Married By Christmas Read online

  As Anna waited, tapping one perfectly manicured forefinger on the arm of her chair, for the venue’s flower arranger to present her with her vision for the table arrangements, Liv knew that Tom’s discomfort wouldn’t have escaped her notice. And that as they sat here, in the very room where in a little over a week’s time they would all be toasting Anna and Tom’s union, she was more than aware that Tom looked restless, anxious, like he had somewhere much more important to be. Which didn’t make sense, Liv thought, uneasily. Tom adored Anna. He had done since the moment he’d set eyes on her, around eighteen months ago when Liv had invited her new friend from her kick-boxing class to her birthday party. And it was hardly surprising – most men, when first confronted with Anna’s mass of thick golden hair, her curvy figure and long legs, were usually blown away. Then when they got to know her they’d find she had intellect and humour in equal abundance. But then soon after that, that she was obsessively organised and a little bit controlling. Actually extremely controlling. Not that it was Anna’s fault really. It was her way of adjusting to the chaos of her childhood, Liv understood that, but until Tom there had never been a man in Anna’s life who got it.

  Tom though had stuck around, and the more he had gotten to know Anna, the more he liked her. Anna’s lists, her plans, her constant striving for perfection and her need to control almost everything around her, frightened most men off within weeks, despite how beautiful she was. And if she’d been asked to put money on it, Liv would have thought that sporty, but super easy-going and relaxed Tom would have been running a mile from her obsessive compulsive friend within weeks. Instead, he’d seemed intrigued by her, in turn fascinated and amused. Gradually, Liv had watched her new friend fall in love with her oldest and best friend. Aware that their lives were about to change for ever, Liv had done her best to conceal her mixed emotions as Anna and Tom grew ever closer, knowing that if anyone deserved a man like Tom, it was Anna. They were so good together, everybody thought so. So why did Tom now seem so distracted so near the wedding?

  ‘So,’ Jean the florist was telling Anna, as she opened a rather dog-eared and aged-looking photo album. ‘For a Christmas wedding, my brides usually love this combination of holly, ivy and mistletoe displayed in this fishbowl vase. It looks very very festive and yet modern and chic.’

  It was Liv’s turn to squirm as she watched Anna stare blankly at a photograph of someone else’s wedding.

  ‘I don’t think,’ Anna said very slowly and sweetly, ‘that flowers in fishbowls are quite for me, not that they are not lovely for some people. It’s just that if you remember my email, sent to you on the eighteenth of November at fifteen forty-eight, you’ll recall that I asked for roses? Big fat red roses?’ Anna unleashed her best smile, reserved for the people that were testing her compulsive need to have everything exactly the way she wanted it the very most. ‘Here, let me give you a copy, because sometimes those pesky little emails just wander off and go missing, don’t they?’ Anna produced her wedding folder, an orange highlighter pen from her special highlighter-pen pocket in her bag, and retrieved a copy of said email from the dated files marked ‘Correspondence (Venue)’ which she passed to Jean. ‘So let’s just go through this, shall we? As you can see, it’s composed in easy-to-read bullet points …’

  Jean blinked at Anna, and closed her photo album with a distinct slap, clearly offended that her trademark ‘festive plants in fishbowls’ weren’t considered to be up to standard. This was her fault, Liv thought, momentarily distracted from Tom’s odd behaviour by Anna’s anxiety. Not that Anna’s face wasn’t a picture of serenity. But Liv knew the signs and knew the murderous thoughts that were almost certainly running through Anna’s head. She should have made her delegate more.

  ‘You can’t try and do everything,’ Liv had told her the day Anna had broken the news of the wedding. It was last New Year’s Eve. Liv had got back to the flat first, glad to have escaped her lovely, but energy-zapping family, and to finally be back home with a precious week off work to do nothing but watch bad TV and eat the poor quality junk food that she would never in a million years dream of admitting she loved. She’d just put the kettle on, and lined up a family-sized bag of Wotsits, when Anna let herself in the door. For once she had been without Tom.

