Lizzie's Christmas Escape Read online

  ‘No bloody wonder living with you,’ I muttered angrily, struggling to control my voice. He was lucky I wasn’t guzzling gin straight from the bottle – being married to Henry would drive anyone to drink.

  This was a far cry from our very first ‘paper’ anniversary. Henry had woken me up by kissing me softly on the lips. At the side of the bed had lain a tray of warm croissants with strawberry jam and a glass of champagne. Abbie had been fast asleep in her cot in the nursery next door, which allowed Henry and I an hour of uninterrupted lovemaking. It had been perfect. When Abbie had finally murmured, Henry had taken care of all her needs. He had given her a bottle then washed and changed her, leaving me to grab a shower. To my amazement I’d followed a scattered paper trail all the way to the bathroom. Each piece of paper had been cut into a heart shape and Henry had written on each of them a reason why he loved me. My heart had soared with love for him.

  Scooping up the cottage pie with my fork, I heard the doorbell ring. I sat quietly back on my chair and listened for any sort of movement from the living room, but alas there was nothing. The bell rang again. Slamming my knife and fork down onto the table I stood up and stomped towards the front door.

  ‘I’ll get the door then, shall I? Don’t you trouble yourself. You just sit there and watch the damn darts,’ I shouted angrily towards the open living-room door. Henry didn’t even retaliate; he never moved a muscle, and it seemed he was completely oblivious to my outburst. He just carried on watching the telly.

  I forced a smile on my face before yanking open the front door. I shivered at the cold blast of air and could see that the snow was falling thicker and faster than ever before.

  ‘Hi, I’m sorry to disturb you,’ spoke a soft Scottish accent.

  I gawped and it took a minute before I could answer. There was something about a Scottish accent I quite liked. I blinked and looked at the pair of hazel eyes that were staring back at me. Taken by surprise, I lost myself for a moment. This was a welcome change. Standing on my doorstep was man, a stranger, and there was no denying he was a handsome one. His features were soft, and his smile was warm and friendly. My pulse quickened and I felt myself blush. He stretched out his hand towards me. Remembering my manners, I wiped my hand on my apron and shook his hand. His grip was firm.

  ‘No, you aren’t disturbing me, no, not at all,’ I lied, remembering my cottage pie, which would be rapidly going cold.

  ‘I’m Marcus, Marcus Bowman. I’ve just moved in next door.’ He nodded towards the Baldwins’ house.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Lizzie, Lizzie Stevens. That makes you our new neighbour then.’

  ‘I didn’t pick the best day to move in, did I?’ he said, looking up at the sky and then wrapping his arms around himself in an attempt to keep warm.

  ‘That snow is coming down thick and fast now. It doesn’t look like it’s going to stop any time soon.’

  Marcus nodded.

  I was beginning to feel chilly, standing on the step; the cold was already biting at my fingers. ‘Where are my manners? Please come in.’

  Before Marcus had a chance to answer, Henry’s voice boomed from the living room. ‘If they’re selling something, we don’t need it and shut that door – you’re letting all the warm air escape.’

  My husband had a long, long way to go before he won any awards for his manners. My heart sank and I flushed with embarrassment, hoping Marcus hadn’t heard Henry. I closed the living-room door firmly.

  ‘I’d better not.’ Marcus had clearly heard what Henry had said.

  ‘I’m sorry about him,’ I hissed.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s my fault. I’ve disturbed you both. I won’t keep you, but could you possibly direct me to the nearest chip shop? Unfortunately, I’m disorganised and haven’t had time to get to the supermarket.’

  ‘I’d be more than happy to, except there’s a slight problem with that – it’s shut on a Monday.’

  Marcus sighed. ‘Bad timing on my part, even though it’s cheaper to move on a Monday. What about a local shop? It looks like beans on toast will be the chef’s special tonight.’

  I smiled. ‘Beans on toast won’t satisfy your hunger – you need a good wholesome meal inside you to keep your strength up unpacking those boxes. Wait there.’ I hurried into the kitchen.

