"Got it!" Chrissie says as she clambers back into the taxi. "I got the bloody perfume."
"There you go!" He makes it sound as if she has achieved something wonderful. "Right. Marylebone it is."
They chat, her leaning forward through the hatch. She tells him about the passport and the dollars, and he shakes his head. She tells him how she loved her job until the new supervisor arrived, a man for whom she can apparently do nothing right. She says little of David, feeling disloyal. But she wants to. She wants to tell someone how lonely she is. How she feels she is missing some clue: the late nights, the business trips. How she feels stupid and tired and old.
And then they are at the cheese shop. There is a long queue visible through the big glass window, but the driver doesn't seem to mind. He cheers when she finally emerges with the heavy, stinking wheel. "You're done!" he says, delightedly, and she can't help cheering, too.
And then her phone beeps:
I asked you specifically to get the Waitrose Christmas pudding. You've bought the Marks & Spencer pudding. I have just had to go to Waitrose myself, as you are taking so long, and they have sold out. I have no idea what we are going to do about this.
It is as if she has been winded. Suddenly she sees the four of them around the table, hears David's pointed apology to his family for her "wrong" Christmas pudding. And something in her gives.
"I can't do it," she says.
"Can't do what?"
"Christmas. I can't sit there with the cheese and the wrong Christmas pudding and . . . them. I just . . . can't."
He pulls over. She stares at her bags. "What am I doing? You say you have nothing, but you have a family you adore. I have a posh Stilton and three people who don't even really like me."
He turns in his seat. He is younger than she thought. "So what's keeping you?"
"I'm married!"
"Last time I looked, it was an agreement, not a prison sentence. Why not go to your friend's? Would she be pleased to see you?"
"She'd love it. Even her husband would. They're always asking me to come. They're . . . they're . . . cheerful."
He lifts his eyebrows. Laughter lines fan out from each eye.
"I can't just . . . go."
"You have your passport in your bag. You told me."
Something has ignited in her stomach, a flash of burning brandy on a steamed pudding.
"I could drop you at King's Cross. Get the Piccadilly line to Heathrow, jump a flight. Seriously. Life is short. Too short to look that anxious."
She thinks of Christmas freed of Diana's disapproval. Of her husband's unfriendly slab of a back, his claret-soaked snore.
"He'd never forgive me. It would be the end of my marriage."
The driver grins. "Well, wouldn't that be a tragedy?"
They stare at each other. "Do it," she says suddenly.
"Hold tight." And with a screech, he does his second U-turn of the day.
The whole way around the back streets, her heart thumps. Bubbles of laughter keep forcing their way out of her chest. Moira's response is quick and unequivocal: YES!! COME!! Chrissie thinks of her supervisor, glaring at his watch when she does not turn up at work after the Christmas break. She thinks of Diana's appalled disbelief. She thinks of Barcelona and Moira's husband's emphatic bear hugs and their surprised laughter and the huge table, loaded with friends, that they are planning for Christmas Day. And then they are at King's Cross station. And the driver is screeching to a halt.
"You really going to do it?"
"I'm really going to do it. Thank you--"
"Ray," he says. And he reaches through the hatch and shakes her hand.
"Chrissie," she says. She pulls the shopping bags from the seat. "Oh. All this stuff . . ."
And then she looks up. "Here--give the perfume to your wife. And the gift vouchers. For your daughter."
"You don't need to--"
"Please. It would make me happy."
He hesitates, then accepts the bags, shaking his head. "Thank you. She'll absolutely love it."
"I don't suppose you want the Stilton, too?"
He grimaces. "Can't stand the stuff."
"Nor me."
They both start to laugh.
"I feel . . . a bit insane, Ray."
"I think it's called the spirit of Christmas," he says. "I'd just go with it."
She starts to run toward the concourse, her legs flying up like a girl's. Then she pauses, dumps the cheese ceremonially into a bin, and looks up in time to see him, one hand lifted in salute. As she runs through the crowds toward the ticket office and he navigates his way back into the crawling Christmas traffic, they are both still laughing.
About the Author
JOJO MOYES is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You (now a major motion picture), After You, One Plus One, The Girl You Left Behind, The Last Letter from Your Lover, Silver Bay, and The Ship of Brides. She lives with her husband and three children in Essex, England.
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Jojo Moyes, Paris for One and Other Stories
(Series: # )
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