The Christmas Party (27 page)

She crouched on the floor next to him. Lance’s face had gone grey. ‘Are you all right, honey?’

He was sweating, his face contorted with agony. He gasped, his mouth working soundlessly.

‘Help me,’ Melissa turned to the people behind her. ‘Help me, please.’

Thankfully, after a moment’s hesitation, two burly men she didn’t know stepped forward.

‘Come on, Lance.’ Melissa slipped her arm around his shoulders and, between them, the men hoisted him up. ‘Let’s get you home, sweetheart.’

With a heart-rending groan, he leaned on the men to support his weight.

‘You can do this,’ she said. ‘Martin has the car waiting.’

‘Let me catch my breath,’ he finally wheezed.

So she and the two men guided him to the nearest chair and he slumped into it. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for helping me.’

‘Can we do anything else?’ one of them asked.

‘I can manage from here,’ she assured them and they faded back to the dance floor which, despite the emergency, had filled once more.

Lance held his body, rocking it.

‘Are you in pain?’

‘Indigestion. Overdoing it.’ He drew in a sharp breath. ‘Not as young as I used to be.’

‘Can you get to the car? I could text Tyler, get him to help you.’

Lance shook his head. ‘No, no. Don’t call Tyler.’ He looked up at her and his eyes were cloudy. ‘I can do this myself.’

Part of her wanted to call the paramedics and the other part of her just wanted to get Lance out of here. The mood felt hostile now and it was clear that they’d overstayed their welcome.

She gathered a chunk of the ice into a
Merry Christmas One and All
napkin and held it to his forehead, which seemed to soothe him. When some of his colour had returned, she said, ‘Shall we see if we can make it now?’

He nodded and, with her help, pushed himself out of his chair. He paused to steady himself.

‘Martin’s waiting for us,’ she said. ‘Soon we’ll be home.’

‘What would I do without you, angel?’ he said.

He leaned heavily on her and she supported him as slowly, laboriously, they made their way out of the marquee and into the corridors of the manor. It was a beautiful place and, in different circumstances, this might have been a great Christmas party.

As she opened the front doors, the unwelcome chill of the night swept in. Swirling flakes of snow assailed them. The car was waiting at the bottom of the slippery steps and, when Martin saw them approaching, he jumped out in an instant and rushed to her aid.

‘Everything all right, Mrs Harvey?’

Even Martin could see that Lance was worse than usual.

‘He’s not well, Martin. He collapsed on the dance floor.’

‘Let me help.’ The driver opened the car door and shouldered the bulk of Lance as they shoehorned him into the back of the car.

‘Do you want me to drive you straight to the nearest hospital?’ Martin asked. ‘I can find it on the satnav.’

‘Lance?’ Melissa tried to rouse him. ‘Shall we take you to the emergency room? Perhaps you should see a doctor?’

‘No,’ Lance said, his natural belligerence surfacing again. ‘No doctor. Just need to sleep.’

She and Martin exchanged a worried glance.

‘I’ll do whatever you want me to, Mrs Harvey,’ Martin said.

If they took Lance to a hospital against his wishes, he’d only cause a scene. What would a hospital say anyway? That he was a drunk. They both were painfully aware of that.

‘Thank you, Martin,’ she said. ‘But we’ll go straight home.’ If he didn’t improve she’d call a doctor or make him see one in the morning. They just had to get through the night.

‘No problem, Mrs Harvey.’

Melissa got into the back of the car with Lance. She cradled his head on her lap and knew that in moments he’d be fast asleep and snoring. Panic over. Until the next time.

‘Ready now?’

‘Yes. Thank you, Martin,’ she said. He looked at her in the rear-view mirror and their eyes met.

Martin pulled away down the snowy drive of Wadestone Manor. As they made their way through the overhanging canopy of trees, the line of coaches waiting to take what remained of the Fossil Oil staff back to their homes came into view. They were covered in a sharp, glittering sheen of frost. They all stood in darkness, showing that the drivers had at least had the sense to abandon their charges and seek refuge in the comforts of the manor. The car crunched past them until the headlights picked out the personal number plate of Tyler Benson’s Mercedes parked at the very end of the row, furthest to the house.

‘Could you possibly pull over please, Martin?’

