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‘Big night for you tonight, isn’t it, sweetheart?’
For a moment I stiffened, and the car juddered as I messed up changing the gears. I made a sound that came out a little strangled.
‘It is your magazine’s Christmas do today, isn’t it? Aren’t you off to that swanky party tonight?’
‘I’m not sure people still say “swanky”, Dad,’ I said, hoping he hadn’t noticed the tightening of my hands on the steering wheel or the pulse fluttering wildly at the base of my throat.
I did have plans for that night. Big ones. And while some of them involved attendingGlow’s annual Christmas extravaganza, there were others that were definitely not appropriate for sharing with my parent.
*
For the last four weeks, I’d been swept up in a whirlwind. The jury was still out as to whether this was a heady romance type of whirlwind or a devastating tornado that was tearing through my life. I still didn’t know which was the more accurate description of what was happening between Finn and me.
From the moment he’d kissed me goodbye at the train station barrier, I knew I was in trouble. I was falling for a man who might yet disappear from my life as unexpectedly as he’d dropped back into it. It was something, to be fair, that Finn had never denied. He had a home and a life in Australia, but as far as I knew, no one waiting there for him. In England, all he had was an open-ended Airbnb booking. And me, of course.
Everything was exciting and new between us. We were building something made out of a thousand firsts, without knowing if the foundations we were standing on were strong enough to hold them.
On the plus side, Finn had cancelled his flight back home; on the negative, he’d changed his booking to an open-ended return rather than cashing it in. It was indicative of where we saw this thing heading. We simply didn’t know.
‘Slow and steady’ had become our mantra. To minimise travel time, Finn had checked out of his London hotel and found temporary accommodation in town, close enough for us to see each other as often as we wanted.
‘But that doesn’t mean I want to crowd you,’ Finn said. ‘I don’t want you to feel like I’m invading your space. You’re under no obligation here. If you want to see other people, well… that’s perfectly okay.’
I imagined that was the point where I was supposed to say ‘You too’. I stayed tellingly silent.
After a moment, he smiled and pulled me into his arms. ‘Thank God. I was hoping that would be your response.’
We weren’t exclusive… but I wasn’t seeing anyone else and would happily never do so again.
We weren’t calling it love… but it felt an awful lot like it to me.
We weren’t talking about the future… but I could no longer visualise one without him in it.
We weren’t sleeping together yet… but I hoped that after tonight we would be.
*
‘Is that Aussie friend of yours going to the party tonight?’ Dad asked as he hefted his case from my car and prepared to enter the station.
I’d told him very little about Finn, because since Mum’s death he’d had a habit of ‘worrying for two’. I’d always thought my mother was the more observant of my parents, better able to read between the lines and decipher the invisible writing hidden there. But now I found myself wondering if Dad was every bit as astute.
‘Probably,’ I said, pulling Dad in for a hard hug, because it would be the first time we’d ever spent Christmas apart, and it hid my face nicely from his scrutinising eyes.
‘You’ve seen quite a bit of him, haven’t you, over the last few weeks?’ he asked innocently.
A far from innocent image of Finn with his shirt unbuttoned by my impatient fingers came into my head and refused to budge. I feigned a sudden interest in a notice outlining the station’s parking restrictions until the unfortunate double entendre had faded away.
‘Yeah, I guess,’ I said with a shrug. ‘But he’ll probably know loads of people at the party tonight. He used to be in the business.’
*
TheGlowChristmas party was legendary in the magazine industry. Somewhere in the past, long before any of the current employees worked there, a gauntlet had been thrown down by one of the glossies as to who could throw the flashiest Christmas bash. Each year,Glowprided itself on being the undisputed winner.
I usually flew solo at industry events, which were often just thinly veiled networking opportunities. But this year was different. When the MD’s secretary approached my desk and asked if I was bringing a plus one, I gave a decisive ‘Yes’, even though at that point I hadn’t asked Finn if he wanted to come.
‘Are you ready to go public?’ he asked me when I eventually broached the subject.
‘Is there something here to go public about?’ I countered.
