The Christmas Express, page 3
I stare at the wonky Christmas tree for a while. There are other things too, little things, songs she adds to her stories with lyrics about lost loves, a caption that’s from my favourite old Hollywood movie. ‘The very fact she’s posting all these details . . . it’s unlike her, she’s usually more private with this stuff. But I just wonder if, well, she’ll know that I’ve seen her stories. You can see who views them.’
‘You think she’s posting these things for you? What, to rub it in?’
I shake my head. ‘No, she’s not like that. I feel like it’s more, trying to get my attention?’
‘Why?’ Tonia chuckles then tries a gentler, ‘Why do you think she’d be doing that?’
‘Maybe she still has feelings for me?’ Ugh, I sound so big-headed. But what if I’m right?
‘Mmm, that’s a jump . . .’
‘But what if it’s not? What if it’s, I don’t know, a way of her trying to reach out, tell me she still thinks about me? She knows I only check my socials around my birthday now, so she’s known I’ll see the things she’s posting.’
Tonia straightens the tree for the fourth time. It’s only early December, so I have nearly a whole month of this thing toppling down on me. ‘So, what is this?’ she asks through the branches slapping her in the face. ‘Are we sliding into her DMs this afternoon? Asking her what’s going on?’
‘No, no . . .’ I shake my head. ‘It’s nothing. It’s silly and I’m just feeling lonesome, probably.’ I put my phone away and set to work untangling a string of Christmas lights that Tonia brought over, dangling from her tote bag. And I forget all about Bryn, and her wedding.
As if that happens.
I shield my eyes, the December sun bright and low and glinting off the water. I’m waist deep, my wetsuit slick, my hair matted with salt, as it always is, in a straggled braid down my back.
‘That’s it, that’s it, paddle, paddle, paddle,’ I call out as my two surf newbies use every muscle in their bodies to try and catch this next wave. She catches it, her boyfriend doesn’t, but both tumble into the foamy crest on the shoreline with happy chuckles that reach my ears all the way back here.
I trail my fingers through the cold ocean as they leap their way back over the breaking waves towards me, ready to jump back on and try again. ‘That was awesome, you’ve nearly got it now.’
‘It’s so much fun,’ the boyfriend chuckles, his rash vest riding up and making a crop top over his wetsuit.
‘I can’t believe we have to go back home tomorrow,’ the girlfriend says with a sigh, wiping salty snot from under her nose. ‘You must be so happy to live here.’
I’m about to agree with them when the perfect wave swells towards us, not too big, not too small, just nice and chill. In several ways.
The couple take off again, both managing to stand, arms flailing a little, eyes focused on the beach, cores engaged and knees bent. This time, they make it all the way in and hop off their surfboards in unison, double-high-fiving and embracing each other in a tangle of salt and sopping neoprene.
I am lucky to live here. But . . . did I give up on The One just to make this happen?
One thing about Bryn is that she always encouraged me to follow my gut, even when it ultimately took me away from her. My parents were the same, they just wanted me to be true to my heart. But now they’re all gone from my life, it’s like my heart doesn’t know what’s true any more. I mean, I think I’m happy. I think I’m okay. But am I, deep down? I don’t know.
‘I’m going to Canada.’
‘Absolutely not.’
I’m facing off against Tonia and my other friends, who have barricaded themselves in my home while I’m trying to pack.
‘Yes, I am,’ I tell her.
‘Nope. This is the worst idea you’ve ever had.’
Over by my Christmas tree, which is now practically bare because in the space of three weeks it’s dropped all but about three needles, Kim pipes up. ‘You should definitely, definitely just phone her if you need to know how she feels.’
I put an extra sweatshirt in my backpack with a huff. ‘I need to see her. She needs to see me. This isn’t something you do over the phone.’
‘Yes, it is! This isn’t one of your old movies; you don’t fly across the globe to try and see your ex before they get married. It’s not giving romance, it’s giving creepy as hell.’
‘Plus, nobody likes surprise visitors,’ adds Kim.
I wave my hands around at them: my surprise visitors.
