The Postcard Read online

  Maya’s back prickles. ‘We’d only just got together last Christmas…’

  ‘I know, it’s just a shame.’

  It is a shame. Maya didn’t like kissing James goodbye at Hazelworth station on Christmas Eve morning, all his worldly belongings stuffed into his backpack, while she packed him off to Kent to say goodbye to his mum, dad, sister and sister-in-law. She didn’t want to be awake at 2 a.m., folding the last of her clothes and jewellery into boxes to go in the garage at ‘Flowers Towers’, as her family call it, when the only place she wanted to be was nestled into James’ neck in their bed. She didn’t want to wake up alone on Christmas Day again – she’d rather got used to the warm feeling of waking up against James’ arm, even the scent of her morning breath against his skin is sweet and appealing. The last two Christmas mornings, despite James being her boyfriend, were much like most of Maya’s adult Christmases. Waking up alone.

  Maybe next year…

  ‘Well, he did need to see his family to say goodbye to them,’ Maya reasons, with herself more than Clara. ‘He’ll be at the airport tomorrow. I hope, anyway! You can say goodbye to him then.’

  ‘I guess. And you’re about to have a whole year together. Lying on a beach. Lazy cow.’ Clara looks at the bubbles and loses focus.

  At first Clara was cynical about her little sister falling in love at first sight with a stranger on the train.

  You don’t know him.

  He could be a total weirdo.

  What if he has a voice like David Beckham?

  All valid points at the time. But now she knows James, she can understand precisely how Maya fell for him. And now even Clara gets a little bit flustered and lost for words when the tall, dark and handsome man who makes her little sister happy walks into the room.

  ‘All those sunsets. All those romantic waterfalls…’ Clara says dreamily, envious of her sister’s exciting life, but content with the love and the repetition that fills and punctuates hers, as a mother of three young boys.

  Clara gasps as she plunges her hand into the water, as if the temperature is too hot. But it isn’t – she’s just had a really exciting thought.

  ‘Think of all the proposal opportunities he’s going to have! Oh my god, Maya, he’s so going to ask you.’

  6

  December 2015, Kent, England

  ‘Happy Christmas, James. Happy Christmas, girls,’ James’ mum says in a small voice as she raises an elaborately cut glass of sherry at the table. It’s the most flamboyant Diane Miller gets all year.

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You too, dear,’ she says to her husband, as he scratches his white hair. ‘You too.’

  James’ dad, Stuart, and his sister, Francesca, barely look up from their plates. Francesca’s wife, Petra, lifts her wine glass, closely followed by James, and they say ‘Happy Christmas’ in unison. ‘Cheers Diane,’ adds Petra. ‘Thanks for a beautiful lunch.’

  The Christmas dinner table at the Miller home in Kent is quieter than the Flowers of Hazelworth. It is circular, covered by a neat tablecloth with holly embroidered onto it. In the middle, a metal Christmas carousel rotates, where angels chase – but never catch – each other, powered by heat rising from the candles around it. Gold crackers perch uncracked on beige linen napkins, and Diane’s late mother’s Denby ware pottery all still matches. No one’s elbows knock into anyone else’s elbows. No one shouts ‘SPUDS TO THE NORTH END!’ over a clatter of crockery and glasses. Neither James nor Francesca flash a mouthful of food at their sibling. James can imagine it’s a lot noisier at the Flowers dinner table, even though he’s not yet spent a Christmas there.

  It’s a staid but loving table, and only gets lively once Stuart and his daughter have hit the mulled cider and fall out over who should have won Sports Personality of the Year; how Stuart voted in the General Election or last year’s closely run Boxing Day game of Trivial Pursuit.

  Stuart looks at his plate with contentment. Meat and two veg is his favourite kind of dinner, so turkey and pigs in blankets is as fanciful as it gets: his favourite meal of the year. Everything is right with the world as Stuart Miller sits down to dinner, but he’s a quiet man, so he doesn’t say it.

  James’ mother motions to the window, knife and fork in hand, at the gnarly bare branches of the cherry blossom tree, and notes that the rain held off. No one answers as they enjoy the beginnings of their lunch. Diane is very good at talking about the weather, whether she’s at the dinner table, hanging out the washing or playing bridge with their friends. It doesn’t seem to bother her if people join in her meteorological observations or not.

