Always, in December(4)
“You could come with me, you know,” Bia said softly. “The offer’s still there, I’d love to have you with me.” Josie looked up, and hated the understanding she saw on Bia’s face. It made her head hurt, trying to stop herself from giving in to the urge to cry all over again. Today had been a rough day, that was all.
Josie hesitated, then sighed. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” Because the thought of booking a ticket to fly tomorrow was too much, given how drastically her life had already changed in a matter of weeks. She’d seen first-hand how impulsive decisions could lead to devastating consequences, and while that sort of spontaneity seemed to work for Bia, it wasn’t something she’d ever been able to do. Just the thought of it sent a writhing ball of anxiety through her stomach.
“Well, what about Laura then?” Bia asked, referring to Josie’s self-proclaimed work wife. “You know, for Christmas?”
“She’s off to Scotland with her hunky Scottish fiancé.”
Bia shook her head. “Typical. OK, well, look, I’ve got another bottle of this hiding in my handbag…”
“Of course you do.”
“So let’s drink our way through this and the next one, order a takeaway and maybe put on Love Actually, or, as it’s your pick, like Pride and Prejudice or something.”
Josie wrinkled her nose. “Not really in a romantic film kind of mood.”
“Lord of the Rings?”
Josie laughed. She looked from Bia, her heart-shaped face currently framed with curly bright red hair, hair which she’d dyed to go with the festive period but was liable to change at a moment’s notice, to the overdecorated Christmas tree, and felt her chest tighten painfully at the thought of a Bia-free flat as of tomorrow. The burning behind her eyes was back. God, she needed to get a grip on herself. She glanced down at the envelopes on the table again, thought of everything they signified, and knew she had to get out of the house.
“Hold that thought. I’ve just got to post this letter, then I’ll be back.”
“Now?” Bia exclaimed incredulously.
“I’ll be back,” Josie repeated, pushing to her feet and setting the half-empty glass of wine down on the kitchen counter beside Bia before she grabbed the three letters. She dropped two of them on her bed beside the box of her things while she grabbed her phone, bike lock, and bank card—just in case—from her room.
When she strode back along the corridor toward the front door, Bia was standing at the top of the step in the living room, watching her over the rim of her wine glass. “If this is you bolting because you smell smoke and I don’t or something, then I’m definitely going to come back to haunt you after I burn alive.”
Josie rolled her eyes as she slipped on her coat, put on her sneakers, and tucked the last letter inside her pocket. “Lovely, graphic image there.”
“All right, but hur-ry,” Bia said, drawing out the syllables on the last word. “If you’re not back soon, I’m finishing the rest of your wine. I’ll drink it out of your glass, no shame.” Josie waved a hand over her shoulder at Bia as she let herself out of the flat.
As soon as she was on the other side of the door, she allowed her face to crumple and screwed up her eyes. In the last twenty years, there had never been one where she’d looked forward to Christmas Day. She’d long since forgotten what it had been like to be a child, desperate and excited for Santa to come, listening out for the creak of a parent’s footstep. And though she liked the break from work every year and enjoyed the extra time to spend with friends, who were inevitably in better moods and looking for excuses for fun as the day grew nearer, she dreaded the countdown to Christmas itself, to the reminders it brought. The last few years, she’d gotten through it in London by keeping busy and distracted, which had been made easy by good friends, especially Bia and Laura, a demanding job, and, more recently, Oliver. And now, at least two of those things had been taken away from her. Josie slid a hand into her coat pocket and ran two fingers over the smooth envelope. Christmas, it seemed, was looking very bleak indeed this year.
The cold, damp air whipped past Josie’s face as she let her bike whizz down the side of Streatham Common, past the runners trudging their way up the other side of the road, her gloved fingers resting lightly on the brakes. Her breath misted out in front of her, the puffs soon disappearing into the little bubble of darkness around her—darkness that never extended too far here with all the lights and people, not like the little village she grew up in, where she’d learned to take a flashlight every time she stepped outside at night. Her cheeks were already freezing, and it felt like little misty water droplets were clinging to her skin, though it wasn’t raining. There had been a lot of talk of snow recently, in the office and on the news, the whole country getting excited about the prospect of a white Christmas, as it seemed to do every year. Josie would much rather take the rain, though she knew that was a controversial opinion and one often best kept to herself. But for her, the snow only brought on painful memories of Christmas Day twenty years ago, of watching through the window as fluffy snowflakes fell onto an empty driveway outside her grandparents’ house, a full but unopened stocking lying next to her, listening to her grandmother stifling sobs from where she made Josie a hot chocolate in the next room.