  ‘Happy New Year!’ Anna had said, bounding into the kitchen. ‘How’s the family, did they miss me? I missed them. Tom’s family is lovely, but it’s an awful chore having to be on my best behaviour for all those days and not reorganise the kitchen or colour code their airing cupboard.’ Liv had been about to respond when Anna had hugged her literally off her feet and spun her round. ‘Why am I wittering on, Liv … this is going to be the best year ever because … Oh Liv! I’m getting married! To Tom! He asked me to marry him and it wasn’t a joke or anything, he meant it and everything and I said yes!’

  ‘Wow!’ Liv had said, her eyes widening as the news slowly sunk in and she got a breath back. ‘Wow, Anna. Wow.’

  ‘Are you pleased?’ Anna had asked her, not able to fail to notice the distinct lack of enthusiasm in her ‘wows.’

  ‘I am, of course I am,’ Liv said, willing herself to catch up with the news. ‘It’s just … Oh that’s amazing news. I’m so happy for you. You’re going to be married! To Tom!’

  The two women had hugged again, and the second time Liv put on a much better show of being pleased, because this was Anna, and she wanted to be pleased for Anna.

  ‘I know,’ Anna had said, skipping a tiny bit. ‘And there is so much to do! Think of the lists! And the pie charts, and I’m certainly going to need a spreadsheet and maybe a PowerPoint presentation!’ She rubbed her hands together in glee. ‘I’m going to need millions of Post-it notes, all the colours!’

  Immediately, Anna set about making lists, sitting on the living-room floor of the flat they shared, with a newly bought bound notebook and a set of coloured biros, which she must have picked up on the way home for just this purpose.

  ‘We’re supposed to be going out, remember? Dancing? Bringing in the New Year? Not making lists that can easily wait until tomorrow,’ Liv had said, a touch petulantly. ‘Especially as this will be our last ever single girl New Year, Anna.’

  ‘I know, and we will, I promise. But just let me make a pre-list. A list of lists, please, Liv. You know how excited I get by a new notebook.’

  Sighing, Liv had sat down on the floor next to her friend, crossing her legs, noticing a hole in the seam on the inside thigh of her leggings, and tugging at it to make it a bit bigger.

  ‘I’m really pleased for you and everything,’ she’d said, despite the heavy weight that was descending steadily downwards in her chest.

  ‘But?’ Anna looked up at her, her pen hovering mid-air.

  ‘But what?’ Liv asked.

  ‘That sentence was definitely going to end in a “but”,’ Anna said. ‘“I’m really pleased for you and everything but …” But what? Please, please, don’t say you’re not happy for me and you don’t love Tom, because if you don’t approve you realise I can’t marry him, don’t you? Your disapproval could seriously ruin my life, here.’

  Liv had sighed, picking up the blue biro and slotting the lid of the green one onto it, just because she knew it would drive Anna mad.

  Honestly, she couldn’t quite make sense of her own feelings at that moment, and although Anna was quite right, there was a ‘but’, a massive huge ‘but’, it wasn’t exactly one that she could communicate then, or indeed ever now that Anna and Tom were forever. Because you didn’t do that, you didn’t tell your best friend moments after they told you they were getting married that you were really pleased for them and everything BUT you’d been secretly in love with their fiancé since the first moment you’d set eyes on him, weeks before he’d even met Anna. Or that you’d only invited him to your birthday party, and made a fool of yourself by wearing an actual dress, because you’d rather hoped that it would be you he’d be kissing passionately on the sofa at ten to two the next morning, and not yo
ur flatmate and best friend. (And the person who had always best fitted the description of soulmate.) No, you definitely did not add that particular ‘but’ to the end of that particular sentence in response to that particular announcement. Not unless you were OK for life as you knew it to end for ever and ever less than sixty seconds later.

