Married By Christmas Page 17

  The barman handed Anna three cocktails in a row, which lasted at the rate of approximately one per minute, as Miles held the bar in his thrall, singing a song that he had implied was about her. The tune, which sounded nothing like the retro punk-rock fusion band that he was planning to audition with the following day, had an instantly memorable melody, and his voice had just enough of a raw edge to give its warm, soulful tones a roughness that seemed to catch at every listener’s heart. The room fell entirely silent, as Miles played on, his eyes half closed, a smile playing around his mouth until a split second after he finished and then suddenly the applause was deafening. He really was very, very good, Anna realised.

  ‘Did he write that song for you?’ the girl who liked English men asked Anna, looking at her, wide-eyed and impressed. ‘Man, he loves you! All that stuff about light and love and finally seeing the real you … that’s like, way romantic. He loves you, you lucky bitch.’

  ‘Oh no, he doesn’t,’ Anna reassured her. ‘We’re just friends. We barely know each other. In actual fact, I’m getting married next week to someone else, well, that is if I can track down his wife so …’

  ‘You’re not with him?’ the girl asked her, incredulous. ‘Really? In that case would you mind introducing me to him when he comes over?’

  ‘Oh well, I mean I’m sort of with him, in that we are together as friends and, anyway, he’s got an early morning so he probably should just go to sleep.’

  ‘And next up we have Miles again …’ The MC had to pause for the cheers. ‘But this time joined by his fellow Brit, Miss Annie Carter!’

  ‘What?’ Anna said as the barman slid another Cosmo straight into the palm of her hand. ‘What? No way.’

  ‘You sing too?’ the curious girl asked her. ‘Are you in like a band?’

  ‘Come on, Annie.’ Miles grinned, beckoning her over. ‘Come and sing with me.’

  ‘I can’t sing!’ Anna said, her voice unheard over the din as she downed the latest cocktail. ‘Miles, I have no musical talent whatsoever!’

  But the bar began to chant her name: ‘Annie, Annie, Annie.’ And Anna found herself being propelled, quite against her will, towards the platform where Miles was waiting, smiling at her. And, worse still, she hadn’t had time to drink the last cocktail that the barman had made for her, which was probably just as well, as her face already felt numb and she wasn’t entirely sure she could remember where her feet were, neither of which things helped with the fact that the very, very last thing Anna Carter ever wanted to do in her life was to stand on a stage, no matter how small, and sing.

  ‘OK,’ Miles told her, slipping his arm around her waist as she clambered, blinking under the lights, on to the stage. ‘Here’s a mic.’

  Anna took the clunky-looking thing as if it were an object that had recently appeared from outer space. ‘Miles, I can’t sing,’ she hissed, her voice magnified around the room, causing a ripple of laughter.

  ‘Everyone can sing,’ Miles said. ‘You can all sing, right?’

  There was a cheer of general assent.

  ‘And so can you, Anna,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘Come on. You wanted me to take my audition seriously, to get in some practice to work on my song, and I’ve done that, thanks to you. I now know that the song I’ve got is pretty good. So let me do something for you.’

  ‘Miles! Doing something for me would be letting me leave here at once,’ Anna insisted, her voice tight with fear, her stomach lurching dangerously.

  ‘Just sing,’ Miles urged her, smiling into her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter what you sound like, just sing it and feel every word and let yourself go, skate away, I’ll be right here next to you.’

  ‘So,’ he addressed the crowd. ‘We’ll be singing the best Christmas song I know. “River” by Joni Mitchell, and I want you all to join in, OK.’

  ‘Joni Mitchell!’ Anna squeaked. ‘No one can sing along to her. Her voice is so high that only dogs and some breeds of bat can hear it. And angst-ridden teenage girls.’

  ‘You’re funny.’ Miles smiled. ‘Now, shut up and sing.’

