The First Christmas Without You:. Michelle Betham
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be forgetting that. And I really don’t need to be treated with kid gloves anymore, I’m fine now.’
Kat raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you?’
I really didn’t want to get into this conversation again. I’d been through it enough times, and that was the main reason I’d made the decision to spend Christmas somewhere completely different this year. Somewhere we’d always wanted to visit, a place we’d both wanted to experience; only now I was going to have to experience it alone – for the both of us.
‘You’ve still got time to change your mind,’ Kat persisted, sitting back and crossing her legs, still eyeing me with that concerned expression on her face. ‘Maybe delay your trip until after Christmas? I mean, I’m not denying that getting away from here for a while isn’t a good idea, but… You’re not going to change your mind, are you?’
I shook my head, quickly checking my watch. ‘Nope. I’m not going to change my mind. Come on, get a shift on, Katrina. I’ve got to lock up in half an hour and get packing. And there’s a lot to pack when you’re heading off to the Arctic Circle, believe me.’
Kat sighed, hauling herself up out of the chair. ‘Anyway, if you had to go away over Christmas, I don’t understand why you had to go with your brother and his mates. Why didn’t you ask me?’
I looked at Kat, half-smiling at her as I tidied up a tray of friendship bracelets I’d made that morning. ‘Seriously? You? In salopettes? And thermal underwear? Navigating your way around the ski slopes in snow boots and a thick padded anorak?’
‘I’m sure you can get some quite fashionable padded anoraks, if you look hard enough,’ Kat huffed, examining her nails.
I nudged her, smiling as she leant over and hugged me. She’d hugged me a lot over the past year, and every hug from my best friend still meant the world to me. I still needed all those hugs because, on the outside I might give the impression that everything was fine, but deep down inside I was still getting there. Slowly. I just didn’t want everyone else knowing it was taking this much time.
‘Look, Matt had already booked his skiing trip there, and he’s been before so, it just made sense to tag along. Especially as it’s somewhere we… I’ve always wanted to visit.’ Kat didn’t miss the look on my face as I quickly corrected myself, but I avoided her eyes. Now wasn’t the time to get into another deep conversation about how everyone around me still assumed I wasn’t coping. I was coping. In my own way. They just needed to let me get on with it.
I had thought about doing what Kat had suggested and leaving it until after Christmas to take my own trip to Lapland, but I was also big enough to realise that, although I might come across as somebody who could quite easily handle some time on her own, thanks to the vibes I’d been sending out for the past year, I probably was going to need some company at some point. Because this was Christmas. And Christmas wasn’t just any time of the year for me. It was a special time, a time I’d always loved, or it had been, until the events of last year. When Christmas changed forever for me. We’d always spent Christmas together, you see. Just the two of us, holed up in our little two-up two-down close to the sea front. Just the two of us. The way we’d always liked it. And this past year without him had been the hardest of my life. He’d been my world, my whole reason for existing. Oh, my life had been good before he’d walked into it, don’t get me wrong. He’d just made everything that much better, that’s all. I guess you could say he’d been the icing on the cake. He’d completed me. And not having him in my life anymore meant that, as far as I was concerned, Christmas had lost its appeal, it meant nothing now. And I just couldn’t do another Christmas at home without him. Another Christmas without icing…
The second I laid eyes on Jase Collins, when he’d walked into my shop not long after it had opened, in the summer of 1998, looking for a scented candle for his mum’s birthday, I knew he was the man I was going to marry. I just knew it. With his torn jeans and loose-fitting Metallica t-shirt, messed-up, light-brown hair and beard, and the most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen, it was as though I’d been waiting for him to walk into my life forever. There’d been an instant connection, something he’d felt too, and it had been the most incredible feeling. Like a bolt of electricity shooting right through me, making me sit up and take notice of a future that had just been laid out in front of me. As soon as he’d smiled, as soon as he’d started talking to me, as though we’d known each other all our lives and not just that second met, it felt as though I’d found the other half of me. He had the same laid-back attitude, the same morals and beliefs; the same taste in music, not to mention that hippie/rocker edge to him that I’d fallen in love with straight away. It had just felt so right. He’d felt right. Jase Collins. My life.
Our first date just two days later had been at a local pub to watch my brother Matt and my dad’s rock band play, and from that night onwards we’d become inseparable. We’d married a couple of years later in a small but beautiful ceremony attended by just a handful of family and close friends, bought our little house in the village of Tynemouth, and began the rest of our lives together. Jase had continued working in his surf shop down by the beach, and I’d carried on making and selling my jewellery and gifts. We’d never had all that much money, and life had been a struggle sometimes, but we’d had each other. We’d had the life we’d wanted, doing the things we’d wanted to do, and that had been more important to both of us than all the money in the world.
Jase had been my soulmate, simple as that. I can’t say we’d had the perfect marriage – we’d had our ups and downs, whose marriage didn’t? But they’d never lasted long because we were both people who believed in living each day as though it were the last; we’d believed in making the most of life, so stupid arguments and disagreements were always dealt with quickly and forgotten even quicker.
We’d been free spirits. Happy as long as there was food on the table and a roof over our heads. Jessie and Jase – just the two of us. And that’s the way it had been for over ten years. Until last Christmas, when he’d gone out with Matt and their friends, to a biker-friendly pub just outside of Northumberland for a mate’s birthday. Over the years, ever since Jase Collins had walked into my life, he and my brother had become really close friends. Best friends. With their shared love of surfing, motorbikes and rock music, they’d had a lot in common, and I’d never minded them spending time together. I’d loved seeing my brother and my husband so close. But I’d never been all that keen on Jase riding pillion on Matt’s Yamaha, even though Matt wasn’t some wet-behind-the-ears speed-freak. He’d been riding those things for years, both of them had, and it wasn’t the first time Jase had been out with him. But that night, something just hadn’t felt right.
I’d watched him from the living room doorway as he stood by the Christmas tree laughing with Matt, joking about something, and whatever it had been it had made Jase laugh out loud and I’d always remember how handsome he’d looked that night. How relaxed and happy and handsome. So I’d tried to push those niggling feelings to the back of my mind, even though they were constantly fighting to come to the forefront.
He’d kissed me goodnight, holding me close and making me smile with the things he’d whispered in my ear, things that I’ll never, ever forget because they were the last things he ever said to me. And I can only thank God that one of those things had been ‘I love you’ and I’d told him I loved him too, because he never came home. My beautiful husband died that night when a driver, who we later heard had been three times over the limit, had crashed into the bike as Matt and Jase had made their way home along a narrow country lane. They’d taken a short cut because Jase had wanted to get back to me, Matt had told me later at the hospital as he was treated for nothing but a fractured wrist and bruised ribs. Jase had missed me, and he’d wanted to get home before I went to bed because he’d just wanted to be with me. But fate had seen to it that he never arrived.
I said my last