Married By Christmas (11 page)

Liv lifted her head above Dana’s bustling, barely conscious of Anna’s exclamations of delight and satisfaction as Dana proudly showed her what seemed like every individual stitch, and noticed how her tawny skin contrasted with the pristine white of the gown, how the bodice cinched and accentuated the curve of her waist and hips, and how, with her cheeks a little flushed, her dark eyes sparkling, her nude lips parted as she gazed at herself, it turned out that actually, she was quite gorgeous. Shame really that a girl couldn’t get away with wearing a kick-ass wedding dress to work, or the supermarket, or kick-boxing, if a kick-ass wedding dress was what it took to make her look like a girl.

‘Now, the jacket, Leeev,’ Dana said, interrupting Liv’s thoughts to slide a three-quarter-length sleeved velvet bolero jacket, with covered buttons stitched on with silver thread, over her arms and bare back. ‘And finally the veil.’

Liv found herself holding her breath as Dana floated a mist of finest net over her head, edged with the same exquisite snowflake motif, and then held it in place with a perfect crystal tiara.

As Liv looked at herself, once removed from reality by the veil that gave her features a soft focus, she felt certain that she wasn’t looking at herself any more, but instead at some Snow Queen, one perhaps recently released from a set of wardrobes. And quite unexpectedly, she discovered that she did have a tear in her eye and, more than that, her heart was throbbing with a sudden urgent sense of loss. This was Anna’s dress, the dress in which she would one day soon marry Tom. It was the final beautiful omen that Liv had to face to realise once and for all that Tom would never be hers. She’d told herself that a million times over the last eighteen months, but it was perhaps only now, standing here in Anna’s dress, that she really understood it,

‘It is perfect.’ Anna’s voice filled the air from the tablet, which Dana handed to Liv before exiting, sensing perhaps that the two women needed a moment to themselves. The veil hiding her tears from Anna, Liv took a breath and held the phone up at shoulder height so that Anna could see the dress reflected full length in the mirror.

‘You see,’ Anna whispered in her ear from three thousand miles away. ‘You see why it has to be a Christmas wedding. Just like I always wanted a Christmas wedding, with my Christmas dress, and this is it. Just the way Mum and me drew it on that last Christmas.’

Liv bit her lip, willing the tears to stop falling, if her own heartbreak wasn’t enough it was knowing that, despite everything, the one memory that Anna cherished above all others was that one happy Christmas she’d spent with her mum, the one when she’d been free of drugs for a few weeks, and they’d had a warm place to stay and even some presents. And how much, even now, Anna still loved that version of her mother, still steadfastly entwining her memory into her wedding, even though she hadn’t seen or heard from her since she was nine years old.

‘I completely see,’ Liv said softly, wishing she could extend an arm and put it around her friend, as all sensible and rational thoughts about the marriage being the thing, rather than the dress and the party, evacuated her head in an instant.

‘You look lovely in it,’ Anna said, sweetly. ‘Maybe a bit too lovely, come to think of it. I might have to have a word with Dana, make sure your bridesmaid’s dress is a bit frumpier …’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Liv chuckled. ‘This dress would make anyone look good, but imagine
you
, with your hair, and your skin, and boobs that aren’t extra-absorbent fourply. Oh, Anna, you will be the most beautiful bride there has ever been. Sod Tom. If we can’t get hold of his stupid wife and get her to divorce him I’ll just find someone else to marry you. You need a Christmas wedding and I’m going to make sure you have it.’

Anna laughed. ‘Thanks for doing this, darling,’ she said, and when Liv looked she saw Anna’s eyes were sparkling with tears again. Confident that her teary moment had passed, at least for now, she ever so carefully lifted the veil off her face so that she could see Anna more clearly.

‘You don’t have to thank me,’ Liv said. ‘I know you’d do the same for me, and for God’s sake don’t cry! Look, this will work out somehow, I know it will, because I know you. You are unsinkable.’

‘What, like the
Titanic
?’ Anna half sobbed and half giggled. ‘No, seriously though. I know it’s a pain for the world’s last dedicated pedestrian to get to the far side of Surrey in one morning. All those trains and buses, all that public transport, it must have taken you hours.’

