Married By Christmas (8 page)

‘Sweet Jesus,’ I Heart London muttered audibly.

‘I thought you said you weren’t spontaneous,’ Miles said. ‘That’s radical! That’s the most spontaneous thing I have ever heard! You go, girl.’

‘No, Miles, no.’ Anna shook her head. ‘It’s not spontaneous. It’s desperate, and controlling and crazy and really it should be Tom that is sitting on this plane, doing this. I pretty much asked him to try and he pretty much said don’t be so ridiculous, and yet I am still here sitting on this plane being ridiculous because I just can’t let it go. And the truth is I don’t know if I will have a wedding when I get back because probably around about now –’ she checked her watch ‘– Tom will have realised exactly how mental I am and he’ll be running a mile.’

‘No, he won’t,’ Miles said, unexpectedly taking her hand. ‘He’ll think how lucky he is to have such an amazingly romantic, spontaneous, optimistic, brave and incredible woman, who still wants to marry him, despite the high levels of fuckwittery that he has recently displayed. If he loves you that is what he will think.’

‘Do you really think so?’ Anna asked. ‘Only no one’s ever called me amazingly romantic or spontaneous before, in fact I’m fairly sure that I am the opposite of all of those things.’

‘How can you be, if you got a plane at moment’s notice to try and save your wedding?’ Miles asked and, when she thought about it, Anna supposed that he did rather have a point, which somehow frightened her more than reassured her. She’d spent the majority of her life working hard at containing all the thoughts and feelings that she was afraid might give her away; the idea that she had somehow unwittingly let all those defences disappear without a second thought for the consequences alarmed her. Except … except if Miles was right, if that was the way Tom saw her, saw her trip, then perhaps, just perhaps, that might be a good thing?

‘You must love him very much,’ Miles said. ‘Your Tom. You must love him a great deal to go through all of this for him.’

Anna sat back in her chair, leaning her head against the rest.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do. I do love him. He’s the first man who’s ever made me feel … safe and normal.’

‘So,’ Miles said, looking at his watch, as Anna realised they had barely been in the air for half an hour and she’d already poured her heart out to a man she barely knew. ‘I think I’ll check out a movie or three.’

‘Me too,’ Anna said, relieved that the conversation was over by mutual consent. She noticed, as she plugged in her headphones, Miles giving her a fleeting sideways look, before he settled down to watch some slasher horror, which he probably thought would be a good deal less terrifying than listening to her rant on.

Anna sighed heavily, debated over a romantic comedy featuring Anne Hathaway and then opted for the horror film too. After all, right now a good deal of screaming and anguish, and foolish decisions to go down into the cellar armed only with a torch, seemed like a much more accurate reflection of her love life than Anne Hathaway kissing boys in Central Park. There really was only one thing for it, Anna decided darkly. The only thing she could do as soon as she got to New York was to turn around and go home again and face up to the fact that Slutty Martha had been right, there was no way she would be married by Christmas.

Chapter Five

‘Hello, Tom. Yes, I know what time it is, and the thing is, you see, is that, um, well … Now that Anna’s gone to New York and left me in charge of the wedding, the last thing she told me to do was to check on you and make sure you were OK.’ Liv rehearsed under her breath as she waited for the lift that would take her to Tom’s riverside apartment. Funny, she thought to herself as she watched the LED numbers count down to the dawning of the impossibly awkward situation she had found herself in, when she’d first visited Tom’s flat, almost two years ago now, she’d never imagined that one day she’d be turning up at just after midnight, under this set of circumstances. Nope, of all the things she had imagined, which had been legion, and mainly involved her and Tom engaging in naked kissing, never, ever had she imagined this scenario. Maybe Anna was right, maybe the only way to get through life was to try and think of every single worst case scenario before fate could get to it.