  ‘How’s Maya getting on?’ asks Petra, preening the quiff of her lilac hair. Petra adores James. She finds comfort in the fact he looks so much like his sister. His darkest brown, wide eyes and olive skin. Hair that’s almost black, swept to the side in a side parting. She is reassured that the things she loves about James are the things that made her fall in love with Francesca, and perplexed that their swarthy features are so unlike their very Anglo-Saxon-looking parents.

  ‘Yeah, she’s busy packing up the last bits that didn’t make it into storage. Just clothes and stuff now. And saying goodbye to her family.’

  Diane inhales a whimper and swallows it so no one can hear.

  ‘Ahhh, it’ll be nice to see her at the airport,’ says Petra with a reassuring smile.

  ‘So, what’s the route again?’ asks Francesca, as she lifts a crystal glass she wouldn’t dream of drinking from in her own home.

  ‘Fly to India tomorrow, Delhi first, then the wedding in Udaipur…’

  ‘Franny told me,’ enthuses Petra, clapping her hands swiftly before unfolding her napkin. ‘What an amazing gig!’

  ‘I didn’t have much choice, Jeremy just sort of ordered me to go.’

  ‘Well, I think you should be very proud – how many photographers are asked to fly out to shoot an opulent Indian wedding?’

  ‘Erm, four. I’m photographer number four.’

  Diane smiles proudly. Stuart stabs at an undercooked Brussels sprout.

  ‘Well still, I bet your pictures will be the pick of the album.’

  Petra is definitely the chattiest person at the Miller table. Probably because she’s not a Miller. And it’s probably why she and Maya have bonded at thirtieths, sixtieths, Easter lunches and summer barbecues over the past year. And taking James to the airport tomorrow means they get to give Maya a goodbye hug too – as well as extricating them from awkward Boxing Day drinks up the road at Mary and George’s house. Their daughter, Kitty, is James’ ex-girlfriend, and the last time they bumped into Kitty in Sainsbury’s Tunbridge Wells, Petra had a job of keeping Francesca out of the same aisle, she was so worried about the tirade she thought might burst from her mouth.

  James puts his hand to his mouth to clear his throat and carries on to the silent room. ‘Then from India to Thailand, Vietnam, Laos – maybe Cambodia – Indonesia…’

  ‘Are there more peas?’ asks Stuart, giving up his battle with the sprout. They’re his least favourite part of his favourite lunch anyway. He only likes to eat a token couple, and only because it’s Christmas.

  ‘Yes, dear, just in the microwave…’

  Diane gets up from the table and goes in search of peas.

  James can tell no one is all that interested in the route so tails off.

  ‘Sounds ace,’ says Francesca, not asking him to go on.

  ‘What are you doing about keeping up your portfolio?’ asks Petra. ‘Your pictures will be awesome, maybe you could move into travel photography. This year Condé Nast Brides, next year National Geographic?’

  James widens his dark eyes, enthusiasm brimming. ‘Well, I do like capturing people, whether it’s a wedding or not. So maybe…’

  Francesca looks up but smiles to herself. Her favourite photograph in the world is one of Petra, taken from the back, half-laced in a corset, her shoulder blades muscular and strong. James took it on the morning of their wedding day and a
large print of it hangs in the bedroom of their Victorian terrace in Birmingham.

  ‘That’s my biggest worry,’ James adds, pushing the black rectangles of his glasses up his nose. ‘Letting down all the couples I cancelled next year; getting a bad rep. I’d only just started to get the ball rolling.’

  ‘But you didn’t just leave them in the lurch. They have months to find another photographer.’

  ‘I know, but…’

  ‘It’ll be OK, I’m sure,’ Petra nods. ‘As I said, National Geographic…’

  James looks down as he chases a sprout around his plate. He can’t help thinking he might be shooting himself in the foot.

  Petra can see the doubt flash across his features. ‘And this big Bollywood wedding might open lots of doors.’

  ‘Let’s hope so, eh?’

  ‘Anyway, what does it matter if you’re a kept man?’ says Francesca with a hint of glee.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Maya has her millions.’

  ‘Hardly millions – she spent a good chunk of the inheritance on her course. And she’s going to be working while we’re away, writing travel columns for Esprit magazine.’

  Stuart finally looks up from his plate, impressed, even though he always throws Esprit magazine straight into the recycling. High fashion, celebrity wisdom, handbags, homes and recipes are not his kind of Sunday afternoon reading.

