The Mistletoe Pact by Jo Lovett
Now – April 2022
Evie
‘Evie, this egg’s got a present inside it.’ Autumn shook it hard. It did sound like there was something clunking around inside there. ‘Look.’ Autumn pointed at the side of the personalised box. ‘It says “gift”. That means “present”.’ Very good point. Evie hadn’t spotted that earlier. She looked at her watch.
‘I’m late,’ she said. ‘I’ll open it later. Thank you for pointing that out. Night. Love you. See you in the morning.’
Evie gave Autumn a hug, grabbed her phone, purse and keys, and sprinted out of the house. Her phone rang as she was walking down the lane.
‘Hi, Matthew. Happy Easter.’
‘Hey. Happy Easter to you too. I’m missing you.’
‘Missing you too.’ Eek. She wasn’t really, if she was honest. She’d had a lovely day with her mum and Autumn, and now she was on the way to the pub for a pre-wedding summit with Sasha and Lucie and Sasha’s other bridesmaid, Dervla, a university friend of Sasha’s. They were planning to discuss all things weddingy, eat pub food and drink a lot of Prosecco, with the bonus of not having to get up early tomorrow because it was Easter Monday, and Evie was really looking forward to it. It was lovely going out with Matthew, but it was nice to have the opportunity to see her mum and Autumn and her friends on her own sometimes, so it felt like it had worked out well that he’d had a golf weekend planned for ages.
Matthew had a lot of golf trips planned. He wasn’t going to be able to make it to Sasha’s wedding because he had a golf week in Tenerife arranged for then.
He also had a lot of golf stories, like the one he was telling now, not as interesting to your non-golfer as they probably were to people who had any idea about the rules and under-par and irons and all those things. It was nice listening to his enthusiasm, though, and watching his eyes twinkle when he joked when they were together in person.
‘Ha, hilarious,’ she said when he’d stopped talking after what she was pretty sure was a punchline.
‘Yeah, I know. Golf’s a fantastic game. Different every time. Anyway, enough about me. Have you opened your Easter egg yet?’
Evie screwed up her face as she rounded the next corner along the green to go up the lane past the church towards the pub. Autumn must have been right. Clearly, there was a present in there, and she couldn’t thank him for it without knowing what it was.
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a really busy day with Mum and Autumn and I thought I’d save it. I’m going to open it this evening when I get home from the pub.’
‘Okay, well I hope you like it. The egg. Have fun this evening.’
‘Thank you.’ Wow. If he was like this over an Easter egg, what would he be like over a birthday present?
‘Okay,’ Sasha said three hours later. She put her pen and notebook down and glugged more Prosecco. ‘So that’s favours sorted. Thank you so much for doing those, Dervla. And Evie, I’ll let you know what dates they have available for menu tasting. And Lucie, thank you so much for sorting all the place settings.’
‘I know what I was going to ask,’ Lucie said. ‘What have you decided about Max and Dan?’
‘We drew lots. Dan’s walking me down the aisle and Max is doing the reading and the speech.’ Sasha and her siblings still had very frosty relations with their father since he’d left their mother for another (older) woman three or four years ago.
‘Perfect,’ Lucie said. ‘Okay, I’ve got to go. I’ll be up at the crack of dawn with the kids.’
‘Me too, actually,’ Dervla said.
‘Stay for another one, Evie?’ Sasha said.
‘Definitely,’ Evie said.
When the others had gone, Sasha said, ‘There’s something I thought I should tell you, about Dan.’
‘Mmm?’
‘He’s expecting a baby with his ex.’
Evie choked on her Pringle and Sasha whacked her hard on the back.
‘Ow,’ Evie said.
‘Sorry. Are you okay?’
‘Yes, you didn’t hit me that hard.’
‘I meant about Dan,’ Sasha said. Yep, Evie had known that she’d meant about Dan. And she was not okay about it but she didn’t want to say that. Because why wouldn’t she be okay? It was nothing to do with her.
