chapter twenty-two

t w e n t y - t w o

*

I wake up with a start in the middle of the night, greeted by darkness and the sense that something isn’t right. Not like there’s someone in my house or the place is on fire, but the itchy feeling at the back of my mind that I’m forgetting something, something that I should be upset about. It’s only when I roll over with a grunt and squint at my too-bright phone screen that I see it’s only half past midnight. It feels like it should be four in the morning, but it’s been less than three hours since I came to bed.

And then it hits me like cold water creeping up my back, a slow wave of realisation that comes with the memory of yesterday, sweeping up the glass and tipping it into a shoebox and crying. That scratchy feeling that woke me up intensifies and all I can think, in my delirious, sleep-ridden state when my head feels thick and soupy and my limbs are leaden, is that the girls have been split up. The girls should never be split up.

They grew together and they died together, and they were memorialised together in those ornaments that I check every day from the moment my tree goes up each year, and now I can’t shake this paranoia, this strange superstition. I can’t have one without the other. The universe already made that decision for me – I can’t have my girls, but they can have each other.

My feet know what they’re doing more than I do. I push off my covers and blindly stumble out of bed without my glasses. They must have fallen off my bedside table, but I don’t need them to find my way downstairs. It’s a strange relief, actually, for everything to be a blur as I slip out of my room and pad down the stairs, the softly glowing lights on the Christmas tree greeting me like an old friend.

Noelle’s bauble stands out even though I can hardly differentiate between most of the decorations. Perfect clear glass, a glittery snowflake shimmering in the light, her name written in beautiful cursive. Pip is so talented. All of the Campbell siblings are. Their artistic prowess knows no bounds, featured in some way in every room of my house, and I feel a tug of guilt and shame when I cup one hand around the bauble and take it off the tree.

But that tug isn’t as strong as the powerful instinct that tells me to break it like Robin’s was broken. The compulsion has taken over my body beyond reason, this ridiculous but unshakeable conviction that they can’t be at rest if they’re apart, and when I’ve put so much symbolism and ritual into these baubles, I can’t rest easy knowing that one is proudly displayed on my tree and the other is a pile of glass in a box.

I can’t do it, but I have no. I can’t just drop it on the floor and hope it shatters, but I need to. I’m tearing myself between conflicting messages in my head, one voice telling me that I’m being ridiculous, that there’s no real significance and I can just get a new bauble for Robin, but the other voice is just as loud. The one that tells me I’ll feel better if they’re both broken, when I can convince myself once more that they’re together even if they’re not here.

I’m still torn when the decision is wrenched from my hands, quite literally. In my tired and glasses-free state, I don’t notice the curl of the rug when I turn. It catches my foot and when I throw out my hands to break the fall, I drop Noelle’s bauble. It doesn’t bounce on the thick pile rug or fly onto the sofa, nestled between cushions. It smashes on a patch of uncovered wooden floor, cracking the snowflake right down the middle.

I can’t help a whimper, even if that was what I was going to do anyway. It’s the shock of the fall and the noise and the realisation slowly sinking in that there’s no turning back now. I have to collect the pieces and add them to the shoebox but it’s dark and damn it, I should have found my glasses. It’s impossible to see the shards and as I plant my hands on the ground to push myself up, one embeds itself in my palm.

“Fuck,” I hiss, pulling it out and cradling it. I need the shoebox, and I need the dustpan and brush. They’re both in the conservatory. I can find my way there in the dark, the blurry door visible in the weak light from the tree across the room, as long as I can navigate the floor. I don’t know where the glass is. This was a bad idea. I’m tired and blind and I’m not thinking straight, but I can’t stop now else I’ll feel even worse, because the only thing I can do now is to scoop up the remains.

I make it to the kitchen after a couple of bumps, bashing my thigh on the sofa and stubbing my toe on the coffee table, and the light is blinding but necessary when I find the switch. It’s a freezer in here, but not as cold as it is in the conservatory, which has absorbed every negative degree from the snow outside. It’s more like tight, compacted ice now, and my bare feet freeze the moment they hit the tile floor. The minute that it takes me to find what I’m looking for is agonising, my toes so cold that it feels like they’re burning.

Back in the sitting room, I tread carefully until I find the spot where I fell and I drop to my knees, squinting as the lights on the tree fade and come back again, enough to glint off the glass on the floor. Reaching out with the dustpan and brush, I try to sweep as much of it as possible but I misjudge the distance and a long shard slices along the side of my palm, a cry escaping me when the skin splits and I feel hot blood spill out of the wound.

