The Twelve Dates of Christmas Read online

  Matt sang while they worked, “On the second date of Shagmas my true love gave to me, a bad case of VD.”

  Kate thumped him.

  “I’ll bet you spent all day thinking that up, didn’t you,” she said.

  Matt grinned. “Not all day.”

  “I’m impressed that you think I’ll take twelve lovers between now and Christmas.”

  “Well, you don’t have to sleep with all of them.”

  “I don’t have to sleep with any of them,” said Kate. “But I might want to.”

  “Kate,” said Matt. “Some of the men who sign up for these kinds of things aren’t very nice.”

  “Matt,” said Kate. “I’m a big girl. I’ve been around the block a few times. You don’t need to be signed up at a dating agency to meet not-very-nice men.”

  Matt huffed. “I don’t know why you feel the need to join a dating agency anyway.”

  “I didn’t feel the need. Laura felt that I felt I should feel the need.” Kate frowned as she mentally considered the sense of her sentence. “And anyway,” she continued. “It’s good to meet new people. And I would like to . . . you know . . . settle down maybe.”

  “I don’t want to cast aspersions on your character, Kate,” said Matt. “But you’ve never exactly been short of men.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t seem to make any of them stick!”

  “You mean they don’t make the grade.”

  “I see nothing wrong with being choosy,” said Kate.

  “What about that James bloke? I liked him.”

  “Yes, Matt, but it’s not really about whether you like them or not that matters, is it?”

  “Or Harry!” said Matt. “Harry was great.”

  “Maybe you should have gone out with him then,” said Kate. “I don’t know.” She sighed and began applying berry-red lipstick in the mirror above the fireplace. “Since Dan there hasn’t really been anyone that’s . . .”

  “Rocked your world?” Matt finished for her.

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re always saying you don’t need a man.”

  “I don’t,” said Kate. “I just think it would be nice to meet someone I could share my life with. Laura’s got Ben. You’ve got Sarah . . .”

  “Well, it’s only been a couple of months,” said Matt hastily. “We’re not exactly ready for marriage.”

  “But you’ve got someone to kiss under the mistletoe,” said Kate wistfully.

  “If that’s all it takes to make you happy, I’m sure I could rustle up one or two customers to give you a snog under the old love branches.”

  “That’s exactly my point! I’m tired of rustling up men. I’ve had my fill of sprinters, I’m looking for someone who can go the distance.”

  “You’re looking for a marathon runner?”

  “Metaphorically speaking, yes.”

  “Come on, then, show me tonight’s date.”

  Kate brought the picture up on her phone. Matt looked at it and frowned.

  “Private school mummy’s boy,” he announced dryly. “I don’t think he’ll make the cut.”

  Kate let out an exasperated breath.

  “I knew you’d say that,” she said. “You took one look at his hair and made a judgment. It just so happens he works in an art gallery.”

  “Did he go to private school?”

  Kate scrolled down Michael’s profile. He had. Damn. “Yes,” she admitted.

  “I rest my case.”

  * * *

  • • • • •

  The date was being held in a cookery school. Kate parked her car and crunched along the gravel drive and through a stone archway decorated with ivy and twinkling fairy lights. She was met at the door by a Lightning Strikes rep who took her name and told her to head for workbench five.

  The walls were hung with more swags of ivy and holly. A Christmas tree that must have been twelve feet high stood in one corner, the fairy at the top almost lost in the vast ceiling. The room was filled with workbenches, each with its own cooktop and oven beneath. Around the edges of the room were more worktops with food mixers and electric hand whisks, and hundreds of hooks with utensils swinging from them.

  Two gigantic saucepans steamed at the back of the room and filled the place with the heady scents of mulled wine and cinnamon. Out of one, a rosy-cheeked woman ladled hot wine into glass-handled jars, and a similarly flustered-looking man did the same with the saucepan labeled nonalcoholic. Kate got herself a jar of the latter and took her place by bench five. She sincerely hoped her date turned up tonight.

  All the benches faced toward a huge expanse of glass at the front, which lent a view of a generous walled kitchen garden, lit by floodlights. Just as the noise of excitable amateur chefs was becoming unbearable, a stream of youths in white chef tunics glided in carrying wicker baskets laden with vegetables and meats and fish. A rotund ruddy-faced woman waddled in with an air of authority, and the room hushed.

  Kate felt someone brush her arm. She turned to see her very handsome date smiling at her, and she smiled back far too broadly.

  “I’m Michael,” he whispered as the head chef boomed instructions from the front of the room. “And you must be Kate.”

  He held out his hand and she shook it, still smiling. This could be something, she thought. This could actually be something. And her stomach gave a little lurch of excitement.

  For obvious reasons Kate and Michael cooked a vegetable dish. Kate and Michael, Michael and Kate. She ran their names together around in her head, and she liked the way they sounded. Oh, hi! This is Michael; we fell in love over a vegetable tagine. She chided herself for being such a schoolgirl. But it was hard not to be, when you were in a classroom with the best-looking boy in the school.

