Married By Christmas Read online

  ‘I feel … so … so … stupid,’ Liv wept. ‘I really thought he liked me, we laughed about stuff, and he held doors open for me and asked me to go places with him, and not just the pub – we went to the cinema and I went with him when he needed to buy a new pair of shoes. We went to the cinema, Simon! That should mean something, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, darling, yes it bloody should,’ Simon said sympathetically, although he was looking at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘I thought he was shy … a slow burner, which made him perfect for me,’ Liv said, scrunching her hair in her hands as her tears plopped one by one onto the tabletop. ‘I thought he was building up to asking me out, kissing me and all that, b-b-but I couldn’t have been more wrong, could I?’ Liv’s shoulders shuddered with a fresh outpouring of sobs. ‘Because he had his tongue down Anna’s throat within half an hour of arriving here! He wasn’t building up to declaring his love, he never ever saw me that way. Except … except for today, for a minute, when he saw me in Anna’s dress, with Anna’s boobs, and then it was like he was looking at me for the first time. But, Simon, that was a lie, that’s not me and anyway what is he even doing letching at another woman when he is about to get married? I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, but, oh I love him too. A lot. Oh God, just kill me. Kill me now. I’ll leave a note. You won’t go to prison, use that cheese grater that he gave me for my birthday, that about sums up my entire miserable pointless life. Go on, grate me to death!’

  Simon was silent for a moment as he took it all in. And then finally he spoke. ‘So you’re definitely not a lesbian, then?’

  It took a hot bath, three more cups of coffee and Simon threatening to sing the entire songbook of West Side Story to her, accents and all, for Liv to finally regain control of her senses and see that perhaps she was being just a little bit melodramatic.

  ‘Your trouble is you live in Anna’s shadow, and it’s your own fault,’ Simon said finally as he settled Liv, now wrapped in a fluffy pink dressing gown, on the sofa and fed her chocolate. ‘You fell in love with her the minute you saw her, and ever since you’ve been in awe.’

  ‘I’m not a lesbian!’ Liv reiterated firmly.

  ‘I know that now, darling,’ Simon said. ‘I don’t mean that kind of love, I mean, well, who didn’t fall in love with her the minute they met her. I know I did. It even stopped me crushing on the postman for a while, until I realised I didn’t love her in that way. I loved her. I love her, because, well, she’s fab, isn’t she? I fell in love with her, just like you and Mum and Dad did. The difference is I haven’t spent the rest of my life comparing myself to her, what’s the point? We’ve got a mum who loves us, who may well have unwittingly attempted to ruin our lives by saying inappropriate things at the wrong time on a daily basis, but out of love. We’ve got a dad who loves us and kept us safe, and didn’t have a stroke when I told him I was gay. We are cursed with a loving and tolerant family, that is so really very nice that they even took a scraggy little girl who had nowhere else to go and made her one of their own. Anna is a hero, yes, she is, but if you call her now and ask her if she would have chosen that life, the life she’s had, over one with a mum that stuck around and a real dad rather than one whose name she never knew, well, I think I know which one she would pick. And that doesn’t mean to say you are not a hero, or brave, or clever or beautiful, like her, because you are all of those things. You just go about them in a different way.’

  ‘I know that really,’ Liv said. ‘I do. I just wish … Why him, Si? Why out of all the men I know, did I fall for Tom?’

  ‘Darling, Tom is the only real man you know, the only normal one anyway,’ Simon told her gently. ‘The first one you’ve met in a long time that wasn’t some steroid-pumped-up repressed homosexual with height issues.’

  ‘You’re talking about Barry, aren’t you?’ Liv asked him with a small smile.

  ‘Yes, yes, I am. Listen, darling, you work with women, you work mostly for women, your mother will keep trying to fix you up with men with beards and your brother doesn’t know anyone single who’d be impressed by anyone’s boobs, let alone your miserable excuse for a pair.’

  Liv’s smile broadened as she dug her brother in the ribs. ‘I’ll have you know I’m a C cup!’

