The One with the White Wedding. Erin Lawless

close to Christmas) – but when she’d seen it in the shop she knew she had to have it. It was a soft and shiny material in rose gold which slouched forward a tad daringly off of her shoulders and hung loose across her frame, allowing it to flow over her body, catching the sheen of the lights. It felt festive and decadent and sexy (Cleo hoped that she herself would accordingly follow suit).

      The broad space of the function room was lit at low-level only, but the white, silver and blue colour theme served to brighten the area. It felt more like a wedding than an office Christmas party, each round, white-clothed table sporting huge centre-pieces – oversized martini glasses filled with prickly sprigs of holly and soft, fat plumes of white feathers. Glitter-dipped laser-cut snowflakes in shades of gleaming silver, snow white and ice blue hung from the high ceiling, like something out of Frozen. Bright strands of silver lametta draped from the branches of a distastefully large real Christmas tree taking up one entire corner of the room. The standard rust-coloured hard-wearing carpeting detracted from, but didn’t ruin, the general effect.

      Spying a work mate taking an artfully-angled photo of the tree, Cleo made a bee-line over to her.

      “You look amazing,” Tia told her, approvingly, aiming an air-kiss in the vicinity of one cheek, then the other (events like this were weird, thought Cleo – it’s not like they greeted one another in the staff room like that). “Have you got a drink?”

      “No, not yet. I’m going to pace myself. Don’t want a repeat of last year and all that!” Cleo laughed self-depreciatingly.

      Tia raised one expertly-threaded eyebrow. “Well, don’t wait too long. There’s a budget behind that free bar, you know.”

      Cleo double-took. “Free bar?”

      “Yup. The management board has put an undisclosed sum behind the bar as a little festive bonus. You know, in lieu of us getting paid actual festive bonuses? But when it’s gone, it’s gone,” Tia shrugged, taking a generous gulp from her generously-large glass of white wine.

      Cleo glanced behind her – that definitely explained the popularity of the bar area, which was already thronged with people. “Well, in that case,” she laughed. “I wouldn’t want to miss out on my bonus!”