  There was only one thing for Anna to do – she had to sing. However, she had not been exaggerating about her lack of vocal talents. She was an awful singer; for every perfectly honed note that Miles hit, Anna squawked, squeaked and squealed her way through ten more, pausing with inward breath to apologise to the audience, who, oddly, didn’t seem to mind at all, and who in fact seemed to be enjoying the gusto with which she sang, if not the actual sound that she made. And Anna found that the more they laughed and cheered, the more she felt her shoulders relax, and a smile spread across her face as she gradually let herself go, throwing herself into the song and finishing off her performance with an ear-splitting note that would render most people deaf for at least ten minutes. And yet everyone in the bar cheered and clapped and laughed as Anna took an unsteady bow, firstly on her own and then, finding Miles at her side, taking his hand and bowing again.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Anna turned to him, her eyes sparkling, breathless with laughter. ‘This was the best fun ever, I think I should go on The X Factor. I think I should be a pop star! They love me, those people out there, they love me, Miles!’

  ‘Yes, they do,’ Miles said and before Anna knew what was happening he’d swept her into those arms of his and was twirling her round and round until the room spun. And very shortly after that she threw up about six undigested Cosmopolitans on his sexy white vest.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Anna said for about the thousandth time in the fifteen minutes it had taken Miles to get her out of the back of the bar, and for them to find a street they recognised again. They had started back to the hotel, finding themselves somehow at an ice rink at the foot of the Rockefeller tower. Anna was still a little dizzy and breathless, so Miles sat her down at the edge of the rink so she could catch her breath. The rink was still packed and, as she sat under the twinkling lights of the enormous and perfectly proportioned Christmas tree, Anna took in deep breaths of cold air until she could feel her lungs shudder, and her head finally clear.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said, burying her head in her hands. ‘I threw up in front of thousands of people! I threw up on you! Oh God, oh God, oh God.’

  ‘It was more like you spontaneously regurgitated a great deal of alcohol in the vicinity of maybe two hundred people,’ Miles said chuckling. ‘And most of them didn’t see, because I was standing between you and them, so really, the worst that happened was that you ruined my audition top. Thank God that carbonara stayed down, that would have been nasty!’

  ‘I’m so humiliated,’ Anna groaned, clutching her head in her hands. ‘What must you think of me? Why do I always do this? Why? Why?’

  ‘Sing badly and throw up?’ Miles asked her. ‘It’s not such a big deal, Anna.’

  ‘Freak out, mess up, make a good situation bad,’ Anna continued unhappily. ‘It’s just I wonder sometimes, am I like my mum?’ Anna took another deep breath. ‘Because I was nine when she … went. I was nine and I was quite old, but I don’t remember a lot of my life with her, just little snippets, like …’ She looked around for inspiration. ‘Like bright stars in a dark night, you know? Always happy memories, times when we were laughing or it was sunny, and she looked pretty, even though I know it was hardly ever like that. And I wonder if it’s because I was nine, or if it’s because I don’t want to remember, because she was …’ Anna paused, running her fingers through her hair, and the air suddenly became charged with the unhappiness and fear that Anna spent every single day fighting off. She looked up at Miles, who, seeing her misery-struck expression, knelt down before her.

  ‘Anna, what is it?’ he asked gently, taking her wrists in his hands, because her fists, he discovered, were knotted into two tight balls. ‘You just got a little bit drunk, it’s fine.’

  ‘But it’s not fine, is it? That’s what she used to say, “I’m just a little bit merry, love, it’s fine.” And it was never fine. What if I am like her? Because … it’s so confusi
ng, Miles. I’m terrified that if I put even one foot wrong, I will become the same person that she did.’

  Miles’s brow furrowed as he tried to understand. ‘Anna, what really happened with your mum?’

  ‘I don’t know how to talk about it,’ Anna told him, her voice trembling. ‘I don’t know who I really am, because I never let myself find out. What if I am the sort of person who runs away, who never gets it right, who lets people down time and time again, no matter how much I try not to? What if all this –’ she spread her arms wide to embrace the city, glittering around them as if it was a remote mythical celestial audience ‘– me racing over to New York, trying to sort out this wedding, creating a great big drama just so my diary doesn’t get messed up, is just me trying to prove that I’m not going to let anyone down, I’m not going to let it get messed up, that I’m not my mother, because the truth of it is I’ve never loved anyone as much I loved and adored my mum, and she left me. What if I’m just not the sort of person who gets a fairy-tale wedding and a happy ever after?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Miles said, both perplexed and touched by Anna’s tears. ‘Of course you are, and, well, if your mum wasn’t that great a mum maybe it was because she was ill, or … worried.’