Liv remembered the first time she’d set eyes on Tom. She’d just laid out her instructor with a particularly powerful roundhouse kick to his solar plexus, screeching like a banshee as she landed on the crash mat, to find this tall, gingery-blondish, strong-looking man grinning at her with naked admiration, which wasn’t something that Liv was all that used to. When it came to attracting men, Liv realised at some point around the age of seventeen, she and Anna were as bad as each other, although in completely different ways. For although boys, and then men, were usually initially attracted to Anna, with her legs and breasts and hair, quite soon her particular little tics and foibles, fierce intellect and anxieties would mostly scare them away, and those that had stuck around for longer were invariably the sort of lowlife who liked going out with beautiful but insecure women principally to do their heads in. Liv’s problem on the other hand was quite different. A little shorter than Anna, with dark olive skin that she’d inherited from her Italian grandmother, her curves were more subtle, her soft brown eyes, fringed with black lashes, less instantly arresting, and her short spiky black hair, which she liked because it was easy to look after and suited her delicate heart-shaped face, was less obviously sexy than Anna’s Rapunzel locks. Also Liv wasn’t the sort of girl who knew how to be girly, which despite her problems, Anna instinctively was. If Liv met a man that she liked, she’d either talk to him like he was her new best mate, or not talk to him at all. And, as in Tom’s case, if she managed to develop a rapport with him at all, she’d live in the vain and foolish hope that one day he’d suddenly see her in a new light and wonder to himself why on earth he hadn’t fallen for this dark, exotic and rare beauty before, sweep her up into his arms, crush her to his chest and then make mad passionate love to her forever more. Well, for at least an hour or two anyway. The trouble was this particular scenario had never quite panned out for Liv. She’d had a couple of proper boyfriends – one had been at school, and the other had been a few years ago, a guy she’d met at five-a-side, a sweet enough man. They’d got on pretty well, and Liv had been really rather fond of him, even if he was two inches shorter than her five foot two and his pet name for her was ‘mate’. Then one morning he’d sat up in bed and announced that he’d come to a point in his life when he felt that it was time for him to really move on with his life, to commit to a relationship, to get married and have children. And that, he told Liv, holding her hand and looking into her eyes, was why he thought it was time they broke up. She was, he told her, a great girl, a brilliant laugh, a total mate, but she just wasn’t the sort of girl he imagined himself marrying. Since then Liv had come to accept that she was the kind of girl who on the inside was a hopeless romantic, but who on the outside tended to be the girl that men bought pints for and then turned to for advice about other ‘proper’ girls.

Her hopes had been high when she’d met Tom though, about six weeks before his first fateful encounter with Anna, because she could have sworn that the first time he’d seen her that afternoon, screaming like a fishwife, there had been a twinkle of attraction in his eyes as he’d looked her up and down in her sports bra and Lycra shorts. A little overwhelmed by his charming grin, which made sweetly asymmetrical dimples either side of his mouth, and his sheer physical presence, Liv had done two things. Firstly, she developed an instant crush on him and, secondly, she decided to go for her policy of never speaking to him at all, mainly on the grounds that she was fairly sure he was far too handsome to talk to using actual words.

Tom on the other hand had had other ideas. He sought Liv out for sparring, complimenting her on her sharp right hooks and precise uppercuts, and showed her some of his own techniques, which frankly weren’t quite as good as Liv’s, but she’d pretended to be impressed by his prowess. After about three weeks of friendly hellos, and mostly kick-boxing-related chats, Liv had come out of the women’s changing room one evening, her hair still damp from the shower, to find Tom waiting for what turned out to be her.

‘Fancy a drink?’ he’d asked her as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a man like him to ask a girl like her for a drink. Most likely he wanted to ask her advice on girls, Liv had told herself as she had mutely nodded her acceptance, or perhaps he thought, she actually was just a very short, slightly bosomy boy.

‘You’re good,’ Tom had told her in the pub, handing her the gin and tonic she’d asked for as they took a seat. ‘Better than you let on, most of the time. Have you ever thought about competition?’

