The Thirty List by Eva Woods

Author:Eva Woods [Woods, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474030830
Publisher: Harlequin (UK) Ltd
Published: 2020-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

There’s nothing about Christmas that should make it any harder on the soon-to-be-divorced lady of a certain age (pushing thirty-one). It’s just another day, after all. It’s not even when Jesus was born. That was probably sometime in March. No reason to slide into a lower life state, as my Buddhist friend Sunita would say.

I was telling myself all this from my vantage point in the upper deck of a National Express coach headed to Exeter, but it wasn’t working. Christmas. My first without Dan, having to face my extended family and say, hey, thanks for those spoon rests you got us as a wedding present, but it hasn’t worked out. Were you supposed to give things back if the marriage failed within a certain time frame, like a mobile phone handset? I kept imagining Dan at home with Jane, the two of them in the silent living room with their presents, eating with just the chink of cutlery and the tick of the grandfather clock. Maybe his grandma would be there too, a woman so Victorian she thought that gels wearing trousers was a bit racy. She’d once dropped her glass of sherry when I appeared for Christmas brunch in my pyjamas. There was, of course, a worse scenario, which was that Dan’s new ‘special lady’, whoever she was, had whisked him away on a Christmassy minibreak. They’d be throwing snowballs at each other, then falling over in the ice, and he’d roll over, brush the hair from her cold cheek, and …

God. My imagination had clearly been mainlining Mills and Boon. I’d hated spending Christmas in someone else’s house, missing Mum and Dad and Jess and the kids. And now I was on my way to an uninterrupted family Christmas, as I’d wished for, probably for the rest of my natural life, and I was mired in horror. Dad would lock himself in the shed when it all got too much. Mum would throw a strop over the gravy. Jess would be displaying her perfect children and happy marriage and I’d be all alone.

ALONE, ALONE. The wheels of the bus seemed to sing it out for me, or perhaps it was the tinny music emanating from the speakers of the teenage boy in front. Outside, a drizzly Christmas. Ho flipping ho.

Patrick was taking Alex to his parents’ for Christmas. I’d asked if Michelle would be over to see her son, but Patrick said she had only one day off work. She would try, but if the weather continued snowy and stormy, it seemed unlikely. I wondered how Alex would feel, not seeing his mum at Christmas. Emma was with Ian’s lot in Manchester—all Trivial Pursuit marathons and walks in the Peak District. She had sent me a text two days before, saying she’d see me at Cynthia’s New Year thing. I took this to mean the two of them were now speaking again. Cynthia and Rich were hosting both families this year, because that was how together

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