Kitty sips a French Martini.
‘Happy New Year!’ says James, raising his red wine and watching it cling to the sides of his glass in desperation.
Eyes look up but don’t make contact. Glasses chink.
‘It’s not for another three hours,’ Kitty says sternly, before looking over James’s shoulder at the bustling bar behind him. Bottles sit on iron shelves against an exposed brickwork wall.
What am I not giving her?
James looks at Kitty’s white-blonde hair, swept sleekly in a side parting as she injects some glamour into her androgynous look. James knows all of Kitty’s looks so well. White shirt buttoned up over skinny charcoal jeans and pointed navy stilettos. Muted palette. Icy complexion. Frame so thin her wrists look like they might snap. But clothes hang beautifully from her.
Kitty gazes up at the sage green vintage bicycle hanging from the ceiling above, a garland of fake flowers twisted around it and silk blooms bursting from the basket. This is the most London-style bar and restaurant they have discovered since moving to Hazelworth, so it is the only place Kitty likes to go out. Dominic and Josie invited them to their house party in Greenwich but Kitty thought they should stay close to their new home this Christmas and New Year. She didn’t even want to see their parents as they usually do. Their parents live in the same street in the same town in Kent that they lived in when James and Kitty got together when they were sixteen. In fact, James and Kitty’s parents are spending New Year’s Eve together tonight.
‘I wonder if they’ve broken out the Trivial Pursuits yet,’ says James desperately.
Kitty arches her body back to look up at the ceiling above them again, to look anywhere but at him. James marvels at her beauty and wonders what her laugh sounds like. He can’t remember the impish cackle that used to fill a classroom. How she would tip her head back and a joyous sound would come from her belly. Everyone loved that laugh, it’s what made him fall for her in RE.
‘Are you OK?’ James whispers. Kitty doesn’t hear. Raucous laughs envelop them. Diners in the space beyond the hanging bicycle, where an old ballroom used to be, chat, oblivious to the raging flames sizzling close by in the open kitchen. Anticipation fills the room.
‘What are your hopes and dreams for next year?’ James asks, trying to engage the girl he used to know.
Kitty’s eyes well up.
‘What’s the matter?’
Kitty was like this all Christmas. Quiet. Tense. James was pleased that she wanted to lay some roots and stay in their new home because he hadn’t even been able to decipher if she was happy to have moved there or not. She seemed to miss London. Miss something anyway. Just the two of them for Christmas wasn’t fun. James made a roast dinner with all the trimmings and Kitty said she wasn’t hungry, she’d eaten breakfast too late. James ate as much as he could so it didn’t go to waste but he missed his mum’s roast potatoes. He even missed his dad and sister Francesca having their annual Christmas Day argument after one mulled cider too many. He’d wished they were spending New Year’s Eve with Dominic and Josie and their mates on the meridian. But he wouldn’t say any of this out loud of course.
‘What are we doing in here?’ Kitty pleads with a crinkled forehead.
‘I thought you wanted to come, you like this place.’
*
In a booth just beyond the hanging bicycle, tucked around a corner against a tall oblong window topped with an arch, Maya sits with her siblings. Clara and her husband Robbie, Jacob and Amelia, Florian and his girlfriend Rose, a meek and shy flower if ever there was one. The circular table tidily hides the fact Maya is the only single person there and she already knows that at midnight, Clara will hug and kiss Maya before she hugs and kisses Robbie. She has done so for the past three New Year’s Eves that Maya has been single.
‘Stoppit you don’t have to hug me first, I can handle it,’ Maya always says.
‘Get outta here, I like you more than I like him anyway,’ Clara always winks.
Clara and Robbie are high-school sweethearts who were pushed together at the prom, married at twenty-three and had three sons in quick succession. And because Clara has never been on a date in her life, she has never had to sit through 100 awkward questions or the disappointment of knowing within the first five minutes that this will go nowhere. She has never had that feeling of squash, clatter and crumple in her stomach.
Clara’s stay-at-home life with Henry, Jack and Oscar is so full of laughter and love and puzzles and puddles and T-Rexes and time out, and the boys are so all-consuming, that it’s hard for her to understand Maya’s world at all. Her job at FASH in exotic London. Her exciting dating stories. Maya adores her nephews. Jacob and Florian do too, but none of them think they have the energy for longer than a couple of hours spent winding them up with treats and sweets and tickles and cuddles before they walk away to their peaceful homes.
