Lucie sighed as she placed her cutlery on her empty plate. “That was delicious, Glenda and Hank. Thank you so much.”
Glenda smiled. “You’re very welcome. But have a little breather, because there’s dessert too.”
Lucie rubbed her belly. “I’m about to pop.”
“Nonsense. I’m sure you can squeeze some more in. We have to keep you well fed, especially now you’re part of the f…” She dropped her eyes to her plate and colour flooded her cheeks.
Everyone stared at Glenda, and Lucie watched in horror as the woman’s cheeks turned from pink to scarlet.
“What’s all this then?” Thomas asked. “Part of the family?”
Glenda shook her head but she caught Hank’s eye and started to smile.
Lucie suppressed a groan. Here goes…
“Do tell!” Helen said. “Don’t keep us all in suspense here, Glenda. Lucie?” She looked from one woman to the other then to Dale. “What about you, Dale? Are you going to spill the beans?”
Dale met Lucie’s eyes and she saw the panic there. What now?
“Actually, Mum, while we’re on the topic of revelations, I have one of my own,” Ieuan announced as he drained his glass of sugar-free lemonade. Lucie breathed a sigh of relief. Thankfully, the competitive nature of the Treharne brothers meant that they usually had to try to outdo one another, and Ieuan clearly didn’t want to be overshadowed here.
Glenda turned to face her eldest son. “You do?”
Ieuan nodded and crossed his arms. Then uncrossed them. Then placed his palms flat on the table. “I—”
“But I want to know what’s going on with Dale and Lucie!” It was eight-year-old Max, Thomas and Helen’s eldest son.
“What have I told you about interrupting grownups?” Helen scowled at Max.
“You said it was rude unless it was something really important. And it must be important because they were in Granny’s toilet together.” Max widened his eyes to give his statement extra impact. “And my teacher says that boys and girls mustn’t go into the same toilet.”
All eyes turned to Dale and Lucie. Heat crawled up her throat and into her face. She knew she’d be getting all blotchy. She wished she could just disappear.
“We were uh… I couldn’t find the uh… toilet paper.” Dale shrugged but Max shook his head.
“Granny always has lots and lots of toilet paper, Uncle Dale. You’re fibbing and Mummy says fibbing is naughty.”
Helen looked from her son to Dale and nodded.
“Dale couldn’t manage to turn the tap on to wash his hands, so I helped him,” Lucie blurted desperately, realising it was the lamest excuse ever for being in the downstairs loo with her best friend. “He’s really weak sometimes.”
Max stared at her.
“And I’m really strong!” She raised her arms and curled them like a bodybuilder.
Max’s mouth had fallen open.
“And I have something I need to say.” It was Ieuan. “It doesn’t involve toilets or muscles or anything like that thank goodness… well, some muscles, but that’s TMI for you right now and I… uh… well… it does involve Christmas.”
Lucie held her breath and glanced at Dale. How did Ieuan have news about Christmas too? She saw Dale’s cheek twitch. If Ieuan was going to be away as well, then it would be worse when Dale told Glenda that he wouldn’t be there, so he needed to get in first.
“I’m going to New York for Christmas!” Dale shouted, just as Ieuan exclaimed, “I’m bringing my boyfriend to Christmas dinner!”
The room fell silent.
Everyone stared at their empty plates.
The clock on the sideboard ticked.
Glenda raised her eyes and opened and closed her mouth as if gasping for air, then eyed her sons in turn as if seeking the worst offender. It was worse than that time one of the boys had emptied the chocolate advent calendar by opening the bottom and shaking all the chocolates out. Lucie had been present that December morning as Dale and his brothers had been reprimanded for being sneaky. None of them had admitted to the crime, and she didn’t think they had discovered who’d done it even to this day. But there had been a grey cloud over the Treharne household for weeks. Dale had insisted that it had been one of Ieuan’s friends who’d come over to play, but there was no evidence. No way of proving it to their mother. After that, Glenda only allowed the boys to have a card calendar featuring small pictures of snowmen, reindeer and puddings with holly on top. She’d said that she couldn’t bear to witness the disappointment of her sons opening a calendar door and not finding a chocolate there because some greedy piggy had eaten them all.
Hank stood up suddenly, but the tablecloth was caught in his belt, where he’d tucked in his napkin, so everything flew up the table towards him, causing glasses and cutlery to fly off in all directions. Someone screamed. Someone swore. Hank gazed in shock at the lunchtime carnage, threw his napkin aside, pushed his glasses up his nose and asked, “Anyone for port?”
Lucie opened the door to her flat and shuffled inside, instinctively turning the thermostat up as she passed. As she hung her coat on the rail and pushed her boots under the shelf, she noticed that as Dale entered, he automatically turned the heating back down. They really were like a couple sometimes; he didn’t even live there yet he was still thinking about saving her money.
“Hey, what’re you doing? It’s cold.” She shivered as she watched him remove his coat and boots.
“You don’t need it that high, Lucie. It’ll cost you money and it’s bad for the environment.”
“Being cold is bad for me.”
“Go put a jumper on.” He followed her into the kitchen. “Shall I make tea?”
