Mistletoe on 34th Street Read online

  Jon clapped his hands together. ‘OK, how about this? I’ll show you my version of Christmas, then you show me yours.’

  ‘My Christmas involves being on my own, no offence.’

  ‘Tough luck, because my Christmas involves never having a moment of peace.’

  ‘What if you need to go to the loo?’

  ‘Going to the loo is the busiest time! The nieces and nephews will just bang and scream at the door, the lock won’t work properly, a mum – any mum – will be yelling from the kitchen about whether you want a glass of wine or if she can put it in the gravy instead. It’s really fun,’ Jon said happily.

  ‘It does sound fun,’ I half joked. Actually there was something about it that sounded kind of nice. In an awful way. My family were going to be so spread out – again – what with Lucy in Thailand, Anne in Miami, me at home in London and my parents in Tenerife. But that’s what I wanted: solitude.

  I looked back up at the tree, pleased I’d made it down here. ‘Maybe one day,’ I said. ‘One day you can show me your Christmas, but this year I think I’d better stick to my plan. Goodbye, New York,’ I whispered into the falling snow and the night air. Sorry I didn’t let you in this year. ‘See you next Christmas.’

  18 December

  1 week to Christmas

  I woke with a whopping great snort to a pitch-black hotel room and a rapping at my door. Did I oversleep? Had I missed my flight? Was I about to be murdered? At least the murderer was polite enough to knock, especially since apparently I’d been too hot at some point in the night and thrown off my PJ bottoms. Where the hell were they?

  Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock. ‘Olivia?’ someone hissed.

  Not wanting to show off my own full moon, I hauled myself from the bed and wrapped the sheet around my lower half like a meringue wedding dress skirt, and shuffled towards the door. Maybe it was surprise room service. Mmm, I could definitely eat a Philly cheese-steak right now …

  ‘Who is it?’ I yawned as I opened the door, negating the point in asking.

  Abigail stood there, twitching about like a baby deer, wrapped in a dressing gown and an air of distress.

  ‘Abi, hello … ’ I peered past her and down the deserted corridor. ‘You didn’t bring any room service with you, did you?’

  ‘No,’ she said in an almost whisper. ‘Did you order some? Do you want me to go and check for you?’

  ‘No, don’t worry about it. What’s up? Isn’t it the middle of the night?’

  ‘It’s seven a.m. My boyfriend’s still up at home watching weather reports because the snow is really bad in England, and he just called me because look.’ Abigail held her phone up to my face, and I squinted in the bright light. When I could focus a big red word jumped out at me. CANCELLED.

  Abigail scuttled past me and into my room, tapping away at her phone.

  I closed my door and followed her back inside, pushing yesterday’s knickers towards the edge of the room with my foot. ‘Cancelled? Our flight? That’s a pain. We’ll squeeze onto the next one, I’m sure. At least you’ll get to see New York in some proper, thick snow.’ I wondered if it would be unprofessional to climb back into bed with Abigail still in the room. Given my business-up-top, party-down-below state of undress, I concluded that yes: it would be unprofessional, and a touch sex-pesty.

  ‘No, here’s not the problem.’ Abigail hurled open the curtains to show nothing more than some flittery-fluttery snowflakes that wouldn’t look out of place at a Disneyland Christmas. ‘It’s the UK, it’s snowbound.’

  ‘Well that’s impossible. This is England we’re talking about, not Alaska. Maybe Scotland and the north, maybe London, are actually snowbound, but if all else fails I’m sure the south-west will be clear enough and I think some flights go from New York into Bristol. But it’ll be fine, I bet we’ll just get on the next flight. Now why don’t we meet at breakfast in half an hour or so and we’ll come up with a game plan … ’ I led Abigail towards the door, but she whipped back around at the last minute and my toga-skirt wobbled precariously.

  ‘I don’t know, my boyfriend said it’s all over the country – he said over fifty per cent of flights are cancelled.’

  Over fifty per cent?