  ‘She was ill,’ Anna said. ‘I understand that now, at least.’

  ‘And if you only remember the good bits, well, that’s not a bad thing, not at all,’ Miles said. ‘It takes a special person to only look for the good, a kind-hearted, generous person who deserves all the happy endings they want. And if it helps, I think you’re pretty brilliant actually. Look at tonight: I put you on the spot and you rose to the occasion, magnificently. You didn’t mess the moment up, you made it. Maybe you ruptured a few eardrums in the process and if Joni ever heard the way you sang her stuff, she’d put a hitman on you, but if you want to know the truth, seeing you singing your heart out, albeit really, really badly, made me …’ Miles paused, looking away from Anna for a moment, and at the circling, dizzy skaters laughing under the lights instead, as he searched for the right word. ‘Happy. Your singing made me happy. And slightly nauseous. Although not as nauseous as you made yourself.’

  Miles laughed and found a faint tear-stained smile greet him in return, which gave him a curiously warm sensation in the middle of his chest, the exact spot where Anna lightly whacked him with her still balled-up fist. Just for a moment, she found herself forgetting everything that normally nibbled around her edges every moment that she was awake. Just for that second as she looked into Miles’s eyes and found herself laughing …

  ‘Thank you,’ she said on an outward breath, almost without realising it.

  ‘What for?’ Miles grinned, holding on to her wrists again, having caught them as she’d made a half-hearted attempt to beat him up.

  ‘I don’t know really,’ Anna said, suddenly becoming self-conscious, withdrawing her hands from his. ‘For making me forget myself, I suppose, just for a minute or two.’

  ‘Annie,’ Miles said slowly and for once Anna didn’t feel the urge to correct him. ‘Look, it doesn’t take a genius to see that there is more to you than you are letting on. And you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, but just then, when you were talking about your mum? Did she die?’

  Anna looked up at him, caught off guard by his intuition.

  ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘Well, not when I was nine anyway. Do you want to know the whole truth?’

  ‘Only if you want to tell me,’ he said. ‘If you think it might help.’

  Anna took a deep breath of the chilled air, feeling it fill her lungs. ‘I’ve never really talked about this to anyone except Liv.’

  ‘You don’t have to talk to me about it now, not if you don’t want to.’

  ‘But for some really odd reason,’ Anna said, ‘I do. There’s something about you that’s very … easy.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m easy?” he joked as Anna smiled.

  Miles got up from his kneeling position to sit next to her. They both gazed up at the sky beyond the further peaks of the skyscrapers for a few seconds before Anna felt ready to talk.

  ‘I was nine,’ she began at last. ‘It was Christmas.’ She looked down at the toes of her snow-stained boots as she talked. ‘We had this flat, this tiny flat. It was a messy one-bedroom but it was our flat. We’d had it for a few weeks. It was the longest time we’d ever stayed in one place. My mum was a drinker and a drug addict. Heroin mainly. But whatever she could get her hands on at the time would do. Most of the time the rent money would go the minute she got it. We got thrown out of a lot of places. We slept on a lot of other people’s floors. One night, we slept in the park under the trees. It was summer and warm I remember. My mum said we were camping. It was only years later that I realised we’d slept rough that night. After that though things got better for a bit. There was a social worker, and some housing benefit. She arranged for it to be paid directly to the landlord or something. I don’t remember the details exactly. But for the first time we had a proper place to live. A place that belonged to us, a home. I didn’t know any different, so I didn’t really get that the flat was filthy, that other people’s homes weren’t like mine. She left her empty bottles and needles lying around. And I got to sleep in the bed with her if she didn’t have company. If she did, then she’d make me sleep on the sofa, or in the bath. But it was just normal to me. I didn’t mind.’

  Miles said nothing, he didn’t move, his expression didn’t change, he kept his eyes fixed on the far horizon, up where the stars were struggling to compete against the brighter galaxy of New York city lights.