‘So, um, what’s the due date and how long were they going out and… everything, really?’ she said, trying to sound normally gossipy rather than suddenly desperately miserable.
‘I’m not sure about dates. And apparently they only went out for a few weeks, so it was a huge shock. And Dan wants to be involved in the baby’s life but the mother, Hannah, might move to New York.’
‘Wow,’ Evie said.
‘Yeah, bit of a nightmare for him. Not how you want to start a family in an ideal world.’
‘Happens to a lot of people, though.’
‘Yes. Oh, God, Evie, I’m sorry,’ Sasha said. Evie’s mum had never known who Evie’s father was and Autumn’s father, Jack, wasn’t exactly around.
Evie really didn’t mind about Sasha saying that wasn’t the way you wanted to start a family. She was right; it wasn’t. She really did mind about the fact that Dan had had a relationship straight before he came out to Vegas by the sounds of it. Or maybe even while he was there. No, surely not.
‘Honestly, nothing to be sorry about. I know you didn’t mean that in a bad way. Of course it isn’t what he’d have planned. So when did he and Hannah split up?’
‘Definitely before Vegas. I think that might have been why he was keen to go.’
Right. Right. So Evie had been a rebound one-night stand. And there was totally no reason that she shouldn’t have been. He’d been single. She’d been single. Nothing wrong with it whatsoever. Clearly there was nothing wrong with it.
She was still really pissed off, though.
Why, though?
They’d both been single. He’d done nothing wrong. End of.
She shouldn’t be pissed off.
‘Game of darts for old time’s sake?’ she said.
‘Wow,’ Sasha said ten minutes later. ‘You’re chucking those darts like they’re murder weapons.’
Evie nodded. Yup. She was feeling murderous. She flung another one.
‘OMG,’ she squealed. ‘Bloody bullseye.’
‘You’re a darts superstar,’ Sasha said. ‘We’re going to have to get you back from London as a secret weapon.’ Sasha had periodically been putting serious effort into trying to persuade Evie to return to the Cotswolds from London ever since she moved a couple of years ago. ‘Maybe you should have drunk more Prosecco when you were playing regularly.’
Nope. It wasn’t the Prosecco. It was anger. And the anger, Evie realised as she pulled her darts out of the board, was fuelled by hurt. That Dan had had something big with someone else. Jealousy, maybe. Which was absolutely ridiculous, because she was with Matthew and he was lovely. And any jealousy wasn’t just ridiculous, it was stupid. Nothing serious was ever going to happen between her and Dan, so she couldn’t let any feelings she might have for him ruin her relationships with other people.
* * *
‘Close the curtains, Autumn,’ Evie groaned the next morning. ‘What time is it?’
‘Seven. You said I could wake you up at seven.’
‘Did I?’ Why hadn’t she said eight? Or nine? Or ten?
‘Will you open your Easter egg present now?’
‘I’ll open it at eight. Come back then. Love you.’
Autumn was back what felt like about three minutes later, brandishing the egg and a big plate.
‘Is it really already eight?’ Evie asked.
‘Yes. Look, I brought you a plate so that you don’t make a mess if the chocolate cracks.’
‘You’re very clever.’ Evie sat up in bed and took the egg while Autumn bounced up and down on the end of her bed. She took the egg out of its blue foil and gave it a little smack against the plate. ‘Oh.’
‘It’s a key,’ Autumn said. ‘Why has he given you a key?’ She bounced herself down onto her bottom and shuffled forwards and inspected the plate. ‘It’s got a message on it. “Twenty-two A Hartfield Road”. What’s that?’
That was Matthew’s address. On the back of the address message he’d written, So that you can come and go as you like.
Wow. Giving someone a key was huge. And unnerving.
Nice, of course.
But very unnerving.
At least he hadn’t asked her to move in with him. She definitely wasn’t ready for that.
Evie thought about Dan and his baby and about Matthew and how nice he was.
‘That’s a strange present,’ Autumn said. ‘Grown-ups do boring things.’
‘Mmm.’