A distinctive New York voice travels across the restaurant and Maya turns her head.
‘Velma?’ she whispers to herself.
‘Who’s Velma?’ asks Clara, raising a mojito to her lips. Clara looks very much like Maya but older than the three years that separates them. She looks wilder, her hair is more unruly, her hips are broader and her face tells tales of a life filled with more laughter. Clara wouldn’t know how to dress for a date, she can’t bake a birthday cake without it looking like Henry made it, and she doesn’t know the shortcut from the Victoria Line to the Bakerloo Line at Oxford Circus. But she knows how to make a robot out of a cereal box, some foil and an old egg carton, which makes her a goddess on the other side of Hazelworth.
‘One of my students, she’s brilliant. You’d love her, Clara! I’m just going to go and say hi.’
Maya stands up from the cream cushion of the circular booth and walks gingerly across the restaurant after two passionfruit daiquiris. Her peach shift dress with lilac flowers and a full skirt makes her look ladylike, even though she doesn’t feel it as she totters to Velma’s table near the open kitchen, feeling a little bit squiffy.
As his sister walks off, Florian sees the three bows fastening the dress down her spine.
‘She looks like a five-year-old,’ he grunts.
‘Velma!’
‘Oh my goodness, look at you! Maya, you look darling, Happy New Year!’ Velma stands, although she’s so small you’d barely notice. Even for a special occasion, Velma wears her wardrobe staple of a black roll-neck over black trousers and shoes that look like they might be slippers. In a nod to celebration, sparkling multicoloured earrings dangle below her short grey hair. She turns to her companions. ‘Boys, this is Maya. Maya, meet my sons!’
New York giants dab their mouths with their napkins and stand heroically, a prim-looking woman with her hair twisted into a chignon stays seated and smiles waspishly.
‘This is Conrad and his wonderful wife Madison, and this is Christopher.’ Velma sits down, her boys bow their heads and shake Maya’s hand. Suddenly she doesn’t feel so out of place in her princess dress.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Maya says as she wonders how someone so small birthed two such square-jawed and supreme specimens.
‘Maya is my Spanish teacher!’ Velma says with delight, Manhattan rasp sounding stronger for a few days spent with her family.
‘In that case, encantado,’ says Christopher, white teeth gleaming.
‘Maya, who are you here with? A boyfriend?’ Maya sees a twinkle in Velma’s eyes, accentuated by her thick bottle-end glasses.
‘Oh, my sister and brothers and their partners, over there,’ she motions to the booth under the window. Jacob is refilling glasses with Malbec.
Velma strains to look.
‘Are you single?’
Oh god, I can see where this is going.
‘Erm, yes.’
‘Well I can’t believe that, you’re so pretty! Isn’t she pretty, boys?’
Maya’s flushed face is highlighted by a flambé in the open kitchen.
‘I would fix you up with my Christopher but he’s got a lot of baggage right now. Haven’t you, honey?’
Christopher laughs.
‘Messy divorce,’ Velma mouths in a half whisper.
‘Thanks Mom.’ Christopher rolls his eyes and then looks at Maya and smiles.
Maya laughs.
‘But didn’t I make handsome boys?’
Maya looks back at Christopher. He certainly is buff.
‘And Madison is expecting, I’m gonna be grandma. Finally! In the spring.’
Maya looks at Madison, whose tiny frame shows no sign of a bump. ‘Wow, congratulations Madison, congratulations Velma! What an exciting year ahead of you,’ Maya smiles but Velma’s trained eye sees sadness behind it. Steak arrives. ‘I’d better get back to my table and let you eat, it’s great to meet you all. Enjoy dinner and Happy New Year. See you back in class next week, Velma.’
Conrad and Christopher stand again and nod their heads like obedient puppies.
Velma stands and takes Maya’s hand in hers and cups her other hand on top. A wedding ring and an eternity ring on liver-spotted hands encase Maya’s with warmth. ‘Happy New Year Miss Oh Just Maya.’
Maya nods a farewell to Velma’s family and walks back to the booth, not knowing why she wants to cry.
Wine flows. Glasses smash. Jacob and Clara get noisier. Rose looks more and more terrified. Robbie and Amelia talk about the decorating Amelia has just commissioned Robbie to do in Jacob’s house. Florian gets quietly drunk. And, as Maya wonders where Train Man is tonight, who he will be kissing as Big Ben chimes, she doesn’t see him walk out of the bar area with his arm around a woman who isn’t talking to him.