  I threw some cling film over the leftover cottage pie still sitting on the hob and headed straight back to him. By now his cheeks were rosy with the cold night air and the tip of his nose was turning red.

  ‘Here, take this. It may just need heating up for a few minutes. I’ve made way too much as usual. Is it just for you?’ I smiled, thrusting the dish towards him.

  The grateful beam on Marcus’s face said it all. ‘Yes, it’s just me. Are you sure?’ he asked before taking the dish from my hand.

  ‘Certainly. It’ll go to waste if you don’t have it. Just pop the dish back when you’re settled in.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘No need.’

  He touched my arm affectionately before turning round and walking back down the path towards his new home. A warm flush surged through my body, a feeling I didn’t instantly recognise. I was hoping this wasn’t the beginning of signs of the menopause. Perhaps I just wasn’t used to human touch – it had been so long since Henry and I had so much as held hands, and the girls were hardly at home. Closing the front door behind him, I knew there was a huge smile plastered all over my face. I didn’t know why I was smiling, but somehow I just had a warm fuzzy feeling about Marcus Bowman, whoever he was.

  2

  The early morning alarm began to buzz. I opened my eyes and automatically reached over to the clock radio. Grappling for the button, I switched it off and glanced over at Henry who was lying beside me, snoring and as per usual hadn’t moved a muscle. Sometimes it felt like I had three children. Every morning I shook Henry in an attempt to wake him for his 6 a.m. start. He had recently secured a rather lucrative electrical contract for a retail park they were erecting on the edge of town.

  Scrambling out of bed, I slipped my arms into my dressing gown then pulled it tightly around my body. This morning the air felt chillier than normal. Padding softly down the stairs, I walked into the kitchen and flicked on the light, then the kettle. While waiting for the water to boil I prepared Henry’s sandwiches, ham on white bread, and left them on the worktop next to his van keys. Five minutes later I climbed back up the stairs with two mugs of tea in my hand. Henry had already stirred – the duvet was thrown back and his side of the bed lay empty. Hearing the sound of running water swirling around the sink I threw a withering look towards the bathroom door while placing a mug of tea on his bedside table. I was tired – tired of the early mornings, tired of the same routine. I took a sip of my hot tea then placed it on my bedside table. I sighed and bent down, hooking a pair of Henry’s dirty underpants from the floor with my forefinger and tossing them into the laundry basket. I could never quite understand why he had to leave them on the floor when the laundry basket was a stone’s throw away. But I was past arguing about it now; I didn’t have the strength any more.

  Before clambering back into the warmth of the bed, I moved the curtain to one side and peeked out at the grey early-morning sky. The snow had finally stopped falling. It was barely light except for the street light at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  The houses looked picturesque with their undisturbed snowy roofs. The snow lay untouched on the pavements, cars and road gleamed and the branches of the trees that adorned the pavements were bowed under the heavy snow that balanced on them. Everywhere glistened with an air of magic. I breathed in the crisp early-morning air from the small open window. Outside was deserted and everything was still – there wasn’t a sound to be heard. All the houses were in darkness, their curtains drawn, and no doubt everyone was still tucked up in bed at this ungodly hour.

  I stared across at Marcus’s house. I wondered how he’d slept last night. It must be strange to go to bed in a new home for the very
first time. Unexpectedly, I saw a light shine onto Marcus’s step, and wiping the condensation off the windowpane with the sleeve of my dressing gown, I squinted to see him coming out of his front door. He plodded across the snowy path towards his car. He was bundled up in a thick black duffel coat and a woolly scarf that covered the lower half of his face. His bobble hat was firmly pulled down over his head, leaving only a small slit for his eyes.