  Liv really had done her best to get rid of her feelings for Tom as he became more and more of an integral part of Anna’s life, really she had. She had told herself it was just another silly futile crush in a long line of silly futile crushes, exactly like the time she’d decided she was in love with Marcus upstairs, even though Marcus upstairs was living very happily and very monogamously with his life partner, Brian. But the truth was the more Liv got to know Tom, the deeper and more hopeless her affections became.

  And now it felt like she was losing both the people she most cared about in the world for ever and there was nothing for it but to keep her chin up, have a stiff upper lip, be the kind of best friend that Anna always was to her and continue to let Tom treat her like one of the blokes down the pub, even ever so occasionally giving her short dark hair an affectionate ruffle, like she was his kid brother. There really was nothing else for it but to ride it out until the ache in her heart finally faded, only it was now almost a year on and Liv still felt exactly the same.

  ‘But …’ Liv had said heavily last New Year’s Eve. ‘If you take on organising every aspect of your own wedding with the same crazy controlling freakery you do everything else, you will literally explode. Take it as read that I’ll help you. You just need to concentrate on the things that really matter. Like getting drunk with your oldest friend in about an hour’s time?’

  ‘It all matters!’ Anna had said, distracted. ‘Right, blue for the dress, green for the venue, red for flowers, black for catering, or do you think pink for the dress?’

  ‘Er, we are caterers,’ Liv reminded her. ‘I’ll cater your wedding. I might even give you a discount.’

  ‘But you are the chief bridesmaid!’ Anna had exclaimed. ‘You can’t be cooking in puffed sleeves and an Empire line dress!’

  ‘Firstly,’ Liv had said, ‘thank you for asking me, I’m honoured, and, secondly, over my dead body will there be puffed sleeves and, thirdly, I will plan your menus, I will pay for it, I will prep it and then we can let our loyal staff cook it for you, and come to the evening do. It can be the Simple Pleasures wedding gift to you, after all, without all your hard work I’d still be doing Sunday roasts in a pub.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Anna said. ‘You are a cooking genius. It’s only a matter of time before the world truly recognises your talent.’

  ‘Which is why you’d be a fool not to let me at least take catering off your hands. Who else in the world knows you like I do?’

  Anna had crawled across the floor and hugged her. ‘Thank you. I’m so happy,’ she’d said, beaming. ‘I’m not used to being this happy. Normally when I’m happy something always goes wrong. Sometimes I think it’s better not to be happy, and then you are never disappointed. Oh God, what if everything goes wrong?’

  ‘Anna! Nothing will go wrong,’ Liv had reassured her. ‘Tom is one of the good guys. And he really loves you, anyone can see that. Now please put away your pens and your lists and let’s go out and have some fun! For one thing I’ve only got twelve months to find a date to your wedding.’

  ‘OK,’ Anna had relented. ‘But re the catering, could you do me a menu by the end of the week, and can we have monthly updates to check on progress?’

  ‘Anna, it’s not even January …’ Liv began, knowing it was pointless to argue.

  ‘I know, but can we?’ Anna asked her.

  ‘Yes, we can. And for God’s sakes, get a florist to do your flowers. What the hell do you know about flower arranging?’

  Famous for being one of the few people in the world that Anna listened to, Liv had made her concede control of the reception flowers to the venue florist, saying she might as well make full use of the services she was paying for. And so this moment of supreme awkwardness was in fact all Liv’s fault.

  ‘So as you can see,’ Anna said, ever so politely, biting her lip, ‘I want roses, deep, dark red roses, fat ones, old-fashioned fat roses, with dark green glossy leaves, a hand-tied natural-looking bunch of those every three seating places and, in between, petals scattered across the table, and candles, exactly the same colour red, alternating with the flowers. So that’s not a problem, is it? To have it like that, exactly like that?’

  ‘Give the woman a break,’ Tom said, shaking his head, getting up suddenly and pacing to the full-length window, where he looked out across the grounds. Liv winced as Anna’s head snapped round to watch him, her blue eyes full of concern. That’s what all this nonsense to do with the flowers was about. She was trying to get Tom interested, to get him to take part. But for the last week or so he’d been anything but, all his apparent joy in his forthcoming nuptials seemingly seeping away. And Anna being Anna didn’t know how to ask him what was wrong, so instead she went into crazy Anna overdrive.

