Married By Christmas Read online

  ‘Why?’ Miles asked, when she paused in her ramble. He leaned in towards her slightly, examining her profile in the candlelight, as she stared at her own translucent reflection in the glass.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Anna said absently. ‘I’ve always seemed to be on the wrong side of the glass, I suppose.’ She straightened her shoulders and sat up, smiling brightly at Miles. ‘Except for now, this Christmas will be different, because it’s my Christmas and it’s the Christmas where I get married to the man I love.’

  ‘Hooray,’ Miles said quietly, balling one fist and shaking it in a half-hearted salute. ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Anyway, enough about me,’ Anna said, noticing that his good mood seemed to have taken a significant dip since they started talking about Joni Mitchell. ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’ Miles asked, polishing off his glass of red wine in one long draught and reaching for the bottle.

  ‘Well, when is your audition? Isn’t it tomorrow? And you haven’t done a thing to prepare for it since we got here. Which makes me feel terrible, because you’ve mainly been helping me.’

  ‘Ah yes, my audition.’ Miles looked out of the window, craning his neck to get a glimpse of the snow-laden sky that lay low over the tips of the skyscrapers. ‘I don’t know if there is much prep I can do, really. I mean I’m not going to play, or sing any better tomorrow at two p.m. than I do now. I would like to have finished that song I was writing, shown them original material, but there’s still time.’

  ‘Still time!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘No there isn’t, you need to go back to the hotel now and start working on it. This is your big break, your moment, your chance, you can’t just shrug your shoulders and see how it goes, you have to be prepared!’

  ‘I am prepared,’ Miles told her. ‘By twenty years of playing and writing. And besides, haven’t you learned yet that you can’t always be prepared for what life throws at you.’

  ‘Surprise wives, perhaps not,’ Anna said, leaning forwards a little across the table and brandishing her fork at him. ‘But auditions, hell yes, you can. You’ve bet everything you’ve got on this chance, Miles. Don’t stuff it up by hanging around with me. Which doesn’t mean I’m not weirdly glad that you’ve been here, and that I don’t realise that I wouldn’t have gotten nearly so far so quickly without you, I do. You’ve been really … helpful. But this is your chance, you have to do every single thing you can to make sure you make the most of this opportunity.’

  Miles watched her for a moment, in the candlelight, night creeping up on them as they ate, a small smile playing on his lips, as he tipped his head to one side.

  ‘You really care about stuff, don’t you? Even my stuff. That’s nice. I like that about you.’

  ‘I care about … getting things right,’ Anna said, surprised by her own passion. ‘About not letting anything that fate might want to throw at you drag you down and back to …’ She faltered to a stop, taking a deep breath and then a sip of wine. ‘I care about trying your best. I suppose that’s kind of old-fashioned.’

  ‘What happened to you?’ Miles asked, his brows furrowing. ‘I know you were fostered by Simon’s family, although the way he talks about you you’d never know you weren’t his blood relation, but what happened before that to make you so … scared?’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ Anna protested, dropping her gaze from his, because that was exactly what she was, all of the time, every single moment that she was awake, and she spent a great deal of time making sure that no one, not Tom, not even Liv, ever noticed it.

  ‘Maybe you aren’t,’ Miles said, not willing to force her to acknowledge what he felt was true. ‘But do you realise that you refer to yourself as mad and weird and mental all the time, and that you imply Tom must be a saint for putting up with you because you are so awful?’

  ‘No I don’t!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘Do I? I don’t know, I just know that I’m not … Liv. Simon’s sister – did you meet her?’ Anna didn’t wait for an answer. ‘She’s my best friend, my sister really. Liv always knows exactly what to do and say and how to be and people always like her straight away. Tom did, from the first moment he met her. For a while there, when we first started dating, he talked more about her than he did about me. I was starting to get a complex. Actually I’ve got a complex. I know I’m not Liv, I didn’t grow up knowing how to just be in the world the way she does. I know I’m not easy to like, like she is, because I’m prickly and difficult and disjointed.’

