At first she thought it was a bookmark or a label of some kind. It was lying face down on the dusty attic floor, a narrow strip of white with the trace of a shoe print along one edge. Vanessa put a hand on one of the roof joists to steady herself as she bent to pick it up. Time and damp had stuck it to the wood, and as she peeled it carefully away it left a mark, a faint mottled memory on the floorboards.
Vanessa turned it over and in an instant she was transported back in time. She could hear the swish of the photo booth’s orange curtain as she pulled it across, and feel the cold plastic of the swivel seat through her new flared jeans as she slipped sideways to make room for him. It had been the first time they had been so close, Vanessa could remember the smell of his leather jacket and how her heart had raced as his thigh pressed against hers.
‘Have you found the box yet?’
The shout came from the bottom of the ladder.
‘I’m still looking,’ Vanessa called back.
‘We haven’t got all day if we’re going to get the tree. The garden centre will probably have sold out and we’ll be left with some awful spindly twig like last year.’
She sat down on an ancient trunk full of long-since abandoned toys and stared at the strip of pictures. Four faded photographs in a line, small squares of frozen time.
‘It has “Christmas Lights” written on the lid,’ called the voice from below.
‘OK.’
‘In red pen.’
‘OK.’
In the first square they were smiling at the camera, faces squashed together, cheeks flushed from the icy wind that blew in from the sea. In the second they were solemn, mouths downturned in pretend despair. In the third she was laughing, her blonde hair falling over her eyes while he made a ‘V’ sign behind her head. In the fourth they were kissing, eyes closed, his hands on her face. It had been the first time. In the attic, Vanessa had to look away.
‘On the left-hand side.’
‘On the left,’ Vanessa repeated.
‘In front of that hideous painting of Conwy Castle your parents gave us as a wedding present.’
Vanessa looked down at the boy in the photograph, the dark eyes that crinkled in a cheeky grin, olive skin, beautiful black curls. ‘Ringlets,’ she had teased him. She remembered sliding her finger into one delicate coil.
He wasn’t like the boys from the grammar school, who had been invited to the Christmas disco in the last week of term. They had lined up awkwardly against one wall of the gymnasium, all ill-fitting blazers and wide ties, while the girls swayed demurely to a David Essex song under a net of red and green balloons.
This boy was very different.
Marco.
Fifty years later Vanessa whispered his name.
Marco. She said it again, rolling the ‘r’, emphasising the ‘o’. It had sounded so exotic, so foreign for an English seaside town.
‘Not the white box that says “Outdoor Lights”.’
‘Not the white box.’ Vanessa tapped her feet a few times on the floor so it would sound like she was walking around.
‘That’s the box of lights left over from Meg’s wedding, though I don’t know why we’ve kept them for so long. I doubt we’ll ever throw a big party like that again.’
Vanessa didn’t answer. She could still hear Marco’s voice, so confident and self assured. His accent wasn’t one Vanessa was used to: he dropped his ‘t’s and said ‘yeah’, not ‘yes’. Her mother had called him ‘common’. Her father called him ‘brash’.
He had such dreams. He told her he wanted to design furniture – like Alvar Aalto, he said. She told him she wanted a futon from Habitat, and he had called her sweet and kissed the top of her head.
‘I don’t know why we’re even bothering with the tree this year. The trip to the garden centre is just a bloody waste of an afternoon when I could be on the golf course.’
‘Not with that broken ankle of yours,’ said Vanessa, under her breath.
She remembered the way the lights had come on as they walked towards the beach. Multicoloured bulbs strung along the seafront – a fairyland of possibilities as the Christmas decorations flickered into life.
‘Is it really worth it...’ he called up from the landing.
Vanessa let out a long sigh as he continued.
‘...what with Megan and the kids going to Owen’s parents in Guildford, Tom and Sally staying in Saudi and Robbie doing God knows what in Thailand with who knows who. When will that boy ever get a proper job?’
‘He’s writing a novel.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
Marco told her he wanted to go to New York to train at an art college he had read about in a Sunday magazine: ‘I’ve sent for an application form. I’ll go next summer if I get a place.’
Her heart stopped. She couldn’t breathe. New York was so far away, and she would never see him again. Her parents would never let her go there alone. She had stomped furiously away, stumbling on the pebbly beach, the hair blowing in front of her eyes hiding the embarrassment of her pricking tears.
Then she had walked back to him, slowly, like she didn’t care.
‘I’m going to be an actress. A proper theatre one, performing on the West End stage.’
He had jumped down off the wall onto the beach, as graceful as a puma, longlimbed and lithe. He raised an eyebrow.
‘That’s cool.’
Then he gently lifted up her chin and looked into her eyes. She thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he asked a question.
‘Do you like chips?’
The voice came up from the landing, disturbing her memories, but the sentence turned into a cough – the hacking bark that had been bothering him since November.
‘No real point having a bloody tree at all,’ he finally said.
