Some of them just end.
And that’s why there are no happy endings; not in the book, not in the movie, not in real life.
But, once upon a time, I really thought there could be…
2
December, 10 YEARS AGO
It’s my fifth fake Christmas.
It’s not as bad as the first one. The year Mum died, Dad and I did our best to pretend nothing had changed, as if cheerfully playing host to all of the ghosts of Christmas past would somehow help make the reality of Christmas present a little less scary. As if all we had to do was remember the exact order Mum used to hang the Christmas baubles on the tree, and we’d pass the test. Then people would stop touching me sympathetically on the hand, while asking how I was “bearing up”. Dad would be able to open the bookstore for more than half a day without breaking down in tears somewhere in the sci-fi section. Neither of us would ever again be faced with the impossible task of coming up with a non-violent response to the diabolical phrase “Everything happens for a reason.”
Christmas was the boss level in the surreal video game my life had become, basically, and I approached it the same way I’d approached every other vaguely pointless test someone had deemed it essential that I pass (GCSE Maths, the school talent show Mum persuaded me to enter in Year 7, despite my startling lack of any discernible ‘talent’…); bybriefly making it my entire personality, and preparing for it like an Olympic athlete with a solid shot of winning the gold.
I made lists. I checked them twice. I checked them a third time, and sometimes a fourth. I spent hours reading articles about how to make Christmas wreaths out of old socks, and scoured the cooking section of the bookstore until I found a recipe book calledMistletoe Munchies, which I smuggled home in order to surprise Dad with my mince pies and pigs-in-blankets.
Mum would have loved it. But Mum wasn’t here. It was down to me now to make Christmas magical; and while Mum had done it apparently effortlessly, and with the same joie de vivre she applied to everything else she ever did,Idecided to do it by baking a Christmas pudding with so much cinnamon in it that my lips swelled up like Mick Jagger’s, and Dad couldn’t stop sneezing. Finally, on Christmas Eve, I found Dad crying over an old Christmas card I’d made for him and Mum when I was 6, and too young to know that a happy Christmas was not, in fact, guaranteed, and I think that was the moment I realized there are some things you just can’t prepare for. It didn’t matter how hard I tried — and trust me, I tried really,reallyhard — Christmas was always going to feel fake from now on, and no amount of mistletoeor‘munchies’ would change that.
So the Christmas pudding went into the bin. My lips went back to normal (although Daddoesstill call me ‘Mick’ from time to time…). I swore off cinnamon for life. Then Dad and I ordered takeaway for dinner, and told each other that next year would be better.
But it wasn’t.
“I’m just not much of a Christmas Person,” I’d started saying by Fake Christmas Number 2. It seemed like an easier thing for people tohave to deal with than hitting them with the whole ‘dead mum’ thing at what’s supposed to be the most magical time of year; so I just kept repeating it until it had become as much a part of my personality as my love of books, and my habit of over-planning everything.
And now here we are, on year number 5. I’m 24 years old. It snowed last night; not the pretty, fluffy kind of snow you see on Christmas cards and in romcom movies, but the gray, wet kind that turns to slush as soon as it hits the ground, and seems to worm its way inside your soul. It soaks my boots as I trudge through the village square on my way back to the bookstore, doing my best to avoid the small group of market stalls which are huddled apologetically together against the wind, the stallholders grouped around them with hands thrust in pockets; breath misting the frigid air as they complain about the cold.
The Bramblebury Christmas Fayre has been a village tradition since 1903, with visitors coming from miles around to eat roasted chestnuts and buy things like ugly handmade ceramic elves, and Christmas baubles with ‘World’s Best Mum!’carved on the front.
As a Non-Christmas Person, it goes without saying that I’d rather go on a date with Martin Baxter, the nerd next door, than visit a Christmas market; and Martin could bore for Britain, so that’s saying something. But the fact that the stalls are set up almost directly outside our shop makes it hard to avoid it — especially on days like today, when I have a package to drop off at the post office, and the only way to get to it is by walking through the square. So I run my errand, and am almost back at the shop when something on one of the stalls catches my eye, and I find myself walking towards it to take a closer look.
The snow globe is tucked away at the back of a stall selling second-hand bric-à-brac; almost hidden between a stack of old vinylrecords and a teapot the color of snot. It’s absolutelynotmy kind of thing. I can’t stand clutter; not even the ‘vintage’ kind, which this appears to be. It disrupts the orderliness of my carefully organized little world, and makes me feel like I can’t think clearly. So I have no idea what it is aboutthispiece of ‘clutter’ that makes me stop in my tracks.
Plus, I’m Not a Christmas Person, remember? What would I want with asnow globe, of all things?
Later, I will wonder if the globe was somehow bewitched; because that’s the only explanation that will make any kind of sense to me once this ordinary-looking ornament has proceeded to wreak havoc upon the course of my entire life, like some kind of enchanted object in a fairy-tale, which the princess was always destined to touch. For now, though, it’s still just a snow globe, and I find myself reaching for it in spite of myself, curious to know if the little scene inside the domed glass really is what I think it is.
Just as my fingers brush the dome, though, another hand appears from nowhere, reaching for the globe at the same time. Our fingers collide, and I snatch my hand back, as if it’s been burnt.
“Oops! Sorry,” I say, looking up and into a pair of deep blue-gray eyes that are staring right back at me, a little too intently to be totally comfortable.
The owner of the intense eyes is very tall, with dark hair that curls slightly at the ends, a nose that’s started to turn red from the cold, and cheeks that are either naturally rosy, or just absolutely freezing. He’s wearing a pair of dark-rimmed glasses that he reaches up to adjust as I stare at him, and he looks exactly how I’ve always imagined Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables: only if Gilbert was aroundmy age, and much better looking than Lucy Maud Montgomery gave us reason to believe.
His lips are turned up at the ends in a slightly bemused smile, and just as he opens them to say something, a fat white snowflake — so perfectly fluffy as to make it almost look fake — descends from the heavens and lands right on the tip of his nose.
I kid you not. A snowflake. An actualsnowflake. Followed by another, then another still. Within seconds, the gray sludge on the streets has disappeared beneath a blanket of white, and everyone around us has paused to stare at the heavens, as if they’re witnessing an actual Christmas miracle. It’s almost as if Bramblebury has abruptly decided to give up on being an ordinary little village in the middle of England, and turn itself into the setting of a Hallmark Christmas movie instead — with me and Mr Rosy Cheeks here as the unsuspecting main characters.
The stranger laughs, and reaches up to wipe the snowflake away, his eyes meeting mine in a way that suggests he knows what I’m thinking and totally agrees.
I know beyond doubt that I have never seen this man in my life before, and yet he’s somehow instantly familiar to me, as if I knew him in another life, and have been just waiting to bump into him in this one. Which is absolutenonsense, of course; right up there with ‘everything happens for a reason’ and all of those other trite, meaningless phrases so beloved by people whose mums didn’t die indecently young. And yet…
“It’s you!” I say, in a strange, breathy voice that doesn’t sound anything like mine, and which will make me do a full-body cringe every time I remember it from now until the day I die. “Yours, I mean!”I quickly correct myself, my cheeks suddenly hot enough to melt the snow that’s still landing on them. “It’syours. Here.”
I snatch the snow globe off the table and thrust it towards him, embarrassed by my reaction to this total stranger. Not to mention my sudden inability to speak like a normal person.
The stranger’s eyes do a thing I can only describe as “twinkling.”
I’ve always wondered what that meant. Well, I guess now I know.