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ Miles said. ‘You aren’t like that at all, you know. Not once you stop telling everyone you are. It’s like you’re scared to let anyone see the good in you.’

  ‘No … really?’ Anna said, thoughtfully. ‘I don’t really think of myself as good. I think if myself as … taxing.’

  ‘But why? Because you like to make a few lists and you prefer it when things go your way? That doesn’t make you weird, that just makes you you. And, by the way, you should realise that for a person to be really scared, and still get up and face the world every day with a sword-rattling battle cry, well, that makes them also really brave, and pretty amazing. What have you been through, Anna?’

  ‘My mum died,’ Anna said, trotting out the B version of her life, the one she always gave to strangers. ‘My dad was already dead and I didn’t have any relatives so I got put into care. I met Liv when I started a new school, and her family took me in. I’ve been so lucky really. I couldn’t have asked for more.’

  Anna smiled, the very same smile that she always produced when she finished that particular piece of fiction, a smile that was usually greeted with some relief from the person she was telling it to, relief that they weren’t going to have to deal with someone who was really damaged by life. But Miles didn’t have that expression of relief as he looked at her; instead his eyes narrowed just a little, as if he somehow detected the lie, before deciding not to press on it, something that Anna was grateful for.

  ‘Well, I don’t know Simon very well, but he seems like a lovely man,’ Miles said. ‘So I’m guessing you really lucked out with the rest of his family.’

  ‘Oh I did,’ Anna said, her smile broadening into genuine joy. ‘I mean, Graham, who’s sort of been my dad, he acts like the rest of his family permanently confuse him, but he’s so kind, and so loyal, and always there. And Angela, my foster mum, is really quite barking mad, says whatever is in her head, even if it’s twaddle, but she never treated me differently from her own children, not for a minute. And when we were sick she’d put cold flannels on our heads and bring us toast and Lucozade, you know the old kind with the orange twisty plastic.’ Miles nodded, smiling. ‘And Simon is funny and kind and never once minded that this cuckoo turned up in the nest and Liv …’ Anna paused, her gaze resting for a moment on the string of trees that lined the sidewalk outside the window, glittering gently with their Christmas lights in the still cold air, the snow that had ceased to fall a few hours ago throwing the shadows they cast into sharp contrast and making her suddenly want to feel the chill of the air on her cheeks and in her lungs. ‘Liv is the most beautiful, best, funniest, cleverest, talented, genuine, gorgeous person that I know. I’d love to be like her, she finds life so effortless. Honestly, she is so … amazing. And if it wasn’t for her … If she hadn’t decided to be my best friend and persuade her parents to take me in, then … well, put it this way, I owe her so much. She saved my life.’

  Miles nodded, glimpsing just a hint of the truth that lay behind Anna’s fake story, when he saw the genuine passion Anna felt for her friend and sister.

  ‘You know what,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I need to go and practise or do something to get ready for tomorrow. I don’t want to come all this way for no reason, do I?’

  ‘No,’ Anna said, a little surprised at how disappointed she felt that their evening out in NYC together was coming to an end, but pleased nevertheless that Miles had listened to her. After they had split the bill and found their coats, they walked out into the
cold night air, the city buzzing and vibrating with life around them. It felt wrong somehow to Anna, to go back their hotel room now, and spend the rest of the night insulated from all this living that was being done around them, and she realised that for perhaps the very first time in her life she felt like being adventurous, of taking a right turn instead of a left, of losing herself in the sparkle of a strange, magical city and just seeing what happened next. It had to be New York that was doing this to her, with her brazen come-ons, decked out in all her flirtatious finery. As Anna looked upwards, trusting Miles to guide her through the sidewalk packed with revellers, her arm tucked in his, she couldn’t help but get the very strong impression that the city itself was inviting her to just let go, live a little and see what it felt like.

