A Tale of Christmases Past

It was official. Evelyn Cameron was a woman who could seldom find herself saying that she hated many things. Christmas parties, however, were an exception. Frankly, she would rather have swallowed broken glass than put herself through even one of these ludicrous gatherings that were effectively nights of unnecessarily prolonged torture. And her sentiments towards this one was not any different than they usually were by any means. Her ridiculous, self-righteous prude of a sister had dragged her along kicking and screaming ("I'm not having my younger sister laying about in her apartment alone on Christmas Eve, drinking wine out of the bottle and watching Gunsmoke reruns.") to her office's night out - Josephine's office, not Evelyn's; she'd wangled her way out of that one citing a bad migraine, which was fast becoming her go-to avoidance tactic. It was too early for it to be socially acceptable to leave, and she wasn't drunk enough yet for her be able to conceivably pretend that she was enjoying herself.
"If it's not impolite for me to say, you look bored out of your bloody nut."
There was a man behind her. Never in her life had she seen him before, or at least if she had, she didn't remember it. Still, his presence was far from unwanted; by this point, she was hovering about without conversation, waiting for either an appropriate moment to slip away or the floor to open up and swallow her. He was tall; at least 6'2", if not more, and with the most gorgeous dark brown hair; long in the front and lightly tousled. His eyes were a sort of vague blue-green, with an odd sort of dark spot in the right iris just below his pupil.
"I'm terribly sorry, do I know you?"
"Not at all. In fact, I am sure that I have never, ever seen you before in my life," he grinned, lifting the glass of champagne in his hand to his lips and emptying it in one mouthful. "I do apologize, but I suffer from a dire affliction that causes me to be dreadfully uninteresting to those of the female persuasion unless completely and utterly piss drunk."
"I do believe that normal people tend to refer to that as 'alcoholism'," Evelyn rolled her eyes as, in spite of her reluctance to do so at such an appalling joke, she smiled, pinching the bridge of her nose between gloved thumb and forefinger.
"I'm sorry, where the fuck are my manners? Wait, that wasn't right...sorry. I'm Matthew, by the way," he extended his hand, offering it to her.
"Evelyn," she took it, expecting a handshake. This man appeared an ill-mannered drunkard one minute and a purebred gentleman the next, as he bright it to his lips and planted a light kiss on her white silk glove. "Evelyn Cameron."
Matthew pondered for a moment, looking to the ceiling as if trying to recall something. He wore a clearly expensive black suit with a sort of silk cravat; so much black he would blend in fittingly in a crowd of professional mourners. A highly stark contrast to her entirely white outfit; this had cost her a small fortune, but it kept Josie from telling her that she looked like a tramp every three seconds. "Evelyn...you wouldn't happen to be a close relation of the uptight bitch who works the phones, would you?"
"That would be the one, yes."
"Jesus Christ, you might just be the most unfortunate person in the room to be tied by blood to that one for the rest of your life, eh?"
"I don't know - it appears that her fiancé may just be all three deaf, blind, and dumb. That, or he's never actually met her."
"Poor sod...Anyhow, Ms Evelyn, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Said obnoxious sister has forced me out of what had promised to be a quiet night in with the television and a bottle of Prosecco;  she has no other social life to speak of, so it wasn't like we could have gone anywhere interesting or anything, so here I am. Yourself?"
“Oh, my father owns the company. I’m part-time here so that I can wade my way through university in some state other than complete poverty.”
“Poverty my arse; I’ll bet that suit is worth more than my apartment and its entire contents.”
“Okay, you have me there. Can I ask you something that may or may not be insane and potentially incredibly lewd, depending on how I manage to word it?” he raised an eyebrow, a jaunty smirk on his face and a slight throaty chuckle playing about his voice.
"And what would that be?"
"What do you say we just slip away unnoticed, find a decent bar, get absolutely shitfaced, and then have hot sex in a cheap hotel room?"
Evelyn rolled her eyes, smiling and snorting disgracefully (quite by mistake) as she tried to keep her laugh discreet and ladylike. "And they say chivalry is dead. I couldn't think of anything better."



The world over, people were gathering together to mark the passing of another year; friends, family members, colleagues, vague acquaintances, dire enemies, and whoever else social etiquette  dictated you invited for the sake of filling a guest list; in bars, offices, homes, nightclubs, pubs, street parties, and wherever else one could fit a clock or a television, and a shedload of booze.