“Please. There are biscuits in the cupboard.”
She went to her room and changed into fleecy pyjamas and a thick jumper, then headed to the bathroom. She combed out her hair and stared at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. She had terrible dark shadows under her eyes. They’d appeared this afternoon because she felt so bad about deceiving Dale’s family. Following Ieuan’s announcement, along with Dale’s about heading to New York, there had been utter chaos. Poor Hank had pulled the tablecloth off, along with some of Glenda’s best crystal wine glasses, and plates and gravy-covered cutlery had rolled off onto her thick cream carpet. Although Lucie and Dale had done their best to remove the stains, it had proved impossible to get the gravy out, so not only did she feel bad about taking Dale away at Christmas and pretending that they were dating, she also had to carry part of the responsibility for ruining Glenda’s lovely home. And Glenda was house-proud. Extremely so. Even having three boys had not hindered her efforts to make her home a cosy palace.
And what about Ieuan’s confession? After all the apparent philandering with women, he was gay? And he was bringing his boyfriend, who he’d later told them was called Barry, to Christmas dinner?
Lucie knew that Dale’s parents were very tolerant, and that it wouldn’t be the fact that Ieuan was gay that would bother them so much as the fact that they hadn’t known. Glenda would no doubt blame herself for not knowing her son, and Lucie’s heart went out to her. To add insult to injury, she was giving Glenda false hope, deceiving her about her relationship with Dale, and Lucie hated lying. She hated liars. Because liars caused pain; liars tore families and lives apart.
“Lucie?” Dale knocked on the door. “I’m bursting!”
“Okay. Coming!” She opened the door. “Sorry.”
“No problem. Just couldn’t wait any longer. You’ve been in here for ages. Tea’s ready and I’ve turned the TV on.”
“Thanks. Don’t be long then!”
Ten minutes later, snuggled up on the sofa with a large steaming mug of tea and a packet of chocolate biscuits, Lucie gazed at the television screen. The paranormal investigators were traipsing through a cavernous cellar somewhere, their faces illuminated by night vision cameras and their eyes black holes as they wore expressions of expectant terror. Lucie loved the programme, even though Dale always claimed it was a load of rubbish – yet he always watched it with her, even jumping at some of the scarier bits.
“Are you okay about how today went, Luce?” Dale placed his mug on the side table then turned to look at her.
“Kind of.”
“That was quite a dinner, eh?”
“Your mother’ll never want me to come back.”
“Rubbish.” He shook his head. “She won’t blame you for that. In fact, she’s thrilled that we’re finally together.” He air quoted the last word and Lucie blushed.
“I hate deceiving them, Dale.”
“Me too. But like I said, Mum just assumed that we were a couple and I didn’t want to hurt her. We can tell them the truth in time. It won’t be that hard to pretend to be my girlfriend will it?” He looked at her from underneath his thick, dark lashes.
“No. Of course not. It’s only until we get back from New York though, right?”
He glanced away for a moment before meeting her eyes. “Of course. I mean, I could never live here with you full time anyway. It’s like the Sahara!” He made a choking noise and fell backwards on the sofa, loosening his shirt and wiping his brow dramatically.
“Dale, stop it!” Lucie laughed at him. “I don’t know how you can stay in that big old house of yours without central heating.”
He shrugged. “I have jumpers, thick socks and a duck-down duvet.”
“Even so. It must be freezing at night, Dale.”
“The new boiler’s going in soon, so it’ll be fine. Lucky the old couple who lived there had that electric shower or I’d be really stinky by now.”
“Did you know about Ieuan? At all?”
Dale sat upright and straightened his shirt. “I don’t know. I mean… kind of, I guess. Now that he’s admitted it, I can see that he’s said and done things over the years that could have been his way of dropping clues. All those women he was seeing… we never met them. Not one. They were always models off on assignments abroad, or businesswomen travelling the country with their jobs. But now I think it was all a front. He was hiding who he really was, yet, I suspect, still trying to get us to see him properly. We just didn’t read the signs.”
“Like what?”
“Well the absent girlfriends, for starters. Then there were other things. Like, he FaceTimed one of his male friends a lot over Christmas last year. And on Christmas day too! And when he was in uni, he had photos of him and this guy in his room. They were all over the walls… and I mean all over. And he’d check out other men if we went to the pub then make out like he was joking, but now I guess I can see that he was testing my reactions to it all.”
“Poor Ieuan.”
“Well, at least it’ll give Glenda someone else to fuss over at Christmas when I’m in NYC with you… making sure that you don’t get yourself into any trouble.”
“True.” Lucie paused then realized what Dale had just said. “Hey! I will not get into any trouble.”
“Not with me there you won’t, but if I’d let you go alone…” He shook his head.
Lucie grabbed a cushion and whacked him over the head with it. “That’s it! Pillow fight!”
And for the next ten minutes, Lucie forgot about feeling worried or guilty, forgot about Ieuan’s situation, and forgot about all her other worries as she and Dale chased each other around the flat until they collapsed in laughter on her living room floor.
Exhausted.
Happy.
And more than a little bit excited about their upcoming trip.