The Mistletoe Pact by Jo Lovett
Then – October 2016
Evie
The beauty of having to wear a large (purple velvet) penis-and-accompanying-balls deely bopper (‘Double meat and two veg all round,’ Sasha’s sister Lucie’s very posh friend Tara had yelled when she’d distributed them) was that when you leaned forwards it obscured most of what you did.
Evie waited for Lucie’s friend Nags to finish sloshing tequila into everyone’s shot glasses.
‘Right,’ Nags said, sitting down. Oops, she’d missed her chair. Up she got. ‘Chair moved,’ she said. ‘Okay. On the count of three. One. Two. Three.’
While everyone else tipped their heads back and downed their shots, Evie poured hers into the pot of the large yucca plant behind her. She’d spotted the yucca when they’d arrived at the restaurant and had manoeuvred herself into the closest seat to it. She’d now tipped three out of five shots in there and was a lot more sober than everyone else. It was lovely that Sasha and Tara had invited her – along with thirty-seven other women – to Lucie’s hen night, but she was helping out with a school Duke of Edinburgh training day tomorrow, and it would be torture with a hangover. Plus she wasn’t that keen generally on getting over-pissed.
Nags stood up again and banged the table with a fork. Oh, God. If there was one thing the last hour had taught Evie, it was that Nags had a lot of ideas that Evie didn’t like.
‘It’s time for Truth or Dare,’ Nags announced. Exactly. Evie didn’t like that idea.
Fifteen minutes later, it was Evie’s turn.
‘Truth,’ she said. There was no choice. The first three victims had gone Dare. Nags had a big list that she was ticking off. The first three had been: ask a man at the bar for his number (that had been Lucie and she’d gone for someone with a wedding ring and he’d still given her his number and tucked it into her bra top – Lucie had been free with the champagne before the tequila and she’d found that hilarious, where Evie wouldn’t have been quite so pleased); let the rest of the group sign you up to Tinder with your real details (the woman who’d got that one had just got engaged and wasn’t happy); and go braless for the rest of the evening (and the woman who’d got that one was wearing quite a see-through top and also wasn’t happy). Truth had to be safer. And what did she have to hide? Absolutely nothing.
‘Oooh, I have a big question for you,’ Sasha screech-slurred before anyone else could speak. Everyone went quiet and leaned in. ‘I always want to ask you this and I never do.’ Really? Evie and Sasha didn’t have secrets from each other, surely? ‘Do you fancy Dan? Like really fancy him? Because I love you both and I think you’d be perfect together. And I’ve thought for the past few years that maybe you like each other. Do you?’
Okay. The whole Dan thing was the one big secret Evie did have from Sasha. The kiss the night before her twenty-second birthday. The very full-on, amazing kiss, since when she’d hardly seen Dan. And the fact that for a long time Dan had been her secret crush. She thought about him much less now, because she hardly ever saw him, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to lie, especially since she was a lot soberer than everyone else.
‘I mean, he’s lovely,’ she said. Good start. ‘Really nice. Of course he is. And good-looking. Of course. But he’s your brother. I’ve known him forever. I mean, he’s almost like a cousin to me or something.’ He really wasn’t. ‘I don’t think there’d ever be any kind of spark.’ She was going on too much. She needed to stop talking. Pretty good lying, though, if she said so herself.
‘Hmm. I’m not sure.’ Lucie waved a dildo wand in Evie’s direction. She was slurring even more than her sister. ‘People always fancy their friends’ siblings.’
‘That’s what I think. And you looked all dreamy when he kissed you under the mistletoe that time,’ Sasha said. ‘I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to embarrass you.’
Very restrained of Sasha. Unfortunate that her restraint had gone out the window now, though.
