The Mistletoe Pact by Jo Lovett
Now – September 2022
Dan
Dan clapped Katie as she pulled the extending squeaky giraffe neck on her playmat over and over again.
‘You’re so clever,’ he told her. His daughter was amazing in every way. Her smiles, her chortles, the way she held her arms out to be cuddled, her giraffe-neck pulling.
The doorbell rang and he tensed as the familiar wave of sadness washed over him. He hated saying goodbye to Katie each time. And there was the underlying worry that Hannah might decide to move to New York after her maternity leave. She’d been vacillating about it for months now.
‘Hey, Hannah.’ He used his best cheery tone. You wanted to be on good terms with your daughter’s mother, however much you wished that she would just bloody tell you her plans.
‘Hi, Dan. How’s she been?’
‘She’s getting really good at pulling. Watch her go with that giraffe. I think she’s definitely a lot more advanced physically than your average baby of this age. And mentally. She recognises so many people.’ He might have to fake cheeriness around Hannah, but he didn’t have to fake adoration of his daughter, and if there was one thing they agreed on, it was that she was literally the most perfect human ever born.
They sat at opposite ends of Dan’s sofa and watched her for a minute or two, both clapping for her, while she gurgled and beamed at them.
Hannah suddenly stopped clapping and turned to face him and said, ‘I’m so sorry, Dan, I should have told you immediately. About New York.’
God. Dan felt his face and stomach drop, like the joy had been sucked straight out of the day. Out of his life. He couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Katie regularly any more.
‘I’ve decided not to go,’ she said. ‘I’m going to co-head the desk with someone already there, so I’ll only need to visit from time to time. I just can’t bring Katie up away from you, and my family. It wouldn’t be right for her, and I don’t actually think I could cope. I’d have to have at least two full-time nannies to cover my working hours.’
‘Are you certain?’ Dan said.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to be honest: I’m incredibly relieved. I’d have been devastated not to be able to see her regularly.’
‘I know.’ Hannah turned back round to Katie, who was still busy with the hanging giraffe. ‘I’m sure she’d have been devastated too, growing up far away from you.’ She turned back to Dan. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to work things out but I’m sure now that I can manage things remotely from here and just fly out there every month or two for a few days.’
‘Not a problem,’ Dan said. He really wanted to ask about formalising arrangements about how often he would see Katie going forward, but maybe now wasn’t the time.
‘So I’m thinking maybe we carry on like this for a while,’ Hannah said – Dan had Katie one full day each weekend and for the occasional evening – ‘and then once I stop breastfeeding you could see her a minimum of one evening a week and have her to stay over one night every weekend? And have her for at least a couple of weeks’ holiday every year? Would that suit you?’
‘Yes,’ Dan said. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘No, thank you. You’re an amazing dad.’
* * *
Dan was still in such a state of euphoria that he genuinely wasn’t that pissed off that he was going to be seeing Evie with Matthew that evening. Angus had won a wine tasting for eight at a London wine merchant’s, and he and Sasha had invited Max and Greggy (who they were staying with), Evie and Matthew, and Dan and Angus’s brother Rory, who also lived in London, to join them. Dan hadn’t really wanted to go, because of Evie and Matthew, basically, but he hadn’t felt like he could say no, especially now that things were so good between him and Max, because he wanted to keep them that way.
He arrived about fifteen minutes later than the others, due to the longer-than-expected handover chat with Hannah, and walked in to see the seven of them sitting round a table, with one spare chair, for Dan, obviously.
Evie was telling an anecdote – something to do with spiders and her classroom – and she was gesticulating and laughing almost as much as she was talking. She looked gorgeous, as always. God, he’d messed up not asking her out when she was single.
He frowned. The man she was sitting next to really didn’t look like the man Dan remembered as Matthew. It wasn’t like Matthew was etched in Dan’s mind but at the same time he did quite clearly remember talking to the two of them – and not enjoying it – and Matthew had definitely been tall and blond (and annoyingly handsome), and this man was shorter and dark.
‘Hi, Dan. This is Jimmy, my flatmate,’ Rory said. Looked like Matthew wouldn’t be coming given that there were no more spare chairs. Excellent. Probably playing more golf.
Dan said hi around the table, trying not to smile too much at Matthew’s absence.
An hour and a half later, they’d all shifted positions round the table and Dan was sitting next to Evie, who was completely ignoring the host – who’d been a sommelier at a couple of very fancy restaurants before setting up this business, and sounded like he really knew his stuff and was currently talking about vineyards in Armenia and Turkey – and was busy re-tasting the six different reds they’d tried so far.
‘I always like the cheapest ones,’ she said happily. ‘Which I think you’ll find is this one because it’s the nicest.’ She finished one of the glasses.
‘Wasn’t that the one he said was served in the Ritz Paris and is incredibly rare, like the grapes only develop once every twenty years and are trampled by foot by princes and unicorns?’
‘Nope. I really like it, so I think you’ll find it’s Chateau Lidl at best.’ Evie picked up one of her other glasses, took a sip and sucked her cheeks in. ‘This will be the expensive one. One mouthful of that and I can feel a headache coming on. Seriously. I know my stuff. I can rank them in order of price based on what I like.’
Their host raised his voice and said, ‘So now I’d like to play a little game. I’d like you to rank them according to price. There’s a prize for the winner.’
‘Yessssss,’ said Evie. ‘Finally, my life skills come into play. I’m going to get them all right.’
‘There’s no way you will.’ Dan closed his eyes and re-tasted all of his and started to arrange them in order.
When he’d finished, Evie looked at his and compared them to her own. ‘You’re rubbish,’ she said. ‘You’ve only got two right.’
‘I’m genuinely quite good at this,’ Dan told her. It was only fair to warn her. ‘Currently you only have two right. You’re welcome to copy me.’
‘No way,’ said Evie. ‘I want that prize.’
‘And let’s go,’ said their host.
Five minutes later, Evie was bowing and clutching her prize: a bottle of rosé. ‘Six out of six,’ she crowed.
‘I’m genuinely impressed,’ Dan said when everyone had finished clapping and she’d sat back down.
‘Always works. Nicest the cheapest, worst the most expensive. I’m a very cheap date.’
‘So what’s Matthew up to this evening?’
‘We split up,’ Evie said.
‘Oh, no,’ said Dan, trying really hard to sound sincere. ‘Are you okay?’ He really wanted to ask what had happened.
‘Yep, fine, thank you.’ Evie gave him a small smile and said, ‘So which was your favourite of the wines?’
They spilled out onto the road outside the wine merchant’s at about eleven, all saying how much they’d enjoyed the evening.
‘Tubing it home?’ Dan asked Evie. Max, Greggy, Sasha and Angus were going back together to Max and Greggy’s place in North London.
He was going to take the plunge. He should have asked her out at the beginning of the year, built on their night in Vegas. Maybe she’d be happy to go on a date with him now, maybe she wouldn’t, but he should give it a shot. He could ask her on the way home.
‘Yep. I think Rory and Jimmy are going to Wimbledon on the District Line too so we can all go together.’
‘Great,’ Dan said. Not exactly what he’d had in mind.
‘Night,’ he said to the other three, fifty minutes later, when the train stopped at Fulham Broadway. He could have saved himself a fair amount of time and left them at Earl’s Court and not waited for the Wimbledon branch train, but he’d hoped the whole time that he might be able to chat to Evie, just the two of them.
Okay. He was going to text her instead. The worst that could happen would be that she’d say no.