Married By Christmas Page 6

  Anna finally looked into his eyes – the rain had plastered his hair to head, and was running in rivulets down his cheeks. Without thinking, she pulled the sleeve of her sweater over her hand and wiped his face dry.

  ‘We are getting married in a week,’ Anna told him. ‘For the last year – for at least the last twenty-odd years – I’ve thought and dreamed and planned every last detail of getting married, and it’s going to happen in a week. And even if I can take discovering the fact that you’ve been married before to the wife that time forgot, I can’t take finding out that your amnesia about past spouses is going to trash every single one of those hopes and plans and dreams. And I’m not prepared to accept that it’s happened, not yet.’

  ‘But … Oh God, Anna, I know I’ve ruined everything. And I’m sorry, so sorry,’ Tom said. ‘But what else can I do? Surely you must see I’ve done everything I can think of? And in a few weeks it will all be sorted and we can get married right away – in the New Year – I promise you.’

  Anna took a deep breath. ‘I’ve planned a Christmas wedding Tom, a Christmas wedding. My dream Christmas wedding, exactly like the one I first talked about the very last night that I spent with my mother when I was nine years old. You know, don’t you, how much this means to me, that I didn’t just pick this date out of thin air? You do get that, don’t you? I’ve booked reindeers, Tom! Reindeers!’

  ‘Anna,’ Tom said her name softly, pulling her into his chest in an embrace., her hot cheeks crushed against the wet of his jacket. He held her tightly against him until a little of the tension eased from her stiff, unyielding frame. ‘I do get it and you don’t need to tell me I’ve fucked up, I know I’ve fucked up. I know I probably don’t deserve you after this, but listen, when you think about it, you’ll see that I’m right. It’s not when we get married that matters, it’s that we get married at some point. OK, so we can’t get married in a week, but all we have to do is postpone for a bit, we’ll hire a detective to look for Charisma so we can prove we tried and then, well, how about a Valentine’s wedding, we could probably get everything sorted by then.’

  ‘I don’t think you usually have a reindeer-pulled sleigh at a Valentine’s wedding,’ Anna said into his chest, willing him to say something that would make the knot of uncertainty and anxiety in her chest melt away and for all the things that mattered to her so very much not to matter any more, because that would be the easy option, the approach that any sensible, pragmatic person would take. Much easier than trying to explain to Tom why cancelling their wedding now would break her heart. ‘Listen, when I was a kid and everything was going to crap all around me, and I was stuck in the home, where the other girls beat me up and made my life a misery, I made myself this silly little girl’s promise about a fairy-tale Christmas wedding, a silly dream that I promised myself would one day come true. And I know it’s stupid, and frivolous, and shouldn’t really matter now. I know that. But even though I know I’m no longer that little girl, in my head, she is still there, staying awake all night in the home because she’s terrified about what might happen if she closes her eyes … I just … I don’t want to let her down, Tom. She got let down a lot.’ Anna hesitated before confessing her other worry to Tom. ‘And I don’t know, I get the feeling that if we don’t get married this Christmas it just won’t happen at all.’

  Tom cupped her face in his cold hands, kissing the tip of her nose, and Anna melted into him, feeling a wave of relief that he understood.

  ‘Now you are just being silly,’ he said and Anna froze.

  ‘Silly?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes!’ Tom chuckled again. ‘Why wouldn’t we get married? We’re not cancelling the wedding, we’re just postponing it. Of course we’ll get married one day.’

  ‘One day?’ Anna looked crestfallen. ‘So that’s it, you’ve given up. It’s over, it’s postponed and we’ll get married “one day”?’

  ‘I just don’t see what else I can do,’ Tom said, uncomfortably.

  Anna sighed, wondering why the plan that she had pretty much already implemented hadn’t occurred to him.

  ‘Martha said you need Charisma’s signature to annul the marriage in time. So it’s obvious! Fly to New York to find Charisma and get her signature so the wedding can go ahead!’

  Tom sighed, which wasn’t exactly the romantic, ‘do or die, never give up, anything for you’ response that Anna was hoping for.

