16

Christy

“Brave,”Christy muttered to herself as she stomped through the snow to the Snow Spa where she’d arranged to meet Alix for an hour of luxurious pampering. After a lively, fun lunch, most of it spent trying to stop Holly climbing the cabinets in Robyn’s kitchen, she was looking forward to having a few moments to herself. “I’m brave. Robyn said so, and she can’t be wrong.”

“True, but how brave do you need to be to endure a spa treatment? Do we subject ourselves to the terror of the lavender scrub or the agony of the massage?” Alix appeared next to her, and Christy stopped walking.

“I didn’t see you there.” Her stomach gave a little flip. Talking to Robyn had convinced her that she had to have an honest conversation with Alix, but she wasn’t ready for it. She needed time to decide exactly what to say and how to say it.

“I would have attracted your attention earlier, but you were deep in conversation with yourself, and it seemed rude to interrupt.” Alix walked alongside her, the hood of her jacket half covering her face. “This place is perfect, isn’t it?”

“Stunning.” Christy glanced around her, buying time. The trees stretched upward, their branches lumpy with snow, the surface glowing silver in the dim light. Soon the light would be gone, but that meant stars and, if they were lucky, the soft shimmer of the northern lights. Robyn and Erik had promised to take them on a special trip to see them, and she was looking forward to it. But first she had something more difficult to deal with.

Alix nudged her. “So how was your heart-to-heart with Aunt Robyn? Did all the skeletons come tumbling out of the cupboard? Did you swear to love each other forever?”

They’d always been so comfortable with each other, and now they weren’t comfortable. There was a snap of tension in the air, and Christy knew she was about to make that worse. Robyn was a subject they’d speculated on frequently growing up, and now, finally, she knew the truth. But was it right to share it with Alix? Would Robyn want her to share something so personal?

But she knew Alix was going to want to know everything, and she could already see that her friend was in a prickly mood. She’d known her long enough to be able to tell at a glance. It was there in the way she walked. In the angle of her jaw and the glint in those green eyes.

Christy’s insides flipped with nerves. She didn’t have Alix’s quick verbal responses. She usually thought of the right thing to say a month after the opportunity to say it had passed. When it came to doing something she found difficult, she’d win a gold medal in procrastination.

“Robyn and I had a good chat.”

“A good chat? After all these years of guessing and wondering, all you’re going to tell me is that you had a good chat?”

Maybe she should have made an excuse and postponed this activity. She hadn’t managed to get her own thoughts straight. She wasn’t quite ready to add Alix into that mix. There were other, more important conversations to be had.

“It was…a lot.”

“I’m sure. We’ve been talking about it for almost three decades. I always went with murder, although having met her, I’m doubting that now. She doesn’t seem the type.”

“You’ve met a lot of murderers?” She was stalling, nervous, and Alix’s smile flashed.

“Blame the time I’ve spent watching TV in hotel rooms. Are you okay with this spa plan? You’ve got those little frown lines on your face that you only get when you’re anxious about something.” She waved an arm toward the spa. “If you don’t feel like peeling your clothes off and being pummeled or talking in front of an audience, we could go back to the cabin and open a bottle of wine. Zac is doing something daring and outdoorsy, so the place is empty. We can have a proper catch-up in private. You can tell me everything. No witnesses. We could even change into our pajamas. I’ll hit you with a pillow, if you like. It would be like old times.”

It made it worse, somehow, that Alix was making such an effort.

Christy wanted to be able to push down her feelings, ignore everything that was bubbling to the surface, but she couldn’t.

“That sounds tempting. Maybe another time.”

“So it’s a no? No to what? No to wine? I’ll make you hot cocoa, if you prefer. Remember how we used to do that at Christmas? There was that time we used the cream your mum had saved for the pavlova. She was so angry with us it was like Christmas fireworks.”

Another time she would have laughed and enjoyed the memory. Right now she didn’t want to be taken back to a time when their friendship had been so simple.

“I need some thinking time. Robyn told me a lot of things. It was a lot to take in.”

“I’m sure. So let’s talk it through.”

Christy stopped walking. “I can’t, Alix. It’s…personal.”