  Michael was very handy in the kitchen as it turned out, and they worked well together, chatting and laughing as they followed the extensive list of instructions. They were making a Thai vegetable curry—making the fragrant curry paste from scratch—with sticky coconut rice.

  “If you don’t mind me saying,” said Kate as she stirred the bubbling pot of pale red sauce, “you don’t seem like the sort of person who would need all this to meet someone.” She gestured around the room with her free arm.

  Michael carefully dropped handfuls of chopped baby corns and green beans into the thin but potent liquor. He smiled.

  “I could say the same about you,” he said.

  “But it’s different for me,” said Kate. “I live in a tiny village; we don’t exactly have a steady stream of attractive single men passing through. You work in an art gallery in the city.”

  “A bigger pool doesn’t necessarily mean a better swim,” said Michael.

  He looked down at Kate and gave her a cheeky half smile, and she felt her cheeks—already glowing from the steamy pot—redden.

  With their meals cooked, the couples plated their spoils and headed through to a candlelit converted barn to eat. It was cooler there, and Kate was glad of it. The seating was informal; two large banqueting tables ran the length of the barn with benches on either side.

  Kate and Michael—she still loved how that sounded—sat opposite each other and began to eat. Invariably as their comfort with each other grew, the lighthearted conversation moved on to more serious topics.

  Their backgrounds were very different, but their politics were the same. He made no bones about the fact that he had “father issues” owing to his dad’s controlling nature, and Kate found herself confiding in him that her mother’s affair with the estate agent had been far from her first indiscretion.

  “I mean, no one likes to admit that their mother was a bit of a slapper,” said Kate. “But unfortunately, my mother was a bit of a slapper.”

  Michael laughed.

  “I genuinely think that my mother would have been much happier if she had had aff
airs,” said Michael. “Instead of being a begrudging martyr.”

  “Why do people stay together when they’re clearly so unhappy?” Kate asked. “It makes no sense.”

  “To save face?” suggested Michael.

  “Maybe in the 1940s,” said Kate. “But not now, surely?”

  “In some social circles it would still cause a scandal,” Michael said in such a knowing way that Kate determined to look his family up in Laura’s high-society gossip magazines.

  “So,” said Kate as she poured them each another glass of water from the carafe. “The big question is, are our parents’ inadequacies the reason we find ourselves midthirties and still single?” And she smiled broadly at what she thought was quite a humorous suggestion.

  Michael didn’t smile. He looked down at his plate and gently rested his cutlery across it. A curtain of dirty-blond hair fell over his eyes, but Kate could see by the way he bit his lip that he was fighting back tears.

  Kate didn’t know what to do. The noise in the barn burst through the conversational cocoon she’d been wrapped in, and she was suddenly very aware of people all around her laughing and shouting and preening at their dates, or the dates of others in some cases, and of her and Michael’s awkward silence in the middle of it all.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Kate. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just trying to be funny.”

  Michael sniffed. Kate handed him her napkin and he dabbed his eyes and wiped his nose.

  “It’s not you,” he said. “It’s just.” He sniffed again. “It’s just, that’s exactly why I am single. When I got together with Morgan I was trying to piss my dad off. She was everything he didn’t approve of. But then I fell in love with her. Real love. And then one night at a dinner party someone let slip the reason I’d first asked her out. And. And.”

  Michael took a moment to compose himself.

  “And she left me!” he hiccupped.

  His composure went out the window, along with Kate’s hopes for a second date. Michael broke down in floods of tears: shoulder-shuddering, snot-bubbling, body-jerking tears that had probably bottled up over years of private schooling and stiff-upper-lip enforcement.

  People began to stare. Michael’s sobs became louder, accompanied every minute or so by a howling that would’ve driven wolves back to their dens. He’d blown his nose on his and Kate’s napkins. The woman across from her—clearly a mother—handed Kate a packet of pocket tissues and gave her a sympathetic look. Kate smiled at her gratefully and mouthed, Thank you! Then she opened the pack and handed one to Michael.

  Michael banged his fists up and down on the table, shrieking, “Why! Why! Why!” in time with every thud. “Why, in God’s name, WWWWWHHHYYY!”

  People began sliding surreptitiously along the bench, away from Kate and Michael, until there was a distinct gap around them. Kate wondered if it would be insensitive to eat her curry while consoling her date; she decided it probably would be. Soon the dinner plates were replaced with dessert dishes and Kate’s mouth watered at the smell of brandy sauce rising up from her sticky Christmas pudding.

  “Maybe it’s not too late?” Kate asked. “Perhaps there is a way you two could be reconciled.”

  “HOW?” Michael groaned. “TELL ME HOOOOOWWWWW!”

  He threw his arms up into the air and wailed at the vaulted ceiling. People began to take their puddings through to the bar area. Michael seemed unaware of the scene he was causing.

  Eventually he wore himself out. The Lightning Strikes team were clearing up around them. Michael’s eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. He’d used an entire packet of tissues.

  When he was calm enough and Kate was satisfied that he wasn’t likely to start howling again, she began to reason with him.

  “Have you actually tried calling her to apologize?” Kate asked.

  “What’s the use?” asked Michael. His lip wobbled.

