Her mouth hangs open. ‘You’re not dating?’
‘No,’ they chorus.
‘Kit, they’ve never been dating,’ says Laurel too loudly, and starts shushing herself.
‘You knew?!’
‘Yes. Didn’t you?’
‘Obviously not! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I just thought you knew! Especially after you told me all that stuff about how you had feelings—’
‘Please! Stop! Talking!’
‘Wait, how did you know, Laurel?’ Haf interjects.
‘Ambrose’s Twitter polls confirmed it.’ Haf makes a mental note to definitely murder Ambrose. ‘And also it was kind of obvious, darling. He can’t lie to me. I sniff everything out!’
‘She got it out of me this evening,’ he concedes.
‘It’s all very funny, really!’ laughs Laurel. ‘I only thought they were together because I saw them kiss under some mistletoe.’
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘We... We did have a drunken snog, though it was more like a peck. A very bad one. There was some mistletoe, and it was all... burned up, and we felt bad for it,’ Haf explains. ‘We did it for the mistletoe.’
‘For what?’ Kit snaps, brow furrowed. ‘Formistletoe?’
‘Well, now that I say it out loud, it does sound a bit weird.’
‘Yes, we kissed at Sally’s party, which Laurel saw, but she presumed we were together,’ Christopher explains in a way that makes it sound much more normal than Haf’s meandering.
‘Yeah, and I felt so bad for him being caught snogging by his ex and fucking Mark that I just went along with it, and then we stole some Prosecco and ran away.’
‘Then I fell asleep on your couch,’ adds Christopher for some reason.
‘And then I accidentally told everyone,’ says Laurel brightly.
‘Precisely,’ says Christopher.
‘Wait, so who even are you then?’ Kit spins towards Haf.
‘Everything I’ve told you about myself is true,’ she says this with emphasis on you. ‘Just not the Christopher timeline of it.’
‘This is all...’ Kit mutters. ‘I have no fucking idea what it is, but we need to go home so I can shout at you some more without half of Oxlea thinking we are re-enacting an episode ofEastenders,or something.’
‘I’ll go ask the doorman to order us a car,’ says Christopher. ‘As long as you two are not going to murder each other.’
‘I can wait,’ Kit snaps.
‘We’ll be fine,’ says Haf. ‘Can you get my coat too? My tits are going to fall off.’
‘Must you always tell me about your tits?’ he mutters, walking off. With an apologetic look, Laurel trots off after him.
Alone again, it’s deathly silent. This is somehow worse than Kit swearing or crying. But she doesn’t say or do anything. She just stares out into nothing, gaze unfocused and lost in her ownthoughts as her brain reprocesses the memories of the last few days.
‘Kit—’ Haf begins, but Kit silences her with a hand.