‘Ha,’ Evie said. ‘Dreamy. I was probably a bit pissed.’ She remembered it well and, yes, she had had a bit too much mulled wine, but it had been more than that. She’d definitely felt a bit dreamy. ‘Also, if you remember, I have a boyfriend?’ So silly. She should have mentioned Euan immediately rather than wittering on about why she could never fancy Dan. That would have been the end of the conversation. And probably a lot more convincing.
‘Is he the one for you, though?’ Sasha said. ‘I know you think you want boring, but do you actually want boring? Oh.’ She clapped her hands over her mouth. ‘Oops. Did I say that out loud? Evie, I’m really sorry. I love you and I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s fine.’ Evie shook her head and smiled. It wasn’t that fine. This was one of the downsides of being the sober one. Drunk people said brutally honest things and you remembered all of them. At least her mum didn’t say stuff while drunk that she wouldn’t say while sober. Other people really did, though.
Maybe Evie should just abandon caution and get plastered herself.
‘Isabel. Truth or Dare.’ Nags had turned her attention to the woman on Evie’s left, hooray.
Was Euan boring?
No, he wasn’t. He was just sensible. And sensible was great. Sensible didn’t force you to wear huge penis deely boppers, drink too much and play Truth or Dare.
Evie looked around the table. Everyone else was having a lot of fun, screaming in delight at Isabel’s dare (twerking her way round the restaurant – the best one so far – Isabel was having fun too).
Arguably, Evie would have more fun if she binned all the sensibleness.
Maybe she wouldn’t chuck her next drink in the yucca pot.
‘So this is nice. BFF,’ Sasha said three hours later.
It really wasn’t.
They were sitting on the floor together in a loo cubicle in a not-very-nice nightclub in Cheltenham. Evie had been vomiting into the toilet basin and Sasha had been holding her hair out of her face.
‘I feel guilty,’ Sasha said. ‘I was drinking a lot faster than you but you’re the one vomiting. I’m kind of thinking you should practise drinking a bit more.’
‘Or never ever touch alcohol again,’ Evie croaked. Her mouth tasted beyond disgusting, her head was killing her and things were spinning around her. This hadn’t been boringly sensible but it wasn’t fun either. ‘I have to be at D of E practice at school at eight thirty tomorrow morning.’
‘That’s bad.’ Sasha hugged Evie’s shoulders. ‘Sorry you feel rough.’
Evie closed her eyes while the tiles of the loo cubicle spun round and round her and her stomach heaved. The tiles were cream, she knew that, but when they were spinning they got a lot darker. Weird.
‘You okay?’ Sasha rubbed her back and Evie’s stomach heaved again and she threw up some more. Sasha looked into the loo. ‘Bile. I think that’s good news. I think your stomach’s pretty much empty now. I think you might be okay to sip some water soon.’
Evie turned her head, slowly, because fast movement wasn’t good, and did her best to smile at Sasha. ‘Thank you so much for being with me here. This would be a lot worse without you. Sorry you aren’t out there with everyone else.’ Oh no. Sasha should be out there with everyone else. ‘You should go and dance again. I’m ruining your evening.’
‘You aren’t ruining my evening. This is nice.’
‘This is not nice.’ The underneath of the toilet bowl definitely hadn’t seen any form of cleaning product recently. ‘I want to get some Marigolds on and chuck some bleach around.’
Sasha sniggered. ‘I love you, Evie Green. I love all your tidiness and the way you like everything to be so perfect. Sorry about what I said about Euan and sorry for asking you about Dan. Obviously Euan’s great and obviously you don’t have a thing for Dan. And you’re bringing Euan to Lucie’s wedding and Dan’s bringing his latest girlfriend. Another new one. Ignore what I said. It was just the drink talking.’
Evie shook her head, slowly, waited for her stomach to settle, and said, ‘You were kind of right.’ It felt mean to be lying to Sasha, who really was an amazing friend. ‘Euan is a bit boring.’