  ‘Well … I mean look, let’s be realistic. Even if I did do that, the chances of me finding her are virtually nil. She left Vegas for New York eight years ago, she could be anywhere in the world now. And if I go off on some crazy wild goose chase all that would mean is that we’d be apart at the very time we need to be together, and if I didn’t find her, which I won’t, you’d be even more disappointed and there’d be even less time to cancel stuff and get back the deposits. And I know it’s a pain, but I promise you, promise you, that I’ll get all of the deposits refunded, rebook everything exactly as you want it and we’ll get married next Christmas, how about that? Just think, a whole extra year to make me do wedding-organising stuff!’

  Tom’s smile faded in direct proportion to how quickly the expression of acute disappointment and hurt spread across Anna’s face.

  ‘If you won’t do it, I will,’ she said, turning on her heel and going back into the flat, unwittingly almost flattening Liv behind the front door, which rebounded off her nose.

  ‘What?’ Tom followed. ‘What do you mean, Anna?’

  ‘I mean, the flight’s booked, the visa’s sorted, I’m about to pack my bag. I’m going to New York to try and sort this mess out and make sure we get married by Christmas, because I’m not ready to let this go, Tom. I can’t stop trying until I know there is no hope left. I just can’t. I’m not that sort of person. Now, Liv’s coming with me to the airport, so you’d better go. I’ll let you know when I have any news.’

  ‘Wait,’ Tom said, struggling to keep up with the rapid turn of events. ‘You’ve booked a flight, already?’

  ‘I want to marry you, Tom,’ Anna said. ‘I want to marry you this Christmas. And I haven’t given up hope yet.’

  ‘Then, right, well, book me a flight too, we’ll go together,’ Tom said, realising far too late that he had done and said much, much less than Anna had expected from him.

  ‘The flight’s full now, it’s too late,’ Anna said. ‘Look, go home. Stick to your schedule for the wedding, help Liv with the final details. Let me at least try and get this sorted out.’

  ‘But, Anna,’ Tom said, ‘it should be me doing this.’

  ‘I know,’ Anna said sadly. ‘It should be. But it isn’t, is it?’

  ‘Do you think you’re doing the right thing?’ Liv said, watching Anna make her final arrangements. Tom had only been there for a total of ten minutes but somehow it felt like everything had changed, and if it felt like that for her what must Anna be feeling like?

  ‘Of course I am,’ Anna said. ‘If I don’t do this, if I don’t at least try and sort it all … I’m not the sort of person to give up because something is a bit difficult, am I? If I were then I would never have made it this far.’

  ‘I know, but the way he looked when he left. Like …’ Liv tried to put into words the look on Tom’s face, but she couldn’t find the right ones and she couldn’t help worrying that in her determination to fix things, no matter what, Anna had inadvertently broken what she and Tom had. Perhaps she had gone too far this time, even for Tom? But still, he hadn’t tried to stop her, he hadn’t said, ‘If you do this it’s over between us.’ He’d just … looked bewildered.

  ‘You really need to talk to him some more.’

  ‘I know and I will,’ Anna said. ‘But for now a few hours apart, some time to get our heads straight, is just what we need. I mean we haven’t even talked about why he never mentioned being married.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Liv paused for a second while she examined her motivations for what she was about to say, and decided that she was saying it to be
a good friend. ‘Don’t you think you should be talking about whether or not you should be getting married instead of rushing across the Atlantic to try and make it happen? A lot has happened and only a short time before the wedding. Don’t you think you need to talk about why you are finding out about this now, instead … Well, I don’t really know how to describe what you are doing any other way than madness.’

  ‘That’s one opinion,’ Anna said, hurriedly rolling her underwear into neat little saugages which lined up in her case, and then swiftly reorganised them into similar coloured groups, without even giving it any conscious thought. ‘But on the other hand, nothing has happened at all. Nothing that a signature can’t undo straight away.’

  ‘I just wonder if you need to try more to communicate what you really feel,’ Liv tried again, her mother’s advice about leaving Anna and Tom to it ringing reproachfully in her ears.