“Personal.”Alix stopped, too. There was a brief pause. “And we no longer talk about personal things, do we? In that case, forget the wine and chat. We might as well go and rub ourselves with lavender and make polite conversation about nothing at all. How about the weather? Are we allowed to talk about the weather?”

Christy saw the hurt in her friend’s face. For all her tough approach, and although she’d never admit it, when it came to relationships, Alix was the most sensitive, vulnerable person she knew. She was single not through choice, but through fear.

“Alix—”

“What?” Alix shrugged. “It’s no problem. Whatever works for you. On second thought, you go and have the spa treatment. I can hit the spa anytime I like, but they don’t have trees like this in London, so I’m going to take a walk in the forest. I’ll see you later.” She spun away, pulled her hood down farther and trudged through heavy snow along the trail that led away from the spa.

“Alix!”

But her friend didn’t pause or look back.

Christy felt sick. They hadn’t even had the difficult conversation yet, and this was the stage they’d reached? The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Alix, but she’d managed to do that. It seemed that at the moment they did a lot of that. And she was hurting, too. She’d been hurting for a while.

She glanced from Alix’s stiff shoulders to the door of the spa.

She could go and have a massage. She could give Alix time to cool off and hope things settled down. Plan what she was going to say and say it another time. Ignore the undercurrents and try to relax and enjoy Christmas.

Except there would be no relaxing. Not now. And she knew that this would hover over both of them if it wasn’t dealt with.

It had been building for a while.

She thought about Robyn’s description of her relationship with her sister when they were young. She was my best friend.

She thought of all the years her mother could have had her sister. All those years she’d missed.

Christy knew that if she’d had a sister, she wouldn’t have let that happen.

And yet Alix was, in every way that mattered, her sister. And there were issues between them Christy had chosen to ignore. Instead of speaking up, she’d let her resentment fester and slowly erode the bonds of friendship. She’d blamed Alix, but she was also to blame because she hadn’t been honest. She’d never told Alix how she felt. She should have done it right away. She should have cleared the air years ago, but she hadn’t, and now she had a choice. She could do what she’d always done, what her mother had done, and bury it. Or she could say what she felt. Speak her mind.

Brave, she told herself.

Feeling slightly sick, she walked quickly to the spa. She canceled their treatments with profuse apologies and then followed Alix’s footsteps down to the lake.

She walked slowly, and not only because the snow was deeper than she’d thought. She wasn’t in a hurry to reach Alix. She was dreading the conversation.

The trail was empty. For a few moments it felt as if she was alone in this snowy wilderness, and then she saw a peep of color and spotted Alix, standing by the edge of the lake, shoulders hunched against the bitter cold, staring across the ice.

Christy trudged through the snow toward her.

“Hey.”

Alix didn’t turn, even when Christy walked right up to her.

She touched Alix gently on the arm. “I know I’ve hurt your feelings.”

“I’m fine.”

Christy recognized that fierce tone. She’d heard it countless times when Alix had talked about her parents. She’d never before heard her use it about their friendship. It was protective. Armor. Alix only used it when she was deeply hurt and upset.

“I know you’re not fine.”

“Yeah, well.” Alix gave a careless shrug. “My problem and I’ll handle it. Don’t worry about it.”

“I am worried about it. I care about you. I… We need to talk, Alix.”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk.” She was cool and unapproachable, something Christy had witnessed many times over the years but never directed toward herself. And she knew that if she left it like this, those defensive layers would toughen, and it would become harder to break through. Their friendship would fade, or crumble, perhaps until there was nothing left but an impersonal card at Christmas. Or worse. It could be like Robyn and Elizabeth.

The thought of that pushed her forward.

“I wasn’t ready to talk about Robyn, that’s true. She told me some personal stuff. I haven’t even processed it yet.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Another barrier went up, and Christy felt a pressure in her chest. An emotion close to panic engulfed her. The urge to apologize, smooth and bury the issue had never been stronger.

“We need to talk about us. About our friendship. You’re my oldest friend, Alix. You’re like a sister to me.”

“Good to know.”

It was like chipping away at ice.

Christy blinked away the tears and stared at the lake in front of them. Right now it reminded her of their friendship. Frozen. Bleak.