‘Oh, Evie, I’m even more sorry now.’ Sasha took some loo paper and folded it round some of Evie’s hair and pulled gently. ‘Vomit in your hair. I wasn’t holding it properly. Sorry. Anyway. I don’t think we should talk about this now. But I would say that I don’t believe you need boring and I don’t believe you should settle for boring. Maybe you need sensible, or steady or dependable, but you do not need boring. You’re under-selling yourself. Anyway. When you’re ready, let’s get a taxi and go home. You should maybe wash your hair before you go to bed. Or wash your pillowcase in the morning. Maybe both.’
* * *
Sitting in the Melting Bishop village church a fortnight later, Evie looked over her shoulder with everyone else to see Lucie as she walked sedately down the aisle on her father Robert’s arm, her bridesmaids Sasha, Tara and Nags behind her. Lucie looked stunning, and a completely different woman from the penis-accessory-holding, boobs-spilling-out-of-tiny-top, cackling hen she’d been two weeks ago. The bridesmaids also looked beautiful, particularly Sasha. Evie beamed at her best friend as they all glided past the end of her pew.
Euan reached for Evie’s hand with his own as the wedding party took up their position at the front of the church. Evie tried not to frown. Lucie had gone for a big wedding, with a lot of family and local friends present. There were a lot of people here that Evie knew very well and liked a lot. She loved the village. She loved the village church, beautifully decorated today with autumn foliage. And, if she was honest, she wanted to enjoy it all without being distracted by Euan’s presence. He was doing some – slightly annoying – finger rubbing. She was pretty sure that he thought it was erotic, because he usually finger-rubbed at the end of an evening when she was going back to his and it looked like sex was on the cards. Right now, it was a struggle not to slap his fingers away.
Euan whispered something in her ear that she didn’t catch. Simultaneously, the vicar started talking. Evie hadn’t been to that many weddings in recent years, since her mum had stopped getting married – she’d had three short-lived marriages when Evie was at school – and she wanted to hear what the vicar had to say. And this was a nice traditional one and a relative biggie: someone she knew, who she’d known most of her life, her best friend’s older sister, was getting married, and hopefully she was going to stay married a lot longer than Evie’s mum used to.
She edged away from Euan so that she could hear the vicar better. He edged after her. She edged more. He followed. Evie gave up and stayed put and Euan spoke in her ear again.
‘I can imagine us at the altar maybe next year or the year after,’ he said.
Evie froze. What? It sounded almost like he was proposing. They’d only been going out for just over a year. And no-one said things like this in the middle of someone else’s wedding.
‘Will you marry me?’ he whispered. Good heavens.
Evie shot her head round to look at him and the top left of her forehead connected hard with his chin.
‘Ow,’ she said.
‘Umph,’ Euan said.
Both really loudly.
A lot of people turned to look at them.
Evie screwed her face up. ‘Sorry,’ she mouthed.
Oh, for God’s sake. Euan was mumbling something else now. Yes, it was lovely and very kind of him to have proposed, very flattering, yes, but honestly. What was wrong with him? No-one proposed in the middle of a wedding service and the way he was carrying on everyone was going to be staring at him when their attention should be focused on the actual ceremony. Her head hurt too but she wasn’t mumbling.
‘What?’ she said out of the side of her mouth, staring straight ahead, and trying not to hiss Shut up.
‘Blood,’ he said, his consonants very dulled.
Evie turned with reluctance to look at him. Yep, quite a lot of blood actually, dripping out of his mouth and onto his pristine white shirt and pale-yellow silk with little foxes – not very nice actually; the foxes looked evil – tie.
‘Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,’ she said.
He opened his mouth and showed her more blood and his tongue, which looked almost bitten-through, and she nearly gagged.
She shouldn’t have gagged. It looked awful, so painful. Poor Euan.
She took tissues out of her handbag – she’d taken to carrying all sorts in there because with a two-year-old in the family you never knew what might happen and her mum usually forgot practical stuff – and passed them to him. He pressed them to his mouth and made a kind of eech sound, very quietly but quite persistently. Not surprising; it must be so sore. She put her hand on his knee and squeezed, hoping that that might feel comforting.