  ‘Well, enjoy it I say. Good to see a sister enabling my brother to loaf around,’ Francesca says with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘Eh?’ James looks puzzled.

  Diane walks back in to the dining room with a Tupperware container crammed with peas and tips them into the green serving dish with a matching green and gold domed lid. ‘There you go, Stuart. More peas, James?’ she asks, blinking fast through glassy eyes. ‘Actually, they’re petits pois,’ she adds, as her voice cracks.

  Stuart frowns. He thought they were peas and was very much enjoying them. But he doesn’t complain, not when his wife is so emotional.

  The Millers don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves, but James had noticed the sadness in his mother’s eyes today.

  ‘Oh, Mum. It’ll be no different to the advertising shoots I used to go on with Dominic,’ James says, grateful to change the subject from whatever Francesca was trying to get at.

  ‘But you always came back from those.’

  ‘And I’ll come back from this trip. This time next year I’ll be home. In fact, I’m sure the trip will be over and I’ll be back before you know it.’

  Diane sits down and replaces the lid on the Denby dish with the petits pois in it. Petra asks Stuart how his allotment is coming along and Francesca steals a pig in blanket from her brother’s plate.

  ‘Looks like that cloud isn’t shifting,’ Diane mumbles, as she looks back out of the window.

  My Travels with Train Man

  Hi, I’m Maya, I’m 29, and I’m a stalker. Through completely non-grubby means, I have had Bono beckon me for a cuddle, The Hoff has laughed at my jokes, and Tom Cruise has led me by the hand on one of his red-carpet walkabouts. But the stalk of my life, the one I’m most proud of, was the handsome stranger on the train who ended up falling in love with me.

  For almost a year after he started getting the 8.21 a.m. to King’s Cross, I wore that little bit extra mascara and tried not to stare as he read books I loved. He was so beautiful and seemed like a good soul, but we never spoke. I tried to test if he would notice me by ‘accidentally’ dropping my ticket, to see if he would pick it up. My heart sang when he did, but I blushed too hard and squeaked too high to say anything more than an inelegant ‘Ta’.

  It took almost a year for me to pluck up the courage to write him a note – on my birthday in May – and another eleven days for me to actually give it to him. When he emailed me at 5 p.m. to say thanks, happy birthday, but unfortunately he had a girlfriend, I was gutted but decided to cling onto the use of the word ‘unfortunately’. Remember, I’m good.

  Months passed. Friends told me to move on. I went on the odd date. I even dated the guy I used to slow down for in kiss chase at primary school… but I just couldn’t get past the fact that they weren’t Train Man. My sister called me ‘too picky’. I know I sound like I was taking the fast train to Crazytown, but I really saw myself with Train Man.

  Months after I’d given Train Man the note, I was doing a shoot for a newspaper I was working for (you might remember the whole Fifi Fashion Insider furore – yeah, that’s me), and who was the photographer at the studio? That’s right, Train Man. He didn’t get the chance to tell me his circumstances had changed. Stunned in shock and silenced by his beauty, I was too embarrassed to seize the moment. When his ex-girlfriend walked in, I fled the studio with a hot face and a broken heart; I thought they were still together.

  Fast-forward a few weeks and I was on the last train home, stuck in the snow at 1 a.m. in a village outpost. I was about to panic, and there he was in the doorway. He told me he was single; he had been for months. He said he’d noticed me – HE’D NOTICED ME?! – way before I dropped my ticket or threw the note at him. He told me he’d noticed my sparkly eyes. We kissed in the doorway of a closed pub and that night I fell in love for real.

  We no longer get the 8.21 a.m. to King’s Cross. In fact, we’re about to embark on another, bigger, adventure – my long-held dream of travelling the world for a year. And you, dear Esprit reader, are invited too…

  7

  New Year’s Eve 2015, Udaipur, India

  ‘YOU AND JAMES SHOULD GET MARRIED!’ bellows Josie from across the dance floor. She is teetering on skyscraper heels, in the same oyster hue and with the same satin sheen as her micro dress, clutching a bottle of Moët in her left hand. ‘BEING A WIFEY IS AMAAAAAAZING!’

  Maya looks at the bright colours and rich fabrics swirling around them, relieved that James isn’t within earshot. It takes a lot of noise to drown Josie out, but the twelve dashing men banging out bhangra beats on kettle drums have spared Maya this time around. Maya doesn’t have to flush a shade of awkward and James doesn’t need to smile uncomfortably and change the subject.