Marco took her to a café that had condensation dripping down the windows. Mary’s Boy Child was playing on a crackling radio. They ordered a plate of chips to share between them and drank mugs of steaming sweet coffee, the first time she had ever had it black.
On the radio the opening lines of White Christmas began. He sang along, his voice strong and clear and very tuneful. He didn’t care about the surly waitress and the grease-stained cook who had come out of the kitchen to listen.
‘I didn’t have you down as a crooner.’ Vanessa stirred more sugar into her coffee.
‘I love a bit of Bing.’ His eyes locked on to hers.
‘I thought a boy like you would be more into Led Zeppelin.’ She spilled some sugar on the table and felt herself blush.
‘I thought a girl like you would be off skiing for Christmas in Val d’Isère.’
He slid two fingers through the glistening granules.
‘My grandfather is ill. He lives in a big house on the edge of town. We had plans to rent a villa in the Canaries but had to come here instead.’
‘That’s tough. Nothing happens in this place. It’s the most boring town on the planet.’
‘Oh, I don’t know...’ She leant forward across the formica table, feeling suddenly brazen. ‘...I think it has its charms.’
She picked up her mug and blew dark ripples across the surface before taking a sip. The surly waitress slid an oval plate of chips onto the table.
‘There you go, Romeo and Juliet.’
He picked up a plastic bottle and squeezed out ketchup in long scarlet trails, back and forth.
‘Like a Jackson Pollock.’ He sat back, triumphant.
‘You didn’t ask if I wanted sauce.’
He smiled, and she noticed a dimple on one cheek.
‘Do you?’
‘I do.’
He picked up one long chip and held it out to her, ketchup dripping. She ate it slowly from his fingers, tiny bite by tiny bite.
‘Come with me next September.’
He said they could live in a loft and hang out in Greenwich Village’s coffee shops and galleries.
‘You could perform on Broadway, have your name up in lights.’ Vanessa looked into his eyes, which were like pools of melted chocolate.
‘I have to do my A-levels.’
She was shaken back to reality by the voice below. ‘Is there any point in having a turkey either?’ The ladder rattled as he repositioned it below her. ‘I’d be happy with a toasted cheese sandwich.’
‘I know,’ she called down. He said it every year, even when they had fifteen people sitting down to Christmas dinner in the dining room – the children and grandchildren, her parents too, when they were still alive.
‘It will only be us,’ he reminded her, as if she didn’t know.
‘I like turkey.’
‘We’ll be eating it until Easter.’ He started to cough again. ‘Though I may not be here by then.’
Vanessa looked around the draughty attic and wondered if she would be there at Easter herself.
She looked down at the strip of pictures, delicately balanced on her palm. It moved in the breeze that came through the slipped slates, like a bird about to take flight.
The photographs had been Marco’s idea: ‘There’s a booth in the arcade on the pier.’
He took her hand as they started to walk. The wind buffeted them along, whipping their hair into the night sky. Her coat blew out behind her like a sail, flapping in the freezing air. She thought she might lift off at any moment.
The arcade was in a low dishevelled building. It had a flashing neon sign above the wooden doors: ‘All Year Entertainment’, on and off, over and over, throwing shafts of multicoloured light on their faces as they walked in. They were the only people there among the flashing slot machines.
As they waited for the pictures to slide out of the machine they played the penny-pusher and won a heap of copper coins. A weary looking man in the booth at the entrance changed the coins, swigging lager from a can as he handed them a single creased pound note.
‘You’re rich now.’ His voice was a monotone that they both mimicked as they walked away, dissolving into fits of giggles.
They spent the note in the shooting gallery. The man had to leave his booth to supervise, and brought his can of Carling with him.
Vanessa shot three ducks and won a small pink velvet rabbit. She had never used a gun before.
‘You’re a natural.’
Marco took the gun from her and calmly shot ten ducks in a row. He claimed a plastic bracelet as a prize and slipped it onto her wrist.
‘You’re rich now,’ he said, winking.
They went outside and looked up at the slumbering ferris wheel. The great steel contraption was dormant for the winter.
‘Come back in the summer and I’ll take you for a spin.’
She imagined being at the top, rocking back and forth, the whole world spread out beneath them.
‘I might be frightened. I don’t like...’
He stopped her words with a kiss. A long time passed before they pulled away from each other. That was when they remembered the photographs.
‘You’re too late.’ The weary looking man was at the wooden doors. ‘I’m locking up.’
Ignoring him, they skipped past into the room of darkened machines, plucking the strip of pictures from the tray of the photo booth before sliding back outside into the freezing air.
‘Hooligans!’ the man shouted after them as they ran, and they had to stop, breathless with laughter. They leaned against a high stone wall, and the sound of waves on shingle almost drowned out his words.
‘You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.’
That was when the snow began to fall, soft white flakes like feathers in the air.
The voice from below was still complaining. ‘I don’t want a present this year.’
