“It didn’t. I’ve had a perfectly nice life, thanks,” I say stiffly. “It’s been… nice.”
“Nice? Is that all?”
Elliot gives a low chuckle.
“I’ll leave you to get on with your nice life, then,” he says, crossing to the office door, which he tugs open with much more force than it actually requires. Then he stops suddenly and turns back to face me.
“Doyou still have it?” he asks, framed in the doorway. “The snow globe? I’ve always wondered.”
I look up at him from my position at the desk.
“No,” I say quietly. “No, I don’t. I got rid of it years ago.”
“Right. I should’ve guessed.”
There’s nothing I can say to that, so I just sit there at my desk and watch as the door swings closed behind him. Then, once I’m sure he’s definitely not coming back, I open the desk drawer beside me and rummage around in it for a minute until I find the thing I’m looking for lurking at the back.
I pull it out and place it on the desk in front of me, checking the door first to make sure it’s definitely closed.
The snow globe still looks exactly the same as it did ten years ago. The tiny buildings are still recognizably Bramblebury, the snow still swirls around them, and the little couple still stand there, locked in their eternal kiss.
Everything’s the same.
And yet every single thing is different.
14
DECEMBER, 10 YEARS AGO
For the two days that follow Elliot’s suggestion that I come to America with him for Christmas, I let myself believe I’m actually going to do it; that I’m going to hop on a plane, and my life is finally going to begin.
They’re two of the best days of my adult life, and they are, of course, completely fake. I know it even as I’m looking up the prices of flights during my lunch break and wondering what the temperature’s like in Fort Lauderdale in December. I know I can’t actually go — and even if I didn’t know it, the look on Dad’s face every time he sees me head out to meet Elliot would get the message across loud and clear. But imagining Christmas in Florida is a special treat I allow myself to indulge in, just for a little while. It’s like a vacation for my brain; and Elliot’s right there with me.
“You wouldn’t have to leave right after Christmas,” he says one frozen afternoon as we sit on our favorite bench at the top of the hill, eating fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. “You could stay for New Year. Or, you know, longer. You could stay as long as you like, really. Your dad could manage the shop on his own for a bit, couldn’t he?”
“I’m sure he could,” I agree, there being no point in trying to argue otherwise. Even Elliot, who finds everything about England quaintand magical, has noticed that we never seem to have any customers when he comes to meet me at the store. “It’s whether he’dwantto, that worries me.”
This isn’t really up for debate either. I already know exactly what Dad would have to say about the idea of me spending Christmas in America, and it’s not a thought I like to dwell on, because it doesn’t really fit with the fiction I’ve created around the idea.
“What’s your parents’ house like?” I ask Elliot instead, stuffing another chip in my mouth. “Is it near your apartment?”
“Nowhere’s near anywhere in Florida,” he says, grinning. “It’s not like here. You can’t just walk places. You need a car to get anywhere.” I snuggle into his side and listen to him talk about the house he grew up in, with its pool and its golf course view, and think about how different it sounds from the life I’ve known up until now. It seems crazy to me to think that this man I’ve come to know so well inhabits a world I’ve never seen; that I know what his voice sounds like when it’s rusty from sleep, and what he looks like when he’s dreaming, but not what color his bathroom is, or whether he hangs his sweaters or folds them. And Iwantto know. I want to know everything; from what kind of sofa he has, to how he celebrates his birthday. I want to know what his life looks like; and, more than that, I want to see it for myself.
“What are they like?” I ask, my mind seizing on something new to worry about. “Your family, I mean? D’you think they’d like me?”
It takes him so long to answer, I start to panic that he’s going to say no.
“They’re complicated,” he says finally, screwing the wrapper from his fish and chips into a tight paper ball. “Nice, but… complicated.”
“How so?”
“Oh, just in the way all families are complicated, I guess. Ours isn’t anything out of the ordinary, really. No skeletons in the closet. Well, not that I know of, anyway.”
Elliot rolls his paper ball a little tighter and stares out at the landscape in front of us, which is in its finest Christmas-card form after the unusual amount of snow we’ve had this week.
“You haven’t finished researching your great-granddad yet, though,” I reply teasingly. “Maybe you’ll unearth a few skeletons there.”
The arm I’m leaning against suddenly goes tense, making me look up at him in surprise.