“Alix.” Oh this felt so hard. “I need to talk about the wedding. About what you said that day. You never wanted me to marry Seb. You made that clear.”

“That’s history.”

“But it’s not, is it? It’s still there, simmering away between us. You think he’s going to let me down. Some days it feels as if you’re waiting for that moment.” She heard her own voice rise but couldn’t stop it. “You treat him as if he’s on probation.”

“What?” Alix frowned. “That’s not true.”

“It is true. I heard it in your voice that night I rang you in New York and said I needed your help.” The words started to flow. “The first thing that entered your head was that it was something Seb had done.”

“It was something Seb had done. You told me he had a work meeting.”

“But you didn’t believe me. You automatically assumed it was code for my marriage going wrong.” She saw Alix’s cheeks flush.

“Because you didn’t tell me the truth. I couldn’t understand why a work meeting couldn’t be rescheduled for something so important. You failed to tell me Seb had lost his job. You gave me a tiny morsel of incomplete information and then got mad when I was worried.”

Christy was flustered. “Who told you he’d lost his job?” It could only have been one person. They kissed. And it lasted forever. “Zac, I suppose.”

“He knew I was worried about you. He cared enough about me being worried to put my mind at rest.”

He cared enough about me—

Christy decided that revealing comment was something to be tackled later. If they reached later.

“I didn’t feel it was my place to tell you.”

“Right. You didn’t want to talk about it.” Alix’s features were frozen. “You don’t think I would have cared? You don’t think I would have been sympathetic? You knew how worried I was, but you didn’t care to put my mind at rest.”

“It was Seb’s business. And none of this changes the fact that your instinct is always that Seb is going to let me down.” She thought about Seb admitting to feeling vulnerable and felt fiercely protective of him.

“I don’t think that,” Alix said flatly. “But even if I did, it wouldn’t have mattered. The only opinion that matters is yours.”

“You didn’t think that five years ago.”

“That’s what this is about? What I said at the wedding? You said that was behind us.” Alix huddled deeper inside her coat. “It wasn’t, was it? You’ve let it fester. You’ve bottled it up.”

“You know I’m good at that.”

Alix lifted her chin. “If there are things you haven’t said, things you need to get off your chest and—”

“You ruined my wedding.” The words burst out of her, fueled by the pressure of keeping them inside for so long. “The most important day of my life. The day I’d been dreaming of since I was little. The day I’d pictured in my head. The beginning of my life with Seb. You ruined it.”

There was a stunned, hideous silence.

Alix took a juddering breath. “No.”

“Yes! I know you believed you were doing me a favor. I know you kept telling yourself that it was your responsibility as my friend to tell me the truth, but you weren’t telling me the truth. It wasn’t about me. It was never about me. It was about you. You were thinking about yourself. You were thinking about how you were an accident, and somehow that meant that every unplanned baby in the world would somehow grow up feeling the way you do, with all your issues. But unplanned does not mean unwanted.”

Alix’s face had turned as white as bone.

She said nothing in response to that, which was probably good because now she’d started talking, Christy couldn’t stop.

“You thought I was making a mistake. You thought it was the wrong thing to do. You never once considered that I loved Seb.” It was bitterly cold. She could no longer feel her cheeks.

There was a protracted silence.

It felt like ages before Alix spoke.

“It’s true I didn’t believe you loved Seb. You’d known him for about five minutes. He was nothing like the men you usually dated. And you were nothing like yourself the night you met him. You behaved out of character, like a different person, and I thought to myself, Hey, why not? Everyone deserves a wild moment. But wild moments don’t turn into forever.”

“But what if they do? What if that was the person I wanted to be? I’d lived my whole life being careful, and structured, and planning every minute, and then all of a sudden for one night I felt this incredible freedom. Yes, I was a different person, but that was the person I wanted to be!” She paused long enough to draw breath and instantly regretted it because the air was so cold it hurt. “And do you know what, Alix? If it had turned out to be a mistake, it would have been my mistake. And as my friend, I would have hoped you’d support me either way, whatever the outcome. And babies can be unplanned and still be loved. Relationships can break down, and people can still be good parents. No two relationships are alike. You can never assume that just because external circumstances seem similar, that what’s going on inside people will be the same. I am not like your mother. Seb is not like your father.”