‘This is just the birthday blues talking,’ says Tonia, trying to remove things from my case without me noticing.
I snatch back my washbag. ‘No, it isn’t. It’s my gut.’
‘It’s your gut that took you away from Bryn in the first place, babe. You wanted different things. And that’s okay. She’s happy now, and so are you.’
I shake my head. She didn’t know me when I was with Bryn, and we were so good together. I’ve not been able to replace her, I’ve not even wanted to, or maybe I’ve not even tried. And this is romantic. All of December, Bryn’s been sending me signs that she’s been thinking about us, and our relationship. I can’t spend my life wondering, what if? Because, what if she’s the one, my person, my love and I just ignored it? I can’t do that.
‘Look, I’m going to go now so that I arrive a few days before the wedding. Then I’ll see her, if it goes well have Christmas together, if it doesn’t, I’ll find somewhere cosy and snowy to spend Christmas on my own.’
‘I don’t want you to be on your own,’ says Tonia.
‘I’m always on my own at Christmas,’ I remind her.
She holds my gaze for a second, softening. ‘That’s not true. You might not be spending Christmas with your mum and dad any more, or a girlfriend, but we’re your home at Christmas nowadays.’
She’s right, in a way, they all are. I’m lucky to have them. After Bryn and I split up, I wandered around London feeling totally isolated for a few weeks, her friends – who I thought had become my friends too – having cut all ties with me. Eventually I gave up and got on with my life, with the whole reason she and I broke up in the first place, because I wanted to get out of the city and move closer to the ocean. A few months later, both of my parents passed away within weeks of each other, and I didn’t hear from any of them, except for condolences from Bryn after I let her know (she’d known them well, after all).
But this group has enveloped me ever since. I know that anytime I’m having a hard day, they’ll be there. If I’ve had a good day, I want to tell them about it.
Tonia continues, her voice calm, like you’d speak to a puppy you didn’t want going berserk at an incoming parcel deliverer. ‘How are you going to feel if she tells you to leave?’
I swallow. ‘Maybe it’ll let me move on, forget about her.’
‘This marriage stuff has just thrown you, that’s all; I think you have moved on.’
‘I know you do.’ I wrap my arms around Tonia’s neck and hold her close for a moment. ‘But . . .’
‘But I’m not you?’ she finishes.
‘I’ve got to try for that Hollywood ending.’ I smile, and buckle my bag closed.
Chapter 5
Cali
Jeeeeeeez. My heart is thudding so loudly I can hear it even over the screech of the London Tube as it comes to a stop at Heathrow Airport. I’ve not been able to eat a thing all morning, and my mouth is dry, my eyes wide as I dart my gaze from face to face while I exit the carriage and follow the crowd towards the terminal. Any second now I could see one of them again. I’ll recognise them all, surely? None of them are likely to have changed that much. Of course I’ll recognise them all. Silly me. I could pick them out in the distance from any of their walks or postures alone.
I totter through the airport, my big mauve suitcase full of heavy coats and long-sleeved formal wear, dragging its wheels behind me. I am doing a good impression of a normal person, just a single gal on a solo expedition. Chin held high, eyes focused on the airline check-in desks in the distance. Nobody will guess that under this chic exterior I’m hyper-alert to the potential of hearing Joss’s loud, hiccupy laugh, of Joe’s squeak-squeak-squeak of that one trainer of his, of catching sight of Sara’s bum-length curls among the greys of the terminal, vibrant in whatever vivid colour she’s dying them these days. Of smelling Luke’s aftershave – the smoky vanilla one that he didn’t even used to realise was his signature scent but that made me wobbly-kneed when he’d walk into a room and cross straight over to greet me with a hug.
I join the queue to check my bag for the first flight to Toronto. Even though Bryn’s wedding is in Vancouver, when she sent through our ticket info she said she’d have a surprise for us waiting in Toronto Airport for the second leg of the journey. I don’t know what the surprise is, but I’m guessing either she’s meeting us there, or has maybe upgraded us on our onward flight or something.
