Married By Christmas by Scarlett Bailey

certificate?’ Liv asked him.
    Tom shrugged. ‘I don’t even remember signing it. I think the only reason I took it when I left was as a souvenir, a memory of that time of my life. I almost wish I hadn’t. I almost wish I’d just left it at her place, and then none of this would have happened. I’d have forgotten all about it and you’d have …’
    ‘Ended up married to a bigamist,’ Anna said, bitterly. ‘What could be more perfect?’
    ‘Anna, look. Martha’s going to help me sort it, it will be fine.’
    ‘And then what?’ Anna asked him sharply. ‘What happened next in your first marriage?’
    ‘And then … and then we woke up the next day and went to work. I don’t think we even talked about it. I think less than two weeks went by before we got bored. She got bored of me, and I got bored of waking up every day with a hangover. When I finally phoned home, and heard how worried and upset my mum was, well, that was the first time the real world crashed in and I realised that I’d been stuck in a fantasy, where nothing was real.’
    ‘Except for Charisma’s tits, by all accounts,’ Martha joked crassly.
    ‘Martha, you’re supposed to be helping me,’ Tom said, angry.
    ‘Sorry, darling,’ Martha said, pinching her lips together like a naughty schoolgirl attempting to stifle a giggle.
    ‘So.’ Anna paused for a long moment, not at all sure that she wanted to know any more. ‘How did it end?’
    ‘It went downhill from the wedding, actually. We continued living together, going to work for a couple of weeks because, well, because I think we were both a bit embarrassed that the magic had worn off quite so quickly, it was like we couldn’t look at each other even. It was almost like someone had told a terrible joke and we were the punchline. And then one Sunday morning I woke up and she’d left a note stuck in the mirror frame. It said she was off to New York to try and make a go of it as a proper actress. She’d always wanted to be on stage, before the money in Vegas sidetracked her. She said that she was glad that she’d met me because I’d reminded her what was really important in life.’ Tom smiled vaguely. ‘I remember not being exactly sure how to take that, after all did she mean being married to me reminded her to go and have a proper career? Anyway, there was no forwarding address, no number, no nothing. At the end she’d written “Goodbye and good luck, Tom, be happy.” And kissed it, so that she left an imprint of her lipstick on it – Firecracker Red, that’s what she always wore.’ Tom adjusted his expression of fond remembrance, perhaps just a little too late, as he became aware of Anna’s expression. ‘She was gone for good and, to be honest, I was relieved. She’d done what I had been unsure how to and ended it. I never thought about the marriage, the certificate. I never thought it could possibly be real in the real world, in the UK. No one is more surprised than me to find out that it is.’
    Anna nodded, tapping her teaspoon against the tabletop three times as she absorbed the story of her fiancé’s first marriage. Taking a deep breath and straightening her shoulders, she looked at Martha.
    ‘What next then, an annulment? It will all be done before the twenty-fourth though, won’t it? It will be easy won’t it? A formality. A technicality. A signature and a stamp and it’s done, right?’
    Liv sat up in her chair, surprised by Anna’s response. ‘You mean you want to go ahead with the wedding, after finding this out now, Anna? Don’t you need at least a little time …’
    ‘No,’ Anna said, quite calmly, her face set like marble. ‘I mean, yes, yes, I want to go ahead with the wedding, and no, I don’t need time. This happened eight years ago. It’s not like Tom’s cheated on me, or gone behind my back. Yes, it would have been nice if Tom had thought to mention it to me before now, but it doesn’t change him, or me, or us. Or the fact that we plan