‘You’re not a nightmare.’ Tom grinned fondly at her, touching her rose-frosted cheek with the back of his frozen hand. ‘You’re extremely high maintenance, but you are not a nightmare.’
‘It’s just … it’s just …’ Anna gazed out across the valley, the twinkle of faraway headlights dipping and disappearing between hedgerows, as the whole world went home to be with loved ones on Christmas Eve.
‘It’s just, you’re the sort of girl who likes things the way you like them,’ Tom spoke for her. ‘And I sort of like that about you, even though you do colour co-ordinate my pants.’
‘I just think you know where you are with colour co-ordination. Particularly when it comes to scheduling when to do laundry, you get to cerise and you know it’s time to put a wash on …’ Anna began, before she broke into a chuckle. ‘Sorry again.’
‘You are my perfect girl, Anna, any time of the year,’ Tom told her fondly, with more than a touch of pride. ‘Even your imperfections are perfect.’
‘Thank you.’ Anna leaned her cheek into his hand. ‘It is so nice that you get me … What imperfections?’
Tom laughed, tossing his head back so that the very last remnants of the sun bathed his face in amber light.
‘Oh you know: the endless list making, the constant diary co-ordination, the way you break into my phone and put reminders in my planner for me …’
‘I don’t break into your phone! You don’t have a password on your phone. I keep telling you to get one. I even made a list of difficult-to-hack passwords and set a reminder for you to look at it on your … phone.’
The two burst into laughter. Anna playfully pushed Tom away and found herself backing into one of the dogs, who for some reason had made it his business to be tangled up in every available pair of legs he came across; Tom’s grandmother said she was convinced he was dead set on getting her a hip replacement,
‘Dog!’ Anna yelled, giggling. ‘Don’t stand about, run!’
Tom grinned as Anna took off through the snow, Nelson barking and leaping excitedly at her heels, eventually bringing her to the ground in a good-natured tackle, which quickly became rather amorous on the part of the dog.
‘Tom!’ Anna shrieked and giggled at once as, pinioned to the ground, she suffered Nelson’s enthusiastic attempts at a French kiss. ‘Come here and defend my honour!’
Tom hauled the sizeable animal off Anna and threw an imaginary stick for him to chase – a ruse Nelson almost always fell for, even though he was now almost five. Tom knelt down in the snow next to Anna, who looked happier and more relaxed than he’d ever seen her, with her blonde hair fanned out around her, her eyes sparkling with mirth.
‘I love you, Anna,’ he said, rather more seriously than he had ever said it before, which was a total of thirty-nine times since the first time six months ago, Anna happened to know. (And had made a note in her diary in case she should ever forget.)
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, suddenly anxious as he helped pull her up out of the snow and on to her feet, just in time before Nelson got back from his ill-fated mission. The dog fixed his eyes on Tom, his tail wagging crazily until he threw another stick.
‘Nothing,’ Tom said. ‘It’s just, just then I realised that it’s really true. I really do love you.’ He smiled happily, but Anna frowned.
‘So before then, before that moment all the other thir– times that you said you loved me you weren’t really sure?’
‘Yes. No. Oh God, Anna!’ Tom rolled his eyes. ‘Stop analysing everything I say, I’m trying to be romantic here!’
‘Sorry.’ Anna was contrite. ‘Proceed.’
Tom took a breath. ‘Well, I can’t just be romantic on command, that’s not something you set a reminder for in my diary, is it?’
Shaking her head, Anna made a mental note to delete the reminder she’d set for 13 February at the first available opportunity.
‘I love you too,’ she said, testing the words on her tongue. Tom was the very first man she had ever said them to, and they still felt unfamiliar and a little alien, like they weren’t words that were ever meant for her.
‘Do you?’ Tom asked her, taking her hands in his and looking into her eyes. Anna was surprised to see her confident self-assured boyfriend looking suddenly nervous and uncertain.
‘Of course I do,’ Anna said gently, smiling at him. ‘How could I not? Have you met you?’
‘You’re not that forthcoming with the romance yourself, you know,’ Tom said. ‘Most girls I’ve known have been so needy and “I love you, do you love me”, but not you.’