My old friends could be here in this queue. My palms leave streaks of sweat on the leather of my passport and I stand as still as a statue, eyes forward, afraid to look around me. I have the sensation that someone is staring at the back of my head – is it one of them? And if I turn, will the stare be a glare? My heart is too afraid to find out.
‘HELLO,’ I say a little too loudly to the pristine woman at the check-in desk when I shuffle forward. ‘Hello.’ There, that was a much more airport-appropriate volume. ‘Checking my bags for Toronto, please. My name’s Bryn. No, it isn’t!’ I drop my passport in a panic and it tumbles over the counter, slapping its way past the outstretched hand of the woman.
‘Excuse me?’ An arched eyebrow arches higher.
‘Cali, I’m Cali, not Bryn. Bryn is my friend who booked the ticket. Who the booking might be under? But probably not, I’m the passenger, you want my details, I guess. So, erm, there’s my passport and look . . .’ I hold my e-ticket out on my phone screen as if it’s proof I’m Very Normal.
‘Yes, we just need passenger details,’ says the woman, tapping hopefully only nice, positive things on her computer. She hands me back my passport and asks a few security questions as I heave my case onto the conveyer belt.
I am one hundred per cent blushing my whole face off, and my neck is hot under my hair and the woollen turtleneck I’m cosied up in, ready for Canadian winter weather. God, I hope none of them are in the queue watching me right now.
I’m about to fill the silence with a monologue about why Bryn booked the ticket for me and how we were once friends but I haven’t seen her in five years and I don’t really know yet what this all means for the future, but then my case is given a sticky tag adornment and slides off into the magical suitcase tunnel of love and I’m being presented with a boarding pass and a seat number and archy-brows is wishing me a lovely flight.
‘You too,’ I say automatically as I move away.
I can’t look back and instead shuffle my rucksack onto my back and make my way towards security. By the time I’m through, my mouth is dry from all this shallow breathing and worry-sweats, so I stroll the shops of the terminal sipping from a freshly purchased bottle of water.
Would it be weird to put my shades on inside so I can gawp at the people I’m passing, properly? I just need to see them. I need to know where they are, what they look like now, and how they’ll look at me.
Yes, it would be strange. Or perhaps quite celebrity-like? It’s worth a go.
I slip on my sunglasses and immediately feel my back straighten. Okay, this is good, it’s like I’m behind a mask now. And maybe someone who works here will spot me and assume I’m somebody important and direct me into a swanky airport lounge and then I’ll be escorted to the first-class cabin on the plane and draped in a satin duvet and crystal flutes of champagne will appear until I no longer even care that behind me, somewhere in economy, is the guy who whispers his name in my thoughts every single day.
‘Oof, sorry,’ I say, stumbling over a small child sat on the floor, sticking shiny little stickers onto the underneath of a bank of seats. I take off the sunglasses and give an apologetic smile to his parents, and something catches my eye. A splash of violet curls heading into a shop on the other side of the seats.
I back away, changing direction, diving into a travel accessories shop and engrossing myself into the minutia of plug adapters until the woman who might have been Sara is bound to have moved on. In fact, I’m there so long that by the time I emerge (empty-handed, much to the frustration of the sales assistant) the big TV screen is now displaying a boarding gate allocation for my flight.
This is it now. I walk with stiffness towards the gate like it’s my personal walk of shame.
Outside the large glass windows, the skies are December-grey, made mistier by the drizzle, and it casts a gloom over the planes which seeps inside the terminal, making it seem more like late afternoon than mid-morning.
Maybe they won’t even be there? Maybe they all declined the invitation in the end. Maybe it’ll just be me and Bryn in that big, cosy Canadian cabin, and we can become close once again, and one day we’ll laugh about the lost years and wonder whatever became of the other four and how miserable their lives must have ended up to not have found their ways back to such a beautiful friendship.
Lost in this thought, my mouth turns down along with a small sink in my heart. I guess I want them to be there, after all. All of them. Even if it’s awkward, or uncomfortable, or really hard. I want them to be there.
My gate number comes into view. My tummy churns, my skin tingles, and my breath quickens as nerves mingle with excitement and fear and all three lace through my veins.
And then there he is.
