, give her a smile, his trademark cheeky wink-anything.

He waved for the waiter and asked for another bottle of wine. Then she saw him glance across and nod at the two blondes, now seated a few tables away, but not once in the next ten minutes did he look at her. Her seat might as well have been empty.

‘Toby?’

‘What?’ Finally he glanced in her direction. But once, where she had been able to see her dreams coming to life, there was only a vacancy.

He rubbed his front tooth with his forefinger and it made a horrible squeaking noise. ‘Do I have spinach on my teeth, or something?’

She shook her head. What spinach would dare sully the picture of masculine perfection sitting opposite her? The thought was almost sacrilegious. She was tempted to laugh.

The words wouldn’t come. How did you ask what she wanted to ask? And how did you stand the answer?

She tried to say it with her eyes instead. When she’d been modelling, photographers had always raved about the ‘intensity’ in her eyes. She tried to show it all-the emptiness inside her, the magnetic force that kept the pair of them revolving around each other, the small spark of hope that hadn’t quite been extinguished yet. If he’d just do it once…really connect with her…

‘Jeez, Lulu. Cheer up, will-’

A chime from the phone in his pocket interrupted him. He slid it out and held it shielded in his hand and slightly under the table. The only change in his features was a slight curve of his bottom lip. Now he looked at her properly. He searched her face for a reaction, and then returned the mobile to his jacket pocket and returned his gaze to his plate.

She waited.

He shrugged. ‘Work stuff. You know…’

Unfortunately she had the feeling that she did know. And she kept knowing all the way through dinner as she shoved one forkful after another into her mouth, tasting nothing.

The rumour was true.

All afternoon, since she’d spoken to her friend on the phone, she’d hoped it was all silly speculation, someone putting two and two together and coming up with five. Six years ago, when the tabloids had been jumping with the stories of Toby’s ‘secret love trysts’ with his leading lady, she’d refused to believe it, had given interview after interview denying there had been any truth in it. During the second ‘incident’ she’d done the same but, while her outward performance had been just as impassioned, inside she’d been counting all the things that hadn’t added up: the hushed phone calls, the extra meetings with his agent. Never enough to pin him down, but just enough to make her die a little more each time she shook her head for the reporters and dismissed it as nonsense.

She blocked out the busy restaurant with her eyelids. No way could she go through that again. And no way could she put Jack through it. He’d been too young to understand before, but he was reading so well now. What if he saw something on the front of a newspaper? She squeezed her jaw together. What kind of message was she giving to her son by lying to the world and letting Toby use her as a doormat? What kind of man would he become if this was his example?