Dying for Christmas: Tis the Season to Be Dead Read online

  About the Book

  Sometimes, evil comes gift-wrapped . . .

  I am missing. Held captive by a blue-eyed stranger. To mark the twelve days of Christmas, he gives me a gift every day, each more horrible than the last. The twelfth day is getting closer. After that, there’ll be no more Christmas cheer for me. No mince pies, no carols. No way out . . .

  But I have a secret.

  No one has guessed it.

  Will you?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Tammy Cohen

  Copyright

  Once again, for my amazing mum, Elizabeth Gaynor Cohen

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chances are, by the time you finish reading this, I’ll already be dead.

  Three interesting things about me. Well, I’m twenty-nine years old, I’m phobic about buttons. Oh yes, and I’m dying. Not as in I’ve got two years to live, but hey, here’s a list of things I want to cram into the time I have left. No, I’m dying right here and now.

  In a sense, you are reading a snuff book.

  So, why did I go along with it? That’s a tricky one, that question of motivation. Maybe it’s because I was caught up in the Christmas spirit and feeling kindly disposed. He told me I was beautiful.

  Also, it didn’t hurt that he was handsome. He looked a bit like that guy from Silver Linings Playbook, the one who always plays nut jobs. Maybe that should have given me a bit of a clue.

  Oh well, you live and learn.

  Except in my case only one of those is true.

  * * *

  I was in the café of a department store on Oxford Street. I’d been Christmas shopping for four hours by then. Normally I avoided in-store cafés – so claustrophic, and always someone with a buggy blocking the way, and someone else in the world’s biggest wheelchair. But it was sleeting outside and I had all these bags.

  I managed to find a table which, considering it was Christmas Eve, was no mean feat. I set my cappuccino down and tried to fit all my bags around me. One had to go on the table itself. It contained a toy I’d bought for one of my nephews. When I placed it on the table, it lowed like a cow. By that point I was well into that stage of Christmas shopping where you look at your purchases and know beyond any doubt that not one of them is right and the only solution is to buy more.

  So I was already feeling harassed when he approached.

  ‘Can I sit here?’

  I shrugged without looking up.

  ‘Sorry. It’s just so packed in here. Seems like you’d have to sell a kidney or something to get a table.’

  Then I did look up.

  First impressions: blue, blue eyes.

  Slightly too close together, but that was almost a relief because without that his face would have been so film-star perfect no one could ever have taken him seriously. Strong, straight nose. Brown wavy hair swept back from his face. Dimple in one cheek, near the mouth. Chin slightly cleft, just so it lent that edge of masculinity.

  Men who look like that don’t exist in my life. Not in 3D form anyway.

  I stared down at my cappuccino like it might be trying to tell me something and wished I’d brought a book. His presence across the tiny table was an elephant sitting on my chest.

  ‘You’ve been Christmas shopping I see.’

  No shit, Sherlock.

  Except I didn’t actually say that. What I actually said was: ‘Yeah, well, I put it off as long as I could.’

  And that’s when he said it. ‘You know, you’re very beautiful.’

  Like I said: hand, meet putty.

  There was an awkward silence. I took a sip of cappuccino and then couldn’t swallow it in case the noise deafened us both.

  ‘I’m sorry if I keep staring at you,’ he said, and my eyes flicked up to find his boring right into me. ‘It’s just you remind me of someone.’

  I focused on him, forcing myself to hold his gaze by pressing my nails into the palm of my left hand under the table. It’s a distraction technique. It distracted me from thinking about the awkwardness of this whole situation, and the fact that as someone technically in a relationship, I shouldn’t really have been encouraging this conversation. Or noticing the colour of his eyes.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘I hardly ever remind people of other people. Although someone did once say I looked like Daisy the kitchen maid in Downton Abbey, but I think that was because I was wearing an apron at the time, and he thought it was funny.’

  I ramble when I’m nervous.

  He smiled, and the dimple in his cheek was like a cave inviting me in.

  ‘You remind me of my wife,’ he said, and he stirred the spoon around in the glass mug in front of him, releasing clouds of something green and herbal into the clear water. ‘Actually, I haven’t seen her in months so she’s probably my soon-to-be ex-wife. She looks just like you. In fact, when I saw you earlier walking along Oxford Street, I thought for a mad moment you really were her. That’s why I followed you.’

  ‘You followed me into the shop?’

  He was beaming, as if he’d done something clever.

  ‘Through the Glove and Scarf department? And Toys and …’ My face suddenly blazed, recalling my prolonged foray into Lingerie.

  ‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘It was just so uncanny, you see. And then when you came in here and sat down, I thought, “Here’s my chance.”’

  I nodded calmly. As though strange men were forever following me into department stores off the street.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind. I’m not some crazed axe-murderer, I promise.’