  He flicked the snow from the car door before climbing inside and starting the engine. Immediately a puff of smoke spluttered out of the exhaust pipe. I wondered where he was going at this ridiculously early hour. A couple of seconds later he was standing back on the path scraping the snow off the windscreen and crunching through the crisp layer on the ground around the car. Without any warning Marcus looked up towards my bedroom window and I gasped. Damn – he’d spotted me watching him. For a split second our eyes locked and he held my gaze. He turned away and began to write something in the snow on the rear window of the car. I narrowed my eyes watching him. When he’d finished he stepped to one side then glanced back up towards me. I squinted to see the words. It read, ‘Hi,’ followed by a smiley face. I chuckled quietly and immediately felt my cheeks flush.He bent down and scooped up some snow, and then rolled it into a ball. Looking back towards me with a wicked grin on his face he pretended to throw the ball at my window. I giggled then watched him walk back towards the driver’s door. He waved at me before climbing inside the car. Switching the headlamps on, he reversed slowly out of the drive and manoeuvred carefully along the icy road before he disappeared out of sight. I felt my heart leap, a feeling I had almost forgotten.

  A familiar voice behind me made me jump out of my skin. Lost in the moment, I’d forgotten Henry was in the bathroom.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I twirled round to find him standing semi-naked by the side of the bed, rubbing a towel over his wet hair.

  Moving away from the curtain, I took a quick sip of my drink.

  ‘I was checking to see if the snow had stopped falling,’ I answered before slipping off my dressing gown and clambering back underneath the warmth of my duvet.

  Henry sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled on his socks before taking a slurp of his tea. He climbed into his clean overalls – which I’d left hanging on the hook on the back of the door – and in his usual routine, wandered around to my side of the bed and kissed me lightly on the top of my head. ‘Have a good day,’ he said. I nodded like I usually did. I remembered the times when he used to kiss me properly on the lips and say, ‘I love you’ every morning before disappearing off to work. Somewhere along the line things changed. Somewhere along the line things had become habit wrapped up in a mundane routine.

  Finally the bedroom door closed behind him.

  I sat up in the bed and pulled my knees up to my chest, clamping my hands around my warm mug of tea. I closed my eyes momentarily and wondered where Marcus was going so early in the morning. He’d made me smile with his silly antics in the snow. Henry had made me smile like that once.

  Feeling a tight ball of emotion in my throat, I quickly wiped away a lonely tear. I did love Henry, but was this it? Was this all I had to look forward to for the rest of my life? Early starts and nights of darts with a light kiss on the top of my head each morning. I was only in my early forties, and it saddened me there were to be no more butterflies in my stomach or earth-shattering sex.

  I heard the sound of Henry’s mug being placed by the sink and the jangle of his van keys as the front door shut behind him. It was at this moment I knew that the only thing Henry and I now shared was a mortgage.

  3

  ‘Pinch, punch, first of the month.’

  I chuckled at Ann’s text message. Without fail, on the first of every month she would send the exact same text. I would reply – no returns – and then I would receive a long list of everyone she would like to pinch or punch. Usually it was the woman who lived up the road from her, whose dog barked religiously every morning at 6 a.m., or the neighbour who lived opposite who continually parked his car on the road outside her house, blocking her drive, even though he had a perfectly good drive of his own to park on.

  Ann and I shared everything from handbags to secrets – the secrets usually being all hers. We’d met at college when we were sixteen. The sewing department and the art students were thrown together to organise a charity fashion show for the college. She was the arty one, designing the backdrop for the catwalk, while I made patterns and sewed the creations together. At first it took me a while to warm towards her. She was a force to be reckoned with – someone who always stood out from the crowd. Her hair was long, worn in matted dreadlocks, her eyeliner black and thick, and her Doc Marten boots were scuffed and well worn. However, once we began to work together, I was drawn towards her wicked sense of humour. She’d been through every rebellious stage possible: nose piercing, being a Goth, oh and not forgetting the vegetarian saga – even though she’d convinced herself it was still OK to eat a bacon sandwich, especially after a hangover. Whereas I had always been plain Jane: my dress sense wasn’t out of the ordinary – usually I wore long floral dresses with my white pumps – and there was nothing wacky about my hair. It was blonde, straight and fell just below my shoulders. Yet, despite our differences, the fashion show cemented our friendship, and soon we became inseparable.

  For two whole years Ann dragged me into the thick of student life. Back in the day, we were out partying every weekend, and studying really did get in the way of our social life.

  I couldn’t actually keep up with her. She was a party animal, and me? Well, I was the sensible one, but I tried my best.

