‘Oh, come on,’ the watch-seller says. ‘How else will you know when the clock strikes midnight and it’s finally Christmas Day?’
‘Well, I could just look at my phone.’
He bats this suggestion away with his hand. ‘Phone, schmone. Tell you what, I’ll give it to you. An early Christmas present.’
I laugh. ‘No, seriously, that’s very kind, but you don’t have to—’
He reaches across and slaps the watch onto the table in front of me. ‘I just have,’ he grins. ‘Merry Christmas. Go on, try it on. It’ll change your life, I guarantee it.’
There is clearly no way I’m getting out of this situation watchless, so I just decide to give the bloke whatever I can. ‘OK, look …’ I take out my wallet and peer inside to see what I can offer. But when I look back up, he’s already disappearing out of the door.
The watch is still on the table in front of me. I stare at it for a second and then fix it around my wrist. When I look closely, I spot straight away why he wanted to palm this one off: it’s not even working. The hands are frozen at one minute to twelve. I fiddle with the winding mechanism, but they don’t budge. His line about ‘when the clock strikes midnight’ suddenly makes sense: a little dig before he fobbed me off with a dud.
Harv returns bearing fresh drinks. ‘So. Who was your mate?’
I blink up at him, feeling slightly dazed now, as if I’ve just imagined the whole conversation. I consider telling him about my weird gut feeling that the old man somehow knew me. But I don’t want Harv to think I’ve totally lost the plot, so instead I just hold up my wrist. ‘Not sure who he was, but he gave me the greatest Christmas gift I’ve ever received. A broken watch.’
Harv laughs. ‘You get some proper weirdos in this pub.’ He takes a sip of his vodka and claps his hands together. ‘Anyway, let’s do this. Every World Cup winner since 1930 … and no checking our phones.’
‘All right, let’s go.’
With that, I push every thought of Daphne or Alice or Mum to the back of my mind, and focus all my mental energy on meaningless football trivia.
And when we say goodbye two drinks later, having successfully managed to name every World Cup-winning team in history (with the exception of Uruguay in 1950), I definitely don’t feel better. But I don’t feel worse either.
And that’s something, surely.
I get home about half ten, and Daphne’s still not back.
She hasn’t texted, and my Guinness-addled brain immediately conjures an image of her and Rich stroking each other tenderly beside a roaring log fire, which has to be the least imaginative hypothetical adultery fantasy ever. Still, it does the trick: the thought of them at that party right now, drunk and flirting, makes me feel hot with anxiety.
I walk straight past the undecorated Christmas tree and into the kitchen, where I sit down and crack open the very expensive bottle of red Daphne bought specifically for tomorrow’s lunch.
I pour myself a large glass and check Facebook. There’s a new message. It’s from Alice.
Hey! Found out that my conference thingy is DEFINITELY on for next week so I will be down in London! They’re putting me up in the Hilton in Canary Wharf (fancyyyyy) so maybe we could meet for a drink there? Say, Tuesday 29th? Would be SO good to see you and catch up … ;-) xxx
I take a big gulp of wine and think: is this how it starts, then?
Is this how easy it is?
When I was a kid, the idea of Having An Affair seemed like an incredibly elaborate, complex, almost Machiavellian thing to do. In my head, I built Dad up to be some sort of evil genius who’d spent months planning this dark, terrible scheme that would rip all our lives in two. But maybe I was giving him too much credit. Maybe he stumbled into it without thinking. Maybe he was just frightened and lonely and confused. If so, then I guess I’ve inherited those traits from him. None of his talent, none of his charm; just the cowardly, rotten, arsehole bits.
I pour myself another glass and stare down at the message, wondering how to reply.
The whole thing is just so … odd. I hadn’t seen Alice for years – not since Paris – until I bumped into her at Marek from uni’s wedding a few months back. Daff wasn’t able to make it, and Alice was on her own, too; she’d just split up with her fiancé in Manchester and was there, in her own words, ‘to get as drunk and cynical as humanly possible’.
I’d been really nervous about seeing her again, but right from the off, she acted like nothing had happened. As if there was no reason for any awkwardness. She beckoned me across the lawn with a glass of champagne, and after three more, we were engaged in a lively debate about the ethics of switching dinner-table name cards. Before a conclusion had been satisfactorily reached, Alice had done it – ‘Uncle Steve’ was settling down oblivious on the other side of the marquee, and she was sitting in his seat beside me grinning like a mischievous kid.
Over salmon and chicken and endless white wine, we steadfastly ignored our tablemates and huddled together revisiting the past, expounding on the present and then cringing at all the same bits in the speeches.
It wasn’t just that she looked hot – though she very much did – it was how she made me feel as I talked to her: like I was nineteen again, like the past fifteen years hadn’t happened and the future was still blank and inviting. It was just like in Paris: I loved the fact I could present an edited version of myself to her. I could prune away at the rudderless screw-up that Daphne has watched me become until a better man emerged.
And then later, right at the end of the night, something happened.
All I remember is that the music was winding down, and Alice must have been as wrecked as I was, because she dragged me off the dance floor and into the ‘quirky’ photo booth we’d spent most of the evening taking the piss out of.
We grabbed our ridiculous props – fairy wands and top hats – and at her insistence, we pulled a variety of stupid faces as the flash bounced off us: rictus grins and zombie grimaces and – for the last picture – air-kissing selfie pouts. I closed my eyes for that one, I remember that, and as I felt the flash echo through my eyelids, I realised I wasn’t air-kissing any more. Alice’s lips were pressed up against mine. I pulled away, obviously. But not as quickly as I could have done.
When I opened my eyes, she was shrugging and laughing like it was no big deal. Just a joke.
So that’s what I’ve been telling myself it was. But jokes don’t keep you awake at night, prickling with guilt.
When I got home the next day, I didn’t even tell Daphne I’d seen her. Daff’s always had a weird thing about Alice. I guess because Alice and I were so close during that first term at uni. Even now, she’ll still make the occasional semi-joke about how Alice used to fancy me. Those jokes always leave me prickling with guilt too. So I didn’t tell her when Alice messaged a few days later, and I didn’t tell her when I messaged back. Daff and I were going through a particularly grim patch where we were barely even speaking; she was constantly busy with work, whereas I was fretting about how badly paid, boring and sporadic my employment situation was.
I’m a writer, I suppose, technically speaking. But that makes what I do sound much grander than it actually is. I always imagined I would follow in my dad’s footsteps and write some great play or TV series or novel, but I could never quite sharpen those dreams down to anything specific. I used to think I lacked drive or self-confidence, but the truth is, I just don’t have it in me. I never did. Paris proved that, among other things.
So at some point I downgraded my ambitions and worked as a staff writer for a pretty