Page 1 of The Christmas Express
Prologue
Bryn
Let me pose a question to you: if you had a scab, would you pick it? What if the scab had been there for five years and was extremely crusty? What if the scab was in the shape of five people you once called your friends, and picking at the scab could open the wound and make it all horrible and painful again? But also, what if picking it made your skin finally able to breathe?
Sorry. This is not the best opening to a tale about a snowy winter. I should have started by telling you that I’m inside a vast wooden cabin, like something out of Architectural Digest or maybe a Canadian Christmas movie. The only sound is coming from the crackling fireplace to my left, filled with naturally scented woods that fill the home with the most festive, fir-tree smell you could imagine. I should have described how I’m sat at a desk in front of a window overlooking a glittering white winter wonderland, unusually snow-coated for November on Vancouver Island, with views of lakes and mountains and trees.
Christmastime is coming. I can feel it in the mountain air, in the frost on the window panes, in the high spirits, in the slowing down of bear sightings as they begin hibernation.
Any minute now, the cabin will come alive again with the sound of my fiancée and her family returning home. It’ll be all stomping feet and shaking of hair and their nonstop chatter as they fill me in on their morning of wedding prep. It’s Ruby’s parents’, sister’s and cousins’ last trip over here from their various homes across Canada before our big day just before New Year’s Eve, and I’ve left them to it while I stay at home and . . . pick my scabs.
To clarify: I do not literally have a five-year-old scab in the shape of a group of people on my body. It’s a metaphorical scab. What I do have is five wedding invitations. Addressed. Stamped. All ready to be airmailed back to the UK. I’ve cut it fine, but that’s kind of the point . . . with everything arranged I’ve made it as hard as possible for them to say no.
I gnaw on the end of my fountain pen, turning their names over in my memories. This is a stupid idea. I don’t even know if they live at these addresses any more, or work at the companies I’m posting them to in lieu of a current place of abode. I expect Cali is still in the house, the Miss Havisham that she is, but I’m pretty sure the rest of them left soon after I did.
Will they say yes? Will they come?
And will they be furious all over again when they find out what I’m planning?
There’s a wallop against the window and Moglington, my cat, has leapt upon the sill, spraying snow over her grey paws.
‘Come in, madame,’ I say, opening the door. She’s from Quebec so I like to speak to her in French. As I open the window, the frozen air pools in along with the sound of snow tyres pulling into the driveway.
Moglington hops down and wanders over to the fireplace, where she stretches out on the rug in front of it and shows it her belly, letting the warmth melt the snowflakes on her fur. Beyond the window, out of the car step Ruby, her sister and her mum, their identical dark hair in matching wedding rehearsal updos twinkled with snowflake-like crystals.
She’s beautiful, my fiancée. I can’t wait to marry her. I’ve only ever got close to this feeling with one other person; must have been half a decade ago now.
Right, come on, time to stop overthinking this. It’s too late to back out of this plan now. Everything’s paid for, everything’s been put into place, my hopes are well and truly pinned on the outcome of these RSVPs.
I stack my envelopes, memories swirling like snow in a blizzard. So much changed back then, but it all led me here, to this moment.
But will it lead them here too?
Chapter 1
Cali
We know when someone likes us. Don’t we? We know. We recognise the signs because we know we do them ourselves. The attempts to hold eye contact, the unsubtle compliments, the little excuses to come back over to see you for the fifteenth time that day. We always know, and so, if we don’t feel the same, we’ll often break eye contact first, bat away the compliments, ignore the fireflies you’re sending into our orbit because we don’t want to make things awkward. Perhaps we want to keep you as a friend.
Ah, but the blindness comes when we’re the ones that like you. Then you’re no longer a backlit book we can read, you’re a mystery novel behind the dusty glass of a locked cabinet. And so, we search for signs, we scour social media for fragments of videos unpicking the way you look at us or talk to us and see if that means you’re into us. We daydream, we imagine the future in a million different scenarios.
With Luke, I tried to read him for years and only cracked his coded pages when it was moments from being over between us. Now, I haven’t thought about Luke in half a decade.
Except for the other week, when I saw a guy wearing a navy cable-knit jumper like the one he always used to wear.
Oh, and last month when I was on a date and the man mentioned he had a friend called Luke and I spent the rest of the meal bringing the conversation back to his friends, just in case his Luke was my Luke. He wasn’t.
But before that, it had been years—
No, wait, sorry. I also had that fortnight last April where I looked after my neighbour’s cat in the flat that he used to live in and ended up sat on the studio floor every day with a box of tissues, scrolling my phone for all of the photos of him and me when we used to be just friends, just those great buddies, Cali and Luke, before anything even happened. Back when the six of us lived in this townhouse, and we were as close as could be.
Now, I’m standing in the front doorway, frozen in time. I was collecting my post from the side table, about to head upstairs to my own flat and cook myself a warming bowl of pasta on this icy November evening, but one envelope begged to be opened on the spot. Something about the handwriting, familiar in a way that sent a frosty lungful of air to swoop out of my mouth. I tore into it, and now, in my gloved hand is a wedding invitation – Bryn’s wedding invitation, of all things – and my first thought is, will he be there?
‘Do you think Bryn invited all of us? Or just me?’ I ask up to the top of the ladder, where a maintenance man is fixing something above the door frame.
He doesn’t look down at me but answers, ‘I don’t know, love.’
‘It’s just . . .’ I turn the invitation over in my hand, the silver foil lettering glinting under the hallway spotlights. Jeeeeeeeeesus, so she hasn’t forgotten me? ‘She and I haven’t spoken in five years. So, this is out of the blue, you know?’