‘Why?’ Liv had asked him warily. Was that why he’d asked her for a drink? Did he want to manage her or something? Or bet against her in some elaborate gambling scam?

‘No reason,’ Tom chuckled. ‘I just wondered. A girl as good as you, you could win stuff, I think.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Liv said. ‘It’s just a good way of letting off steam. My job’s quite … high pressured. This helps me relax.’

‘Not the typical sort of hobby for a girl to pick,’ Tom had said.

‘Well, I’m not a typical sort of girl,’ Liv had said before she had time to think of how that sounded, but Tom didn’t seem at all thrown by her retort.

‘I can see that.’ He’d smiled at her, and Liv had been almost one hundred per cent sure it had been a flirting sort of smile. A few weeks had gone by with Tom and Liv becoming friends, stopping for a drink after sparring once or twice a week, sharing jokes, talking about their jobs, their families and friends, with one notable exception – Liv had not mentioned Anna, her foster sister, best friend and flatmate. For reasons that she didn’t care to dwell on, Liv decided not to tell Tom anything about Anna or Anna anything about Tom, not even to mention that she slightly liked him as a person, let alone had a dangerously deep crush on the man, because Anna would instantly want to know everything about Tom and then before Liv knew it she’d be making a list to check compatibility and weigh up pros and cons, and within an hour Liv would have a statistical probability of how successful a relationship with Tom was likely to be in real terms. And that was one thing Liv didn’t want to know, she didn’t want to lose that sense of hope and expectation just yet.

She did mention him to Simon, one weekend when the three of them had been home visiting Mum. Simon had been trying, with his usual dogged determination, to set her up with some long-haired musician type, apparently convinced they’d be perfect for each other, and the only way Liv had been able to make him stop was to mention Tom. But even then she refused to divulge details. She didn’t want to jinx it. The way Tom looked at her, the way he smiled at her, the way he brushed against her when they were putting on coats or picking up bags, Liv was sure that the first-kiss moment could only be days away. All she needed was the right ambience, the right setting and an excuse to wear that tight little red dress her mother said made her look like a girl for a change, and a pair of heels. Which was why she hit upon the idea of throwing herself a birthday party, to make an occasion of the date she usually tried her best to forget as an excuse to invite Tom home without looking like she was asking him out.

Anna had taken some persuading, and some reassuring over red wine and white sofa clashes, cheesy footballs in the deep pile scenarios, and people going around the house and touching stuff. But as soon as Liv had given her the green light to make lists, she was on board. Tom was invited and available to attend and everything, everything was in place for that first kiss to take place, and for Liv’s secret romantic dreams to come true for once in her life.

The night of the party came and the scene was set. Liv looked fairly good in her red dress, the subtle curves of her cleavage swelling over the scoop neckline. She sported just a little mascara and eyeliner to bring out her eyes, and a dusting of glitter on her dusky skin. Negotiating even two or three steps in her high heels was more of a challenge, but Liv told herself she only needed to keep them on for that first-impression moment with Tom, the moment when he realised that he loved and wanted her, and then after that she could kick them off and go about in her flip-flops.

For most of the evening, Liv hovered by the front door, opening it every time the bell rang, hoping to find Tom there, speechless as he took in her ensemble and realised that she didn’t scrub up too badly as it turned out. But as hour after hour dragged by, with the party in full swing in the other room, the several glasses of wine Liv had partaken of to bolster her courage began to take their toll, and after three hours of constant door management, she had finally had to take a break to go to the loo. She’d just been wiping away her excess eyeliner with a piece of tissue paper when she heard the bell go again. More than a little tipsy, it had taken her several seconds to guide her feet into her shoes, several more to remember which way the lock on the bathroom door turned to open, and crucially several more than that to make a dignified and almost sexy progress up the hallway in four inches of stiletto to open the door.

