I hardly hear him. I point to an upstairs window where someone has forgotten to close the curtains. The first few flakes of snow are starting to fall through the beam of light.
Alex looks pleased. ‘Right on time. I ordered that last week, but I wasn’t sure whether the delivery van would make it. It was very important to me that it should be snowing the first time I kissed you.’
We stand for a few seconds, locked in each other’s gaze. From somewhere inside the house comes a roar of sound, ‘Three, two, one ...’
‘Zero,’ whispers Alex and pulls me towards him.
Chapter Five
Ibarely sleep when I get home. I don’t feel tired. I lie in bed and stare up at the glow-in-the-dark stars my father stuck on my ceiling when I was a child, thinking of how Alex and I looked up at the stars together. We stayed there after he kissed me, his arm wrapped around my shoulders, watching the snowflakes drift down through the bars of light. I didn’t want to speak, fearful of breaking the spell.
Mira broke it for us a few minutes later when she burst outside, clutching a plate. ‘I’ll throw these out for the birds. They’ll be gone by morning.’
She saw us and stopped. ‘What are you two doing out here? It’s freezing!’
Her eyes widened, and she disappeared as abruptly as she’d come. But the spell was broken. I shivered, suddenly aware of how cold I was.
‘We’d better go inside,’ said Alex. ‘I don’t want you freezing to death just when I’ve found you.’
Those words stay with me half the night as I watch the stars on my bedroom ceiling. I could almost swear they move and change positions as the night goes on, just like the real constellations they’re mimicking.
Just when I’ve found you! That’s exactly how I feel too, as though I’ve been looking for something I wasn’t even conscious of, and last night I finally found it. I smile as I remember kissing Alex. It felt so right. Nothing like the boys I kissed in my teens, or even the English student with whom I briefly imagined I was in love during my first year at university. Those kisses felt artificial, as though I was observing myself and commenting in my head on what I was doing. Kissing Alex was nothing like that. It felt so natural and right.
The constellations move faster and faster, and I finally fall asleep. I doze on and off all night, swimming through a tangle of dreams about Alex, which makes it all the more annoying when Mum comes thundering down the landing, shouting, ‘Hurry up, darling! Don’t you want to see whether Santa’s been?’
I push my feet into my slippers and emerge onto the landing.
‘Happy Christmas!’ shrieks Mum.
‘Happy Christmas,’ I say. ‘Can you turn down the volume a little?’
She gives me a suspicious look. ‘Don’t tell me you have a hangover! Did you spend all night drinking on an empty stomach? I knew you should have had something to eat. Didn’t I tell her, Graham?’ she says as Dad appears behind her, tying the belt of his dressing gown.
‘Happy Christmas, Annie,’ he says, kissing me. ‘Tell her what?’
‘That she should have had something to eat!’ says Mum impatiently.
‘You tell me a lot of things. But if Annie wants something to eat, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t. I can make her some pancakes while she opens her presents.’
‘Not now. I’m talking about last night,’ she says even more impatiently. ‘Do you never listen to a word I say?’
She stomps off down the stairs, leaving us to follow at a safe distance.
‘She has a terrible head this morning,’ whispers Dad. ‘She and Brenda Dawkins got through the best part of three bottles of wine last night.’
I stifle a giggle. ‘And she has the cheek to accuse me of having a hangover.’
‘Good party?’ he enquires.
I beam at him. ‘The best!’
‘That’s good.’ He shoots me a quick look. ‘You’re allowed to have a hangover if you like. You’re over twenty-one, and it isn’t your mother’s sole prerogative.’
We find Mum busily adjusting the stockings hanging from the mantlepiece.
‘See?’ she says. ‘I told you Santa would come. Oh, here’s Jamie. Happy Christmas, darling. Don’t make too much noise. Your sister has a hangover.’
Jamie raises an eyebrow. ‘Good for Annie. I didn’t think she had it in her.’