  ‘That would be a terrible idea,’ Anna said, out loud apparently, as it caused Miles to stop and look at her.

  ‘What would be?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ Anna said, blushing inexplicably. ‘I don’t know, there’s something about this place, it sort of makes you forget who you are, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it?’ Miles questioned her again, gazing into her eyes a little more intensely than Anna was prepared for. ‘Maybe that’s a good thing, but the more I get to know you the more I think you don’t quite know who you are yet.’

  Anna paused, fixed in that moment, as a fresh fall of snow began to appear all around them, the traffic swishing along the wet roads, a group of office workers on a big night out engulfing them in their midst for a moment as they tripped their tipsy way around Anna and Miles. And standing there, in that moment, cornered by Christmas, Anna realised that Miles was right, she had worked long and hard for most of her life to appear to be someone who she wasn’t even all that proud of. But was that anxious, controlling, difficult person even her? Or was it just a persona she’d adopted and begun to believe in, a little bit like Santa Claus? Anna wasn’t at all sure of who she was any more, not really, only that the person she had been working so hard to be for so many years seemed very far away now, almost as if when Anna had boarded that plane she’d left her carefully constructed disguise neatly folded on the bed.

  ‘It’s a scary thing,’ Anna breathed, her words crystallising in the icy air. ‘If I’m not me, I’m not really sure who I am.’

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid,’ Miles said, so quietly that Anna almost couldn’t hear him over the roar of the traffic. ‘Come on, this way.’

  Miles took Anna’s hand and pulled her in what she was sure was the opposite direction to the hotel.

  ‘I don’t think this is the right way,’ she said, allowing him to leave his hand loosely holding hers.

  ‘It is for what I have in mind,’ Miles said, guiding her with single-minded determination.

  ‘What do you mean – “for what you have in mind”?’ Anna asked, half thrilled and half alarmed by the unexpected turn of events, but for some reason not surprised by them. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘Well, while you were interviewing that naked lady, I got a bit bored by the stage show, so I had a look at a listings magazine that was knocking around, and it turns out there is an open mic night at this bar, just around … here.’ Miles stopped in front of an older brownstone building with a cellar bar that was audible even from street level. The steps that led down to the entrance were garlanded in lights, and there was fake snow sprayed along the insides of the windows. Every time the door opened, a snatch of laughter, talking and music wafted out into the air.

  ‘You’re checking out your competition?’ Anna asked him, confused.

  ‘No, Anna. I’m going to sing. Back home I do this quite a lot if I’m working on a song and it’s not quite there. I take it out, give it an airing and the way people react lets me know if I’m on the right or wrong track.’

  ‘Oh,’ Anna said, suddenly paralysed with nerves, that technically she wasn’t entitled to. ‘Oh that’s what you’ve got in mind. But what if you’re awful? What if I get that horrible cringy, want to curl up and die inside feeling that I get when I’m watching talent shows on TV and the contestants are clearly delusional?’

  ‘Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I’ve only ever been bottled off stage once and that was because the crowd were expecting an Abba tribute band,’Miles reassured her.‘Come on, woman, tomorrow, both our lives might change for ever, let’s have a little fun tonight.’

  *

  The bar was full, with a mixture of bohemian-looking types, many of them clutching an instrument, and suits desperate for a drink after work. There were glamorous-looking girls, in low-cut tops, with long hair tumbling down their backs, most likely stopping off on their way to somewhere much more glitzy, and men who looked intent on snaring them before they did. There were no tables free, but Miles secured Anna a place at the bar, bought her a beer that she didn’t ask for and would never normally drink, before heading off towards the small stage area, presumably with a view to putting his name down on some list. Anna sipped the beer, feeling distinctly uncomfortable about what Miles was about to do. The idea of putting her head above the parapet, inviting criticism, derision and even ridicule was something she endeavoured not to do at all costs. Part of her life’s work was to always get everything just right enough, to never be too showy (with the exception of self-designed snowflake wedding dresses) or over-confident, and to never ever attract the wrong kind of attention, which was difficult as her unknown father had made her tall and blonde. And yet somehow, here she was glued to a bar stool in terror as Miles prepared to do exactly that, to chance everything on a crowd of strangers who might easily hate and revile him. Liv was the one who didn’t care what people thought of her. She was brave and original, and did as she pleased. Anna was constantly worried that people would see through her neat manicure, her brushed hair, her flawless make-up and see that scraggy little wide-eyed loveless orphan.