  ‘I do need to communicate with him, and I will,’ Anna said. ‘Which is where you come in, because while I’m not here you have to be me. Once I know where I’m staying, I’m going to need that awful Martha woman to FedEx me the papers, and you are going to have to make sure the wedding stays on track. It’s lucky really that we are mostly the same size, because there’s a final dress fitting that I’ll need you to go to, and you’ll have to take over all the last-minute arrangements for me. Of course I’m a bit taller and bigger in the bust than you, but I’ve thought of that – all you need to do is stand on a book, wear my bra and stuff it with socks, that should work.’

  ‘Anna …’ Liv was seriously considering deadlocking the front door and throwing away the key. ‘I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t ask you one last time. Are you sure that you are really prepared to go to the United States of America, population three hundred million and counting, to try and find a needle in a haystack, in order to still marry Tom in a week’s time?’ ‘I know how much this means to you, but you’ve got to look at the big picture here. You’ve got to look at this incident in the context of your entire life. If you still love Tom, and you still want to marry him, he will still be here in a month or two or three. The world won’t stop turning if you don’t marry him on Christmas Eve!’

  Anna stared blankly at Liv, as if she’d just spoken to her in Swahili.

  ‘You were on the other side of the front door when I was talking to Tom, you know why it matters to me, you know that without having to eavesdrop, you know better than anyone. You are the last person I should be justifying this to.’

  ‘I know, I know, but I just want to protect you from making a mistake. What I’m trying to say is, are you sure you are being rational?’

  ‘No,’ Anna said, turning on her heel and going back into her bedroom. Liv watched as Anna took her suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and laid it open on the bed, then opened a drawer and transferred a selection of already neatly folded clothes, which Liv knew would be a pre-prepared capsule wardrobe, perfect for impromptu trips to the US of A. ‘No, I’m not being rational, or logical. I’m doing what my heart is telling me to do. And like I said to Tom, where would I be today,’ Anna continued, ‘if I’d just given up trying when things got a bit tricky?’

  Liv shrugged. That was a hard motivation to fault even if in her heart she knew that this time Anna was going too far.

  ‘Look –’ Anna paused for a moment, holding a bouquet of freshly ironed socks labelled Monday to Sunday, retrieved from the drawer in date order ‘– I’ve given a year and a half of my life to Tom so far, and most of it has been really great. It’s been the nearest I’ve had to normality since you and your family took me in and I know how lucky I am that he wants to marry me, even though I am not some Amazonian sex worker who enjoys gluing tassels to her bits and bobs and sliding up and down a pole. Tom still wants to marry me, and I want to marry him, so why not do everything I can to make it happen the way that I want it? To marry him on Christmas Eve, exactly as planned, not in six months’ time, or however long it takes for him to get his effing act together.’ Anna paused again, re-collecting her composure, which just for a moment had shown signs of cracking.

  ‘I’m getting married by Christmas, Liv, if it kills me. I am not going to let this one thing that I have always wanted, all of my life, be swept aside by some … some big-titted tart!’ Anna lifted her chin in a moment of defiance, before Liv saw that familiar uncertainty in her eyes again.

  ‘Look after him while I’m away, won’t you?’ Anna asked her. ‘Maybe pop round on the way back from the airport and see how he’s doing. Help him understand why I’m doing this, because I know he doesn’t.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be the one to do that?’ Liv suggested.

  ‘I’m going,’ Anna said, glancing at her watch. ‘I’ve got to now.’

  ‘Anna,’ Liv tried once again, ‘this is madness. Where are you even going to start?’

  ‘New York of course,’ Anna said, rolling her eyes. ‘Where else?’