‘OK, no present for you.’ But she knew she would have to get him something. It was Christmas, after all. Another V-neck pullover? An umbrella that actually worked? Maybe a book from the exhibition they had been to see in London? He had suggested the trip, but then had been unable to see what she could see in the huge canvasses or feel the same intense emotions.
‘You don’t really need anything either, do you?’ She paused. ‘Darling?’ Another pause. ‘Let’s agree not to get each other anything this year.’
Vanessa closed her eyes and thought of Marco’s beautiful curls between her fingers, white snow glistening against the coal black of his hair. In the attic she could still feel his hot mouth on hers and the cold wall through her coat, even after so many years.
‘The money would be better spent replacing the guttering,’ he continued.
The kissing had been like the candy floss they had shared – she couldn’t get enough.
‘That builder gave us an outrageous quote. I think that we should get some others.’
‘After Christmas,’ she called down. ‘Let’s wait until after Christmas to think about repairs.’
The snowfall was being whipped into a blizzard by the wind. She was shivering, and Marco took off his jacket to drape around her shoulders. The heavy leather felt like an embrace.
‘Come and meet my father. He sells the best gelato this side of Rome.’
‘In this weather?’
‘It’s the perfect time for ice cream.’
He ran ahead and she followed, her breath like smoke, their boots leaving footprints on the carpet of virgin snow.
Through the windows of the big hotels they could see there were Christmas parties in full swing, people in paper hats and evening clothes. The ice cream parlour was completely empty. Marco’s father smiled at them.
‘What can I get you beautiful young people?’
They made their choice and he handed them the ice creams – three scoops each in waffle cones, smothered in raspberry sauce.
‘Could you pass me a napkin, please?’ She had blushed again.
Instead Marco took her hand and licked her fingers, very slowly, one by one. She glanced across the shop, and thankfully Marco’s father had disappeared into the back room. They had the whole parlour to themselves.
Once again she was jolted back to reality.
‘Have you found those bloody lights?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Shall I come up and look myself?’
‘No! You’ll fall and break the other ankle.’
‘This bloody plaster cast is driving me mad.’
‘If you hadn’t tried to carry so many logs...’ Her voice faded – she had said it a hundred times already – and she drifted back to her reverie.
‘Will you write?’ Marco whispered. Vanessa’s parents were waiting in the car.
‘Every day.’
Vanessa looked up through the attic skylight and saw a seagull gliding against a dark grey sky.
‘How often do we sit in front of the fire anyway?’ said the voice below. ‘We never seem to have time.’
Vanessa had time. She loved to watch the flames flickering and dancing, warming her face while the dim light from his shed crept through the window.
‘Too much bother – the house is hot enough.’
Vanessa thought about the money in her secret bank account. After Christmas she would leave. Escape to somewhere else. A flat in a big city? Or a cottage in a pretty village, where she would grow roses round a blue front door. She would join the local amateur dramatic society, finally get on the stage. Maybe meet someone – a man who would drape a jacket round her shoulders; a man who would lick raspberry sauce from her fingers; a man who would make her breathless with laughter.
She wiped a tear from her eye.
She had sworn to herself she would leave every Christmas for years, but she knew she wouldn’t go.
‘Come on Vanessa, I’ve got things I need to do.’ He rattled the ladder.
She sighed and stood up. She had found the box of lights, clearly identified by his big capital letters in red marker pen.
She remembered she had written to Marco five times before she got a reply. When she picked the postcard from the mat her heart had soared.
‘I’m still dreaming of that white Christmas...’
She grinned, holding the picture of the seaside town close to her chest. He hadn’t forgotten her.
Back in the attic, she looked at the photographs one more time and slid them into the pocket of her cardigan. She wondered where the postcard was. Had she kept it? There wasn’t time to search now.
‘Careful,’ he said as she peered down through the ceiling trapdoor. ‘We don’t need two of us on crutches for Christmas.’
She started to descend, wondering what would have happened if Marco’s father hadn’t had a stroke and he hadn’t had to take over the family business.
‘Where are the lights?’ he asked, as she reached the bottom of the ladder.
Vanessa shrugged. ‘You’re right. There’s no need for a tree this year. No need for that trip to the garden centre.’
‘I was only joking about playing golf.’ He pointed to the plaster cast.
‘I know that, you old fool.’
‘What now?’
‘Let’s go to the café.’
He smiled, and suddenly she could see beyond the glasses and the grey receding hair.
‘For chips?’
‘Yes. Smothered in tomato sauce.’
The lines on his face began to smooth.
‘And then?’ he asked. She could still see the dimple.
‘Then we’ll go to the arcade and take our pictures in the photo booth.’
She glanced through the window on the landing that looked towards the sea. Snow was falling.
‘Look, Marco, look outside.’
Marco looked and, turning back, took her hand in his and kissed it.
‘Just like that very first time.’