  If there was a noise then, like a snort in my ear, I instantly blocked it out.

  ‘You look like you’re shopping for an army.’ He indicated the bags all around our feet.

  ‘Oh, just family,’ I said, conveniently leaving out Travis.

  Not that my family is particularly good at presents.

  Last Christmas, my parents bought me six sessions with a therapist. My mother had even mocked up a proper gift voucher on the computer: This voucher entitles the bearer to six sessions with Sonia Rubenstein. It was tucked inside a card that had a glitter snowglobe on the front with tiny children throwing snowballs trapped inside.

  ‘It’s not that we think there’s something wrong with you,’ Mum said, scanning my face anxiously as I examined the voucher. ‘We just want you to be the best you can be.’

  ‘But what if this is my best me?’

  My dad laughed then as if I’d made a joke. ‘Then God help us,’ he said.

  I’d told myself I wouldn’t go on principle, but of course I did. And when the six sessions were up, I booked six more, and more after that. What, turn down the chance to talk about myself for fifty-five minutes a week? I’d have to be nuts.

  The stranger across the table was saying something.

  ‘How about you?’ he repeated. ‘Any significant others?’

  Travis’ face came into my head and again I blotted him out.

  ‘More like a few insignificant ones.’

  ‘Come on. Don’t tell me someone as lovely as you has no one special. There must be someone, surely? Someone to buy Christmas presents for that don’t come in a last-minute job lot from John Lewis?’

  I thought about Travis and how in our first year together he’d bought me a £5.99 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc on his way over on Christmas Day and given it to me wrapped in a corner-shop plastic bag with the price sticker still on.

  ‘I know you don’t really approve of Christmas,’ he’d said, and I’d hidden the cashmere jumper I’d bought him behind the sofa.

  ‘No,’ I lied to th
e stranger. ‘No one special.’

  In one of the bags by my feet was another stocking filler I’d bought for my thirteen-year-old niece, Grace – a little figure that expands in water. Grow Your Own Boyfriend, said the packaging. Well, that little figure could have been me, except I was a Grow Your Own Victim, handmade for him. I might as well have been gift-wrapped with a bow.

  The man with the blue, blue eyes gazed at me across the table, and then stuck out his hand. His left hand. I noticed the gold band on the fourth finger and wondered why he still wore it.

  ‘Amazing the things we find hard to let go of,’ he said, and I was mortified he’d noticed that I’d noticed. ‘I’m Dominic.’ His fingers closed around mine. ‘Dominic Lacey.’

  Now there was a sound in my ear like someone breathing, or an insect’s wings buzzing. My fingers burned where they touched his.

  ‘Jessica Gold.’

  ‘Gold. That’s nice. It suits you.’

  I should have asked him why. There’s nothing golden about me. Usually I have lots of dark hair, not quite black but very dark brown, and already I’ve found a few threads of grey nestling in there like cuckoos in the nest, pretending to be like the others but not like the others at all. My skin is sallow, especially in winter, and when I’m tired, fat purple shadows underline my eyes.

  ‘Talk me through the presents,’ he said. ‘Who’s the wok for?’

  ‘How did you know …?’ Oh, yes, you followed me. ‘The wok’s for my brother James – he likes to think of himself as a serious chef. He makes complicated dishes for his kids and then gets offended when they only want to eat cheese sandwiches.’

  ‘What about you, Jessica? Are you an adventurous eater?’

  I hesitated. Should I tell him that I only really eat bland beige food? Cheese, potatoes, white bread, Cheerios, pasta, digestive biscuits. Should I tell him how Sonia Rubenstein’s eyes had brightened when she found this out and how she’d scribbled frantically on her notepad with her big black pen?

  Instead I shrugged. ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘And is James your only sibling?’

  ‘He’s the oldest. There’s Jonathan too. My middle brother. My parents had a thing about Js.’

  They’d wanted a matching set, you see – my parents. They’d wanted a triple deck of bright, outgoing, confident J-named kids. Instead they got two of those. And then me. An anomaly in the family. An outlier.

  ‘And they’ve both got children?’ He looked pointedly at the bags of toys.

  ‘Yep, James has two and Jonathan has one. It’s good, it means the pressure’s off me.’

  Unbidden there came a memory of Travis and I staring down at a white plastic stick with a blue line creeping across a small rectangular window. I remembered the sudden, treacherous flowering of hope that died practically as it was born when Travis said, ‘Oh shit.’ And then later, ‘Thank god backstreet abortions are a thing of the past.’

  Sometimes if I let my guard down I can hear a baby crying.

  ‘I’m guessing you’ve got a job,’ he said, ‘to pay for this lot.’

  ‘I work for a TV company,’ I said. ‘I’m an archivist. I catalogue old documents and recordings.’

  I store dead things.

  ‘And what about you?’ I asked, remembering belatedly the basic rules of social interaction.