  I felt like Kate letting go of Leo after the Titanic sank. Only Leo was my holiday leave and I was stuck with my workmates rather than on my own, like lucky Kate. An image of myself floated into my mind: coming in through my door, kicking off my shoes, dumping my suitcase in the hall to be unpacked a few days later and not having to hear or see any workmates for two peaceful weeks. And then it floated away, into the dark, drifting like a snowflake.

  I held back a sigh. As the acting-manager, people expected me to have all the answers and come up with all the solutions and figure it all out, and as tired as I was it looked like that still had to be on me for a bit longer than expected. ‘OK, well … let me get dressed and then we’ll round up the troops and find out exactly what’s going on. From someone at BA, not from your boyfriend.’

  I gently shoved Abigail out of my room and then flopped down on the bed, a sense of foreboding creeping over me. If I couldn’t get everybody home for Christmas, would that mean we’d have to spend it together? I couldn’t organise Christmas. I didn’t know how – walking in a winter wonderland was foreign to me. And I didn’t have the strength, or energy, to do it for the people I’d been counting down the days to have distance from. All I wanted for Christmas was to be home, alone.

  Part 2

  Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh

  Over the fields we go, laughing all the way.

  18 December continued …

  1 week to Christmas

  ‘Hi!’ Jon’s voice chirped happily down the phone at me.

  ‘Good morning!’ I replied, scrutinising the contents of my suitcase, most of which were strewn across the floor. I kicked a pair of knickers out of my way and uncovered a clean pair – yes! ‘Is your flight on schedule?’

  ‘That’s what I was calling you about – no, Virgin have cancelled it. And the one after it, but it looks like the flights later in the day are going, so they must be busy shovelling snow, Old Man Marley-style over at Heathrow. And you?’

  ‘Cancelled, but lots are still showing as on schedule. I think we’ll head to the airport anyway, see what’s going on and wait it out. How about you and Carl?’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll come to the airport with you … ’ There was a shuffling noise and what sounded like Carl protesting with the words ‘seven hours?’ and then Jon came back on the line. ‘Carl’s up for it, he loves airports.’

  With seven of us squeezed into a mini-van, trying to make light small talk but with minds elsewhere, the trip to the airport was a little sombre. Abigail was staring out of the window searching for planes to take her back to her boyfriend, and Dee and Ian were sitting in the back of the people carrier in silence, pretending they weren’t holding hands under their coats. Jasmine was intermixing texting, tutting and shooting dagger stares at me in a way that said, I can’t believe you fudged up like this.

  ‘Never had this happen before,’ she muttered.

  I ignored her and turned to Jon. ‘So you’re not flying back with BA?’

  ‘We’re flying back with Virgin,’ Jon explained, stretching over me to look out the car window at the sky, laying a hand briefly on my leg. ‘Or so we thought.’ Carl nodded his agreement while nibbling on half a pretzel he’d found in his pocket.

  Jon went on quietly, ‘Maybe we’ll get to have the George Bailey experience in New York after all.’

  I thought about the night before, about how relaxed and fun it had been. I’d needed that, and I felt closer to New York and Christmas because of it, because of Jon. But I had to get these people home.

  ‘Just a little longer to wait then we’ll be home.’ I was trying to cheer myself up as much as anyone else. ‘I’m sure the airlines have it all under control.’

  As we walked through the doors of JFK airport we w
ere faced with a scene straight out of a disaster movie, minus the actual disaster. The vast crowd had formed itself into spaghetti-junction queues, and everyone was talking loudly into their phones, slurping from water supplies and fanning themselves with rapidly outdating boarding passes. There was also an unsettling lack of staff behind the long rows of checkin desks, just forlorn Christmas wreaths hanging where the workers should be.

  ‘Right.’ I surveyed the scene, trying to keep my voice light. ‘Come along then.’

  We wheeled our suitcases in and out and over people’s feet until we were in the British Airways zone. I picked a queue and we settled into it, because being British we knew this was how best to handle a crisis. Jon and Carl ambled off to find the Virgin desks, and as Jon left he hurled a grin at me and I realised he didn’t seem quite as bothered about the delay in returning home as the rest of us.

  ‘Hey,’ I called after him, and he turned.