  It started three days ago at the mehndi ceremony, when Josie first started asking Maya why James hadn’t proposed yet – and if she thought he might. Maya was relieved to be easily able to change the focus of conversation onto Priyanka and her friends, and to lose Josie in the intricacies of floral and geometric henna.

  The cringe factor was upped two days ago, after the cricket match that turned into a black-tie dinner. Josie was so giddy that the gang were back together that she had a bit too much fizz and started crying when she tried to explain how happy she was and that marriage really was the best thing she and Dominic had ever done.

  On day three of the festivities – a boating trip followed by lunch at a palace on the lake – a tipsy Josie stood up on the sunset boat back across Lake Pichola and started twerking to ‘Put A Ring On It’, a backing track of which she played on her phone. She even straddled James for part of her routine, shoving her ring finger at him and pointing it in his face. James was not amused. The bride’s grandparents were not amused. Dominic was mortified and pulled Josie back into her seat before she capsized the boat and drowned everyone in it.

  This morning, over breakfast of kachori and roti, in the palatial gardens that hugged the still lake, Josie was offering up her Italian wedding villa venue for Maya and James to wed in, even though it wasn’t hers to loan out.

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely to go back, Dom?’ she mused through faraway eyes.

  ‘Easy, Joze,’ replied Dominic, rubbing his droopy brown eyes, sensing the change in the atmosphere, while James scrolled through the photos on his digital SLR and Maya thought make it stop.

  But it didn’t… Earlier, during the flower-filled Hindu ceremony, Josie had squeezed Maya’s arm as Jeremy and Priyanka took their seven steps around the fire, leaned in and whispered to Maya and James, ‘Oh gawd, you have to do this at your wedding.’

/>   Now, surrounded by handsome men in jewel-encrusted kurtas and turbans, and women in saris and Chopard bindis, Josie is still banging on about it, and Maya is relieved that James is somewhere else.

  What’s the obsession with getting married anyway?

  Is it because Maya is turning thirty this year?

  I don’t mind.

  Is it all the ‘proposal opportunities’ Clara and Nena made a big deal of? What’s with all the pressure? Why can’t people just let them enjoy themselves? Why can’t they just… be?

  ‘HAVING A HUSBAND IS AMAAAAAZING!’

  Oh fuck off.

  Maya feels irked but keeps dancing in her sweeping Erdem dress: black, grey and purple florals sway down to her gunmetal heels.

  Maya hadn’t been sure what to pack for four days and nights of luxe wedding celebrations, ahead of a year’s backpacking. First there was the white Bianca Jagger-inspired suit for the cricket match; then the black beaded cocktail dress for the dinner afterwards. For boating and lunch at the lake palace, she wore a brown dress with large cream polka dots. For the official ceremony, she wore a sari Nena had loaned her (which weighed a ton) from when she was in the ensemble in Bombay Dreams.

  And what do you wear for a party where the groom is going to arrive on a white steed ahead of camels and elephants and the bride is carried on a gondola throne made of velvet?

  Anything, reasoned Maya. No one will be looking at me anyway.

  But she did want to look nice for James, to get into the wedding spirit. She was more worried about shipping the wedding week clothes back to England, but Josie kindly brought an extra suitcase. Sequined saris and stoles wouldn’t be much use on a beach in Thailand.

  I don’t want to be anyone’s wifey anyway, Maya tells herself.

  To distract herself from the disquiet in her stomach, Maya decides to play a round of ‘short, shorter, shortest’. It’s a game she silently plays to amuse herself when Josie is being annoying or when she feels alone and misses James, so she looks around the room, trying to find someone in a shorter dress than Josie’s. Double win if their heels are higher too. Maya is usually ninety-eight per cent certain that she won’t find anyone in a shorter dress than Josie’s, whichever bar, restaurant or wedding they’re attending. Except perhaps for Josie’s own wedding in Tuscany, when her dress was decidedly demure. That was until the evening, when she whipped off the bottom half and exposed her petite, dainty legs. Maya thought she might dress the same if her legs were so tiny and shiny, although not here. Only Josie would wear such a dress to a Hindu wedding. In which case, Maya is one hundred per cent certain that none of the five hundred guests will be wearing a dress as short as Josie’s, and feeling bad for Josie’s cultural faux pas, she softens a little.