  It was right at the end of college when Henry heart-throb Stevens had noticed I was alive. After our short conversation in the college canteen I’d found him later that day leaning against my locker, clutching his folders with a huge grin on his face. My heart had skipped a beat when he’d invited me to watch him captain the cup final of the college football team the following weekend. To be honest, I wasn’t particularly keen on football, but I’d accepted his invitation with delight. All afternoon Ann had repeated, ‘Henry Stevens, the Henry Stevens has invited you to the football?’ I don’t think either of us could quite believe it. I hadn’t been sure whether it was an actual date as such, but that Saturday afternoon I dragged Ann along to the match with me for moral support. When we’d arrived there’d been hordes of girls chanting Henry’s name from the sidelines. Some of them had even been holding up banners sporting his name in huge bold letters. When the team had run onto the pitch, the crowd had let out a raucous cheer and we’d noticed Henry scanning the crowd. His eyes had finally locked with mine and he’d grinned. I remember smiling shyly back, astounded when he ran over to the edge of the pitch where Ann and I were standing. He leant across the barrier and swiftly kissed my cheek, whispering, ‘Thanks for coming.’ That was the first time I’d ever felt my heart clatter. After that weekend Henry and I became an item, and by the time we’d collected our exam results at the end of August, I’d discovered I was carrying our first child. Admittedly our parents weren’t exactly over the moon, however we were both ecstatic about the news.

  Ann was intelligent and quickly secured a place at Birmingham University. She’d decided she wanted to become a teacher and was also one of those people who made studying look easy. Truth be told I never ever saw her with a textbook in her hand; it was always a pint of beer, real ale – the stuff that would put hairs on your chest. Maybe that’s why I didn’t go to university – a hairy chest never really appealed to me.

  I can remember visiting Ann one Saturday when she lived away from home. Birmingham University was only a forty-minute journey on the train from Lichfield. It was October, and I was in the early stages of pregnancy. She’d invited me to see her new digs and was rather proud of her new draughty flat, lined with woodchip wallpaper, in one of the city’s less salubrious areas. Even now, thinking about it makes me shudder. I smiled, remembering th
e contents of her fridge. It didn’t contain any essentials, only bottles of Diamond White and Babycham. She had managed to land herself a bar job in a sticky-carpeted establishment in the middle of the city to help pay the bills. Ann had been a true student and lived life to the full. During this visit I’d been bursting with news. Henry and I were getting married, and I wanted her to be my bridesmaid, a role she accepted with great delight.

  Even though our worlds had been miles apart at that time, our friendship always stayed strong. Once we were together it was like we had never been apart and we could put the world to rights for hours. We always vowed no man, fame or fortune would ever come between us.

  We introduced Ann to Dave, who was Henry’s best mate and best man at our wedding. I call him ‘Dependable Dave’ – he owns his own plastering company and works extremely hard. He travels up and down the country wherever the work takes him. Ann and Dave fell in love and married. They are solid, the couple that everyone wants to be like. Shortly after their honeymoon Ann discovered she was expecting a baby and nine months later she gave birth to Leo, their only child. Over the years she’d confided in me that they did try for more children, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

  Leo’s chosen career leaves Ann spending every waking moment in constant worry. Even though she is extremely proud that he’s a soldier, she misses him dearly.

  In recent times, Henry and Dave’s friendship has dwindled – they don’t see each other as much anymore. Boys’ nights out have been swapped for slippers and the comfort of their armchairs – and in Henry’s case, his beloved darts. In earlier times, we would often organise a babysitter and enjoy a night out as a foursome, but those days were long gone too.

  Switching on the radio, I found the Christmas tunes were already playing. I whistled along to ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’, even though my version was actually unrecognisable. Opening the pantry door I turned Gary over to the new month of December. ‘Looking good, Mr Barlow,’ I said, chuckling, striking another day off the calendar. The girls broke up from university at the end of this week. However Freya and Peter were spending time with his parents next week, as they’d decided to spend Christmas with us. She’d met Peter during freshers’ week at university and they’d been a couple ever since. He was a lovely lad, and I already thought of him as one of the family.