‘Really?’ Anna was genuinely surprised, but then again she supposed she hadn’t needed to make a list for how many times she said the three little words in question. ‘Well, I do. I do love you Tom. It’s just that I’ve never had anybody to say it to before, so I suppose I’m not familiar with the etiquette.’
‘That’s so you.’ Tom smiled. ‘“Not familiar with the etiquette”.’
‘Oh, sorry again—’
Tom stopped Anna before she could say more. ‘Stop saying sorry for the things I love about you, otherwise I might have to change my mind.’
‘Your mind about what?’ Anna asked him, intrigued and then alarmed.
‘I’ve been trying to tell you something since we got up here,’ Tom said, pleased that he finally had Anna’s full attention.
‘Why?’ she asked him anxiously. ‘Because all I’m saying is if you were planning to dump me you should have done it before I arrived at your parents’ house for Christmas. I bought a goose, Tom, a goose. There is a dead goose the size of a whale in the chest freezer in your garage. It would be exceptionally rude of you to dump a girl who’s preparing to feed your family for the next month—’
‘Were you there when I was talking about how much I love you?’ Tom interrupted her. ‘You know, about five seconds ago. Stop it, Anna! I’m not dumping you!’
‘What then?’ Anna asked him. ‘Have you got a sexually transmitted disease?’
‘What!’ Tom shook his head in despair. ‘You know what, I’m just going to do this.’
Anna stood watching as Tom fumbled in his pockets again, this time producing a small box, which he opened to reveal a respectably sized diamond ring, of at least a carat, glowing faintly in the dying winter sunlight.
‘Oh!’ Anna said, clasping her hands over her mouth.
‘Good.’ Tom nodded at her self-imposed gag. ‘Now keep your hands there until I’ve finished.’
Wide-eyed, Anna nodded as Tom dropped to his knees.
‘Anna Carter, the moment I saw you when you opened the door at our friend Liv’s birthday party eight months ago, the moment I set eyes on you, I knew you were the one for me. You are the funniest, kindest, most beautiful, sweetest, most compulsively obsessive and overanxious person I know. And, as previously mentioned, I love you. And even though I am certain that Anna Carter organising a wedding is going to be one of the single most terrifying things I have ever witnessed – or experienced – and may in fact bring about the end of the world as we know it, I am prepared to risk it. Which is why I want to ask you, will you marry me?’
Anna stared at him, her hands still clamped over her mouth.
‘Now is the time when you say something,’ Tom prompted her, ‘especially as I’ve got a horrible feeling I’ve knelt in sheep’s poo.’
‘A full year before my deadline too,’ Anna said, happily releasing her hands and gasping in a breath of icy air.
‘Pardon?’ Tom asked her.
‘My life plan,’ Anna explained, referring to the wine-red ring-bound notebook of mostly lists that she kept constantly at her side. She wrote in it every night, ticking off the things she had done, adding the things she needed to do. It included at its very back her life plan. Tom was familiar with it; he was one of the few people she had ever felt brave enough to show it to, a couple of months into their relationship when he still thought her controlling and obsessive traits were kooky and cute. And although it
had made him scratch his head and look confused, he had not run, half naked, out of the door when he’d read her plan for a fairy-tale Christmas wedding, complete with an illustration of the dress, which she’d done aged nine. The plan was simple: married by age thirty-one, two children by thirty-five and a million-pound house in Chiswick to go with them. Which had been reason enough for Anna to decide to be in love with him then and there.
‘Oh yes,’ Tom said, clearly a little disappointed, if not surprised by her reaction. ‘So that’s a good thing, right?’
‘Totally brilliant,’ Anna said, looking at the ring some more, not quite able to bring herself to touch it. ‘Completely wonderful in every way, Tom.’
‘So you are going to say yes?’ Tom asked. ‘And I am going to be able to get up out of the sheep’s poo, before the dogs come back and Nelson tries to have sex with me?’
‘Oh yes!’ Anna laughed, her eyes glittering with tears of joy. ‘Yes, I say yes. Yes, Tom Collins, I will marry you.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Tom said, clambering to his feet, just as the Labradors skidded cheerfully to a halt at his heels. He added proudly, ‘Try it on, I stole one of your dress rings when you were in the bath and traced round it.’
