You Can't Hurry Love

Chapter Thirty-Three

'Is it just me or is everyone staring at us?' Isaac asks, sounding thoroughly amused with himself as we turn the corner onto Shaftesbury Avenue.

I cast him a withering look as we walk on, trying my best to avoid the eyes of the latest group of people who had paused in the street to gawp in our direction, giggling amongst one another furiously as they take in our attire. Or should I say Isaac's attire? Which, compared to mine, took 'Ugly Christmas Jumper' to the next level. It was my fault really. I should have known that he'd take on the task with a fierce determination to be the most obscene. He looked absolutely ridiculous and he knew it. I still couldn't help laughing every time I looked at him though.

He'd somehow managed to find one of those skin-suit jumpers where it looks like you're topless but actually it's just the design on the shirt. Not that I'd seen one like his before. It featured a rather large and incredibly hairy topless man, complete with a bauble hanging from one nipple, a smoking reindeer tattoo and the words HO HO HO stretched across the ample gut. It was vulgar and grotesque and Isaac could not be prouder. Especially when he turned around to show me the back of it and my eyes were met with the image of a fuzzy butt crack peeping up above the hem. I feel sorry for anyone walking behind us tonight, that's for sure.

'I think you'll find they're staring at YOU, thank you very much!' I retort hotly, and a booming laugh erupts from his lips.

'Oh really? So you're not to blame at all then? The lit-up, singing, human Christmas tree walking beside me!'

He quickly reaches over and pushes the pin I'd attached to the front of my own jumper and a loud chorus of Wizzard's 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day' bellows out.

I'm just about to argue back when a group of revellers nearby start singing along and Isaac grins satisfactorily.

'Yeah, I guess you could be right,' I nod, admitting defeat. 'But at least mines in taste.'

'Sure, it is,' Isaac nudges me teasingly and runs a hand over my creation. 'I didn't know you were so handy with a glue gun, missy. Where did you get the idea for it anyway?'

'Er . . .'

My mind is instantly flooded with the image of Lincoln standing before me, smiling as I wind fabric around his raised arms, and I swallow nervously. I didn't want to admit I'd got the idea from the party game I'd played with him that night. It would invoke too many questions and tonight was all about the distraction.

'I don't know, really. I just thought it would look funny.'

'Well, you've done a wicked job of it.'

'Thanks.' I smile at him warmly and glance at my reflection in a shop window as we pass by, laughing joyfully at the flashing lights draped around me. I really did look like a lit-up, singing Christmas tree. With streams of green tinsel glued to every inch of an old jumper, a string of battery-operated fairy lights wrapped around and a pack of small baubles I'd managed to sew on, I looked every bit the part of 'Ugly Christmas Jumper Wearer', and I loved it.

'You know what, I think we might be nearly there. My maps is saying it's just around this corner.'

'Let me get this straight,' Isaac mutters as we dodge a man in a suit talking angrily into his phone. 'We're going to twelve different pubs, and we have to do some whacko task in each one and if we don't, there's a forfeit?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Why twelve pubs?' I ask, misconstruing his question. 'For the twelve days of Christmas!'

'No, I got that, silly. I meant, why the tasks and the forfeits?'

'Oh . . . Well, I don't know really. To make the night more interesting, I guess,' I exclaim, shrugging my shoulders. 'The guys from the office above ours started it and I just kind of go along with it. Apart from,' I look left and right before carrying on. 'I don't actually drink in every pub. But do not tell them that because they would kill me if they knew!'