The Wake-Up Call(100)

And finding me some work, I wait for her to say. She doesn’t.

“Hello, Drew,” I say, trying to sound olive-branchy. “How are things?”

“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” she says, entirely ignoring the question. Drew has always worked to her own script. “I want to tell you . . .” She pauses dramatically. “. . . That I forgive you.”

I stare at her. Beside her, Ollie freezes midway through zesting an orange, his eyes going wide.

“You’ve forgiven me?”

“For kicking me out the way you did.”

“For . . . Drew. I did not kick you out.” My heart is pounding. I think of all the times I bit my tongue with Drew and tried to be a “good friend,” and I think of all the times I snapped at Lucas about something meaningless, and I can’t believe I got this so twisted. “Let’s recap: You knew how I felt about Lucas. You knew I wrote him that card. You kissed him under the mistletoe. I got upset. I asked you to give me the month’s rent you owed me and move out by the end of January. And then you threw a bauble at my head and stropped off.”

She rolls her eyes, and suddenly she looks exactly like the woman I lived with last year, despite the new hair and glasses.

“Izzy, please. The bauble thing was an accident.”

“How?” I ask, genuinely bewildered.

“I think you need to let stuff go?”

“Right,” I say, because there is definitely some truth in this. I am a grudge-holder. I can be petty. I know this. It has caused me some bother this year. “Well, if you say sorry, I am happy to let it go.”

“Say sorry?”

Ollie has stopped even pretending to make cocktails. He is just watching this unfold, half of a squished orange segment in his palm, a drop of juice trickling down to his elbow. Around us, the crowd mills and hums, and beyond them, the garden stretches out in frosty whites and greens through the orangery windows.

“Why would I say sorry when you were such a bitch about it?”

I take a deep breath, and I smile. My favourite smile, the one I reserve for the very worst guests.

There are times for olive branches, and then there are times for the sort of childish pettiness that a year of baiting Lucas has really helped me hone.

“Drew . . . you’re fired,” I say.

Her mouth drops open. “Excuse me?”

“Yes. You’re fired. I am firing you. You need to leave now.”

Ollie’s expression turns aghast, but he’ll manage solo. He’s good under pressure. He’s also sensible enough not to object.

“This is three hours of bar work, cash in hand. You can’t fire me. It’s not a job.” She looks around, suddenly aware of the interest of the crowd around us.

My smile stays in place. “If I could have fired you from being my friend, Drew, I’d have done it, but that’s not a thing, so I’m taking what I can get.”

Then I catch the time on her watch: three minutes to six.

“Argh!” I jump.

Drew looks at me as though I am unhinged.

“Bye, Drew! Off you go! Have a nice life!” I say, spinning on my heels and sprinting away. I will not be wasting one more minute on Drew Bancroft—especially when I barely have one minute to spare.

I get to the lobby just in time. Dinah is wheeling the old projector in from the lost-property room, and up on the landing Kaz, Reese, Raheem, and Helen throw white sheets over the bannisters so that when the projector starts up, the video should line up just right.

Well, we’re out by about a metre. But it’ll do!

“Surprise!” shout Lucas’s family, their image projected on the sheets, just as I spin around to hear a different chorus of voices yell, “Surprise!”

Lucas is standing in the doorway to the hotel, framed by Grigg, Sameera, and Jem.

I can’t compute it. They don’t quite look real. But then they descend on me, burying me in one big hug, and behind us on the makeshift bedsheet screen the da Silvas are yelling Feliz Natal!

“Oh my God!” I say, emerging from the middle of the huddle and swiping my hair out of my face. “How are you all here?”

“Lucas,” Jem says, wearing her widest, warmest smile.

Sameera tucks my hair behind my ears and kisses me on the forehead as my eyes fill with tears.

“You! You!” she says. “Lying to all of us about where you were spending Christmas! This is not the time or place, but as soon as the festivities are over, I am going to have a right go at you. Oh, God, it’s so good to see you!”

“Lucas told on me?” I say, wiping my eyes as Grigg pulls me in for another hug. “You guys! You should be in the Outer Hebrides! And you should be in America!” I say to Jem.

“We fly back tonight,” Sameera tells me, grinning at Grigg. “His mum would kill us if we missed Christmas lunch, and I can’t be away from Rupe any longer or I will literally explode. But Jem is staying, right?”

“Absolutely,” Jem says. “As soon as Lucas messaged me, I thought . . . What am I doing here, being told it’s not too late for me to turn my life around, when I could be with people who love me and the life I’ve chosen? So Piddles and I jumped on the next flight.”

I squeeze her arm. I know that will have been a lot harder than she’s making it sound. Behind her, Lucas’s sister is yelling at him in fast Portuguese; Grigg and Sameera move aside so I can see Lucas’s expression, and it’s like going back in time and seeing what Lucas would have looked like as a little boy. His face has just lit up. Pure, stripped-back, childlike delight.