“Beth?” Casper’s voice travels down the stairs and then his footsteps get faster and louder when he sees me. “Jesus, Beth, what the hell are you doing?”

He’s by my side in a flash, hands on my shoulders pulling me up. He hits the light switch and I can see him a little more clearly, though my unaided vision is akin to driving in the rain without the wipers; I can’t read the depths of his irises, but I can make out that he’s frowning.

“What have you done to yourself?” He grabs my hand and I wince when he inadvertently touches my cut. I forgot about the one in my palm, that pain erased by my determination – and the newer, deeper slice. “Fuck, Beth, this looks bad.”

“It looks worse than it is,” I say. “Can you help me sweep up the glass? I can’t see it all.”

“What are you even doing down here? You went to bed ages ago. What’s all this?” He looks down at the mess on the floor, the shattered glass and a few drops of blood that’ll wipe right off the wood. He’s quiet for a long time, both of his hands putting pressure on mine, until he seems to put two and two together and he sighs. “Oh, Beth.”

I’ve never heard him use my actual name so much in so short a space of time. It digs under my skin like a splinter, the nasty little truth that I’ve done something stupid and pathetic and I’ve worried him, and he probably thinks I’m crazy now. I must look crazy, madly sweeping up what’s left of a bauble I smashed, the sister of a bauble that I wept over not twelve hours ago.

It’s only now that sense starts to sink in, that I feel like I’m waking up properly, stepping out of the fugue state that has dictated me for the past half an hour. I see the destruction I’ve created and I feel the sharp pain radiating from the side of my hand, the dull throb coming from my palm; I feel rather than hear the low, mournful cry that comes out of me.

“I’ll sweep that up once you’re fixed up,” he says. His hands are bloody from holding mine but he doesn’t let go, leading me upstairs. The bathroom is too cold and too bright when he pulls the string for the ceiling light, and my undamaged hand flies to shade my weak eyes.

Casper pulls me over to the sink, where he washes blood off my hand, the cold water a shock to my system that has me seething. Planting me on the edge of the bath, my hand raised, he roots through my cabinet for a tube of antiseptic cream and a roll of plaster tape. He works quickly and quietly, even when he has to use a pair of nail clippers to cut the plaster to size, one to cover the small puncture in my palm and another to cover the three-inch gash on the side of my hand.

“Did you, at any point, think that maybe that was a bad idea?” he asks. His voice is soft; so are his hands.

“I’m realising that now.”

“Bit late, Jerusalem,” he says. Relief floods me to hear a nickname again. He raids my first aid box and finds a roll of that stretchy white bandage, standing between my knees as he cradles my hand and wraps it up, so carefully that you’d have thought he was handling a baby bird rather than me.

“It’s a bit of a hack job,” he murmurs, “but it should hold, as long as you don’t move your hand too much while it heals. It’s right on the crease of your hand – you’re gonna open that wound up every time you move your fingers.”

“Sorry, Cas.”

“You don’t need to apologise to me. It’s yourself you’ve hurt. Thank god I heard you crashing about – who knows what damage you could’ve done.” He tuts to himself and checks my other hand. “Anything else Doctor Casper should know?”

Not unless I tell him that I’m pretty sure he restarts my heart every time he smiles, or that my muscles seize every time his fingers graze my skin.

“I have an idea of what you were doing,” he says, “but tell me, Beth, what were you doing?”

The whole stupid story spills out, the inexplicable compulsion and how I knew I would never get back to sleep until I did what I had to do. My cheeks burn as I tell him, realising how crazy I sound. Shame crawls over my skin like a disease. I pull my hands away from Casper.

“It was impulsive and stupid,” I mutter.

“A bit, yeah,” he says, “but we all do impulsive and stupid things sometimes, and I think yours is more understandable than others.” His hand falls on my wrist, his fingers warm. “I get your logic. Your execution, however, needs some work. And if you must go on late-night bauble-smashing expeditions, wear your damn glasses, girl. And invite me along, next time.”

A weak laugh escapes me. Casper sighs. He squeezes my wrist and says he’ll be back in a moment, and he leaves. I sit here feeling sorry for myself, cursing myself for waking up and acting on my impulse, until he comes back with my glasses and he places them on my face, tucking my hair behind my ears when he makes sure they’re on straight.

“Better?”

“Much.”

“I’m going to clear up downstairs,” he says. “Don’t worry, I won’t throw anything away. Into the shoebox, right?”