‘Oh no, we drove,’ Liv said, remembering a little bit too late that she probably shouldn’t mention to Anna that it was Tom waiting outside in the car for her. Normally, the superstition prevented the groom from seeing the gown before the big day, but under their present tricky circumstances Liv was fairly certain that Anna wouldn’t want to take any chances with Lady Luck. Or perhaps she was wrong about that because although they’d been on Facetime now for over half an hour, Anna hadn’t asked about Tom, not once.

‘Drove, who drove you?’ Anna asked.

‘Kitty,’ Liv said, referring to their seventeen-year-old work experience girl who had only recently passed her test.

‘Really, you put your life in Kitty’s hands? Kitty who recently food-processed her little finger?’ Anna looked amazed. ‘Well, fine, but my dress is not getting in a car with her. Ask Dana to have it delivered, would you? I’ll pay the extra. And when it gets to the flat hide it somewhere where Tom will not be able to see it.’

Liv nodded, taking one last look at herself, supposing she would have to take the dress off now, and go back to being her usual, short, boyish self again. She would put her boots back on, ruffle her hair into some sort of semblance of style, and feel forever about age nine.

‘Talking of Tom, is he OK?’ Anna asked her finally, reluctantly, as if she wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge that she was in New York looking for his ex-wife and things between her and Tom were decidedly uncertain. ‘I’m assuming that as you came to try the dress on he hasn’t called off the wedding or anything? I mean, you would tell me, wouldn’t you, if he had?’

Perhaps it was the way they were talking, separated by the impersonal screens, but Anna looked frail, white and anxious as she spoke. Not unlike she had the day that she’d finally come to live with Liv and her family for good. Liv remembered her pinched little face as she looked around her bedroom, which had been freshly painted for her.

‘Aren’t you happy?’ Liv had asked her then.

Anna had had exactly the same expression on her face as she did now when she replied. ‘I’m not sure, not yet.’

‘Of course Tom hasn’t called off the wedding,’ Liv said. ‘He was in pieces when I turned up at his place last night. He really feels like he’s let you down. Haven’t you talked to him yet?’ Liv hesitated.

‘No,’ Anna said. ‘There hasn’t been time. I only woke up a few minutes ago.’ She knew that Tom wouldn’t mind what time of the day or night she called him, but for some reason she just wasn’t ready to have another conversation with him yet, another exchange of sentences that gave her the distinct feeling that neither one of them really got the other one. Everything had happened so fast since she’d gatecrashed his secret meeting with Martha, she hadn’t had a moment to think about how she really felt about it, so determined had she been to keep the wedding on track.

‘Well, I know he’s regretting that it wasn’t him on that flight. You didn’t really give him a chance to rise to the occasion did you? You maybe did rush into this a bit, you know.’

‘I know I did,’ Anna admitted reluctantly. ‘And I know really that it’s not going to work out, and I know I won’t get my Christmas Eve wedding and that I’ll have to put that dress away for at least a year. In my head, I know that. I’m just not ready to accept it, not yet.’

‘And I completely understand,’ Liv told her. ‘Which is why I think that now is the time that you and Tom should be together, working things out. Not on opposite sides of the Atlantic.’

‘I know, you’re right,’ Anna said, wanly. ‘It was just yesterday it seemed like a good idea to get on a plane and save my wedding. I’m cursed with the need to sort everything out, right now, you know that. Now I’m here though, I do feel a bit stupid. Poor Tom, does he think I’ve gone mad? Or madder than usual?’

‘Which brings me to the other thing we talked about …’ Liv hesitated, wondering how to bring it up.

‘Liv!’ Anna prompted her anxiously. ‘What other thing? If he’s told you about another wife, in another city, wearing another set of tassels then I need to know now!’

‘Don’t be insane. The other thing is I was a bit surprised that you’d told Tom the public version of your story. And not the real one. I kind of accidentally spilled the beans, about your mum and everything, because I thought, you know, what with you being on the verge of marrying him you might have told him the whole truth about yourself, not that he told you the whole truth about himself either, it’s just that I did sort of think that kind of fundamental honesty was one of the basics of marriage, call me old-fashioned.’

