One Day in December: The Christmas read you won't want to put down Read online

  ONE DAY IN DECEMBER

  Shari Low

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.ariafiction.com

  About One Day in December

  One morning in December… Caro set off on a quest to find out if her relationship with her father had been based on a lifetime of lies.

  Lila decided to tell her lover’s wife of their secret affair.

  Cammy was on the way to pick up the ring for the surprise proposal to the woman he loved.

  And Bernadette vowed to walk away from her controlling husband of 30 years and never look back.

  One day, four lives on a collision course with destiny…

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About One Day in December

  Dedication

  Once Upon A Time There Was…

  Prologue

  The day before…

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  10 a.m. – Noon

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Noon – 2 p.m.

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  2 p.m. – 4 p.m.

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  4 p.m. – 6 p.m.

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  6 p.m. – 8 p.m.

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  8 p.m. – 10 p.m.

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  10 p.m. – Midnight

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  A minute past midnight

  Chapter 33

  Nine Days Later – New Year’s Eve

  Epilogue – Part 1

  Epilogue – Part 2

  Acknowledgements

  About Shari Low

  A Letter from the Author

  Also by Shari Low

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  To John, Callan & Brad

  Everything, Always…

  Once Upon A Time There Was…

  Lila Anderson – 30, Social media darling, selfie addict. Girlfriend of trendy menswear boutique owner and gym-god

  Cammy Jones, 41. Mistress to heart surgeon Ken Manson, 50.

  Jack Anderson – 54, Lila’s enigmatic father and chequebook.

  Louise Anderson 51– Lila’s mother. Jack’s patient, understanding and hopelessly devoted wife.

  Caro Anderson – 32, Teacher, single, on a mission to find the father who walked out on her and her mother and disappeared without a trace.

  Yvonne Anderson 52 – Caro’s mum, abandoned by Caro’s father.

  Todd Smith – Caro’s cousin, provider of moral support, hair-stylist extraordinaire.

  Jared Bock – Todd’s Canadian fiancé.

  Bernadette Manson – Devoted nurse at Glasgow Central A&E, loving mum, Kenneth Manson’s long-suffering wife.

  Kenneth Manson – eminent cardiac surgeon, controlling husband, cheating arse who has had an 8-year affair with Lila.

  Nina and Stuart – Kenneth and Bernadette’s adult children

  Sarah Delaney – Bernadette’s lifelong friend, found late-life love again on a Mediterranean cruise, now wants to help Bernadette find happiness.

  Cammy Jones – owner of hipster menswear boutique, CAMDEN, Lila’s boyfriend.

  Josie Cairney – Cammy’s friend of many years, self-appointed surrogate aunt, proposal saboteur.

  Val Murray– Josie’s best pal and partner in crime. A middle-aged Scottish mother with a huge heart and a sharp tongue.

  Mel Cairney– The unrequited love of Cammy’s life, now happily married to Josie’s son, Michael and living in Italy.

  Digby Donelly– Assistant manager at Cammy’s menswear store, CAMDEN.

  Jen Collins– Cammy’s friend and owner of the shop next door, Sun, Sea, Ski.

  Prologue

  Saturday, 23rd December

  One minute past midnight

  It was nothing like a scene from Grey’s Anatomy.

  You know, when alarms sound, and pagers go off, and the model-esque doctor that was having sex with her unfeasibly gorgeous boss in the on-call room leaps to her feet, all tousled hair and bee-stung lips, pulls on her scrubs, and charges to the rescue, not even stopping to adjust her bra before she saves the day.

  Nothing like that at all.

  If this were a TV drama, the writers would be told to get back to the drawing board, add a bit of excitement, a touch of jeopardy, and perhaps some lascivious underwear, before bringing the scene back to the director.

  Because this was… understated.

  Just a person. Lying in a bed. In a hospital room. Breathing.

  There was no time to say goodbye. No time for regrets or recriminations. No time to wait until the loved ones had gathered by the bed to bid them farewell.

  They didn’t know that somewhere out there a heart had just been crushed by the weight of broken promises. Or that someone else sighed with relief as they walked away from the past. Or that someone’s plans for a new life had turned to dust. Or that a very unexpected love was pulling two people together.

  They didn’t know that the person they loved most in the world wouldn’t make it in time. Maybe wouldn’t make it at all.

  They didn’t know that a love had died, that when it came right down to it, the only love that mattered was the one that endured, that stuck, that was meant to be.

  Just a person. Lying on a bed. In a hospital room. Breathing.

  Just a heart, beating.

  And then it stopped.

  The day before…

  Friday 22nd December

  8 a.m. – 10 a.m.