  Chapter Four

  Anna supposed she was lucky to get the very last seat on the flight, which had been almost fully booked when she’d begun the reservation process, although she was slightly put out that she was sandwiched between a charming if slightly more robustly built than was comfortable lady on her left, sporting an ‘I Heart London’ T-shirt, and whoever it was who’d managed to reserve the last aisle seat on her right, in the seconds that it took for the website to process her payment. As Anna smiled at the lady, who was already tucking into a packet of crisps, cheerfully brushing crumbs off her ample bosom, she wondered if perhaps she should have gone mad and shelled out the several thousand pounds for first class after all. She had thought of it as she’d sat there, at the kitchen table, toying with her never previously used emergency credit card (because, after all, if ever there was an emergency this was it), while she was doing her best to process everything that had just happened, bypassing the nervous breakdown stage. Why shouldn’t she wallow in the disintegration of her life whilst lying on a flat bed and being brought endless amounts of gin? Anna asked herself. But the same Anna who’d often gone without meals and knew how to make five pounds last all week would not allow such wilful frivolity, not even under these exceptional circumstances. After all she still didn’t have a room booked in New York. It would be the early hours of the morning by the time she arrived, nearer to three or four by the time she’d gotten through customs and found a cab – who knew how much she might have to spend to secure a room in a decent hotel, or what it might cost to start to look for Charisma, or even how long it might take for her to admit that she was engaged in a wild goose chase of epic proportions, accept defeat and go home. So, as much as it pained her, Anna had made the sensible choice, the Anna choice, to wallow in her misery in economy class, even if it did mean silently resenting the person who’d nabbed the very last aisle seat seconds before she could for the entire seven-hour flight.

  Boarding was almost complete and Anna was starting to feel optimistic about getting her aisle seat after all when she heard a male voice approaching, and knew, just knew, that he was coming her way, intent on sitting next to her and irritating her for the next seven hours and fifteen minutes.

  ‘’Scuse, ’scuse me, love, yep, yep, if I could just squeeze past here … thanks, thanks, oops sorry! Cheers, brilliant, thanks!’ The next thing Anna knew, a large and weighty rucksack had been deposited unceremoniously on her lap, while the owner of a pair of jeans whose button flies were rather disconcertingly at her eye level, spoke to her as he stowed something away in the compartment above their seats. ‘Don’t mind if I just … just while I? Thanks, love. Brilliant.’

  Unimpressed by being referred to as ‘love’, Anna hefted the rucksack, which she was sure wasn’t official hand-luggage size, onto its owner’s empty seat, hurriedly rooting around for the headphones that she was now certain she would need to block out her less than appealing travel companions.

  ‘Oh thanks.’ An arm, with a tattoo of a dragon winding its way around his forearm, reached down
and grabbed the bag. It was followed by a torso in a red and white checked shirt and then a curtain of long straight dark hair, belonging to a man who Anna quickly realised, with swiftly multiplying horror, she knew, and what’s more, desperately wished with all her heart that she would never meet again.

  Wondering if would be possible to avoid detection, and the inevitable ensuing humiliation that was bound to follow for the full seven hours of the flight, Anna grabbed the in-flight magazine, opening it at eye level, so that it covered the entire right side of her face, hopeful that her unexpected travelling companion wouldn’t notice that she appeared to read only with her right eye.

  ‘Managed to get my ukulele on,’ Miles Harker, owner of the jeans and tattoo, and the unwitting co-defendant of the single worst date Anna had ever been on, said, as he unzipped his bag and threw a battered-looking old-school iPod onto the seat. ‘But they made me put my guitar in with the luggage. I said to them, if you hurt my baby, man, you’ve not only ripped out my heart, but you’ve basically fucked my life. Didn’t seem that bothered.’

  Anna sat stock still, staring at the back of the seat in front of her, trying to come up with a plan, any plan to avoid detection. Perhaps if she managed to somehow slip on the eye mask one-handed, whilst still keeping the magazine in situ, and then maybe she could drape that crappy blanket thing they gave you over her face, he’d never know who he was sitting next to. Bitterly, Anna wondered why, out of all the people in the world, it was Miles Harker who’d bagged the last but one seat on the midnight flight out of Heathrow, next to her. Of all the seats, of all the flights, of all the terrible times to bump into Miles Harker, the universe had decided to put him here, now. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice or remember her, Anna thought, wildly hopeful. After all, though he’d had a starring role in it, it hadn’t really seemed to bother Miles that together they had experienced the worst blind date in the history of bad blind dates. It was a faint hope though. Of course Miles would recognise her, not because she was especially beautiful, but because the last time he had seen her she most certainly hadn’t been. In fact, if anything she had mostly closely resembled a living Picasso, her features swollen and misshapen and relocating themselves to quite the wrong position on her face.