Kit.
Haf’s breath catches in her throat. She’s so beautiful, positively radiant in a flowing dark jade dress that falls off her strong shoulders, accessorised with a gold matt walking stick with a curved handle. She stands with a couple of people around their age that Haf doesn’t recognise, school friends, perhaps. And when she laughs, the sound is lost in the music and the sound of the crowd, but Haf knows the sound by heart.
And then Kit looks up.
Their eyes meet, and it’s like the rest of the world falls away, and it’s only the two of them in the whole universe, never mind the ballroom.
The little half-smile curves on her red lips, and she nods her head at Haf’s dress. In return, Haf swishes it and laughs.
Kit raises a glass in cheers, and Haf raises hers in return, and mouths, ‘Happy Christmas Eve.’
The spell is broken as Laurel appears next to Kit, and they all animatedly chatter, catching up on the last year of gossip and stories and life.
When Haf goes home for Christmas, her school friends have a standing arrangement to meet in the pub where they spent lunchtimes playing pool in during high school. Even if they don’t keep in touch all year, they’ll be there still, even with new partners and new babies. Doing that in a literal ball in your literal childhood home is just another life. Another world.
Christopher finds her, and they return to the dance floor, spinning through arrangements of pop songs. They even swap with his parents, Otto gently swaying her to ‘Underneath the Christmas Tree’while Esther and Christopher bop around them happily, both laughing and caught up in the reverie.
The hours slip by, dancing broken up with finally getting a plateful of food from the buffet. As the night they met, Christopher holds the plate and Haf loads them up with food, even though a member of staff offers to fill it up for them. Thin little toasts with rare beef and a dollop of creamy horseradish sauce. Smoked salmon blinis by the dozen, and ones topped with what she’s pretty sure is caviar. She has never eaten caviar, or even seen it in real life, and so she absolutely wants to eat it, just so she can say she has. There are little cones of whipped blue cheese and fig jam that look a little like savoury ice-cream cones, and tiny cheddar tartlets. Next to those are grilled prawns and bacon-wrapped scallops on long sticks, arranged around little bowls of sauces to dip them in. And at one end is a display of pastel macarons, which Haf plans to empty, given half the chance.
They take up a table in a corner with their one laden plate.
‘I’m sad you didn’t make me a rude picture,’ Christopher comments.
‘Yes, I did,’ says Haf, pointing at a pile of meat and olives she’s fashioned to look like a vulva.
‘Oh good God,’ he laughs.
‘Slightly concerning that you can’t find the clitoris even when it’s on a plate,’ she teases, and he swats at her with a scallop lollipop. Waving food in her general direction is a mistake, of course, and she bites the end off it.
‘Christ,’ he says, looking at the ragged end of it. ‘I’m quite glad you’re not really my girlfriend now.’
They tease and laugh and play with their food like children until Laurel joins them, slumping at the table.
‘Cheese and rice, running a party is always so exhausting. My feet are completely rancid in these shoes.’
‘I’m sorry, did you just say “cheese and rice”?’ Haf says, looking at Christopher for backup.
‘It’s the polite way of “taking the Lord’s name”, according to my auntie who insists I don’t blaspheme in her presence. And she’s been here all day prepping for the party, so now obviously I can’t stop saying it.’ Laurel sighs, rolling her ankles gently.
‘Go barefoot?’ suggests Haf.
‘And subject the guests to her stinky feet?’ Christopher teases.
‘Don’t be rude,’ Haf says, tapping him with an empty lollipop stick.
‘No, truly, he’s right. My feet are awful. Too much squeezing into tiny little designer shoes,’ she says, with a dramatic sigh.
‘Life is so hard when you have to be so beautiful all the time,’ Christopher consoles.
If Haf was really his girlfriend, she might feel a pinch at him calling Laurel beautiful, but Haf doesn’t. It’s lovely that they can be so kind to each other, after all the hurt.
‘You’re dangerously close to getting a feminist rant about beauty standards for women,’ Laurel mutters.
‘Yeah,’ says Haf, wanting to back her up.
‘Please don’t. I get enough of those from Kit.’
‘Speaking of, I haven’t seen her for a while,’ says Laurel, shoving a mini cheese tart into her mouth whole. ‘Have you seen her?’