Had he actually just proposed to her?
The vicar was going through the marriage ceremony. She should listen. Hard to concentrate, though, with Euan’s ongoing eeching in her ear.
Euan had actually just proposed.
What if this was the only proposal she ever got and it was a) inappropriately timed, because surely it was rude to propose to someone at someone else’s wedding in case the proposee told someone and stole the bride and groom’s thunder; and b) rubbish, because shouldn’t a proposal be romantic in some way, like on a famous bridge in the moonlight, or on a beautiful beach, or in a lovely restaurant? Or just out for a quiet walk. Anywhere, basically, other than in the middle of a crowded church during someone else’s wedding ceremony.
It would be a good story for the grandchildren: I was so shocked when your grandfather proposed that I inadvertently headbutted him.
Grandchildren. With Euan.
They’d be very sensible grandchildren.
Euan made a weird gurgling sound. Evie turned back towards him to see what was wrong.
‘I think my tooth’s loose,’ he whispered, as the vicar asked the groom if he’d take Lucie to be his wife.
‘Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry. I hope not,’ Evie whispered back, trying simultaneously to look at Euan’s mouth and watch the ring exchange that was now happening at the front of the church.
It was one of his front teeth. Clearly, an important tooth. Well, all teeth were important. But front teeth were really important. If it was loose they should do something about it immediately. But they couldn’t stand up and go anywhere because they’d disrupt the whole ceremony. They’d have to make a dash for it at the end.
Euan gurgled and moaned away – very understandably – next to her during the remainder of the service until Lucie and her new husband processed down the aisle, hand in hand, looking both gorgeous and gorgeously in love.
As they walked past the end of Evie and Euan’s pew, Evie’s mind conjured up an image of herself walking down an aisle hand in hand with Euan. It was a stretch to imagine either of them having eyes only for the other in quite such a besotted way. Euan would probably be finessing some financial calculations in his head, maybe discussing aspects of them with Evie, and Evie would probably be… a bit bored.
No. She was being unfair. He was lovely. Sensibleness and prudence were great attributes.
‘Can we do something about my tooth?’ he said, dribbling a bit more blood.
It was totally understandable thing to say, and Evie should not find the whiny tone to his voice at all annoying. And yet… She could see Max, Sasha’s other brother, out of the corner of her eye. He’d had the most horrendous accident in his late teens, and Evie had never heard anyone in the family whine about it, ever.
But Euan was clearly in a lot of pain and everyone reacted differently to things and probably a lot of people would be whining right now. And they did need to do something about it as soon as possible.
‘Let’s find a loo and clean you up a bit and check your mouth properly and then we’ll go and find a doctor or dentist as quickly as we can,’ she said.
‘It’s definitely loose,’ Euan said five minutes later, peering at himself in the cracked mirror outside the church’s one – brown-carpeted – loo, as he touched his tooth gingerly.
‘Okay. Why don’t I call your dentist and ask them what to do?’
‘Fine.’
An answer machine message told Evie that Euan’s dentist was closed on Saturdays.
‘Okay. We need to do something. I’ll order a taxi. Do you think we should go to A&E?’ Evie tried very hard to squash any feeling of disappointment about missing the rest of the wedding, which she’d been looking forward to. Obviously, her possible-fiancé’s loose tooth was infinitely more important than a wedding, even if the bride was Lucie, who she’d known practically her whole life.
‘I don’t know. Can’t you google it?’ She understood why Euan was tetchy, but did he have to sound quite so irritable? It wasn’t like she’d headbutted him on purpose.
When she and her mum had been moving a big chest in the summer and Evie had dropped her end and it had landed on her mum’s foot and broken a bone, her mum hadn’t been tetchy at all. Evie had apologised a lot and her mum had told her a lot that it hadn’t been her fault and it was just one of those things. Euan clearly did not feel like that. But maybe it was different between mother and daughter. Maybe you’d always be reasonable with respect to your daughter because you loved her so much.
