I'm Glad I Found You This Christmas

3. Invitations and Preparations

3

Invitations and Preparations

Dirk’s picture continued to flash. Maggie was just about to give up, when a timer appeared, and Dirk’s voice said, ‘Yeah?’

Maggie felt a tingle both of excitement and worry. What if he said no? What if he had to fly off to Malaga again this year?

‘Hey, Dirk.’

‘Hey, Pretty Pea. What’s up?’

Maggie felt an immediate tingle of anger. It was a new nickname, one which made him sound like her dad. She’d told him she didn’t like it, but that had only made him use it more often.

‘Dirk … I … are you still coming back to Cambridge this weekend?’

‘Yeah, about that. I’m sorry, Pretty Pea, but it looks like I’ve got to work. It’s just this new job; I have to put the hours in during my first year, you know. The flat’s looking good. You should come down sometime and check it out.’

The vagueness of “sometime” was another of what Renee would call a red flag marker. Apparently, Dirk’s speech and voicemails were littered with them.

‘Not to worry,’ Renee had told her last time they had met. ‘Your cottage is booked for two. If he doesn’t show I’d be happy to fill in.’

‘I’d love to,’ Maggie said. ‘I’ve got to work this weekend, but next is free—’

Dirk laughed. Maggie was tempted to click the icon for video call, but she was afraid of the look in his eyes. What if he was distracted, or appeared bored? What if he was out with someone else?

‘Next weekend I have a conference,’ Dirk said. ‘We’re as busy as each other, aren’t we? Don’t worry, Pretty Pea, we’ll see each other over Christmas.’

Maggie felt as though a train had hit her right in the heart. Christmas was still five weeks away. She’d hoped to see him in person at least a couple of times before that.

‘About Christmas … there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.’

‘Oh yeah? Are you working? That’s a shame, but I guess if you are it can’t be helped. There’s a trip a couple of the guys are planning that I guess I could join if you’re not free. Nothing special, just a bit of a management team-builder out to Portugal.’

Maggie sagged in her chair. He didn’t want to be with her. She could hear it in his voice. She was thinking to give him some vague excuse to end the call, but then Renee’s voice, endlessly positive, chirped up in her mind: ‘Just tell him!’

‘I booked somewhere for us,’ she blurted, immediately covering her mouth, worried that he’d take it as shouting. ‘It’s a Christmas getaway. I took a week off from the twentieth. I thought we could go up there together.’

‘Oh really?’ A hint of amusement in his voice. ‘Where is it? Canada?’

Maggie inwardly scowled. ‘Scotland. A place called Hollydell. It’s described in the brochure as a perfect Christmas village.’

‘Nice. What’s it look like in the pictures?’

Maggie hesitated. ‘Um, it looks, er, romantic.’

Dirk’s laugh bordered on condescending. ‘Ha, we’re never going to w**d that out of you, are we?’

Maggie opened her mouth to reply, but felt an overwhelming urge to cry. ‘I thought it would be nice,’ she croaked, holding back tears. ‘I thought we could spend Christmas together, just the two of us.’

She heard him sigh. Then, to her surprise, he said, ‘Sure. I’ll be there.’

‘You can make it? Really?’

‘Well, I can’t make the twentieth. So sorry. I have a big meeting in London that I have to attend. But I can come by the twenty-first or second. I tell you what—you go up first and get settled in, and I’ll follow you up a day or so later. I’ll bring a special surprise, something to really cheer you up.’

Maggie frowned before twigging what he meant. Huh. Really? Could it be the ring she had been dreaming of? She needed to end this call RIGHT NOW and call Renee. Oh God. Her perfect friend was right, and they hadn’t even got there yet. He was going to ask. He was going to ASK.

‘That sounds nice,’ she squeaked, barely able to lift he voice above a whisper. ‘I’ll message you with the directions. You can’t drive, apparently. There’s a special train.’

Dirk groaned. ‘You can drive anywhere. But if it’ll make you happy, I’ll go mass transit with the rest of the herd. I’ll wear extra aftershave to compensate.’

Berating the poor was another of Renee’s red flags—since, technically, both Maggie and Renee were minimum wage workers—but Maggie ignored it. ‘I can’t wait,’ she gasped, perhaps with a little too much eagerness. ‘It’s going to be the perfect holiday.’

‘Sure, Pretty Pea. Sure it will.’

After hanging up, Maggie rushed to call Renee. Her friend answered briefly to say she was stuck at traffic lights on her way to spend an afternoon playing board games with a disabled lady, but that she’d call back later. Hanging up, Maggie ran in little circles, wishing there was someone else she could call. Her mum would be at work—but she wasn’t too hot on Dirk since his move to London—and none of her other friends would want to know. Instead, she did the only other thing she could think of to settle her nerves.

She went shopping.

Christmas was still a long way off, but she managed to pick up a nice pair of snow boots and a jacket with a fake fur trim which would look nice in the snow days. Walking out of the shop into a warm, sunny afternoon, however, she had a crisis of confidence. It hadn’t snowed in Cambridge over Christmas since she had been a little girl. Sure, Scotland was way farther north, but was it really going to be much different? She’d been watching the weather forecast with interest, and it was still practically beach weather all over the U.K. What was the likelihood that their remote, romantic getaway was a windy shack on a hill somewhere, battered constantly by the driving rain? Images of power cuts and doors that got stuck in the damp and baths with cracks and spiders and weird locals peering in through the windows and—

‘Stop!’

She shouted so loud at herself that an old lady walking past gave her a bemused glance. Maggie smiled, muttered sorry under her breath, and then did that terribly British thing of talking to herself in quiet tones as though to soften the blow of her sudden outburst. She was working herself up into a panic, she knew it. What happened to being all girl power and feminist and—

Deep breath. He’ll be there. It’ll all be fine.

And it’ll definitely snow.