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘You aren’t gagging to get home to that big family Christmas?’

  ‘Christmas is nearly a week away, we have loads of time to get home. I’m quite happy if we get to stay here a bit longer.’

  So here we were, in a queue that looked like it belonged in Disneyland in the height of summer, weaving, stretching, snaking its way back and forth in front of the checkin desks. Above us, long banks of TV screens with departure information on them were showing an awful lot of red. I stood on tiptoes and searched the crowds for someone in BA’s trademark navy blue, but I couldn’t see anyone. For now, at least, we were on our own.

  ‘All right,’ I chirped. ‘Let’s just wait it out here for a while and I’m sure someone will come and tell us what’s going on soon.’

  ‘Do you want me to just go and find someone?’ sighed guess who. ‘Then we’ll actually have some answers?’

  ‘No, I don’t want you to go anywhere. If BA had answers they’d come and tell us. I’m sure they’re working their arses off – wherever they are – to try and figure out what to do with all these people, so we need a little patience.’

  Jasmine sat down on her suitcase and looked away.

  ‘Oh no,’ Abigail wailed and stepped forward, breaking apart Dee and Ian, who were standing as close as two people could without touching. ‘My boyfriend just texted me and he says they’re cancelling flights all over Europe – the snow is just getting worse!’

  This rippled up and down the queue and before long everyone was swapping stories on how they’d heard the snow was three foot thick at Heathrow, that there wouldn’t be any flights until January, that it was all a BA conspiracy, that Christmas was ruined and that none of this would have happened if we hadn’t legalised gay marriage.

  ‘OK, OK, calm down everyone,’ I said to my colleagues. ‘I think it’s pretty likely that we won’t be going home today … ’ I tailed off. We weren’t going to be going home today. I’d guessed that, really, but now I knew for sure. My little flat, with its slippers and its silly little Christmas tree and its pizzas in the freezer suddenly seemed even further away than they’d felt all week.

  I shook myself out of it. So we would be here for another day. Heathrow will have the snowploughs in by tomorrow, and New York City really wasn’t the worst place to be stuck. ‘As soon as a BA rep comes along we’ll find out if they have any idea when planes will be flying again, and if they have a plan for us to go to some airport hotel or something.’

  Dee and Ian exchanged a sideways look, Jasmine remained silent and picked at her nails, and Abigail pulled her phone out to search her Twitter feed for #SnowmageddonUK. I watched her chew her bottom lip. ‘Abi, we’ll be heading back tomorrow, I’m sure. It can’t be that all the airports in Europe are closed. Maybe we’ll have to fly into Amsterdam or something and then get on a Eurostar back to London. You’ll see your boyfriend really soon.’

  Abigail nodded without meaning it. ‘I know, it’s just that we had all these plans. Tomorrow he was going to pick me up from the airport and he had that surprise planned. Then we were going to visit his family, then we’ve got tickets to Somerset House – for the ice rink – the day after. If our flight doesn’t go then Christmas is—’

  ‘Don’t you dare say “ruined”.’ I stopped her. ‘Christmas is whatever you make it – contrary to popular belief, it’s not only Christmas if you follow a certain procedure.’

  ‘Damn right,’ said a man in front of us in the queue without turning around. He wore a scruffy leather jacket and was leaning against a piller, nose-deep in a magazine article.

  I blinked. Was he talking to us? I studied the back of his neck for a moment before turning back to Abigail.

  ‘So, um, let’s not jump to conclusions. Christmas is still on. We’re still going home. Everything will be fine and … ’ My stomach growled. ‘And everyone needs to calm down so I can think about food for a minute.’ Yes, food. That’s what we needed. I had always found thoughts of food soothing.

  The man in front of us straightened up and stretched, cracking his neck joints, before turning around with a grin.

  HELLO. My eyes met his and I found myself smiling back. He had a lovely face – a face that combined the best bits from that guy from Game of Thrones and Nashville with that other guy from Star Wars. You know the ones. A face with stubble and dark eyes and perfect snog-lips that looked like they’d bite you mid-make-out, in a good way.