  Chapter 1

  Caro

  ‘No, please, you go first.’ The elderly man smiled gratefully, as the young blonde woman held the train door open for him. He’d read the Daily Mail. These… what was it they called them? Millennials? Anyway, according to the papers, the young ones these days were all supposed to be so entitled and self-centred that they didn’t give a hoot for anyone else, but this young lady certainly didn’t fall into that category. Actually, now that their faces were so close together, maybe not so young. Perhaps late twenties? Thirties? Pretty, and without all that make-up the young ones wear nowadays. Eyebrows like snails, some of them. But not this lovely woman.

  Caro returned his smile and held the train door open until the gent had, painstakingly slowly, climbed the step on to the train. No hurry. She’d waited this long to make the journey south to Glasgow. Although, right now, there was a huge part of her that wanted to stay in the comforting cocoon of home city.

  Aberdeen train station was bustling with commuters arriving from less expensive postcodes. A city with the third largest population in Scotland, after Glasgow and Edinburgh, in the heyday of the oil industry, this had been boomtown. The black gold that was pumped in from the oil rigs off the coast had seeped into every brick of the granite that lined the streets, bringing American oil companies, financial investment, big spenders and the air of confidence that it would last forever.

  It didn’t.r />
  Only a couple of years ago, revenues suddenly plummeted, profits turned to losses, jobs were lost, lives were ruined and the city was shaken to its grey stone foundations, a catastrophe made so much worse because they didn’t see it coming.

  That wasn’t a mistake that Caro would make today. She had taken her time, thought this through, prepared herself for the juggernaut that she feared could come her way over the next 24 hours.

  The irony was that today, 22nd December, should have been a day of chilled out relaxation after the bedlam of the last couple of weeks in school. It, and all the other school holidays, were marked on her phone diary with the ‘party’ emoji. Not that she didn’t love her job, because she adored it. Even on the toughest days, she never regretted her career choice, but December in a primary school required more complex logistical planning than three wise men could muster without the aid of a team of helpers. There was the nativity show, the Christmas concert, the festive fayre, the end of term party, and of course, the added challenge of managing thirty eleven-year-old children who were overly excited about the prospect of a two-week holiday, and who only wanted to study the gift sections of the Argos catalogue.

  When they’d charged out of school at home time yesterday, leaving her desk almost entirely obscured by tubs of chocolates, scented candles, and (from the more switched on parents) bottles of Prosecco, she’d been both sad to see them go, and relieved that it would be two weeks until she saw them again.

  Today, she should be doing nothing more taxing than putting her feet up with a good book.

  It wasn’t too late to change her mind about going. She could get off now. Forget about the trip. Run for the hills – or at least for her sofa, with a Jilly Cooper, and one of those bottles of Prosecco.

  The thought was squashed by the sight of the old man struggling to put a leather holdall into the overhead rack. Caro stepped in. ‘Shall I do that for you?’

  He gratefully accepted.

  One push and it was sorted.

  Caro slid into one of the empty seats, put her leather satchel on the one beside her. She’d move it if anyone else needed the place. Couldn’t stand those selfish gits that blocked off a seat with their bag so they didn’t have to share a space with a stranger. Her new acquaintance, still standing in the aisle, removed his hat and scarf and gestured to the two empty seats facing her across a Formica table.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ she replied, smiling.

  He lowered his aching frame into the seat, placed his possessions – hat, scarf, paper – on the table between them. Normally, Caro would take out her Kindle, lose herself in a book, hope that no one would strike up a conversation, but not today. Today, she’d be grateful for any distraction, especially if it was the company of an elderly gent with a kind face.

  ‘Going to Glasgow?’ the old man asked, with a Doric lilt in a voice that was stronger than his physical appearance would suggest.

  ‘Yes. And you?’

  ‘Getting off at Perth. Going to stay with my daughter and grandchildren for Christmas.’ His pride was evident.

  ‘That’ll be lovely,’ Caro said, watching as he picked up his newspaper and laid it out in front of him. Going to see his daughter. A few years ago, she’d have automatically pictured her dad, Jack, there, a couple of decades down the line, saying the same thing to a stranger on a train. In fact, maybe even this train. It was the one he’d travelled on every month, for as long as she could remember, when his work took him down to Glasgow. It was all she’d ever been used to. When she was a kid, she always knew when he was about to leave. Her mum, Yvonne, would be just a little quieter, a little sadder, because he was leaving the next day. Off he’d go, all hugs and kisses, and Caro would look forward to him returning because Mum’s face would light up again and she’d be truly happy, singing to the radio in the mornings, brushing her hair and spraying perfume just before he was due to walk in the door.