‘Oh.’ Anna said nothing for a moment, looking towards what Liv thought must be a window as her profile was suddenly flooded with muted white light. ‘I know that
seems
like the logical thing to do, but if you were Tom, or the Tom I thought I knew, you know, the one who was a vicar’s son and not the one who drunkenly got married in a topless bar, would you marry the abandoned daughter of a drug-addicted part-time prostitute? I have a hard enough time hiding the crazy as it is, I didn’t want to put him off me in the early days, the days when we were telling each other stuff. And then it seemed too late to tell him the whole story. Come to think of it that’s probably why he didn’t mention getting married in Vegas.’

‘Well, you both know everything now,’ Liv said, with something of a heavy heart. ‘And you both still want to get married. That must mean something. Although I still think the pair of you need to be in the same room, to really sort things out. I don’t want to say it but … well, it smacks a bit of Regina Clarkson.’

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘I know. I can’t afford to stay here long anyway, but as I am, I might have at least a day here to clear my head, and then I’ll come home and start to be normal again within my recognised parameters and start to rearrange the wedding. Let me see the dress one last time, would you?’

Obediently, and although she found it quite hard to walk in the skirt and the heels, Liv propped Anna back on the mantelpiece and took a few faltering steps backwards.

‘Do a twirl,’ Anna commanded her. ‘And now the other way …’

‘What you up to babe?’ A male voice suddenly sounded from the iPad, causing Liv to spin abruptly on her heels and almost fall off them as she tottered towards the mantel.

‘Who was that?’ she said, but by the time she got there Anna was gone, and when she tried again her call failed. It must have been in her imagination, Liv thought, as she carefully tiptoed back to the mirror for one last look before Dana came to disrobe her. Or a crossed line or something, if that was possible on Facetime. Maybe Dana had some secret man holed away in her house, because if Liv knew one thing for certain it was that there was no way that Anna would be in a hotel room in New York with a man that called her “babe”. Not unless hell had frozen over and there were pigs flying across the Thames.

Hearing the door open behind her, Liv turned around expecting Dana and finding Tom.

‘Listen, Liv, we’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting with …’ Tom stopped mid-sentence as he took in the sight of his friend in his bride-to-be’s dress.

‘Christ,’ he spluttered finally, prompting Liv to stumble and totter behind the nearest – thankfully floor-length – curtain, in a belated attempt to hide the dress from him.

‘Tom!’ she hissed, peering out from behind the floral material, stamping her foot hard against the floorboards. ‘You
can’t
see this! Anna must never ever know that you’ve seen this! Get out! Get out, before Dana comes back and gouges out your eyes with a needle!’

‘Of course,’ Tom said, but he didn’t move an inch, he just stood there in the doorway looking at her.

‘Tom!’ Liv said, feeling acutely uncomfortable under his incredulous gaze, like some silly little girl caught playing dress-up in her mother’s closet and the object of affectionate ridicule.

‘It’s just …’ Tom blinked, as if he was coming back to himself after being in a trance. ‘It’s just that, Liv, I never realised before how beautiful you are.’

‘Oh my God,’ Liv said crossly, dropping the curtain without thinking in her instinctive and confused reaction. ‘Oh my God, Tom, are you really so shallow that it takes a net skirt and bucketload of sequins to make you look at a woman properly? Are you really that thick, because … Oh fuck it, just get out! Get out now. I’ll be ten minutes.’

‘Why are you so cross with me?’ Tom asked her, confused.

‘GET THE FUCK OUT!’ Liv yelled at him, bringing Dana into the room.

Dana shrieked, swore extensively in both English and Polish, and grabbed Tom’s arm and threw him with some force out of the front door.

‘We never speak of ziz,’ she told Liv darkly when she came back into the room. ‘The one to speak of this will feel much pain.’ She drew her finger across her throat, making a convincing strangulated squelching sound to go with it. But she needn’t have worried, Liv didn’t need telling twice.

Chapter Eight

‘What?’ Miles said as Anna almost jumped out of her skin, her iPad flying free from her hands and skidding across the bed to where it was stopped, fortunately, by the pillow.

‘You didn’t even knock!’ Anna protested, not sure of exactly where to look, because although now she knew for sure that Miles had kept his boxers on all night, it was only because he’d waltzed into her room wearing nothing
but
them, leaving the sheet on the sofa.