He stopped the car at the edge of the drive and turned in his seat. ‘Anything the matter, Mrs Harvey?’

‘I’m going to do something that you shouldn’t witness, Martin. Could you please oblige me by looking the other way for a moment?’

‘Certainly, Mrs Harvey.’

As she’d predicted, her husband had already lapsed into a drunken sleep. She eased Lance’s head from her lap and laid it on the leather seat. Lance grunted but didn’t stir, so she slipped out of the car into the cold night. Her footsteps crunched unhappily on the frozen gravel as she walked away, each step of her delicate and totally impractical evening shoes sending a lonely ricochet of noise into the all-encompassing silence.

From her handbag she removed the penknife that Kirsten Benson had received as her present in the Christmas cracker. Didn’t that feel like a lifetime ago? She flicked it open and gingerly ran her thumb over the blade. Surprisingly sharp for a novelty gift.

The car was Tyler’s pride and joy. He certainly treated it better than he did his women. She’d miss him, and she hoped she wouldn’t love him for long. The only thought that frightened her was the one that said unrequited love was often the only kind that endured. She wouldn’t want to go through the rest of her life loving someone so undeserving as Tyler Benson.

She stepped forward to his car. The car park was dimly lit and there was no security that she could see. No CCTV. Perfect.

The sharp tip of the penknife pierced the sugar coating of frost and then the glossy paintwork as she dragged its tip over the door with the painful shrieking noise of a parrot being strangled. A bow wave of frost flakes showered to the ground. She carried on along the side of the car and up and over the boot, her hand never wavering in its steady progress, never needing to stop and retrace a fumbled line. The night was still, silent; there were no sounds to disturb the peace except for the steady bubbling exhaust of the patiently waiting Bentley, the uneasy screech of metal against metal, and the crunch of the hard, frosted grass beneath Melissa’s feet.

When she reached the front of the car again, she defaced the bonnet with a deep and ugly scar – a scar just like their affair had etched into her heart. Then Melissa joined the line perfectly to where she had started her task. The act of doing it was pleasingly cathartic. She was purging herself of Tyler Benson, and that felt good.

The tyres were more difficult, but just as satisfying. Melissa pressed the penknife against black, unyielding rubber. She was slight and the Christmas-cracker penknife struggled to penetrate the hard material but she leaned all her body weight against it until she eventually felt it give. There was a small, satisfying gasp, which may have come from her mouth or from the tyre.

Moving round the car, she did the same to the others. This was for her and for Kirsten. She hoped this time Kirsten would realise what he was really like and leave him before it was too late.

She remembered complaining, at that frightful dinner – which already seemed a hundred years ago instead of a couple of hours – that there had been no joke in her cracker. It had taken her this long to realise that, all the time, she’d been the joke. No more though. Now Tyler Benson was the joke.

To finish, she put the tip of the penknife against the windscreen and dragged it down the glass with a pitiful screeching noise. She wondered if Martin would look round to see what she was doing. But when she glanced back at the car, he was staring resolutely in the opposite direction.

She continued scratching her message. However, she’d run out of windscreen before she’d finished. Melissa stood back and regarded it.

BASTAR

That would do. It was enough for Tyler to understand the gist of it.

Snapping the penknife shut, Melissa put it back into her handbag. It had certainly come in more useful than a plastic magnifying glass, toy whistle or any of the other frightful garbage one usually got in crackers. She smoothed her hair and then her dress. Despite her sadness, there was a triumphant elation in her heart.

Slightly breathless, she walked back to the Bentley and climbed in.

Lance hadn’t even noticed she’d gone. His breathing was more even, less ragged, and he snored gently. It looked as if he’d recovered from his earlier wobble.

‘Thank you, Martin. We can go now.’

The driver eased the car into gear and they moved away. She watched the snow whirl past the windows and fought down the tears.

Martin glanced back at her. ‘Was it a good Christmas party, Mrs Harvey?’

‘It was lovely, Martin,’ she said. ‘Just lovely.’

Chapter Thirty-four

Karen from Customer Accounts was drunk. And when she was drunk she became maudlin. It always happened. Perhaps it was because she mixed her drinks. Champagne, cherry brandy, vodka and Jägerbombs were, it appeared, a lethal combination.