Alix stood silent. Shivering. “I—I didn’t mean to ruin your wedding.”

“I was happy that day. Excited. And then you said what you said, and instead of being able to enjoy the moment, I had your voice ringing in my ears.” She was cold. So cold. What had possessed her to have this conversation outdoors? On the other hand it was the only place she could guarantee they wouldn’t be disturbed. “I tried to block it out, but it was in my head even as I said those vows. And it’s stayed in my head.” Would she have jumped to conclusions about Mandy if it hadn’t been for the words Alix had spoken?

There was a long silence.

We have to get indoors, Christy thought. We have to get indoors before we both freeze.

But neither of them moved.

“All this time?” Alix’s voice was barely audible. “You’ve been thinking this, simmering over this, for all this time, and you never said anything? I asked you if we were okay, and you said yes.”

“Because that’s what I do, isn’t it? I pretend things are fine. I ignore difficult conversations. That’s on me. I need to handle that, and I’m a work in progress—”

“Seems to me you’re making a lot of progress.”

“But you knew me. You knew what I was like.”

“So you’re saying that it’s my fault for saying it in the first place and also my fault for not guessing you were feeling differently from how you said you were feeling? Am I supposed to be a mind reader?” Alix sounded fierce, but it was obvious she was close to tears. “You’re saying you felt this way for five years, and you didn’t talk to me about it once?”

Christy felt sick. Alix had fought for her in the past, but they’d never fought each other. It felt scary, as if her whole future was threatened. “I was trying to forget! It was my responsibility to fix my own thoughts, and I was trying to do that. The last thing I wanted was to rake the whole thing up again. But you put doubt in my mind. You wanted to put doubt in my mind. And I felt as if you were always watching, waiting to say I told you so. Whenever you visited I felt as if I had to prove how happy we were. I could never just be.”

Alix was shivering. “I have never said I told you so. You think that’s what this was about? Being proved right? Is that why you stopped sharing with me?”

“You stopped sharing with me, too. You never mentioned you kissed Zac.”

She regretted the words instantly. This wasn’t about Zac. This wasn’t about scoring points.

Alix was staring at her. Her rapid breathing clouded the air.

Christy waited for her to say something.

And waited.

And finally Alix spoke.

“You’re upset that I didn’t tell you about Zac? That there’s something about my life you don’t know? Think about that, Christy. Think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“Did it never occur to you that the reason I was emotional that day wasn’t only because I was worried about you getting married to someone you barely knew because you were pregnant, but because I felt as if I was losing you? You’ve been my best friend for almost my whole life. You were my family. We were everything to each other for two decades. Everything. There was barely anything that happened to one of us that the other didn’t know about. And then, suddenly, you had another family. In a matter of weeks you had a baby on the way, and you were getting married, and you were making a whole new life I wasn’t part of—” Alix’s voice broke “—and I couldn’t see how I fitted into that life. And yes, I was thinking about myself. I admit it—” she was struggling to talk and breathe “—and maybe that makes me selfish, but maybe it also shows how much our friendship meant to me. How much I loved you. How important you were in my life. I knew all the things you were to me, I was clear about that, but I didn’t know what I was to you anymore. I didn’t know where I fitted. I didn’t know what my place was or how you saw our friendship. And I still don’t know.”

Christy was crying, too, now, tortured by guilt and furious with herself for not understanding how Alix had felt. For not seeing it from her point of view.

Think about that, Christy.

Well, she was thinking about it now. For the first time. And she felt as if her heart had been torn open. How could she not have seen that? How could she have been so oblivious? She’d been so wrapped up in her own new adventure, her own happiness, Seb, that it had never occurred to her to consider how Alix felt.

“I didn’t know… I didn’t think…” She was freezing cold. Literally freezing. “I shouldn’t have said any of those things. Oh Alix—” How would they recover from this? “—you know I’m not good at talking about difficult things. Saying what’s on my mind.”

Alix took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eye.

“I’d say you did just fine,” she said and turned and walked away.