  ‘I buy and sell liquidated stock. If a company goes bankrupt, I buy up their stock and hope to sell it on before I’ve even cleared it out, so I don’t have to pay storage.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ I said. It sounded a little grubby. Making a profit out of other people’s despair.

  ‘I give them a fair price,’ he said, as if my thoughts were flashing across my forehead in neon lights. ‘And if I didn’t do it, someone else would.’

  ‘Is it lucrative?’

  ‘I do all right. I’m comfortable, as they say.’

  I wished I was comfortable. I was too hot in the overheated café. I wished I’d washed my hair that morning, or worn some make-up or smarter clothes. The temperature had just dropped below zero for the first time this winter and consequently I was hopelessly overdressed. Beneath my thick cable-knit jumper I was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt that had come in a tiny pouch from a Japanese clothing chain and boasted heat-conserving technology. My jeans were clammy around my legs.

  ‘We’re being glared at,’ I said, noticing the queue of people standing by the cash till.

  ‘But I want to go on talking to you,’ he said, and his eyes were a sky you could fall into and float there. ‘How about we go for a drink somewhere?’

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve. All the pubs will be packed, and I’ve got all these bags.’

  ‘But I haven’t found out enough about you. I want to hear more, and about how you got that little scar.’ He reached out and touched my wrist, and a bolt of electricity shot up my arm through my veins.

  I shrugged without speaking, in case I opened my mouth and my thumping heart flip-flopped right out on to the table. He kept his hand on my wrist like a cuff.

  ‘My car is right here – in the underground car park. I don’t live far away. Will you come round? Just for a festive glass of wine? I don’t normally invite strange women round, but you seem so familiar, like I’ve known you for ever. And anyway, it is Christmas.’

  He examined my face, his attention like a warm flannel dabbing at the crumbs of uncertainty until they were picked off one by one.

  ‘You can text someone if it makes you feel safer, to tell them where you’re going.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not necessary,’ I said.

  * * *

  A woman’s laugh whooshed past my ear like a Frisbee, leaving the air vibrating. I tuned it out.

  What on earth was I thinking? What would possess an educated young woman, well versed in the perils of stranger danger – a young woman with a long-term boyfriend – to get in a car with a man she’d only just met? And if you have to ask, you’re probably too clear-headed, too normal, not lonely enough, to understand.

  I didn’t think he was going to be my boyfriend and this was going to be the start of a beautiful romance. I knew men like him didn’t fall in love with women like me. What I was after was an experience, a memory I could store in tissue paper and take out every now and then in years to come when no one was around. The next day Travis and I would go to my parents’ house for Christmas dinner. His own parents usually spend the winter months at their house in Florida, so we tend to go to my family unless Travis is working which, as a junior doctor, isn’t unusual. My brothers would also come for lunch, bringing their efficient, multi-tasking wives and their Renaissance children, whose timetables are bursting with ballet and gym and Kumon Maths. James and Jonathan would both, separately, give me the quizzical look they’ve been giving me since childhood, the look that says, ‘Who are you? And where did you come from?’

  ‘Why does she have to be so weird?’ they used to ask my parents as we were growing up, as if weirdness was an eccentric jacket I’d perversely chosen to wear.

  And that’s how it happened. I pulled on my parka with the fur around the hood, and gathered up my bags, though he insisted on carrying the one with the wok, and I followed him out of the shop much as he must have followed me in.

  I suppressed my qualms and shut out my mother’s voice in my head asking what I thought I was doing. I focused on his broad shoulders in the navy-blue wool coat with the velvet lapels, and his brown hair curling slightly over the collar.

  It was the 24th of December. I’d spent all year trapped inside myself with only me for company. I wanted a break. I wanted to be someone else for a bit, with someone else’s life.

  You’re a long time dead, I told myself.

  Funny, that thought isn’t so comforting now.

  Chapter Two

  The car was black and quite low to the ground. I couldn’t tell you the make or model, but it had leather seats and a musky smell like whisky. When we’d loaded the shopping bags on to the back seat and belted ourselves in, he looked at me and a smile cracked his face right open.

  ‘I’m very, very glad you didn’t listen to your mother when she told you not to get into cars with strange men,’ he said. ‘You are a very enlightened person, Jessica Gold.’

  And for that moment, I believed him. ‘Where exactly do you live?’

  Once I’d asked, I realized I should have asked sooner. Isn’t it the sort of thing you’re supposed to want to know, where you’re going? Sonia Rubenstein thought that could be the root of my problem (until I went to see her I hadn’t even known I had a problem). She said, ‘Don’t you ever get tired of reacting to events instead of driving them?’ And, ‘Don’t you think the journey would be easier if you had an end point in mind?’ That’s the thing about Sonia Rubenstein, she asks a lot of leading questions.