  ‘Are you sure you are in love with Tom?’ Simon asked her, gently. ‘And not just pretending to be in love with him because it’s better than realising your life is empty of all meaningful emotion?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Liv said. ‘Even now, even after finding out about his secret wife, even after his stupid dress comments, and even knowing that if he doesn’t marry Anna in less than a week, he will in a year’s time. Even then. Whenever I look at him it feels like my heart rate triples. He’s the only person who can make me laugh so much my ribs ache, the only person who I just long to put my arms around and hug.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Simon said. ‘You’ve got it bad and there’s nothing to be done about it.’

  ‘No,’ Liv said, forcing herself to sit up straight, and lifting her chin. ‘But, on the other hand, I’ve lived with it for a year and half already, so I’m sort of used to the unremitting misery, and I do really want Anna to be happy. And Tom.’

  ‘You should become a nun,’ Simon said. ‘Seriously, you’re halfway there anyway. You’d be really good.’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ Liv said. ‘I’ll be fine. It will wear off eventually, I’ll meet a nice man who isn’t secretly gay with height issues and, when I do, I’ll remember to tell him that I like him before he proposes to my best friend. And when I do get married, I’m going to get the biggest, fattest princess dress that I can find, dress up like a fairy and not give a hoot about what anyone thinks.’

  ‘Good,’ Simon said.

  ‘You should go,’ Liv said. ‘It must be really late, hubby will be wondering where you are.’

  ‘It’s actually only just after nine,’ Simon told her. ‘Judging from the text you sent me you started drinking to forget at about four?’

  ‘Oh God, I am so, so sad,’ Liv said plaintively.

  ‘Yes, darling, yes, you are, but you are my sister, and my hero, and I love you. So chin up, keep marching on, maybe pretend you are in a Noël Coward play, I find that helps me when I need to feel noble, and one day your prince will come. I promise you.’

  Liv kissed Simon on the cheek as she opened the front door, to find Tom standing there with a bottle of wine cradled in his arms.

  ‘Oh God,’ Simon said.

  ‘Hi, Simon,’ Tom said. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘No,’ Simon said. ‘Shouldn’t you be on a plane, on your way to tell your loved one that you adore her?’

  ‘I don’t know … I thought … I thought she probably needed some space. Do you think I should get a ticket?’

  Simon turned to Liv. ‘Come home with me, we’ll make you sushi and watch Casualty, you know how you love it.’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Liv said. ‘You go. Go on. I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Noël Coward!’ Simon called as he left reluctantly.

  ‘What’s he on about?’ Tom asked as Liv stood aside and let him into the hallway.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said. ‘The thing is I’m really tired and it’s been a long day and I haven’t heard from Anna, so I’ve got nothing to tell you and …’

  ‘I thought we should clear the air, after the dress thing,’ Tom said, holding out the wine. ‘I want to apologise. First of all, for being so stupid as to walk in on a dress fitting and put you in a position where you have to lie to Anna. And, secondly, for reacting to the way you … the way you looked, the way I did. It was completely out of order.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Liv said, rolling her eyes. ‘It was the dress, and the veil and the … tissues. You weren’t really seeing me, you were seeing Anna. And I can promise you when you see her coming up the aisle in that dress, she will look ten times better than I did in it.’

  ‘Anna will look amazing in it, if she is st
ill going to marry me, that is, and not decide to stay in New York for ever, but that’s not what I mean. I mean, you said that I thought you looked beautiful because of the dress. And it’s true, part of me did think that, the man part. But I wanted you know, Liv, you are one of the most beautiful people I know, and not just on the outside. And it’s important to me that you know I do see you, I see the real you every day. You are my best friend, and that’s worth a hundred pretty dresses and sparkly crowns to me.’

  Liv stared at him as he stood in the doorway, telling her almost everything she’d wanted, dreamed of hearing from him, and she realised that there was only one thing she could do.

  ‘You have to go to New York,’ she said. ‘If Anna won’t talk to you, you have to follow her, find her and make her see that you love her, and that it doesn’t matter if you get married this Christmas or next. You have to go, Tom. Show her that this means as much to you as it does to her.’