‘I did knock, but you didn’t answer and I could hear you talking and this girl’s voice so I thought maybe you had company and …’ Miles paused, looking down at himself, before realising that he was about to justify walking in half naked on a conversation between two women with what might be considered very dubious motives. A most satisfying blush that began on his neck spread downwards, across his torso, which Anna was doing her best not to look at. ‘Fuck, I forgot I’ve not got much in the way of clothes on.’

‘What if that had been Tom?’ Anna asked, throwing a cushion at him, which he caught gratefully and held protectively over his man parts. ‘What if I’d been in the process of patching up my badly shaken relationship with my fiancé and then you walk in in your pants? What then?’

‘I didn’t think,’ Miles said, apologetically. ‘You know I just woke up. I was in a bit of a muddle. I just wanted to say hi and … anyway I’ll go and put some clothes on.’

‘Thank you,’ Anna said, forced to avert her eyes once again as Miles presented her with his backside. ‘And by the way, I don’t want that pillow back.’

A sudden horrifying vision coming to her, she scrabbled off the bed and shouted through the freshly closed door. ‘I’m having a shower now. Do not, on any account, come anywhere near me.’

There was no sound from the other side of the door and, deciding it was safe to proceed, Anna went into the bathroom, taking a change of clothes with her, and turned on the shower. Exhausted she may well be, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t at least look her best.

Sometime later, after Anna had brushed out her long hair and blow-dried it as best she could with the inadequate hotel dryer, she slipped on a light-grey knitted jumper dress, over thick woolly tights, and pulled on her knee-length boots. She paused for a moment to listen at the door for any sign of Miles, but it was still silent, and she assumed that he must have gone out, leaving her free to relax as she applied a little moisturiser, mascara and a slick of lip gloss. Taking a breath, Anna looked in the mirror and nodded. She was New York ready.

She jumped a little as she walked into the living room, surprised to find Miles sitting on the sofa, reading a book, thankfully fully dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and a white shirt, which, although crumpled, gave him a clean, almost boyish appeal.

‘What are you doing?’ Anna asked him.

‘Reading,’ Miles said glancing up at her. ‘You can’t have a go at me for reading. Not when I’ve got my clothes on.’

‘It’s just I thought you’d have gone by now, to your audition or something.’

‘Oh that’s not for a couple of days,’ Miles said. ‘I do need to practise, and finish off my song, but I’m kind of stuck at the moment. It’s supposed to be an edgy punk-inspired rock number about the futility of existence, but it keeps turning into this sappy love song. And I’ve got a hundred sappy love songs.’ Miles smiled at her thoughtfully. ‘So I thought I’d hang with you for a bit, help you out. Clear my head of the crap that’s going round and round it and see if I can’t get better at songwriting by Monday.’

‘I don’t need you to help me,’ Anna said. ‘We’re not here together, are we? We are here doing separate things. Separately. Remember, we agreed? You write your depressing song and I’ll look for my boyfriend’s wife.’

‘OK,’ Miles said. ‘So, out of interest, where are you planning to start looking for one person in this city of a little over eight million people?’

‘Well,’ Anna said, lifting her chin, as she mentally scrambled for a response. ‘I was going to … I thought what I’d do first is … My plan of attack is to firstly get a map and then …’ She didn’t want to tell him that the main thrust of her plan to track down Charisma Jones was mainly to go shopping and hope that she somehow bumped into her.

‘Why don’t you Google her?’ Miles asked. ‘See what that throws up?’

Anna pressed her lips together as she looked at him, sitting there so easily on the sofa, his long legs crossed, one arm stretched out across the back, holding his clever-looking paperback casually between his thumb and forefinger as if being him was the most natural thing in the world. She was beyond annoyed that it hadn’t occurred to her to do what was pretty much the singularly most obvious course of action for one person searching for another person to take since time began. But she did have an answer for him at least.

‘Duh,’ she said rolling her eyes. ‘Tom already did that, it was the first thing he did. He said she’s not on Facebook or Twitter, he said that there was nothing about her at all out there.’

