‘Why isn’t he here?’
‘Because this is our day. I’m not doing a Kieran and gatecrashing it with a man I kissed for the first time yesterday.’
Shay grabbed her phone and ran around the table to take a snap of the three of us, all rosy cheeked, skewed party hats and satisfied smiles.
‘Send him this, with our very best Christmassy wishes, and that we insist upon meeting him soon.’
‘He doesn’t even know who you are yet,’ I said, sliding lower in my seat.
‘What? We’re the most important people in your life.’
‘You were the most important people in my life. If I told him about you, I’d have to explain about Leo, and ShayKi and the rest of it, and I didn’t want all that contaminating a new friendship.’
‘Contaminating?’ Kieran furrowed his brow. ‘Is that how you see my brother? As a contaminant?’
‘No. I saw him as my beautiful husband, who ended up the most painful, horrific, awful thing to happen to me, that I couldn’t face going over again when I had to cope with a baby and everything else. Obviously, now we’ve kissed I’ll tell him.’ I frowned. ‘If we’re going to be dating or whatever, he needs to know.’
Shay forwarded me the photo and when I dug my phone out of a coat pocket to send Beckett a message about how my old friends were visiting and wanted to say hi, I found two missed calls from him, the first around four-thirty that morning. I’d left my phone in my bag, still on silent after the rehearsal, last night. After the shock of Kieran turning up, and the full-on day, I’d completely forgotten to look at it.
‘Call him back!’ Shay insisted. ‘A post-kiss follow-up call the next day is a good sign.’
I tried, but there was no answer, so I put my phone away and we got on with exchanging gifts. Mine were hastily bought from Hatherstone market that morning, but I knew they’d appreciate the Major Oak T-shirt and silver arrow earrings I’d found on one of the touristy stalls.
They had bought me a gorgeous pair of Grace Tyndale walking boots. She was a shoe designer local to Hatherstone, and had a range of Sherwood Forest-themed boots. This pair were covered in mushrooms and beetles and I loved them. They had bought a whole sack-load of gifts for Bob, including a ShayKi hat and gloves from the baby range, and a pile of toys he wouldn’t be interested in for months.
We spent the rest of the evening belting out our favourite karaoke classics and stuffing in cheese and crisps on top of our monster dinner.
Somewhere in those hazy hours around midnight, I blabbed to Shay about Kieran. Kieran knew I would; that was one reason he’d told me.
‘You know, if you two want kids, you really need to stop faffing about,’ I said when Kieran had nipped out to grab their overnight bags from the car.
‘Who said I want kids?’ Shay drawled back, lolling on the opposite end of the sofa to me, her feet in my lap.
‘You did, many times. What’s new is that you haven’t denied that all those previous denials were denying the truth.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She couldn’t have sounded more half-hearted if she’d tried. Quarter-hearted, maybe?
I sat up. ‘I’m talking about accepting that he’s completely in love with you.’
She pursed her lips, picking at a stray thread on the throw Beckett had bought.
Beckett – why hadn’t he messaged me yet?
‘There’s been times when I’ve wondered whether he might be. I mean, the string of terrible girlfriends is a classic giveaway. And I know he’s not in love with you. No offence.’
‘Yuck. None taken.’ I leaned over and took hold of her hand. ‘He’s your person, isn’t he?’
Shay spoke slowly, as if working it out as she went. ‘I honestly never thought so. Or at least, I knew he was my person, but dismissed the feelings as nothing more than friendship. You know how much it aggravated me when people assumed we were together, or should be together. Why can’t a boy and girl simply be close, without needing to make it romantic? I didn’t want to kiss Kieran. I wanted to hang out with him. Every day, more than anyone else. And then, the business, and working, and the odd time there was a flash of maybe attraction or our gaze lingered a few seconds too long… it was easy to push to one side, and pretend it was a silly moment.’
‘You always hated his girlfriends. That’s the other half of the secretly-in-love-with-my-best-friend cliché.’
‘You hated his girlfriends!’
‘I knew he was with them for the wrong reasons, so they wouldn’t last. I wasn’t jealous like you were.’
‘Of course I was jealous, he was choosing to hang out with boring, fluffy women he had nothing in common with instead of me. The difference was, I had no desire to paw him all the time, unlike the girlfriends.’
‘You’ve been talking in the past tense. What changed?’