Although, shouldn’t a man really love the woman he’d just proposed to and not blame her for something that she obviously hadn’t done on purpose? If your relationship with your husband was going to be worse than your relationship with your mother, what was the point of getting married? Not a comfortable thought to be having as you googled broken teeth.
‘What does it say?’ Euan said.
‘Well, Google isn’t conclusive,’ Evie told him. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘This is ridiculous. It’s Google. Did you even look properly?’
Evie took a big breath and didn’t snap back at him. He was in pain, after all. She had a sudden brainwave.
‘Why don’t I ask Sasha’s brother Dan?’ she said. ‘He’s an A&E doctor.’
‘Thank you,’ Euan said. ‘I’ll wait here. I can’t go outside looking like this.’
* * *
Dan – apparently without the girlfriend Sasha had thought would be coming – had just finished doing family photos and was talking to some people who Evie thought she recognised as his aunts and uncles.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Sorry to interrupt.’
‘Hey, Evie. How are you?’
‘Hi, Dan. Good thank you. How are you? Your sister’s a married woman!’
‘I know. Very grown-up.’
‘I have a question for you.’
‘Oh-kay? I’m intrigued.’ Dan’s smile made Evie want to smile too.
Evie suddenly remembered their pact – weddings, marriage, word association – and shoved the thought away.
She started talking rapidly. ‘Basically, during the service, I headbutted my boyfriend Euan, by mistake, obviously, and there’s lots of blood and his tooth’s loose. I think he might need a stitch in his lip or his tongue or both, and I’m not sure where I should take him to get his tooth seen. Do we take him to A&E?’
‘Where is he? He’ll need to get his tooth seen by an emergency dentist rather than A&E. Why don’t I take a look to see if I think he needs any stitches?’ There was something very sexy about how Dan had just flipped straight into doctor mode.
It was difficult not to compare Dan and Euan while Dan checked out Euan’s mouth. Obviously she shouldn’t be comparing anyone with anyone. But.Dan was slightly shorter and quite a lot wider and a lot more fun to be with. Euan was more kind of classically handsome, but – to quote Sasha – in quite a boring way. Euan’s smile – when he was smiling, which he certainly wasn’t this afternoon, understandably, of course – was not infectious.
Dan was speaking right now and, totally inappropriately for the situation, Evie now wanted to smile too. ‘I think you’ll be okay without stitches but you do need to get your tooth seen. Don’t go to A&E because you’ll be wasting your time – you’ll have to wait and then they’ll send you to a dentist anyway. I’m sure you’ll find one that’s open on a Saturday afternoon.’
‘Thank you so much,’ said Evie. ‘I’m so sorry that we’ve dragged you away from Lucie’s reception. I’m sure we can sort things from here.’
‘Do you know of a dentist?’ Euan said.
Dan took his phone out of his pocket. ‘I’m sure I can call a couple of people.’
‘No, honestly, we’ve already taken up a lot of your time and you need to get back to the wedding party. I’m sure we can find somewhere.’ Evie took her own phone out of her clutch.
‘It would be great if you could give us a couple of names,’ Euan said to Dan.
Dan knew a lot of people, via his father’s GP surgery, and after three calls had found a dentist who could see Euan within the hour.
‘Right,’ Euan said, ‘we’d better get going.’
‘Thank you so, so much for all your help,’ said Evie. Was it bad to find your boyfriend embarrassing? Obviously it was awful to have a loose tooth, really awful, so it was totally understandable that he wouldn’t be that effusive with his thanks, but equally Dan had definitely gone above and beyond and it wasn’t hard to say a proper thank you.
* * *
Ten minutes into their – silent until then – journey in the back of the cab to the dentist in Cheltenham, Euan sneezed three times in a row.