Miles frowned, folding down the corner of the page of his book and closing it. ‘Really? It’s just … Really? This girl’s a dancer, a singer, a wannabe actress – if she really doesn’t have any information out there on the internet then, well, I’m pretty sure she’s either from another planet, the past, or dead or imaginary. Yep, I’m pretty sure that if there is nothing about her on the internet then Tom made her up, for reasons we can only guess at.’

‘Fine,’ Anna said, turning swiftly on her kitten heel to retrieve her iPad. She swished back to the sofa to sit down heavily next to Miles, noticing that he edged far enough away so that they weren’t actually touching. Confidently, she typed the name into Google and hit search. Immediately more than ten thousand results came back.

‘Well,’ Anna said eyeing the list apprehensively, ‘there are bound to be some hits. I could type “jazz singing frog dates pig” and I’d get a hit.’

‘Yes, yes, you would,’ Miles said, ‘mainly because you’ve just described the Muppets, but still you’re right. There’s nothing to say that any of these Charisma Joneses are
the
Charisma Jones. May I?’

Reluctantly, Anna handed him the tablet, whereupon he went immediately to Images.

‘If I know the internet,’ he said, ‘and trust me, I do know the internet, if there is an image or images of a lady called Charisma Jones who also takes her top off it will come up pretty soon in the search …’ Miles paused for a long moment as he took in what he found before handing it to Anna. ‘Or in this case first.’

Anna didn’t take back the tablet, instead she just stared at the photo that Miles had found within a few seconds and presented her with.

It was of a woman, of around Anna’s age, her shiny brunette hair styled in a retro 50s fashion, one finely plucked brow raised in playful come-hither suggestion, one manicured red-nailed hand holding on to the tiny top hat that sat jauntily on the side of her head, which also happened to be the most substantial piece of actual clothing she was wearing, for other than a slash of red lipstick, some high-heeled ruby slippers and the tiniest pair of red bejewelled panties that Anna had ever seen, she was completely nude. Underneath the photo ran a shoutline that screamed out ‘Charisma Jones, Live at the Scarlet Slipper, three times daily!’ and a link to that venue, which Anna guessed probably wasn’t a library say, or a knitting circle.

‘Whoa,’ Miles said. ‘I mean … No, it’s no good, I mean whoa. Look at that body!’ Anna glanced sharply at him. ‘Not that you don’t have a really great body. I remember thinking that about you when I first met you, and then later thinking it was really a shame that you are so not my type.’

Anna shook her head, brushing away his unintended insult in favour of the real point that the imbecile she’d been unwittingly lumbered with was missing.

‘He lied,’ she said, looking at Miles, because it was preferable to looking at Charisma Jones’ alabaster skin. ‘He told me there was nothing on the internet about her.’

‘Well, that’s not strictly true,’ Miles said, seeing the discomfort in her expression and returning to the original search. ‘He said she wasn’t on Facebook or Twitter. Well, there are a few Miss C. Joneses on both those sites, but a quick glance tells me none of them are your Miss Charisma Jones.’

‘She’s not mine,’ Anna said. ‘And that doesn’t change the fact that he lied. You found her in seconds. He must have too. Why? Why is he keeping that from me? Is this all just one big charade? Maybe it’s his way out, pretend he can’t find her and then the wedding’s off. He’s off the hook.’

Miles nodded, thinking for a moment. ‘It could be that, or it could be that he was trying to protect you.’

‘Protect me!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘By lying to me?’

‘By not thrusting a picture of a really hot, mostly naked girl in your face and saying, “By the way, this is my wife.” I mean, you don’t want him to know that you’re sharing a room with me, do you? Because you know, I’m really handsome and irresistible to most women and even though you wouldn’t touch me with a bargepole, if Tom saw my raw good looks in the flesh he’d probably find that hard to believe. Well, trying to keep you from looking up that babe is probably the same for Tom. He was probably worried that you would lay eyes on that incredible pair of … shoes and think how could any man with a pulse possibly prefer me over that? Her, I mean. Obviously I didn’t mean to objectify her as a sex object. Although in this case I do think that’s kind of her intention.’

Anna turned her face from him, desperate to contain her urge to cry before he noticed.