  ‘Have you got anything stronger?’ she said, gripped by panic, leaning across the bar to attract the attention of the barman. They hadn’t been back to the hotel since they’d left it around midday, and Anna was suddenly finding her sweater dress a little too warm for comfort in the close, hot atmosphere of the bar. The beer that she didn’t even like had gone down surprisingly easily and now she found she rather needed something to steady her nerves.

  ‘This is a bar, sweetheart,’ the barman told her, cheerfully. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Um, a cocktail?’ Anna asked him. ‘Something New Yorky.’

  ‘You English?’ the barman asked her. Anna nodded. ‘Then you want a Cosmo, English girls always want a Cosmo. One coming right up, honey.’

  ‘And keep them coming, my friend is going up there to do a number and I think I might actually die of embarrassment,’ Anna confided in the stranger on an unfamiliar impulse, although she discovered that she liked referring to Miles as her friend. It was a novelty to think that she might actually have more than one in the world.

  ‘Ah, the more they suck, they more they love them in here,’ the bartender told her amiably, setting one pink concoction down in front of her. ‘Now, go easy on these. I make them strong, and you don’t look like a big drinker to me.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Anna assured him as a faint-hearted round of applause smattered its way around the bar, barely audible over the chatter and laughter. ‘My friend will make sure I get back to the hotel OK.’

  When she turned back, she was horrified to see Miles sitting on the stage, fiddling with an acoustic guitar that he had somehow got hold of. He’d taken off his jacket and hoody, leaving only a white singlet, which clung to his well-defined chest and abs, and left those strong arms completely naked. Anna noticed that most of the women in the bar had stopped talking, and started looking, and she smiled to herself as she watched Miles, utterly oblivious to the attention he was getting, his dark hair falling across his face, concentrating on getting the sound he wanted out of an unfamiliar instrument.

  ‘Come on, buddy!’ some guy shouted fr
om the back of the room.

  ‘Hey,’ a female voice responded. ‘Leave him be. I’ve seen a hell of a lot worse things to look at and you’re one of them.’ A ripple of laughter and applause followed, as Miles, suddenly aware that most eyes in the room were now on him, looked up and smiled, which solicited a whoop from the female sections of the audience.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, his English accent causing an audible sigh of pleasure.

  ‘Oh, he’s British,’ a girl standing just in front of Anna said. ‘God, I love British men, they’re so funny, and humble and great.’

  ‘So, I’m over in this wonderful city of yours for a few days with a friend …’

  ‘We don’t need your life story, “mate”,’ the same male voice told him with a bad imitation of an English accent.

  ‘We do want your room number though,’ another female voice added to the chorus, making Miles laugh so that his eyes crinkled.

  ‘Anyway I’ve been working on this song. It started just being about that feeling you get when you think you’d like to be in love and you imagine what it’s like, and it’s sort of there, waiting around a corner but you don’t know which one or when you’ll bump into it.’

  ‘Bump into me, baby, any time you like!’ Another voice, this time male, sounded from somewhere in the middle of the bar.

  ‘And then, in the last few hours really, it’s started to be about someone. A person, a real person I just met, or met again, I should say. And so anyway …’

  Miles looked across the bar and smiled at Anna who was clutching her elegant drink in both hands, her eyes wide and terrified.

  ‘Thanks, Anna. If this goes down like a lead balloon, it’s entirely your fault.’