Page 42 of Make You Mine This Christmas

Relieved, Haf laughs. ‘Different voices, too,’ she adds, and Kit gives her the smallest flash of a grin. Maybe Kit’s had a change of heart and decided to go easy on her?

‘Sorry, darling, we’re just very proud of you,’ concedes Esther.

Emboldened, Haf decides to ask her some more. ‘So, as an architect, does that mean you essentially make a lot of buildings?’

‘Something like that,’ she says shortly. ‘What about you?’

‘Haf runs the communications for a wildlife charity,’ Esther offers with a smile. This simultaneously makes Haf glow a little with pride that her fake mother-in-law paid attention to her, but also a quiet worry builds in a corner of her mind – what if Esther works them out?

‘Hey, I didn’t know you were a ventriloquist too,’ says Kit, eyeing her mother. ‘Socials and stuff?’

‘Yeah, and a bit of scientific translation if I’m lucky. You know, like making dry science papers into normal, readable words.’

‘Hmm, tough. You must be on all the time,’ she says.

‘Basically. Just in case something happens in the news or someone responds to a post at like eleven at night.’

Christopher gives her a gentle pat on the wrist, like a good boyfriend would do, and Haf sees Kit’s eyes dart to his hand before jumping back to her own plate.

‘Are you still at Miller and Miller?’ Kit asks Christopher.

Haf realises this must be the name of the company he works at. Another thing she probably should have learned before now.

‘Yes,’ he says.

‘Going okay?’

Christopher doesn’t say anything, just tilts his head a little as though to say it’s so-so.

‘I can’t believe you stayed,’ says Kit.

Everyone is so hung up on Christopher and his job, Haf thinks. Though, perhaps that makes sense. Otto and Esther seem so enamoured with Kit’s job. Do they feel that way about Christopher’s? Was that what the tension was about?

Sensing this is a moment where she, as a good fake girlfriend, should gently stand up for him, Haf goes to speak but Kit barrels on past her.

‘I thought Mark being promoted over you would have been the last straw,’ Kit says flatly.

Christopher stiffens.

Mark? As in Mark the extremely cuboid rugby-man Mark? As in the one who stole his girlfriend...

‘I didn’t know you worked with him,’ and the words are out of her mouth before she realises.

Everyone’s eyes are on her, because, of course, she should know this. She looks to Christopher, hoping he might come up with something to save her.

‘Yes, he’s my sort of my line manager now, remember, darling?’ he says, pointedly.

Perhaps not, she thinks. Well, best alternative option is to lean into the ditziness that they probably think is her entire personality by now.

‘Oh,MarkMark,’ she says, trying to emphasise. ‘I was thinking of, you know, the other Mark.’

‘The other Mark? Do we know this other Mark?’ asks Esther to Christopher.

‘Oh, no, he’s my’ – she glances around wildly, and Kit’s enormous scarf pops into her head – ‘my knitting teacher. In York.’

‘Does he work in finance too?’

‘I don’t know, ha ha ha,’ Haf says, looking into her glass. ‘I don’t know why I said that, of course you wouldn’t know him. Silly me! Must be the wine.’