Anna slipped the ring on, where it sat, perfectly at home. Perhaps it was a fraction too big, but it was a neat square-cut diamond, in a simple platinum setting – exactly her taste.
‘What are you thinking?’ Tom asked, slipping an arm around her thickly padded waist and kissing her on the ear.
‘I’m thinking there’s an awful lot I’ve got to do if we’re going to be married by next Christmas,’ Anna said.
Almost One Year Later
Chapter One
Something was not quite right, Liv thought, as she watched Tom squirming in his pale gold upholstered Queen Anne chair while Anna fretted. Anna was dressed as immaculately as ever, her blonde hair tied in a chignon at the nape of her neck, her taupe patent leather heels exactly the same shade as her skirt suit. Liv thought – as she often did – that Anna looked like a cross between Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe, though she had been as careful as ever to attempt to hide her bombshell curves behind sophisticated clothes. Anna always worried that people would think she was nothing more than a dumb blonde, but it was a foolish person indeed that made the assumption.
Liv glanced down at her own pair of grubby Converse and wondered, not for the first time in her life, how it was Anna always managed to look like a princess in waiting, no matter what the occasion, while Liv always looked – as her mother had persisted in telling her fondly, since she was about five years old – like she had been dragged through a hedge backwards. Really it should have been the other way around. Anna was the one who had turned up at school halfway through the autumn term, aged nine, having been taken into care and placed in a local kids’ home. While Liv’s family was like one out of a storybook: her parents owned a large detached house with a big garden, were kind and loving and would do anything for her. Liv had grown up with the sure and certain knowledge that she would almost always get whatever she asked Santa for (except for the pet python – she never did get that).
Liv still remembered vividly the day that Anna had arrived. Before the new girl had been brought into the class, their teacher had given them a long speech about sparrows. It had been something to do with a flock of brown sparrows, who one day were joined by a single white sparrow, who, because it was a bit different and not brown, they eventually pecked to death, for reasons that were decidedly unclear. Neither Liv nor any of her other classmates could work out what this possibly had to do with them, until eventually their weary and sparrow-pecked teacher came straight out with the news that Anna was living in a children’s home. Thirty nine-year-olds had all but rubbed their hands together with glee as they anticipated the arrival of their new disenfranchised victim, who was bound to be a target for torment if ever there was one. But when Anna arrived she hadn’t been anything like what they were expecting, even then, fresh from all she had been through.
Yes, her uniform was worn out and second-hand, and her shoes had clearly been bought from a supermarket, but with her long golden hair rippling down her back, Anna had stood tall and proud before them, as Miss Healy introduced her, radiating a mixture of sadness and dignity that had made all the boys fall in love with her at once and all the girls want to be her best friend. Why Anna had picked Liv for the latter position, Liv still didn’t know. Liv had never looked like a storybook princess. At age nine, her thick, unruly dark-brown hair had been cut short and spiky like a boy’s by her own stubby nail-bitten hands, after deciding she longer wished to brush her hair. Her school uniform was always awry and her expensive shoes always scuffed two minutes out of the box. Yet she would be eternally glad that Anna had chosen her to be her friend. That morning at break the two of them had formed an instant and indestructible bond, which had lasted their whole lives since, eventually resulting in them becoming more like sisters. Chalk and cheese they might be, but Liv knew Anna would do anything for her, and she would do the same for her friend, no matter what it cost her. Which was why Tom’s strange and distinctly un-Tom like behaviour today worried her deeply. The wedding was imminent. If anything were to go wrong now, well, Liv was sure that Anna would never recover.