  Tom nodded. ‘I know, he said. ‘I know I have to go and find her. That’s the other thing I came to tell you and to ask you something else.’

  ‘What?’ Liv asked, already knowing the question before it was formed on his lips.

  ‘Will you come too?’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Look!’ Anna said holding up a Dolce & Gabbana dress and smoothing it down over her hips.

  After their escape from the clutches of Max at the Scarlet Slipper, Anna seemed uninterested in going to look for Erica Barnes right away, and declared that she was going shopping. She hadn’t asked Miles to accompany her, but accompany her he did, looking perhaps a little incongruous in his jeans and biker boots, as Anna wandered wide-eyed around the ground floor of Saks. The store was a perfect vision of New York-style Christmas cheer – chic little trees, with lights that twinkled in perfect unison, the scent of cinnamon and spices in the air. It mingled with the large quantities of expensive perfume Anna had sprayed all over herself with the sort of abandon that only a girl who’d once had nothing could display. She had delighted in riding the ‘elevator’, insisting they get out on every single floor, cooing with excitement at the toy department, complete with grotto and a very authentic-looking Santa. The grotto itself was built into the centre of a huge model railway display, complete with a tiny steam train that puffed and tooted its merry little way through tiny forests and over snow-peaked papier-mâché mountains.

  In menswear, Anna had discovered a five-thousand-dollar suit that she thought would look amazing on Tom.

  ‘If only he were here,’ she grumbled, pressing the jacket up against Miles’s shoulders. ‘No it’s no good, you’re bit taller than him, and wider in the shoulders.’

  ‘Am I?’ Miles said, pleased with himself. ‘Anyway, if you miss him so much, why don’t you answer his calls or his texts? Your phone might be on silent but I’ve heard it vibrate in your bag about twenty times today.’

  Abruptly, Anna put the jacket back on the rail and marched for the lift again. Shrugging, Miles had followed her, cramming his large frame into the tiny space, already full of women so groomed to within an inch of their life that they made Anna look almost shabby.

  ‘All I’m saying is,’ Miles began, while the lift’s cohabitants did their best not to look at him, ‘that the reason you’re here is because you want to marry this dude, like soon. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make it happen, and, amazingly, you’re in with a really good chance, so why don’t you answer his calls, Annie? That’s what I want to know.’

  A lady with hair far too jet black for her years, which were clearly considerably older than her collagen-plumped lips, had turned around to look at Anna. She might have raised a curious brow if her face hadn’t been frozen in time.

  Anna had pursed her lips, staring resolutely ahead until the shiny brass doors slid open on womenswear, then gasped in delight at the veritable Aladdin’s cave of designer fashion – fashion that she could probably just as easily find at home in Harvey Nichols or Selfridges, but which for some reason here, in this wonderful city, seemed all the more magical.

  ‘What do you think of this?’ Anna asked Miles about the dress, slipping her coat off and hooking the halter neck over her head to get a better idea. ‘Oh if only I had three thousand and something dollars and was a size zero, or even a four, even a size four would be OK. I did try giving up carbs, but it was like … giving up sunshine.’

  ‘Anna,’ Miles said, ‘answer the question. Why aren’t you talking to Tom, filling him in on what’s going on?’ Anna sighed, slumping down on the edge of a platform housing a size zero mannequin, the dress still hooked around her neck.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking up at Miles. ‘I want to talk to him, but then every time I’m about to answer my phone … I don’t.’

  ‘I get that you’re angry and hurt,’ Miles said, taking a seat next to her. ‘But you still love him, because you want to go through with the wedding.’

  ‘The thing is I have the most amazing dress,’ Anna told him, absently. ‘Not that that’s why I want to go through with the wedding, well maybe a bit, but not entirely. But it is sort of why I want to do it now, and not in the spring or the summer, because that’s in my plan you see. My life plan. A Christmas wedding is one of the immovable things in my life, like the North Star fixed in the sky. Something I’ve dreamed of since …’

  ‘Since what?’ Miles asked her.

  Anna shook her head. ‘I will talk to him, just not yet,’ she said. ‘I feel like I need to meet Charisma or Erica or whatever she’s calling herself first. See what I’m up against.’