  ‘So it was Christmas, and for once Mum made an effort. She cleaned out the flat, and dressed up. She even got me a new dress from somewhere. I remember it still had the security tag on but I pretended not to notice. I’ve still got it, you know. I keep it in a box under my bed. No one knows that, not even Liv. We had a chicken, ready cooked and cold, and some pasta salad on the side. It wasn’t really a traditional dinner but I thought it was the best thing I’d ever eaten. And Mum had gotten these crackers, and we pulled a whole box between us.’ Anna smiled faintly. ‘I got to keep all the little toys inside, it was like … well, it was like Christmas. And that would have been enough for me, it really would. It was so special, the way it was just us two, the way we laughed, the way she looked and smelled. Clean, you know. Not of stale vodka and smoke. It was like someone had waved a magic wand and made life just like it was on the TV, in all the adverts. And then, in the afternoon, she brought me out this present. It was all wrapped up with a bow on it. It was a wedding dress Barbie, in a massive sparkly net dress. And I was … in love, completely overwhelmed. I’d never been that happy. Mum grabbed me and hugged me so tightly, I could barely breathe, but I didn’t mind because I knew that right then, whilst she was holding me, that she loved me and …’ Anna stopped, taken off guard by the tears that thickened in her throat once again. She shook her head, taking several breaths, until the moment passed, and she could regain control of her voice again. ‘I remember the telly didn’t work, so we spent the rest of the day making plans for my Barbie’s wedding, and somehow that turned into my wedding, the Christmas wedding that I would have one day. We drew pictures of the sleigh, the reindeer, what Mum would wear, everything except the groom, but then again the groom didn’t seem that important.’ Anna pictured herself sitting on the living-room floor with a packet of felt tips, her mum at her side, their heads bent together, as she schemed and drew. ‘But most of all we drew pictures of my special dress, and exactly what it would be like. We stayed up, until I fell asleep, I suppose. I woke up the next morning alone in Mum’s bed. And when I got up, the sun was shining, it was a bright day and I felt so … so happy and safe. I went to the living room. There was an empty bottle of vodka on the top of the TV, and a five pound note resting under it.’ Anna frowned, her fingers plucking at a loose thread on her coat as she relived what happened next. ‘I waited. I waited all day for her to come back, and a
ll night. And the next day. She didn’t come. I was too afraid to go out, I didn’t know anyone to phone, so I just waited. For four days, and after the third day, the electric ran out on the meter. So I waited in the dark and the cold.’

  Miles kept staring upwards as she talked. He was unable to look at her, Anna guessed. Now that he knew everything, he would probably never talk to her like he had before or make jokes. He’d be careful, and, from now on, politely distant, because no one wanted to get to know someone so damaged, in case it somehow rubbed off on them. Saddened, she felt the loss of that one moment of lightness that they had shared together, that now would be impossible to feel again. And yet, now she had started her story, she knew she had to finish it.

  ‘On the fourth day,’ Anna said. ‘There was a loud banging at the door. Mum told me never to answer the door, and I never did usually, but this time I thought it might be her. It wasn’t. It was loan sharks after their money. I suppose that could have been the worst thing that happened to me, but it was actually the best. I got loan sharks with a heart, you see. One of them called the police, said they’d found an abandoned kid in a flat, and left the door on the latch before they left. A nice policewoman came, they took me to the station, they fed me, got me clothes, another social worker came, and I spent my first night in care. I got moved around a bit, and after almost a year I got moved to yet another school. That was the school Liv went to, and it was soon after meeting her that my life really began. I never heard from my mum again, and I realise now that that Christmas Day, that was her goodbye gift to me. One perfect day. It’s the only thing I really have of her.’

  ‘You never saw or heard from her again?’ Miles asked her, astounded. ‘They couldn’t find her?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘They found her. About a year after I went to live with Liv and her family. In a bedsit in Bristol. She was dead. Overdose.’

  ‘And what about your father?’ Miles asked gently.

  ‘I never knew who he was – there’s nothing on my birth certificate. But ever since then I’ve had a list, a plan, a … map of where to go and how to be, and I know if I stick to it, to the letter, then I won’t lose control like she did. I won’t hurt the people I love.’