I wasn’t looking forward to dining alone, but hopefully the food would be marginally fancier than tonight’s Pot Noodle plan. Plus, I was hoping to shoehorn in some subtle Christmas movie trope-ticking while I was there.
‘Ah, nice. The food’s brilliant. They’ll be chuffed to see you.’
I could only assume that the pub wasn’t exactly popular if they were likely to be excited about an early evening booking for a solo diner. A thought crept in.Should I…?No. Of course I shouldn’t bloody ask him if he fancied joining me there. As if he wouldn’t have better things to do. I changed the subject to prevent the irrelevant thought from lingering.
‘Have you got a busy week coming up?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, always busy at this time of year. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that business is booming, but my days just end up being filled with endless meetings. And it doesn’t help that the venue we’d booked for our Christmas party later this week has cancelled on us and I’ve got a couple of days to sort a plan B.’
‘Yikes! But think of it this way: plan Bs sometimes end up being better anyway.’
Tom puffed his cheeks and blew out the air slowly. ‘I appreciate the positive spin, Mally, but finding a decent venue for twenty people at this time of year? Tough gig.’
‘Ha, yeah, Good luck.’
Silence.Shit, Mally, say something.
‘Your mum’s so great! Funny story, though: I always thought her actual name was Mrs Bee – as in “bumblebee”.’
Oh God, there was that all-over grin again. The shape of his head seemed to alter entirely when he broke into it. I’d never seen a smile so face-changingly wonderful before. And I couldn’t get enough of the fact that something I’d said had caused it.
‘Of course you did!’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I… just like the way your brain works, that’s all.’
I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. So I carried on talking as if he hadn’t said it at all.
‘And your mum’s home is lovely. Believe it or not, I’d never even seen that part of Scarnbrook before.’
I noticed his knuckles blanch slightly as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
‘I mean, why would you have done? None of your mates lived on the estate, did they?’
Oh dear. The nerve I’d unwittingly brushed up against earlier when I mentioned his decision to stay in Scarnbrook seemed to be getting closer to the surface of Tom’s skin. How to make it clear that none of this was intended as a dig at him?
‘Well, I didn’t really have that many friends. Mainly just Elle, in fact, especially after Year Nine when—’
He interrupted me – mouth smiling, but his face not changing its angles at all. ‘Mally, you really don’t have to explain. I’m just saying – we had pretty different upbringings, that’s all.’
Shit, did he think me and my family were, like, wealthy or something back then?
‘You reckon? I don’t think they could have been that different, since we went to the same school and lived in an almost identical postcode.’
‘Can we just, er, change the subject? Those days weren’t exactly, well, the happiest of times for me and my mum.’
Not even a mouth-only smile this time. Accidentally triggering my secret teenage crush’s childhood trauma definitely hadn’t been part of today’s plan. Mind you, neither had accidentally decorating a Christmas tree with him and his mum.
‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Tom, I didn’t mean to—’
He interrupted me again, talking quickly as if the words themselves were in charge. ‘It’s fine. It’s just that my life wasn’t like yours when we were at school. Even before Mum got diagnosed, I never got to do the family package holidays or French exchange trips or swimming lessons at dawn. And then my dad just upped and left us one day because he couldn’t be arsed to deal with Mum’s MS any more. That’s why I had to drop out of sixth form – I had no choice but to go out and start earning money at seventeen. I couldn’t just swan off to uni with my best mate and land on my feet in London.’
Pain pierced through my chest as I processed his words. I thought we were having a nice evening. But now it felt wrong. Every millimetre of my skin prickled with discomfort, my heart racing with adrenalin as I tried to think of a way to defuse this increasingly tense situation. I just wanted to be back in my Hither Green flat, on my sofa, under a blanket, watching a Christmas movie on Channel 5. Not here with someone who I was fast realising I barely knew – and who barely knew me. I had to steer this conversation back to safe ground again.
‘That’s… not an accurate description of my life, Tom.’
‘Fuck. I’m so sorry, Mally, of course it isn’t.’
