‘Why isn’t she spending it with her own family?’ Tom asked, confused.
Lou looked at him strangely for a second, then sighed. ‘She doesn’t have any family left, Tom. This is her first Christmas without her mum, and there’s not really anyone else.’
‘I don’t understand – no aunts, cousins, uncles? What about her dad, he’s still alive isn’t he?’
‘Things with her dad are … complicated. Look, I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t sitting on her own at Christmas. I can’t go to check at the flat cause I’m stuck here all bloody day.’ As if to highlight her plight Lou’s bleep started buzzing obnoxiously. ‘Arghh! See what I mean? Look, just forget about it, okay. Finish your ward round and go eat Mummy’s cooking. What do you care?’
‘I’ll go over there after I finish,’ he forced out, running a hand through his hair in frustration. He didn’t want to care, but the thought of Frankie sitting alone in that small flat on Christmas day made something in his chest contract painfully.
‘Don’t do me any favours, Weasel. I know you don’t give a shit.’
‘Lou, for Christ’s sake of course I bloody care about her.Shedumpedme,remember?’
Lou let out a small muted scream and poked him in the chest again.
‘Stop doing that!’ he snapped, rubbing his chest again. The bitch had managed to zero in on the exact same spot.
‘No, you stop. Stop being such a pussy,’ she bit out. ‘She dumped me,’ she whined in a fake, high-pitched voice. ‘Why don’t you man-up already? You let her push you away, you idiot.’
‘She’s not interested. She said some things –’
‘Aw, did the poor baby get his precious little feelings hurt?’ She rolled her eyes in disgust, then glared at him. ‘I should knee you where it hurts for being so pathetic.’
Tom took a cautious step back. He knew that in all likelihood this was not an empty threat. He’d already been crippled and nearly had a hole punched through to his lungs. He wasn’t going to risk his balls as well.
‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ he told her, surreptitiously bringing both his hands down to cover his boys. ‘Believe it or not I do care about her. I’ll go and check on her after I’m done. You don’t have any other options anyway.’
Lou eyed him for a moment, ‘Okay, Weasel,’ she reluctantly agreed. ‘But if you upset her you can kiss goodbye to your ability to sire children.’
Tom took another nervous step back and Lou’s lips twitched. Just as she turned to go, she whirled back and pretended to make a menacing lunge for him. He let out a very satisfying girly shriek and covered his groin more firmly. She walked away with her laughter echoing around the hallway.
‘Crazy bitch,’ he muttered as he walked back to the ward round.
*****
‘Frankie, I know you’re up there, now open the goddamn door.’
It was the fifth time Tom had pressed the buzzer for the intercom, and he was losing patience with being ignored. He’d seen the curtains twitch the first time he buzzed up. He knew Frankie was in.
‘Hello?’ Finally he heard her voice through the intercom. ‘Um, who is this?’ He sighed and banged his head on the door once. She had to be the most frustrating woman he had ever met.
‘I’m not going anywhere until you let me up, Frankie.’
‘Oh, all right,’ he heard her huff, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
He was starving and freezing his arse off out on the pavement. He wanted to sort this bullshit out now and get to his mum’s for Christmas dinner before those little bastards gobbled up all his turkey.
Once he’d trudged up the stairs he saw Frankie poking her head out of the flat, looking uncomfortable but adorable, with her hair right up on the top of her head in a messy bun, pajama bottoms – and, to his shock, she had on one of his favourite jumpers. He had thought that his mum had finally decided to throw it away (it was years old and the wool was unravelling at the sleeves, with holes in the elbows), but he now realized that the sneaky little thing had stolen it.
Suddenly his bad mood evaporated. Something about Frankie stealing his jumper and wearing it to mooch around the flat made him feel hopeful for the first time in the last three weeks.
‘Interesting outfit,’ he said, fighting a grin. Frankie started, and then flicked her eyes down to what she’d obviously forgotten she was wearing, before looking back up at him and flushing bright red.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, blocking his way into the flat. Tom was not about to waste time arguing in the corridor. His Christmas day starvation was becoming an emergency situation. He moved towards her, and when she realized that he was not going to stop, with no other choice, she leapt back and he forged into the flat.
Frankie had set herself up on the sofa with a duvet and was watchingGone with the Wind, something he knew she watched every Christmas, as she’d confided this to him on one of the many occasions they had been cuddled up together of an evening. Her taste in films was one of the weirdest he’d ever encountered. She loved horrors, and, if given a choice, would watch them almost exclusively; but her favourite character from any film was Scarlet O’Hara.
Tom thought this was odd considering he couldn’t think of any character less similar to Frankie. Then again, he knew that she wished she could be more confident, and maybe she aspired to Scarlet’s unashamed arrogance. Tom himself thought that Frankie had the strength of Scarlet O’Hara without any of the bitchiness, and wouldn’t change her for the world.
