“With all of them,” she said. “Were you just—embellishing?”
Mags braced for him to say something silly.
“No,” Noel said. Then, “Were you just humoring me?
“God. No,” she said. “Did it feel like I was humoring you?”
Noel shook his head, rubbing his chin into her temple.
“What are we doing?” Mags asked.
“I don’t know.…” he said eventually. “I know things have to change, but … I can’t lose you. I don’t think I get another one like you.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Noel.”
“You are,” he said, squeezing her. “And it’s okay. Just … I need you to take me with you.”
Mags didn’t know what to say to that.
It was cold. Noel was shivering. She should give him his jacket.
“Mags?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you need?”
Mags swallowed.
In the three years she and Noel had been friends, she’d spent a lot of time pretending she didn’t need anything more than what he was already giving her. She’d told herself there was a difference between wanting something and needing it.…
“I need you to be my person,” Mags said. “I need to see you. And hear you. I need you to stay alive. And I need you to stop kissing other people just because they’re standing next to you when the ball drops.”
Noel laughed.
“I also need you not to laugh at me,” she said.
He pulled his face back and looked at her. “No, you don’t.”
She kissed his chin without opening her mouth.
“You can have all those things,” he said carefully. “You can have me, Mags, if you want me.”
“I’ve always wanted you,” she said, mortified by the extent to which it was true.
Noel leaned in to kiss her, and she dropped her forehead against his lips.
They were quiet.
And it was cold.
“Happy anniversary, Mags.”
“Happy New Year, Noel.”
Someone is in the garden.
“Daniel,” Miranda says. “It’s Santa Claus. He’s looking in the window.”
“No, it’s not,” Daniel says. He doesn’t look. “We’ve already had the presents. Besides. No such thing as Santa.”
They are together under the tree, the celebrated Honeywell Christmas tree. They are both eleven years old. There’s just enough space up against the trunk to sit cross-legged. Daniel is running the train set around the tree forwards, then backwards, then forwards again. Miranda is admiring her best present, a pair of gold-handled scissors shaped like a crane. The beak is the blade. Snip, snip, she slices brittle needles one by one off the branch above her. A smell of pine. A small green needle rain.
It must be very cold outside in the garden. The window shines with frost. It’s long past bedtime. If it isn’t Santa Claus, it could be a burglar come to steal someone’s jewels. Or an axe murderer.
Or else, of course, it’s one of Daniel’s hundreds of uncles or cousins. Because there isn’t a beard, and the face in the window isn’t a jolly face. Even partially obscured by darkness and frost, it has that Honeywell look to it. The room is full of adult Honeywells talking about the things that Honeywells always talk about, which is to say everything, horses and houses and God and grouting, tanning salons and—of course—theater. Always theater. Honeywells like to talk. When Honeywells have no lines to speak, they improvise. All the world’s a stage.
Rare to see a Honeywell in isolation. They come bunched like bananas. Not single spies, but in battalions. And as much as Miranda admires the red-gold Honeywell hair, the exaggerated, expressive Honeywell good looks, the Honeywell repertoire of jokes and confidences, poetry and nonsense, sometimes she needs an escape. Honeywells want you to talk, too. They ask questions until your mouth gets dry from answering.
Daniel is exceptionally restful for a Honeywell. He doesn’t care if you are there or not.
Miranda wriggles out from under the tree, through the press of leggy Honeywells in black tie and party dresses: apocalyptically orange taffeta, slithering, clingy satins in canary and violet, foamy white silk already spotted with wine.
She is patted on the head, winked at. Someone in cloth of gold says, “Poor little lamb.”
“Baaaah humbug,” Miranda blurts, beats on. Her own dress is green, fine-wale corduroy. Empire waist. Pinching at the armpits. Miranda’s interest in these things is half professional. Her mother, Joannie (resident the last six months in a Phuket jail, will be there for many years to come), was Elspeth Honeywell’s dresser and confidante.
Daniel is Elspeth’s son. Miranda is Elspeth’s goddaughter.
* * *
There are two men languorously kissing in the kitchen. Leaning against the sink, where one of the new Honeywell kittens licks sauce out of a gravy boat. A girl—only a few years older than Miranda—lays soiled and tattered Tarot cards out on the farmhouse table. Empty wine bottles tilt like cannons; a butcher knife sheathed in a demolished Christmas cake. Warmth seeps from the stove: just inside the Aga’s warming drawer, Miranda can see the other kittens, asleep in a crusted pan.
Miranda picks up a bag of party trash, lipstick-blotted napkins, throwaway champagne glasses, greasy fragments of pastry, hauls it out through the kitchen door. Mama cat slips inside as Miranda goes out.
Snow is falling. Big, sticky clumps that melt on her hair, her cheeks. Snow on Christmas. None in Phuket, of course. She wonders what they give you to eat on Christmas Day in a Thai prison. Her mother always makes the Christmas cake. Miranda helps roll out the marzipan in sheets. Her ballet flats skid on the grass.
She ties the bag, leaves it against the steps. And here is the man in the garden, still standing before the window, looking in.
He must hear Miranda. Surely he hears her. Her feet upon the frozen grass. But he doesn’t turn around.
Even seen from the back, he is recognizably a Honeywell. Lanky, yellow-haired; perfectly still, he is somehow perfectly still, perfectly posed to catch the eye. Unnaturally natural. The snow that is making Miranda’s nose run, her cheeks blotchy with cold, rests unmelted upon the bright Honeywell hair, the shoulders of the surprising coat.
Typical Honeywell behavior, Miranda thinks. A lovers’ quarrel, or else he’s taken offense at something someone said, and is now going to sulk himself handsomely to death in the cold. Her mother has been quite clear about how to behave when a Honeywell is being dramatic when drama isn’t required. Firmness is the key.