  It was all because Dad had a Very Important Job. A management consultant in the oil business. Caro had never been entirely sure what that meant. She’d asked a few times over the years and he’d given her spiels about development strategies, man-management, personnel restructures, performance optimisation. As far as Caro could grasp, what it all boiled down to was that his company worked with oil corporations to make the divisions within each organisation work as efficiently as possible. If they needed to expand, he helped them structure the new department, hire the best people and implement training programs. If they needed to cut costs, he showed them where. He travelled a lot, sometimes faraway places like China, Abu Dhabi and Oman, but usually just down to the company office in Glasgow. He was a cavalier guy in a cavalier industry.

  ‘Got to go where the money is,’ he’d tell her, before the door banged behind him. In hindsight, Caro wondered where the money had gone. She and her mother had never seen much of it. There had never been any lavish holidays. No designer clothes. Yvonne didn’t have a fancy car. They’d always lived in the house that her mum had been left by her parents, a perfectly nice semi-detached granite home on a perfectly nice street, that had been worth very little when Gran and Granda had bought it in the fifties, but had a couple more zeros added to the value by the arrival of the oil industry.

  When Gran and Granda passed away, their house had been left jointly to Mum and her sister, Auntie Pearl. When Auntie Pearl married and moved out, they’d worked out a rental agreement and Mum had stayed behind, living on her own until she’d met Jack Anderson at college, got pregnant, married him and he’d carried her over the threshold into the home she’d already lived in for twenty-two years.

  Not that Caro could ever remember him being there full-time. He probably was for the first few years, but then he’d capitalised on the oil boom, and ever since then he’d been gone more than he’d been home. Some months he’d be home for a few days, sometimes two weeks, rarely more. She’d never felt neglected or that she was losing out in any way. It was what she’d always been used to and, as Mum always said, just one of the sacrifices they had to make because Dad had a Very Important Job.

  The payback for the sacrifice? A couple of years ago, just as her parents should have been starting to contemplate cruises and bucket lists for their early retirement, Jack Anderson had walked out of the door to go to his Very Important Job and he’d never come back.

  Caro felt the familiar inner rage start to build now and she squashed it back down. He’d left them a week before her thirtieth birthday, so she was old enough to process her parents splitting up by some mutual consent. Yet she couldn’t. Because it wasn’t mutual and he’d bolted when her mother had needed him most, walked out to a new life and he hadn’t looked back.

  For a long time, Caro didn’t understand why.

  Only now, did she realise that on the Importance scale, the job was up there with his Very Important Secret.

  Maybe.

  She still didn’t believe it to be true.

  She must be wrong.

  Mistaken identity.

  Surely?

  Yet, here she was, sitting on a train, on a cold December morning, on her way to Glasgow.

  She pulled her iPad out of her satchel, logged on to the train’s Wi-Fi, then flicked on to the Facebook page she’d looked at a thousand times in the last few weeks.

  It was one of those coincidental flukes that had taken her to it in the first place.

  It had been late at night, and she’d been sitting beside her mum’s bed in the hospital, feeling like she’d been battered by the storm that was raging outside. She shouldn’t even have been there because it was outside of visiting time, but the nurses overlooked her presence because her mum was in a private room at the end of a corridor, and they made exceptions when it came to patients at this stage in their lives. Yvonne’s eyes were closed, her body still, but Caro wanted to stay, whether Yvonne knew she was there or not. It was the first night of the October school holiday, so she didn’t have to get up early to be
the responsible Miss Anderson for a class of eleven-year-olds the next morning.

  Instead, she could just be Caro, sitting there passing the time catching up with Facebook. She only dipped in and out of it every few weeks, caught up with a Carpool Karaoke, the launch of a new book, or maybe a movie trailer.

  A promotional link appeared for the new Simple Minds tour, twenty dates around the country, yet another band riding the nostalgic affection for the eighties and nineties.

  Before she could stop it, the opening bars of Jim Kerr’s voice belting out ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ flooded her head and she felt the bite of a sharp-toothed memory. Her dad had been a big fan, their music playing alongside Oasis and Blur on his CD player when he was home or in the car on the few mornings he was around to take her to school, and that had been his favourite song.

  The irony in the title didn’t escape her. Don’t You Forget About Me. If only she could forget he ever existed, then she wouldn’t have to deal with the soul-sucking fury that he wasn’t here.

  Agitated, she started to scroll past the post when she noticed the first comment underneath, written by a complete stranger.

  ‘OMG, my dad will FREAK when he sees this. His fave band!’

  Mine too, she’d thought.

  Then she noticed the surname of the person who’d posted. Anderson.

  Mine too, she’d thought again.

  Coincidence. The same surname. Maybe that was why she’d clicked on the photo of the person who’d posted. She didn’t make a habit of snooping in other people’s lives, but any diversion from reality was welcome and she’d come to realise that in the many long hours she had to fill, curiosity was one way to pass the time.

  Click.

  This was pointless. Didn’t everyone have rigid privacy settings these days? Wasn’t that what she taught her primary seven kids at school? Privacy. Protection. Common sense.