  ‘Look,’ Liv said, leaning forwards and smiling pleasantly at Jean, ‘you can get the fat roses, can’t you? In that shade of red, and the candles, can’t you? That’s easy these days, right?’

  ‘Yes, I can. I was just offering an alternative,’ Jean said, clearly still a little wounded. ‘That’s what I’m here for, to offer ideas …’

  ‘I know.’ Liv smiled warmly. She leaned forwards and added with a conspiratorial air, ‘And your alternatives are lovely, just not what Anna has in mind. Anna has had her table arrangements in mind since nineteen ninety-one. And you, of all people, know what brides are like, right? Mental.’

  Jean said nothing, but her expression indicated that she’d seen more than one Bridezilla in her time.

  ‘Also about the specific type of ribbo—’ Anna began to interrupt, but Liv held her hand up to stop her, the only person in the entire world who could get away with doing that.

  ‘The thing that is so brilliant about you Jean, is that you do know more about this than anyone, so who better for Anna to trust her table-setting dreams to than you?’ Jean thought for a moment, and seemed unable to come up with any names. ‘So, we know we can leave you to do everything as per the email, down to the last letter, and everything will be just fine. It will be more than fine, it will be a dream come true. A dream that you made come true.’ Jean nodded and smiled, her hurt feelings instantly healed by a little of Liv’s diplomacy. ‘Great, now I need to have a look at your kitchens, and have a chat to your chef about your equipment, see if there’s anything I need to bring with us for the day. OK?’

  ‘Perfectly fine,’ Jean said pleasantly, smiling at Anna, whose eyes were fixed on the back of Tom’s shoulders. ‘I must warn you that Chef is not thrilled at being ousted from his own kitchen for the wedding.’

  ‘Well,’ Liv said as she got up, touching Anna briefly on the arm. ‘Chef can comfort himself with the knowledge that not catering this particular wedding will almost certainly extend his life by at least ten years.’

  Liv paused, leaning close to her friend.

  ‘Anna,’ she said, ‘just try to relax, darling. If you don’t, all these months and years of planning will have been for nothing. It will all go by in a flash and you won’t have noticed any of it, not even the reindeer-pulled sleigh that’s taking you to the church, which you somehow managed to get Whipsnade Zoo to lend you for the morning.’

  ‘It wasn’t that hard. They don’t open on Christmas Eve, I gave a considerable amount of money to the Save the Tiger fund and I’m paying the reindeer keeper an extra bonus. Everyone is happy, even the reindeer, who get more of their favourite feed. And I know, that’s what everyone says, about it all flying past, but it won’t for me. I’ve made a list of times when I have to pause and take stock: just before the ceremony, during the vows, speeches, photos, first dance etc. I’ll be making mental memories!’

  ‘Are there any other kind?’ Liv asked her fond
ly.

  Anna smiled at Jean. ‘Thank you. I don’t mean to be so demanding. It’s the nerves, you know. And I always expect the worst, it’s a bad habit of mine.’ Anna glanced anxiously at Tom.

  ‘Hey, Tom!’ Liv succeeded in getting him to turn back from the window. ‘Restrain your bride while I go and check out the kitchen, OK?’ she said. She met and held his gaze for several seconds, attempting to psych–ically add the message And at least look like you’re having a good time to the end of it, but Tom only stared at her blankly. It was clear that his mind had been elsewhere, somewhere very different from talking about wedding flowers. But where, or with whom and why?

  That was the question that worried Liv.

  Later that evening, after a long bath, and a large glass of red, Anna looked at Tom as he lay on his bed staring at the spot on the wall just above the TV. He’d said he had to go back to his place tonight, he had a big meeting in the morning, and Anna had accompanied him, unthinking. But now she was getting the distinct impression that he hadn’t really wanted her to come.