Beth Reekles - It Won’t be Christmas Without You

(God, Christmas dinner – that was always her dad’s domain … What the hell would they do? Would Cara expect her to do it all? They couldn’t not have a roast dinner on Christmas Day.)

It was all Cara’s fault. Cara and that bloody guy she was seeing, George. Eloise had only heard wonderful things about perfect, dashing, handsome George so far, but this made her kind of hate him. He’d ruined Christmas.

Cara had sort of ruined Christmas when she’d phoned a few days ago, to say she wouldn’t be there the whole day. But Eloise could just about live with that. It wouldn’t be great, but they’d still have most of the day, and it wasn’t like she’d be off to Josh’s in the evening like she had the last several Christmases.

She could live with Cara bailing on Christmas morning.

But this?

Christmas was the best time of year. For Eloise, it properly started as early as November. She’d been so excited about going back home and spending a few days with her family, watching the usual suspects on DVD, playing games, eating too much …

And now she’d be waking up on Christmas Day all alone. In a big, empty house.

Alone at Christmas.

Did it get much worse than that?

“You coming?”

“Huh?”

Jen rolled her eyes, absently tapping her card wallet on the dividing wall around Cara’s desk. “Starbucks. I literally just explained. You said you were listening.”

“Sorry.” Cara stared intently at her screen, eyes scanning the email once more, deleting one more exclamation mark before she hit send. She looked up at Jen again. “Sorry. I swear I’m listening this time.”

“Starbucks time. Are you coming?” Cara’s eyes flicked towards Dave’s office, and she barely opened her mouth before Jen added, “Dave was the one who asked if anybody else wanted to go out and grab a Christmas coffee in the first place.”

“I don’t know. I’ve just got so much to get through for next week’s last-minute gifts campaign …” As if on cue, an email from some boutique candle company from North Wales pinged into her inbox. Promptly followed by a reply from the high street retailer they were still hoping to pin down. “I’m just …”

“Oh my God,” Jen sighed, exasperated but half-laughing, “don’t bother. You’ll just have your nose in your phone. What shall I bring you back?”

Jen had started her role in the PR team the same week as Cara had joined the company. Despite the four-year age difference, they’d clicked instantly. It hadn’t been long before their joint coffee breaks and lunches turned into after-work drinks and weekend wanders around the shops. Jen was a brilliant friend, especially at times like this, when she understood how much Cara had on her plate.

The company – Klikit – had been around for maybe four years now, but it had only really started taking off about a year ago, hitting the front page of the App Store, their followers spiking on Twitter until they were real competitors, a real household name. They still had a way to go, and everyone in the office worked hard to make it happen – and Cara loved it. She thrived on the pressure, the new challenges that hit her email inbox every day. She loved the team, the platform, the work, all of it.

But she also loved a good Christmassy coffee.

“Toffee nut. With cream. Unless you end up at Costa instead, then I’ll have the gingerbread latte. Ooh, and grab me a muffin while you’re there? Something festive-flavoured. I don’t care what. So long as it’s not a mince pie. I might vomit if I have to see another mince pie.”

People had been bringing boxes of them into the office for about a month now.

Eloise would have loved it. And Cara had at first – but there were only so many mince pies a person could eat. What was she – Father Christmas?

“Gotcha.” Jen waggled her fingers as a few others wandered over, already wrapped in coats and ready to go. “We’ll see you in, like, an hour.”

Cara waved them all off as they passed by her desk and stuck her head back into her computer, sucked into a world of draft posts and stock images and emails, barely looking up until the smell of toffee nut slid under her nose.

“Love ya.”

“You’re welcome,” Jen sang back. Cara looked up long enough to roll her neck, reviving the muscles there, and taking a long sip of her still-steaming hot latte. Heaven. This was liquid Christmas. Sod eggnog: this was the real magic, right here.

Jen was already chattering away, telling her about the latest office gossip that had surfaced, and Cara gave herself ten minutes to indulge in it. (Because damn, was Molly in Finance really hooking up with Patrick from IT? Didn’t she have a boyfriend, or something?)

Eventually, Jen wandered back to her desk and Cara shifted back into full-on work mode.

When six o’clock hit and she broke off another bit of muffin to munch on, Dave passed by her desk.

“Dude,” he said, “go home.”

He called everyone dude. He even called the cleaning lady dude.

“I will, in a minute. I’ve just …” Ping . Who the hell was even still working at six o’clock to reply to her emails now? Weren’t office hours over?

Cara started replying.

Dave laughed, leaning against the desk next to her. “You don’t have to keep working twelve hours a day, you know. You’re already a shoo-in. You work twice as hard as anyone here. You already do half of my job for me.”

Cara dragged her face away from the screen, and then her eyes a moment later. She smiled and said, “I swear, I’ll go home as soon as I’ve sorted this. I just want to make sure it’s done before I head off.”

What she didn’t add was that she did have to keep working like this, to prove herself. That was how she’d always been, though, in fairness, it wasn’t so much to do with the company as it was her. But, even so, there were people who’d been here since Klikit started who would be interested in Dave’s job. She was twenty-two and had been here only eighteen months. It seemed like way too soon to be looking for a promotion. So yes, she did have to work like this.