I nod. How is he so understanding? Even I don’t understand myself this much and I live with me, day in, day out. Maybe on the inside, he’s desperately plotting a way to get out, calculating how long it will take him to walk into town from here or how to get to the station. If he is thinking that, he doesn’t show any sign of it when he takes my hand and when we’re downstairs, he makes me sit on the sofa while he carefully picks up every piece of glass, every tiny piece of fake snow that filled the bauble. It all goes into the shoebox, and I can’t tell which pieces are Robin’s and which are Noelle’s.

The relief that fills me rocks me off my balance, an unexplainable feeling that things have been made right. Casper closes the shoebox and holds it out to me.

“Is this okay?” he asks. “This is what you wanted, right?”

“Thank you, Cas.”

“All in a night’s work,” he says with a smile, brushing his hands together. He places the box on the mantelpiece and takes my good hand, pulling me off the sofa and into a hug. I’m not expecting the contact, my arm pressed between us for the moment it takes me to realise what’s happening and to put my arms around him. He sways slightly, as though he’s listening to music in his head.

“I was going to wait until morning,” he says, “but seeing as it’s after one a.m. I might as well say it now.” He loosens his arms around me and leans back, his gaze finding mine. “Happy Christmas Eve, Bethlehem.”

*

I’m disorientated when I wake up again and realise it’s nearly eleven o’clock, a good two hours later than I usually get up, and last night – this morning? – comes screaming back to me when my hand bursts into a mix of an acute, stabbing kind of pain and a heavy throb. Casper’s bandage has held up overnight, still mostly in place, and my hand hasn’t turned a strange colour. It just hurts like hell.

The events of last night have thrown me off and I should wake up feeling fantastic on Christmas Eve, but I’m unsettled. The vague discomfort plagues me as I go through my morning routine, rolling out of bed and lazily making it again before I head to the bathroom and ten minutes later, I pull on the same outfit I wore yesterday.

That odd feeling only makes itself clear when I walk past Casper’s room and I glance in, because the door’s open, and it looks so much like his space, no longer my spare room. He has made himself a home here, just like I told him to, and now I know with startling clarity that I can’t bear to live with him and love him too. My heart honestly can’t take it; it’s pure torture, smelling his deodorant in the morning and hugging him late at night when my emotions have got the better of me, and then going to separate rooms because we’re just friends.

I know what I have to do, but the weight of it sinks to my feet as I walk downstairs, every step an effort, until I make it to the kitchen and I see him spreading butter on a slice of toast, and the fact that the sight makes my heart twinge is evidence enough that this is too much. This has to end.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” he says with that smile, the one that looks like a hug. “Want a coffee? I just boiled the kettle.”

I nod and when he turns around to pour one, I try to conjure up the words I need to say. My hands want to twist together, but the right one, my dominant one, is useless.

“I don’t think we should live together,” I blurt out, regret coursing through me the moment I say the words. They’re tactless and lumpy and ugly but they’re out there now.

Casper turns around with a look of abject devastation on his face, like I’ve just told him that ... well, like I’ve just made him homeless. “What?” He puts the kettle down and walks over to me. When I sink onto a chair, he pulls out the one opposite. “I don’t understand. Did I do something?”

“No! No, you absolutely didn’t,” I say, shaking my head. Oh, fuck, I’m going to cry again.

“What changed?” He cocks his head to one side, his hand clenched into a tight fist. “I don’t get it. What changed between you asking me to move in and now? What’d I do?”

“You didn’t do anything, Cas, really.” I can’t look him in the eye else I’ll break down and bawl.

“Then why? I thought this was working out really well.” He sounds so hurt, like a lost, confused little child, and I know what I have to say next but the words won’t come and they’re hard to say because they make me vulnerable and I feel like that’s all I ever am with Casper these days. He leans forward, his hand reaching towards me before he thinks better of it and places it palm down on the table. “I mean, I’ll find somewhere else if you really want but I really don’t understand why, Be-”

“Because I’m in love with you.”

There. I said it. Casper leans back.

“Oh.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to live together because, I’ll be honest, it’s really hard when I really like you, and I don’t think I can keep doing this. Like, I literally can’t take it anymore; my heart is taking a constant beating, every time I look at your face and you’re so amazing and I can’t live with you as just friends because it’s killing m-”

“Stop, Beth,” he says, cutting me off.

I stop. He furrows his brow at me and then his eyes crinkle like he’s about to laugh.