And it was in the western London family home of Evelyn (who now found her surname to be Brady - in a turn of events that disgusted her older sister and surprised all else she knew, the man she shagged in a hotel room on Christmas Eve thirty years ago eventually became the man she wed) and her family threw one of these events; however, the few attendees were only Evelyn’s near-to inseparable best friend, Tiana, and her girlfriend Lorna; her and Matthew’s eldest daughter Summer’s current boyfriend, Jack; a few work colleagues of Matthew’s; Josephine (whom Evelyn still despised in spite of the fact that she would never have met her husband had it not been for her) - Matthew had insisted upon her invitation, citing that it’d be rude not to; and a friend of her twelve-year old son David’s, whose name she didn’t know and had never managed to ask - they had fired off to his bedroom to watch TV and gas about something-or-other without so much as stopping off in the sitting room to say hello.

“Hello? Anyone home?” Matthew jested light-heartedly as he gently shook his wife by the shoulders. She had been lying across the settee, a Scotch and soda on the coffee table and her left foot propped on a cushion.
“Jesus Christ, I’m sorry - must’ve dozed off. What time is it?”
“Quarter to ten, darling - you haven’t missed anything. And I hate to have woken you up, only I have someone here who’s positively dying to meet you.” Matthew took a seat on the table, handing his wife her drink. He was swiftly followed by a strawberry-blonde gentleman in a suit, the top two buttons of his shirt undone and a glass of red wine in his hand. “Evy, this is Lucas - close friend of mine for quite a while. Lawyer and divorce attorney; one of the best in the country I believe.”
“Whatever it is you’re hinting at, stop it right this second; I’m not in the mood,” Evelyn snickered, clearly taking the piss. “Matt, it was a joke; stop giving me the evils!”
“What? What did I do?”
“Matthew, you are making a complete tit of yourself,” Lucas smiled. His accent was like something one would expect to come out of the mouth of a caricature of Prince Charles. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Evelyn; I’ve heard so much about you. Call me Luke, by the way. I demand to know what sort of sick, cold-hearted bastard thinks it’s acceptable to give their child a name like Lucas when their surname is ‘Rotheringham’.”
“Jesus Christ, tell me about it; I have four fucking middle names,” Evelyn shook his hand, running her other through her hair. She was sure that it was a total mess.
“Are we done waffling about how posh our parents are, or-”
“I’m almost sure that your parents have ‘Count’ and ‘Countess’ somewhere in their names, and you went to bloody Eton; shut your face,” Evelyn snarked, bashing him in the arm with a pillow.

“I’m terribly sorry, but if you don’t mind me stating the obvious, what on earth did you do to your leg?”
“Frankly, I’m surprised that it’s not come up in conversation far more,” Evelyn gave a laughing sigh, glancing towards her bottom half as she experimentally curled the toes of her plastered left leg. While she wracked her brains for a lie she could tell in place of bringing work up, nothing came to her. “I had a slight accident at work; it really is nothing major.”
“When she says ‘nothing major’, what she really means is she broke her knee and buggered her ankle because she tried to run backwards on a treadmill going at fourteen miles an hour. Stupid mare,” Matthew bantered, stroking his wife’s hand with his thumb as he held it in his. “Major surgery, a bloody fortnight in the hospital, four months’ worth of paid leave, and all because she was playing about like a bloody five-year old,” she smacked him with the pillow again, but he was in fits of laughter now. “Evelyn, I love you and all the rest of it, but your risk assessment skills are fucking ridiculous!”
“Just curious,” Evelyn looked to Luke now. “But how much has he had to drink?”
“A few bottles of beer, champers, maybe a Scotch or two…or five; I don’t know,” Luke put his head in his hands, resisting the urge to chuckle as Matthew rolled about laughing, on the verge of pissing himself. “Just curious, but what do you do for a living?”
“I would tell you, but I would have to kill you…That’s a more interesting way of saying that I work some obscure government office that nobody gives a shit about. Filing and tea-making mostly, but payment isn‘t bad and I don‘t exactly crave excitement.”
“And the treadmill comes in…how?”
“It is a very, very long story.”
*
“TEN…NINE…EIGHT…SEVEN…SIX…FIVE…FOUR…THREE…TWO…ONE… HAPPY NEW YEAR!” As the countdown ended, Evelyn’s (now heavily intoxicated) guests broke out into a tone-deaf rendition of ‘Auld Lang Sine’. She sat on a bar stool, half-engaged in the singing (she had crutches, but she was still early on in the healing process, and terrified of knocking herself on anything) and as the song fell apart into laughs and shouts of ‘I haven’t had a drink/piss/wash/snack/etc. all year!’, she felt the arms of the man she loved close around her waist and lift her up off of her seat. She screeched, bludgeoning him with her fists and commanding him to put her down, before he placed a kiss on her cheek, whispering in her ear: “Happy new year, darling.”
“You, too. I love you, sweetheart.”
“You too, Evy; forever and always.”