  “But have you?” Kate pressed.

  “She said she never wanted to see me again.” Michael hiccupped.

  “So you haven’t,” said Kate.

  “I’m not going to beg!” said Michael petulantly.

  “Nobody said anything about begging,” Kate told him. “But an apology is definitely in order.”

  A long pep talk ensued and finally, in the car park—because the cookery school had closed and everyone had gone home—Kate persuaded Michael to swallow his pride and call Morgan.

  “You literally have nothing to lose,” said Kate as Michael scrolled down to Morgan’s number.

  Kate sat with him on the steps to the school. Morgan answered on the second ring and Michael gripped Kate’s hand as he apologized to Morgan over and over in a hundred different ways.

  Morgan’s responses were difficult to make out above all the sobbing, but the words I love you! tumbled out over and again from both of them and drifted off into the black December sky.

  Kate wouldn’t be going home with Michael tonight, or any other night for that matter, but she couldn’t help feeling a certain rosy glow as she waved him good-bye. This must be what guardian angels feel like, she mused.

  Her phone blipped as she got into her car. It was a text from her mum.

  You’re welcome, darling! I thought they might come in handy for your 12 dates. I’ve seen your underwear, you could use your knickers to catch apples with. What you want to be catching in them is a man, my dear. Love you xxx

  “I’m trying, Mum. Believe me,” Kate said out loud. “I’m trying.”

  * * *

  • • • • •

  By the time Kate reached Blexford the roads glistened with ice. It was late. As she reached the green she saw Matt and Sarah leave the Duke’s Head, arms wrapped around each other’s backs. The lights in the pub went out and the couple were illuminated only by the moon and the thick white frost.

  Kate pulled into a small spot next to some hedges and shut off the engine. Matt would recognize her car as she drove past, and she would be obliged to stop and make small talk, and he would ask how her date had gone, and although she knew it would be funny tomorrow, somehow she just wasn’t in the mood to tell the tale right then.

  She watched them amble along together, zigzagging in that way you do when you walk with your arms around each other after a couple of glasses of wine. The finest of snowflakes began to flurry down as if just for them, and they held their gloved hands out to catch them. Sarah rested her head on Matt’s shoulder and he kissed the top of her head, and Kate’s chest ached for a love like theirs.

  THE THIRD DATE OF CHRISTMAS

  • • • • •

  Ice Skating and Perfect Misses

  The next couple of days were a flurry of activity, and Kate was happy to be immersed in things that kept her mind from wandering to matters of the heart, though as a single woman in her thirties, she brought out the matchmaker in every coupled person she knew.

  The morning after her date with Michael, Kate caught the early train to London, with her portfolio and an overnight bag. It was her office Christmas meal that evening and she was going to crash at her friend Josie’s place in the city.

  When Kate arrived at her desk, having fought her way through the thronging Liberty hallways, she found a brown paper package waiting for her. She tore it open and pulled out the first of her spring samples.

  It was a heavy jacquard material. Kate’s daffodils and hyacinths were woven into the fabric, giving it a raised texture that felt both luxurious and sturdy. The egg-yolk yellows and bright blues studded with peridot-green leaves sang spring, when all around the office shrieked deep midwinter.

  Finding her designs printed on a fabric, out of which like-minded strangers would create clothes or soft furnishings, never ceased to thrill Kate; it was like being part of a special club.

  A part of her felt it was too good to be true, as if at any moment her colleagues would discover she
was a fraud; after all, what did she really do? Paint flowers and draw patterns; nature came up with the goods and she shamelessly plagiarized it with her brushes and pens.

  “You coming out tonight, Kate?” asked Mel, breaking Kate’s reverie.

  Mel was a genius with pattern and color; where Kate’s designs were dainty and ditzy, Mel’s were bold with a fluidity that danced out of the canvas.

  “Yes,” said Kate. “I’ll be there.”

  “So will Pete,” said Mel. She winked and her face cracked into a wide-toothed smile.

  Kate slapped her forehead.

  “I’d forgotten about Pete,” she said.

  Kate had indulged in some festive snogging with Pete from accounting at last year’s Christmas do. Nothing had ever come of it, it was just one of those party things, but she’d had a hard time living it down.

  “He’s still single,” sang Mel.

  Mel was neither the first nor the last person to mention Pete to Kate that day. And it was while hiding from Pete that evening that Kate found herself sat on the drafty back stairs of a karaoke club, talking to Laura on the phone.

  “So he cried all the way through dinner?” Laura shrieked with laughter.

  “All the way through,” said Kate.

  “Dammit,” said Laura. “I had high hopes for him.”

  “He was lovely,” said Kate. “But his heart was well and truly taken.”

  “Was the dinner good at least?”

  “I don’t know!” said Kate. “I couldn’t exactly chow down while Michael was in such a state; it seemed disrespectful of his angst. I was starving by the time I got home. I hoovered up half a loaf of cheese on toast in bed.”

  “Romantic, though.” Laura sighed. “A man in touch with his emotions. Ben only cries at the football. Oh, and when Arnie dies in Terminator 2.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever induced a man to cry over the loss of me,” said Kate.