She was sitting at a table by herself. How had that happened? Wasn’t she usually Miss Popularity? Karen tried to scowl, but wasn’t sure that her face was responding in the required manner. It was all that Louise Young’s fault. She’d waltzed off with Josh Wallace and he was meant to be the one she got her hooks into tonight. Louise was the new girl. She thought she was her friend. What was she doing snaring the best-looking talent at Fossil? It wasn’t fair. She’d thought that he was looking at Louise with puppy-dog eyes in the office earlier today, and had tried to dismiss the notion. But as soon as Josh had seen Louise all dolled up like that, he hadn’t given Karen a second glance.

Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she bet her mascara was running. One of her false eyelashes had fallen off into her drink, which was tragic. It was too far down the glass to fish it out. Never mind. She swigged it anyway. You probably couldn’t catch germs from false eyelashes. Or not many, anyway.

In front of her was the ice bucket full of the bow ties she’d collected. It was supposed to be for charity and it was supposed to be great. That had all gone tits-up too.

She’d tried to do her very best and make it a fun evening. Normally she was the centre of attention, but that hadn’t worked out this year. Lance’s stupid speech had made everyone a bit weird. Then the bloody magician went and nearly sawed Tyler Benson in two. That had been fantastic, obviously. But she’d felt that a measly raffle for charity would have been a bit of an anticlimax after that. She remembered taking the bow ties, wresting or cajoling them from nearly all of the men with lavish promises. There’d been a plan. A good one. She knew that. Trouble was, she couldn’t quite recall what it was.

She looked at the bow ties once more. Now what was she to do with them all?

There was a slow song playing but she had no one to dance with. When she couldn’t cop off with Josh Wallace, she’d had high hopes for one of the firemen, but now they seemed to have disappeared too. She thought she’d last seen one of them with that Stella Swift from Production Planning on his lap. Typical. If she couldn’t have Josh Wallace, she’d have settled for one of them. Either of them.

She scoured the room. Everyone had got someone. Except her. Even Josie Jones from Lubricants, who was WeightWatchers’ biggest failure, was clamped in an embrace with Trevor Royston from Refinery Logistics. Alex Bercow from Group Performance Reporting had his tongue down the throat of Natalie Wilson from Distribution. And those two, Rose Collier and Rob Thomas, both married to other people, might be regretting this in the morning. There’d be plenty of red faces in Quality Assurance too.

‘Thank you and goodnight, Fossil Oil!’ the DJ shouted out. ‘A very merry Christmas to you all!’

That was it. She was out of time and it looked as if she was going to go home alone. Merry bloody Christmas!

The music stopped and, after one last desperate snog, everyone left the dance floor. Her colleagues started to drift out of the marquee. The office party, it seemed, was over for another year. Karen sighed to herself. It hadn’t been her best.

Still, perhaps there was time for one last drink. Everyone would be making their way out to the coaches, and that would take for ever.

Karen reached out for a bottle of wine, but misjudged it. The bottle toppled and she lurched to grab it. In doing so she knocked over the candelabra. She missed the wine but caught the candelabra by its base and righted it. What she didn’t notice was one of the candles teeter and fall gracefully out of its holder and straight into the bucket of bow ties.

She staggered to her feet and mopped up the wine with a
Merry Christmas to One and All
napkin. Then she screwed it into a ball and tossed it into the champagne bucket on top of the now-smouldering bow ties.

There’d probably be some more abandoned wine on the other tables, she thought. She could even take a couple of bottles on the coach, which might liven up the journey home. There might be a spare bloke on there yet.

Left to its own devices, the napkin caught light and sparked into flame. That, in turn, helped the fire among the smouldering bow ties to take hold.

Karen tottered off in search of something else to drink. In doing so she knocked the table, and the ice bucket wobbled. So did Karen; she clutched the tablecloth to steady herself, which made the ice bucket crash to the floor. The flames licked out of it. Karen didn’t see them and she couldn’t be bothered to bend down to pick up the bucket. Instead she pulled the tablecloth down over it so that no one would notice it there.

The flames kissed the edge of the tablecloth and slowly licked along the length of it. Soon it was engulfed, and the flames jumped on to the gauzy folds of fabric festooning the marquee.