He is a lighthouse, and I am a wave-beaten boat which spots him in the gloom like he’s shining only for me. Just as I suspected, even from a distance, even after all this time, my eyes find him instantly.
I tuck myself behind a pillar for a moment, reaching for nothing in my bag, while I blink away my blurred vision. Luke seems to be moving in slow motion, stepping towards the gate, sipping from a takeaway coffee cup, appearing nonchalant but as he moves closer, into focus, I see his shoulders are tense.
He’s right there. Only metres away from me. My heart has stopped, my breath now held. And it’s just like the first time I saw him, a whole decade ago.
It had been a Sunday, in the autumn. It was mid-morning and I was expecting my new friend Bryn to pop down soon so we could try out her new roller blades over in Greenwich Park. I’d been in the middle of taping discreet kitchen sponges to my elbows under my hoodie, in lieu of proper skate protection, when I heard a key jamming into my door.
I’d frozen on the spot, cocking my ear to the side. Bryn? But it was a man’s voice muttering outside.
Sneaking over to my door, I’d peered through my spyhole, looking straight onto a head of sandy hair. Then he’d stepped back, looking directly at me through the tiny circle of glass, making me flinch and hold my breath. But I couldn’t turn away, as he looked back down and studied his keys.
Love at first sight? I don’t know . . . But when I opened my door, giving him a fright, which turned into him unleashing the hottest and cutest chuckle I’d ever heard when he realised he was trying to move into the wrong apartment, we locked eyes and it was something, a connection.
I didn’t know then if we were meant to be best friends or boyfriend and girlfriend, but I knew I wanted to be near him, as often as possible, and he was the same with me. We were like magnets, and very soon he was enveloped into the friendship group.
Then the years ticked by, and it didn’t go beyond that. He never made a move. I never wanted to risk the group dynamics if he didn’t feel the same.
Until one day, when it seemed the right time to risk it all, bet it all on us, and we lost.
Now, he drains the last of his coffee, licking a stray bit of foam from the lid. Damn, I wish I was that lid.
Shhhut it, Cali.
I can’t look away and I watch Luke for a moment longer. His hair is a little longer than it used to be, which highlights the tousles, making them more defined. He slumps down into a seat, his teal eyes scanning the area, and I step back again, hidden further from view, until he pulls out a paperback and looks down, his eyelashes dark and blinking softly. He stifles a yawn, lifting an arm wrapped in a maroon jacket to cover his mouth.
That mouth. I used to look at his mouth all the time when he talked, back before we became ‘a thing’. I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. And I knew I was probably giving off huge, desperate, I want to kiss you signals, but so what? I did. There was something about his lips, how they always seemed to be smiling, even when he was thinking, even when he would fall asleep on my sofa during some movie marathon I’d arranged for everyone in the building.
Then during that week, that one week when everything changed for the better and just before it all changed again, for the worse, I got to know that he also smiles when he kisses, and that the way his face lit up when we broke apart could have made me smile for the rest of my life.
I swallow now, forcing myself to stop gazing at him and look away. Because I also remember the words that came out of his mouth during that group holiday. That came out of all of our mouths during that final night. I struggle to recall exactly what I said, but I know they were just as bad.
I can’t think about him like I used to any more. Pull yourself together, Cali. I walk around the chairs, quietly, trying not to draw attention, looking for an empty seat. But these naughty eyes betray me three more times, and try as a might I just keep glancing back at him, and then one time, that magnetic pull drags his head up, and he looks back.
Shit. Shitting shitting shitballs. I avert my gaze with the speed of an Olympic medallist and feel the neck sweats rush back to collide with my insta-blush.
Why did he have to lift his head at that moment? Why did I have to look back one last time?
And why did I have to like it so much when our eyes met for a millisecond?
We’re all here now, all five of us, spread out on seats as far as possible from each other at the gate, like we’re part of a flash mob who have no intention of getting up and dancing. There’s a twinkling Christmas tree in the corner, and many of the passengers are sat beside bags with brightly wrapped gifts poking out of the top of them. And everyone is wearing their quirkiest Christmas jumper, of course.