Crucially for her future prospect of happiness, Liv was too late, and by the time she made it, the door was already open. She felt herself deflate against the wall as Anna opened the door and Tom set eyes on her for the first time, her golden hair rippling down her back, her figure-hugging if demure cotton dress, her slim, golden brown calves. And in that one instant Liv could see that Tom was smitten. And even if, like most of Anna’s encounters, it only lasted until Tom realised that she wasn’t being ironic, she really was that insane, then it would still be too late for Liv. If Anna was the sort of girl who made his jaw drop, then all her silly romantic fantasies and dreams that he’d been interested in her had been just that. And any hope that Liv had fostered in her heart that the only reason Tom hadn’t actually asked her out on a date yet was because he was a slow burner had been crushed when, half a bottle of hastily consumed cava later, she discovered Tom and Anna engaged in a considerable amount of kissing in the hallway, scarcely forty minutes after they had first set eyes on each other. Then there had been the discovery that Tom was still there the next morning, making Anna breakfast in bed in his boxers, grinning and winking at Liv as she bumped into him in the kitchen as if they were just good friends, which they clearly were, followed by the slow months of denial leading up to last Christmas Eve and the inevitable proposal. Liv had had almost a year and a half to get her head round the fact that her latest crush was not into her, and it was time to move on, again. But still that dogged little splinter of affection that had worked its way into her heart the very first time she set eyes on Tom persisted in festering away, and so far she had completely and utterly failed to not be in love with him

Which was why it made all this drama over the Vegas Showgirl Secret Wife so hard not to take personally, and why Liv would rather be anywhere else in the world than travelling up the eighteen floors to Tom’s flat to carry out Anna’s request to make sure that everything was OK, whatever that meant at this point in their lives, and take care of Tom. But there it was, she and Anna had always been there for each other, always done what the other one asked. And poor, unhappy, confused Anna could not know that she was forcing Liv to take care of a man who she wanted to kiss and slap in equal measure.

It took several long pushes on the buzzer for Tom to finally come to the door and, when he did, he looked terrible. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot, his hair was tousled, and flat on one side, as if he’d been lying on the carpet despairing, which he probably had, judging by his crumpled shirt. He really was upset about everything that had happened, and Anna was not here.

‘She went to New York,’ Tom told Liv miserably, holding out his mobile phone as if it was somehow proof. ‘She just flew off on the spur of the moment to save our wedding. It should have been me, Liv, but I … I let her go. And now she’s on a plane somewhere out there and I can’t talk to her. I can’t explain to her that I didn’t mean to let her down and if she’d given me just one second to get my head round the idea of course I’d have gone to New York on a wild goose chase if it made her feel better. I’ve let her down, haven’t I?’

Taking a deep breath, Liv followed Tom into his flat, into the large modern kitchen-cum-living space that opened out onto a steel and glass balcony with views across the Thames. It really was a beautiful flat to be depressed in.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ Tom told her, shaking his head miserably. ‘I can’t believe that one silly mistake, made years ago, is going to ruin everything now! It’s not fair. I mean, I got married in a bar, for crying out loud! Not a chapel, not even a chapel with some bloke dressed as Elvis doing the vicar shit. I got married in a lap-dancing bar, with six topless bridesmaids, while out of my mind on tequila. How can that be legal? And now I’m going to lose her. My stupid, stupid mistake has messed up the one thing she’s always wanted, the one thing I so wanted to give her and I’ll lose her.’

Liv waited for a moment or two, just to make sure that Tom didn’t have anything else to say. But all he did was stand there on his real oak floor in his bare feet, looking forlorn, making it hard for Liv not to hug him, which she knew she could have done quite legitimately, because they were officially friends, but which she refrained from because of the also wanting to throw him over the balcony thing. I mean a Vegas showgirl in a lap-dancing club? If she’d known about that from the off, she’d have realised straight away that Tom was never going to fall in love with her and months and months of secret misery and heartache could have been averted. But what really made Liv have to stifle murderous thoughts towards Tom was the realisation that despite everything her heart rate still trebled whenever she looked at him, which was probably a good enough reason not to hug him in itself.