‘It can also be very beautiful,’ she batted back as she ran a hand through her dark, wavy hair which still smelt of the lavender shampoo she’d used that morning. She didn’t feel quite as hideous as she often felt after travel, mainly because she’d escaped to use the bathroom right before the beep and the light came on above where they were sitting to ensure they and other passengers remained in their seats ready for landing. She’d brushed her teeth to freshen up, added a thin coat of mascara to open up her tired green eyes and put on a slick of red lipstick so she could feel like herself, even if only for a moment. At least it had gone some way to making her feel like the Amelia who was in control rather than the Amelia who wondered what on earth she was doing bringing a surly teen on holiday with her.
‘I blame your dreamy vision of snow, which causes chaos and sucks, on all those soppy movies you watch,’ said Kyle. ‘Mum told me,’ he shrugged by way of explanation. ‘She joked you’d be making me watch them every night.’
Guilty. She did like snuggling up in front of a good Hallmark movie with a guaranteed happy ever after – and more often than not it involved snow, which never caused the couple any problems other than to inject a bit of magic for them. Snow in those movies never made the characters shiver, or ruined their hair or make-up; they never fell over and hurt themselves. Life for those characters never presented much of a problem that couldn’t be solved by a kiss and a cuddle, but real life came with a huge amount of crap, the cuts and bruises and scrapes that everyone had to go through, including Kyle.
Amelia gathered up her things from the seat pocket in front – bottle of water, packet of tissues, her book she hadn’t turned a page of, far too hooked by the entertainment system and the list of movies. She wondered briefly what her colleagues were doing right now, how the kids she’d been involved with were doing. She had a busy job in London as a youth worker for the council, a job she’d scored because of her excellent behaviour-management skills and affinity with young people from different backgrounds who needed structured support to stay on the right path. What the job description hadn’t specified was getting too emotionally involved. On top of the job stress, Amelia had been trying to sort out her flat near Brixton so it would feel like home after she’d rented it out to move in with Paul. At the time she’d tried to persuade him it would be much nicer to live in the grittier and lively Brixton that she’d grown to love than in leafy Forest Hill, where he had a gated detached house with access to a tennis court, but he’d been more than prepared to share his home with her and even gave her free rein with the decor when she moved in.
Shuffling in a herd down the aisle to the freedom of the plane’s door, she knew that for these four weeks she could leave behind all her pressures at home, put to the back of her mind the redecorating she had to do, the new kitchen floor she needed to fund after a minor flood had damaged the tiles beyond repair.
Amelia thanked the hostess after Kyle walked past the woman with his eyes fixed to the ground, and she kept on his tail, reminding herself she’d volunteered to bring him here.
She must’ve lost her mind.
Then again, Kyle had already had to deal with plenty. The death of Connie’s husband had knocked her sister’s world sideways, but although Connie had wobbled, she’d managed not to topple over completely from the knock – whereas Kyle had never been the same again. He’d worshipped his father, Stuart, and losing him had changed the kid forever. If Amelia ever grew frustrated with Kyle’s attitude to her, to life, to anything, recalling what he’d gone through was a harsh reminder that he could never go back to being the happy-go-lucky boy he once was. Amelia and Connie had had the luxury of two parents being there for them right up until five years ago, when they’d both passed away within twenty-three months of each other, and Amelia couldn’t imagine how different their lives might have been without that kind of stability.
Paul and Kyle had never got on. Paul had never appreciated the way Connie expected Amelia to pick up the pieces when it came to her nephew. He was right, in some respects, but Amelia had never been able to turn Kyle away or say no to her sister, whose life had endured plenty of knocks already too. Paul had always blamed Amelia’s empathetic nature, but she wondered, was that something she ever wanted to change? When she was with Paul she sometimes wanted to explain to him, a man who still had both parents and plenty of extended family who gathered on a regular basis, that not everyone was as lucky. Sometimes a kid needed someone else to step in for a while. But when they’d argued about it, and more so now she was on the other side of the world with Kyle, Amelia wondered why she’d never ever been able to say no to her sister.
Amelia absorbed the sound of American accents as they emerged from the plane to a city that had always felt impossibly out of reach. Her heart sank when they saw the queue at JFK’s passport control. Kyle when he had something to do was hard company enough, but Kyle and her stuck in a long line, with him barely managing to utter more than a quick word, was going to be agony.
She shuffled forward whenever the queue allowed and her patience began to wane. ‘We’ve got a month together, Kyle, we may as well try to get on.’
‘What’s the point? I know you didn’t want me here, you’re doing it because you have to, to help Mum out.’
‘I am helping her out, yes. But it was my idea for you to come on this holiday, not her suggestion.’
‘Admit it, you’d rather be on your own than have me tagging along.’
‘That’s not true.’
He shook his head with all the anger she’d seen too often at work from kids under her watch. It was always a toss-up as to whether you tried to reason with them or let them settle before you made the effort. She went for the former. ‘This is a favour to Connie and it’s also a favour to you. You and your mum clash, I don’t need to point that out, but you’ve reached a crossroads and you both need space.’ She’d heard Connie more than once say she was close to throwing him out of the house, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
‘You drew the short straw.’
‘Then it’s up to you to fix that,’ she said as they progressed in the queue. ‘Make this a good experience, for both of us.’
‘Not much of a good experience for you if you have to work at the markets. Who is this Cleo anyway?’
A little bit of sympathy from his direction and an interest in conversing was a step in the right direction.‘I worked at her aunt and uncle’s knitting shop in the Cotswolds.’
‘You knit?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m rubbish. But I was a good Saturday girl. I served customers, cleaned floors, surfaces, took deliveries.’
‘Sounds riveting.’
Ignoring his remark, she said, ‘Cleo and I have been friends ever since and it worked out well being able to help at the markets, not to mention the free accommodation. Do you know how lucky we are with that?’
‘Sure.’ He didn’t sound convinced.
‘I’m looking forward to it in a way. The markets won’t be proper work, it’s not my usual job, and I certainly won’t have to put in the long days.’
‘You trust me bumming around the city while you’re working?’ He seemed doubtful but she couldn’t totally read his expression behind the curtain of long ebony hair that was just like his mother’s. Silky smooth, it suited him and complemented the dark skin he’d inherited from his father; so like his dad, Kyle was a constant reminder that Stuart wasn’t with them anymore.
‘You won’t be bumming around.’ Cleo and her friends had also come up with a favour Kyle could do for them in return for their hospitality. He probably thought he’d be getting free rein around Manhattan for four weeks, no adults to nag him, no chores to do. Amelia wasn’t that much of a mug, but she deliberately hadn’t told Kyle about the work she had arranged for him, knowing he’d be likely to go walkabout and not get on the plane. Connie didn’t need that, and Amelia hadn’t wanted to get roped into looking for him at the last minute with the risk of missing her flight.
‘Hanging around, then.’
‘We’ll do plenty of tourist things,’ she assured him.