  ‘But, babe, this girl, she’s not your competition. She’s the past.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Anna said, thinking of Mimi Me’s comments about the one who got away. ‘I’ve got the distinct impression from her friend that Charisma might have other ideas about what she wants.’

  ‘What she wants doesn’t matter,’ Miles said. ‘It’s you and Tom and your wedding dress that are getting married, isn’t it? I think you should talk to him, Anna. Hear the sound of his voice, and then you’ll know how you feel about him.’

  ‘I didn’t say I didn’t know how I felt about him,’ Anna said, looking sharply at Miles.

  ‘If you say so,’ Miles said.

  Remaining silent, Anna got to her feet and hung the dress back on the rail, her shoulders drooping as if suddenly the pleasure and delight she was taking in her surroundings had just drained out of her. Miles also climbed to his feet.

  ‘And for the record, just so you know, size zero, or size two or four or even six and eight, not usually very sexy. I don’t know what size you are – most men don’t care about that sort of thing – but it’s the right one, trust me.’

  At any other point in their brief association Anna would have been offended and annoyed by Miles assessing the merits of her body so openly, but on this occasion she could tell that he wasn’t trying some hamfisted move, he was simply attempting to be kind and to cheer her up, and the funny thing was, it worked.

  ‘It reminds me of that song,’ Anna found herself telling Miles over an enjoyable plate of pasta in a little Italian they had found on the way back to the hotel. She was gazing out of the window, at the icy night outside, watching the Friday night crowds bowl past, the world rushing by full of a purpose and intent that for once she didn’t feel privy to. Instead, ever since Anna had found herself one step closer to actually pulling off the impossible and finding Tom’s secret wife in time for her wedding to go ahead, there had been something else. An almost overwhelming urge to just run away, somewhere very far, curl up in a ball and not come out again until spring.

  ‘What song?’ Miles asked her, sucking a piece of spaghetti up through his pursed lips like the Tramp from the Disney movie.

  ‘The one by the hippy woman, with the high voice, where she wishes she had a river she could skate away on.’

  ‘Joni Mitchell?’ Miles asked her, surprised as Anna clicked her fingers and nodded. ‘You don’t strike me a
s a Joni fan. It’s the way you describe one of history’s greatest singer-songwriters as that “hippy woman” that sort of gives it away.’

  ‘I’m not really,’ Anna admitted with a rueful smile. ‘Or at least I would be except that in my first year at uni they made me share a room with this girl who wore tie-dyed headscarves … Jessica Parkinson, bloody awful example of humanity. The sort of person who was destined to grow up, have four kids called Jocasta and kill foxes at the weekend, but was pretending to be alternative in the meantime, which is mental, because, you know, what sort of alternative person listens to Joni Mitchell in two thousand and five? But anyway Joni Mitchell was constantly on her headphones. All I could hear was this annoying tinny little voice in the background all the time, like there was a tiny mouse trapped somewhere moaning about big yellow taxis.’

  Anna checked her impromptu rant when she noticed that Miles was laughing at her.

  ‘Couldn’t you have turned your own music up?’ Miles asked, almost choking on a meatball.

  ‘I didn’t really have my own music,’ Anna admitted. ‘Liv was always the one who was into music, discovering bands and making me go to gigs. When I was small we didn’t really ever listen to music, not even on the radio. And after I moved in with Liv, well, I suppose I just got into whatever Liv and Simon were into. I was never really bothered one way or the other. But I got so sick of this tinny little voice coming from Jessica’s headphones that one day I asked her to just stick the CD on and play it out loud, which she did non-stop for the rest of the year until I finally escaped her and went to share a house with some Christian Scientist students, who weren’t very fun, but very tidy. Anyway, I heard the same CD so many times that I suppose it was sort of like aversion therapy, after a while I actually began to love it, especially the “skating away on a river” song. I mean I hadn’t broken up with a boy or anything, like in the song, but Christmas …’ Anna paused, gazing out of the window once more at the fury of passers-by. ‘Christmas has always made me want to find a river to skate away on.’