  Dee and Ian went back to chattering intimately, while Abigail returned to her phone.

  ‘There’s a lot of motivational speaking going on in your group,’ he commented in a soft American accent. ‘Can I make a wild guess that you’re the boss?’

  ‘I am,’ I laughed, and checking the others weren’t listening, added, ‘And I’m looking forward to getting everyone home.’

  He nodded, catching my drift. ‘You need a break?’ He handed his magazine to me. ‘I’ve got the latest People right here and there’s a pretty juicy story on Katy Perry and Taylor Swift that’s worth a read.’

  I took the magazine, my brows furrowed. ‘Thanks … are you sure you’re done? Did you have a chance to read this one?’ I pointed to a story on the cover called ‘Could All the Real Housewives be Off to Prison?’.

  ‘I read it,’ he nodded. ‘But it was a little sensationalist. Nothing more than them breaking contract by refusing to film a whole episode in Cabo at a funeral. So it’s yours, take it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s made its way down the line and I think I’ve had it for more than my fair share. And besides, you mentioned food, and that’s a sure-fire way to get a guy to stop reading and give up his magazine.’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t trying to get your attention!’ I said, mortified.

  ‘I know.’ He grinned again. ‘But my stomach listened anyway. I doubt we’re leaving here anytime soon so could I ask a huge favour?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I replied.

  ‘Could you watch my bag for like, five minutes while I grab something to eat?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You’re the best.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Elijah.’

  ‘Olivia, lovely to meet you,’ I said, becoming all Queen of England-like around this foreign scoundrel. I shook his hand, and the physical contact made me want to phone my mum, and Kim, and say Look here, you lot, this was the spark I kept banging on about. I knew you needed it – I knew that being a perfect match to someone on paper wasn’t enough.

  Off he wandered and I watched him leave like he was Kenickie and I was Rizzo and I’m not ashamed.

  I let out a long, low whistle and when I caught Dee’s eye she gave me a subtle thumbs-up. Flicking through the magazine and not focusing on any of the pages, my mind and gaze wandered to Elijah’s tatty suitcase and I fell into a daydream about what type of underwear it might be holding. Would we carry on talking when he was back? Perhaps we’d be sat next to each other on the plane, and he’d fall asleep on my shoulder, and I’d let him and then make some joke about how he had to now buy me breakfast. Ha, who doesn�
��t love a pervy joke with a near-stranger?

  Five, ten, fifteen minutes. He was taking a while to pick up some food … Perhaps he was sitting in somewhere. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was a devastatingly good-looking terrorist who’d just left an unattended bag full of bombs with me? Ooo, here come the sweats. I was going to be on the news. Oh lord.

  As my watch ticked around to the twenty-minute mark I fanned my armpits and looked up and down the terminal. Where was he?

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Jasmine piped up, glaring up at me from her suitcase throne.

  ‘Nothing, everything’s great. Go back to sleep.’

  ‘What?’

  I ignored her and crept an inch closer to his bag, leaning down, just a little. Was it ticking?

  ‘Ian, do bombs still tick?’ I hissed.

  He looked up, eyes wide. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Bombs. Do bombs still tick, like a clock, or is that an eighties movie thing?’

  ‘Why the hell are you asking me?’

  I ignored him and knelt next to the tatty holdall, pressing my ear against it. And of course, that’s when Elijah reappeared. He stood over me, smiling curiously, looking like Chris Hemsworth after a trip to Zara Men, following a day of hard manual labour. I bet his arms were a bit filthy and sweaty under that smart jacket. God he was a fox.

  ‘Thanks for looking after my bag,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You didn’t have to keep quite this close an eye on it, you know.’

  I stood up, feeling like a prize twonklodite. ‘At your service, guvna!’ I saluted. I hate myself sometimes. ‘So what did you get to eat?’

  He opened a Subway bag. ‘I didn’t know what you guys liked, so I just got a whole selection of sandwiches.’ He looked up at me, and then at Abigail, Dee, Ian and Jasmine, whose ears had pricked with interest at the prospect of free stuff. Even Jasmine was edging forward.