‘What I’m saying is that Tom obviously loves you, and he wants to protect you. And look …’ Miles waited but Anna did not look, so he went off anyway. ‘If you click on the link to the club, Charisma’s not on the bill any more. She’s obviously moved on. In fact …’ Anna waited, staring at an uncharacteristic chip in her nail polish until she willed the tears back into her head. ‘In fact, she hasn’t been on the bill for more than a year, and there isn’t any more recent image or reference to her than that. Tom wasn’t lying to you, Anna. She’s not here. Not in any useful way. He just wanted to keep you from seeing this, and I’m just sorry that I didn’t have the same consideration that he did.’

Slowly, Anna turned her head just enough so that he could see the edge of her profile.

‘Do you really think that’s the only reason why?’ Anna asked him. ‘And not because he is still obsessed by her? I mean, she is really beautiful and she looks so … exciting. I would have no idea how to be like that.’

Miles looked puzzled but did not respond.

‘I truly, honestly, do think he was trying to protect you,’ Miles said. ‘Look, you saw the photo. The woman’s hot, yes, but she’s not got anything that men really want when they fall in love. No mystery, that’s for damn sure, no vulnerability, no funny little hard-to-understand quirks, and in my experience women who feel the need to take their clothes off to get attention are usually pathologically insecure and a total nightmare to go out with.’

Finally, Anna turned to face him, treating him to a small grateful smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘No worries, see? I’m not always completely annoying, am I?’

‘Not completely,’ Anna admitted. ‘Although your tongue did literally hang out of your head when you were looking at that photo.’

‘In horror!’ Miles said, charmingly, making Anna chuckle. ‘Like yuck, eugh, bleugh, I think I might be sick, in that kind of way. Anyway, this is a lead. We can use this.’

‘We?’ Anna raised a brow.

‘Go on, Anna,’ Miles said, sweetly. ‘Let me help you and keep my mind off the audition. Please?’

Anna twisted her mouth into a knot as she thought for a moment and then shrugged and nodded. ‘OK, Sherlock, so tell me, how is this a lead if she’s not been at the club for over a year?’

‘Well, someone she used to know, even maybe still knows, might work there and remember her. We go to the Scarlet Slipper and we case the joint. I will be your bodyguard, protect you from all those unsavoury types that hang out in strip clubs.’

‘Haven’t you ever hung out in strip clubs?’

‘Well, yes, I know what to expect,’ Miles said.

‘You’re quite enjoying this, aren’t you?’ Anna asked him, unable to resist a smile.

‘There are worse ways of avoiding the terror and fear about what will probably be my last shot at really making it than having a bash at being a knight in shining armour coming to the aid of a damsel in distress, I will concede.’ Miles nodded, smiling with one side of his mouth. ‘Plus, you know, burlesque at lunchtime in December in New York. It’s like all my Christmases have come at once.’

The first thing Anna thought as she stepped out into the crisp December day on West 44th Street was she really should have paid the extra £3.99 to Scotchgard her new knee-length dove-grey suede boots. Back home, December had so far been a bland, mild, grey, rainy month without much glamour and decidedly absent of snow, a fact that Anna had been counting on God to rectify by the day of the wedding, certain that after all the crap he’d dished out in her life he had to owe her at least one beautifully snowy day when she required it. But just in case, she had a special effects unit from Shepperton Studios on speed-dial with their snow-making machine.

Maybe this is it, Anna thought, looking upwards to where the skyscrapers disappeared into the sky that was gently wafting huge fat flakes of snow down onto them, as if they were trapped inside one of the snow globes that Anna had seen for sale at the airport.

‘Wow,’ Miles said, following her gaze upwards, and then looking around him with a delighted smile on his face, like a small boy unwrapping his long-dreamed-of Christmas present. ‘My God, look at where we are, Anna. And it’s snowing!’

‘I know,’ Anna said, unhappily. ‘I didn’t pack for snow, it’s going to ruin these boots.’

‘Shut up!’ Miles said, mildly. ‘Look around you, take in the moment. See how the snow’s made the city pristine and new, even now, after hours of New Yorkers trudging up and down the street. It’s adding another layer of pure white, just for us. And look at that.’ Miles pointed down the street, towards Times Square, which was jammed bumper to bumper with predominantly yellow taxis, the weather causing a sudden upswell in traffic. ‘Smell that exhaust, listen to those horns!’