As Anna waited, tapping one perfectly manicured forefinger on the arm of her chair, for the venue’s flower arranger to present her with her vision for the table arrangements, Liv knew that Tom’s discomfort wouldn’t have escaped her notice. And that as they sat here, in the very room where in a little over a week’s time they would all be toasting Anna and Tom’s union, she was more than aware that Tom looked restless, anxious, like he had somewhere much more important to be. Which didn’t make sense, Liv thought, uneasily. Tom adored Anna. He had done since the moment he’d set eyes on her, around eighteen months ago when Liv had invited her new friend from her kick-boxing class to her birthday party. And it was hardly surprising – most men, when first confronted with Anna’s mass of thick golden hair, her curvy figure and long legs, were usually blown away. Then when they got to know her they’d find she had intellect and humour in equal abundance. But then soon after that, that she was obsessively organised and a little bit controlling. Actually extremely controlling. Not that it was Anna’s fault really. It was her way of adjusting to the chaos of her childhood, Liv understood that, but until Tom there had never been a man in Anna’s life who got it.
Tom though had stuck around, and the more he had gotten to know Anna, the more he liked her. Anna’s lists, her plans, her constant striving for perfection and her need to control almost everything around her, frightened most men off within weeks, despite how beautiful she was. And if she’d been asked to put money on it, Liv would have thought that sporty, but super easy-going and relaxed Tom would have been running a mile from her obsessive compulsive friend within weeks. Instead, he’d seemed intrigued by her, in turn fascinated and amused. Gradually, Liv had watched her new friend fall in love with her oldest and best friend. Aware that their lives were about to change for ever, Liv had done her best to conceal her mixed emotions as Anna and Tom grew ever closer, knowing that if anyone deserved a man like Tom, it was Anna. They were so good together, everybody thought so. So why did Tom now seem so distracted so near the wedding?
‘So,’ Jean the florist was telling Anna, as she opened a rather dog-eared and aged-looking photo album. ‘For a Christmas wedding, my brides usually love this combination of holly, ivy and mistletoe displayed in this fishbowl vase. It looks very very festive and yet modern and chic.’
It was Liv’s turn to squirm as she watched Anna stare blankly at a photograph of someone else’s wedding.
‘I don’t think,’ Anna said very slowly and sweetly, ‘that flowers in fishbowls are quite for me, not that they are not lovely for some people. It’s just that if you remember my email, sent to you on the eighteenth of November at fifteen forty-eight, you’ll recall that I asked for roses? Big fat red roses?�
�� Anna unleashed her best smile, reserved for the people that were testing her compulsive need to have everything exactly the way she wanted it the very most. ‘Here, let me give you a copy, because sometimes those pesky little emails just wander off and go missing, don’t they?’ Anna produced her wedding folder, an orange highlighter pen from her special highlighter-pen pocket in her bag, and retrieved a copy of said email from the dated files marked ‘Correspondence (Venue)’ which she passed to Jean. ‘So let’s just go through this, shall we? As you can see, it’s composed in easy-to-read bullet points …’
Jean blinked at Anna, and closed her photo album with a distinct slap, clearly offended that her trademark ‘festive plants in fishbowls’ weren’t considered to be up to standard. This was her fault, Liv thought, momentarily distracted from Tom’s odd behaviour by Anna’s anxiety. Not that Anna’s face wasn’t a picture of serenity. But Liv knew the signs and knew the murderous thoughts that were almost certainly running through Anna’s head. She should have made her delegate more.
‘You can’t try and do everything,’ Liv had told her the day Anna had broken the news of the wedding. It was last New Year’s Eve. Liv had got back to the flat first, glad to have escaped her lovely, but energy-zapping family, and to finally be back home with a precious week off work to do nothing but watch bad TV and eat the poor quality junk food that she would never in a million years dream of admitting she loved. She’d just put the kettle on, and lined up a family-sized bag of Wotsits, when Anna let herself in the door. For once she had been without Tom.
‘Happy New Year!’ Anna had said, bounding into the kitchen. ‘How’s the family, did they miss me? I missed them. Tom’s family is lovely, but it’s an awful chore having to be on my best behaviour for all those days and not reorganise the kitchen or colour code their airing cupboard.’ Liv had been about to respond when Anna had hugged her literally off her feet and spun her round. ‘Why am I wittering on, Liv … this is going to be the best year ever because … Oh Liv! I’m getting married! To Tom! He asked me to marry him and it wasn’t a joke or anything, he meant it and everything and I said yes!’
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