Jenny Oliver - Love At Christmas, Actually

‘And if it’s not?’ she breathed against his lips.

‘Well, if it’s not, I’ll still love you.’ Lucas grinned at her, watching as her mouth dropped into an ‘o’ of surprise. ‘Yep, I love you. It’s a full-time job, but someone’s got to do it.’

He patted her bum. ‘Now warm up those vocals, rock star!’

They wowed the crowd that night, there were cheers and demands for encores. Tom had given them ten percent of the money made on the bar, and as they danced around on stage to their last encore, the crowd singing along to ‘Come on Eileen’, of all songs, she reached for Lucas’ hand and shouted across the stage: ‘I love you too.’

***

They were good. Really good. Too good to be teachers who did this for fun on Friday nights, Megan thought, heart thumping desperately. She’d downed most of the bottle of wine, and her hands were shaking throughout the set. Twangly guitar and his voice, still so recognisable, and yet with an extra edge it had never had at seventeen. Something that sounded like whisky and cigarettes and too many nights staring at the ceiling. But that couldn’t be true, if Lucas was a teacher, living in the same tiny village that she’d always wanted to escape. So had he failed, or had he settled?

‘You couldn’t have told me!’ she hissed at Estelle, eyes still watching Lucas on stage, though he was purposefully ignoring her.

‘That’s what I was going to do tonight! He wasn’t meant to be playing! I was going to tell you here!’ Estelle explained.

‘And what is there to tell?’

‘Lucas is a music teacher at the school. He came back about six or seven years ago. Went off to pursue the big time, and we heard it was going well, then suddenly he turns up with a teaching degree and a burning desire to destroy talented young people by over-analysing Pachelbel’s Canon and playing on xylophones. He’s a colleague, and a friend.’

Megan felt like her stomach was sitting in her chest. ‘You can’t tell me any more?’

‘I don’t know much more. He teaches, he plays in his band. He’s not married, doesn’t have kids. Lives in a little cottage at the edge of town. Kind of a recluse. Friendly and funny enough, but he keeps to himself.’

Megan took the time to truly look at him. It was impossible not to compare him to the old Lucas, the one with the painted fingernails and kohl-lined eyes. This Lucas looked like an upright young man. His hair was back to his natural dark brown, his blue eyes standing out against his pale skin. He still had a piercing in his ear, and where his shirt was rolled up there was a large tattoo on his forearm, though she couldn’t make out what it was. His clothes were simple now, a pale shirt and dark jeans, a couple of beaded bracelets around his wrist. He didn’t look like a rock star any more. He looked like someone’s dad. Which didn’t seem to be stopping the teenage girls at the front of the stage wiggling their hips and staring up at him in awe.

‘As always, you guys have been…a passable audience.’ He looked seriously into the crowd, surveying them over the mic, and then laughed. ‘I’m joking, we love that you support our little band. But those of you from my Year Ten class here tonight, this is not an excuse for not giving in your compositions. But feel free to write “Mr Bright’s band is awesome” five hundred times if you want extra credit.’

The crowd chuckled, the girls cooed, and the mood seemed lighter. Megan smiled softly; that was Lucas, there on stage. Making jokes and soaking up the spotlight, because he was Lucas Bright, and even his name knew he was meant to be something special.

‘This next song we’re going to play is a bit of an oldie, and we haven’t played it for quite a while, but somehow, tonight, it seems fitting. It’s called “The Girl Who Ran Away ” .’

The guitar started, and Megan’s head began to spin. The song had been everywhere, years ago. She remembered hearing it on the radio in Anna’s house, a year or so after they’d moved in with her. Skye hadn’t stopped crying, she hadn’t eaten, slept or washed in days, and all she wanted to do was fall apart. The small red radio Anna kept in the kitchen was on in the background, and that song came on. ‘The Girl Who Ran Away.’ And Megan thought in that instant, ‘this song is about me. It’s for me.’ The girl who lies, the girl who pushes, the girl who runs away. It was her, and she took so much comfort in it, playing it each night before she went to sleep, playing it when she was upset her parents hadn’t called. Playing it those first few Christmases when she had missed her family fiercely. For Lucas to be playing that song…

‘Well, thanks,’ Lucas smiled at the audience, ‘that little ditty was something I wrote a few years ago, although I’m sure you’ll have heard a more tuneful squeaky-clean pop version on the radio.’ Here he paused, staring up at the back of the room, where Megan froze. ‘It seemed appropriate as the inspiration for that song is here tonight. So here’s to our muses, however much they cut out our hearts.’ He grinned painfully, light eyes flashing, his audience not really sure how to take it, just one lone teenage girl at the front who ‘woo’ed loudly.

‘Speaking of, let’s kick up the tempo into some good old-fashioned rock n roll!’ Lucas laughed, and launched into a rendition of ‘Crocodile Rock’, not noticing that Megan had stormed out in tears.

***

24th December 2004

She’d turned up at his door late in the evening, frozen and shaking.

‘Am outside – you home?’ she texted him, waiting to see if the light in his room would go off, pushing her away even more. Instead, the front door opened, and she just stood there, arms wrapped feebly around her, missing him. Lucas was surprised to see her, his eyes sleepy, his dark hair standing up on end.

‘What the hell are you doing out here? It’s freezing – get inside!’ he said in an exaggerated whisper, grabbing her arm.

‘I’m sorry – I didn’t –’

‘Not here.’ He put a finger to his lips and grabbed her hand, pulling her up to his room. She relished the brief contact, thought about how their hands had always fitted so well together. Holding Luke’s hand had always felt right.

She sat down on his bed, and he closed the door behind him, standing with arms folded, waiting for an explanation.

‘I’m guessing you’re not just here to wish me a Merry Christmas, Meg, huh?’

‘I had nowhere else to go,’ she said, and promptly burst into tears. Lucas hovered awkwardly, not sure where this new space between them put him. Tentatively, he sat on the bed next to her, an arm around her shoulder.

‘Come on Meg, it can’t be that bad,’ he whispered, trying to ignore how her brown hair tickled his nose, and how she was still so clearly his Megan. The one he had loved and fought for and made music with for the last year. The one he’d grown up with for many more years than that.

‘They…they kicked me out,’ she hiccuped, burying her head in her hands, ‘and I’m sorry, but I didn’t know where to go.’

Luke rubbed her back, mind racing. Heather and John McAllister could not be prouder of their daughter, rock band songstress or not. She was smart, and kind, and off to Cambridge to read lots of books and change the world. Whereas he was going to stay here, go to the music college, start teaching guitar and playing gigs. Which had been the whole reason they’d broken up in the first place. They were never going to work. She was destined for great big, important things. And he…well, he wanted to chase a dream while he was young enough to have it.