‘Bless you,’ Evie said.
‘There must have been a cat somewhere.’ Euan looked around him, like one might be clinging to the taxi upholstery.
‘Oh dear,’ said Evie, horrified that her lips were twitching a bit. It was awful to be tempted to laugh, but Euan had been a county-level athlete when he was younger and he always put his speed and jumping ability to good use whenever they were within about a hundred metres of a cat, and now every time he mentioned the allergies Evie struggled not to snigger at memories of him vaulting fences and sprinting miles if he suspected a feline presence. Even though Evie had twice witnessed him unknowingly being in the same garden as a cat and completely unaffected by it.
If she married him, she was going to have to live forever with his – possibly imaginary – cat allergy. What if he developed new imaginary allergies? What if he developed real allergies? How would he behave if something genuinely affected him?
Euan harumphed and they spent the rest of the journey alternating between looking out of the windows on their sides of the taxi and at their phones.
They’d been in the dentist’s waiting room for a few minutes, still not doing a lot of chatting, when Euan’s mother turned up.
She rushed over to Euan. ‘Darling, how are you?’
When Euan’s mother had finished inspecting his mouth and she and Euan had had a chat about his week at work, his work dinner last night and his breakfast this morning – yes, really – Evie said, ‘Hi, Elspeth.’
‘Evie and I are engaged,’ Euan said. Evie’s head shot round for the second time in one day. Good job his head was safely beyond butting distance this time. Had she replied to his proposal? Absent-mindedly? Had she said yes at any point? She was pretty sure she hadn’t. In front of his mother, in a dentist’s waiting room, wasn’t the time or the place to discuss it, though.
She looked back at Elspeth, who was as open-mouthed as Evie felt.
There was a long pause before Elspeth said, ‘Wonderful news.’ She adjusted her pearls and smoothed her skirt, opened her mouth and then closed it again. Not smilingly.
‘Why don’t you go back to the wedding?’ Euan told Evie, then dabbed at his mouth again. ‘We can manage without you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Definitely,’ Euan said.
‘Absolutely,’ Elspeth said, a lot more enthusiastically than when she’d been talking about her son’s supposed engagement.
This was very good news for the rest of Evie’s day. She snuck a look at the clock above the reception desk. Yep, if she got her skates on, she’d be back in the middle of the pre-dinner champagne reception at the hotel where the wedding dinner and dance were.
‘Are you sure?’ she repeated, trying very hard not to beam in delight.
Euan nodded, winced and put his hand to his mouth. ‘Ow. Yes, certain.’
‘Okay. Well. I hope you’re alright. I’ll call you later.’ It felt like she should say something loving and maybe kiss the top of his head or hug him or something at this point, except it felt awkward in front of Elspeth, plus he wasn’t even looking at Evie any more.
* * *
‘What happened?’ Sasha asked her about half an hour after she’d got back. ‘Where did you go? Where’s Euan?’
Telling the story took quite a long time because they both started laughing halfway through, which they really, really shouldn’t have done – and Evie obviously really hoped Euan would be okay – but aspects of it were funny, and he’d never know that they’d laughed.
‘Soooo, congratulations?’ Sasha said.
‘I mean, maybe,’ Evie said. ‘Except I don’t totally remember accepting his proposal.’
‘But you’re going to?’
‘I mean, maybe. Probably.’ Evie adored her mum, obviously, but since as far back as she could remember it had been like she was the adult and her mum was a teenager, and she wanted a calmer adult life than that. Less chaos. Euan was very calm and unchaotic. He had a nice, tidy house. He was very pleasant when he wasn’t stressed about a loose tooth. ‘Yep, I think so.’
‘Well, that’s great,’ said Sasha, far too over-heartily, like a parent at sports day pretending that coming second-from-last in a race was amazing. She clinked her champagne flute against Evie’s. ‘Congratulations.’