“Does it make a difference if I’m in love with you too?”

I don’t think I hear him at first. I hear the words, but I don’t really hear them. It’s like I’m frozen for a moment, like the world just stopped turning and everything shifted out of place and I’m trying to figure out how to put it back together, and I’m nodding all the while. “Yes,” I say at last. I could laugh and cry and melt. Of course it makes a difference.

“Is it a good difference?” Casper asks.

“Yes.”

He smiles, small at first, but then it’s wide enough to show his teeth. “Do you still want me to move out?”

“No.”

“What do I have to ask to get more than one word in response?”

“Hold on,” I say, putting my hand up. “I’m processing. I’m not sure I have fully comprehended what just happened.”

Casper full-on grins and leans back in his chair. “If I remember correctly – and it was a while ago, so forgive me if I’m wrong – you asked me to move out because you’re in love with me, and I told you that I’m in love with you too – which, by the way, I thought you knew, considering I literally told you a few days ago.”

“What? No you didn’t!” I splutter, my words finding me again. “I think I’d remember if you told me you loved me, Cas.”

He pouts and taps his lips with one finger. “Oh, I may have said it in Arabic.”

“Oh my god!” I can’t believe this. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I don’t joke when it comes to love, Bee.”

He loves me. Casper Boutayeb just told me he loves me and it’s such an emotional overload, another turn on the rollercoaster of the past twelve hours, that my immediate response is to laugh. One of those awkward, shocked laughs, one that has me covering my mouth and cringing.

“I...” I have no words, apparently.

“I don’t bandage up just anyone,” he says. “If I didn’t love you, I’d have just left you to bleed last night.” There’s a twinkle in his eyes. He’s joking. My brain’s working a few seconds behind at the moment, like a soundtrack that’s ever so slightly out of sync with what’s on the screen.

A couple more seconds pass. I catch up and suddenly there’s a flurry of words pouring out of me. “Why would you tell me in Arabic, you idiot? You know I don’t speak a word! God, I’ve spent days figuring out what to say and whether to say anything and here you are confessing in another fucking language!” I can’t help laughing, and then I can’t stop laughing, even though my hand is throbbing and I also kind of feel like weeping, and then Casper’s laughing too.

“It was, uh, kind of a test run, I guess?” He shrugs and I think he’s blushing, his cheeks slightly darker than usual. “I wanted to say it without all the potential consequences – namely, you freaking out and wanting me to leave – so it was easier to say it in another language.” His foot finds mine under the table. “It’s ‘ana ‘ahbik, by the way.”

“’Ana ‘ahbik,” I repeat, trying to mirror the exact way he says it.

He takes my good hand, lacing his fingers with mine, and he holds my gaze when he says, “’Ayumkinani taqbilak?”

“What does that mean?” My voice comes out as hardly more than a whisper, all my energy going into not spontaneously combusting. Casper stands and I do too. He’s still holding my hand but then he lets go and his hand goes to my elbow, moving slowly up to my shoulder.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes. Please.”

As he leans in, his other hand comes out from behind his back and I see that he’s holding a sprig of mistletoe, and my pulse runs out of control as he smiles and holds it over our heads, closing his eyes as his lips touch mine.

He’s a gentle kisser. His hand goes to the back of my neck, his body pressed against mine as we stand in the middle of the kitchen, and I can do nothing but lean into the moment, taking my glasses off when they get in the way and I don’t need them, my eyes closed anyway. It’s the perfect kiss. Even if he was worse kisser, it would still be the perfect kiss because I wanted it so badly and now here he is in my arms, his t-shirt bunched in one hand, the other flat against his shoulder blade.

When we part, I lose my balance. I’ve forgotten how to breathe, the way I forget how to walk when I know I’m being watched. I feel completely bare with his penetrating gaze on me, coming into perfect focus when I put my glasses on again , sharpening the clarity of his smile.

I don’t want to let go of him. We’re still standing so close, my elbows tucked in against my body when I place my hands over his chest and search for the right words. Are there any right words for this moment?

“What was the other thing you said?” I ask at last. “The other day, you said something in Arabic and you wouldn’t translate it. What was it?”

Light dances in his eyes. He holds the mistletoe between us, twirling it by its stem. “’Ant tajealni ahib eid almilad,” he says, leaning forward to kiss me again. This time a gentle brush of his lips against mine, his hand in my hair. “You make me like Christmas.”

*

well, there we have it. the moment you've all been waiting for!