Free Married By Christmas by Scarlett Bailey Page B

the very last seat on the flight, which had been almost fully booked when she’d begun the reservation process, although she was slightly put out that she was sandwiched between a charming if slightly more robustly built than was comfortable lady on her left, sporting an ‘I Heart London’ T-shirt, and whoever it was who’d managed to reserve the last aisle seat on her right, in the seconds that it took for the website to process her payment. As Anna smiled at the lady, who was already tucking into a packet of crisps, cheerfully brushing crumbs off her ample bosom, she wondered if perhaps she should have gone mad and shelled out the several thousand pounds for first class after all. She had thought of it as she’d sat there, at the kitchen table, toying with her never previously used emergency credit card (because, after all, if ever there was an emergency this was it), while she was doing her best to process everything that had just happened, bypassing the nervous breakdown stage. Why shouldn’t she wallow in the disintegration of her life whilst lying on a flat bed and being brought endless amounts of gin? Anna asked herself. But the same Anna who’d often gone without meals and knew how to make five pounds last all week would not allow such wilful frivolity, not even under these exceptional circumstances. After all she still didn’t have a room booked in New York. It would be the early hours of the morning by the time she arrived, nearer to three or four by the time she’d gotten through customs and found a cab – who knew how much she might have to spend to secure a room in a decent hotel, or what it might cost to start to look for Charisma, or even how long it might take for her to admit that she was engaged in a wild goose chase of epic proportions, accept defeat and go home. So, as much as it pained her, Anna had made the sensible choice, the Anna choice, to wallow in her misery in economy class, even if it did mean silently resenting the person who’d nabbed the very last aisle seat seconds before she could for the entire seven-hour flight.
    Boarding was almost complete and Anna was starting to feel optimistic about getting her aisle seat after all when she heard a male voice approaching, and knew, just knew, that he was coming her way, intent on sitting next to her and irritating her for the next seven hours and fifteen minutes.
    ‘’Scuse, ’scuse me, love, yep, yep, if I could just squeeze past here … thanks, thanks, oops sorry! Cheers, brilliant, thanks!’ The next thing Anna knew, a large and weighty rucksack had been deposited unceremoniously on her lap, while the owner of a pair of jeans whose button flies were rather disconcertingly at her eye level, spoke to her as he stowed something away in the compartment above their seats. ‘Don’t mind if I just … just while I? Thanks, love. Brilliant.’
    Unimpressed by being referred to as ‘love’, Anna hefted the rucksack, which she was sure wasn’t official hand-luggage size, onto its owner’s empty seat, hurriedly rooting around for the headphones that she was now certain she would need to block out her less than appealing travel companions.
    ‘Oh thanks.’ An arm, with a tattoo of a dragon winding its way around his forearm, reached down and grabbed the bag. It was followed by a torso in a red and white checked shirt and then a curtain of long straight dark hair, belonging to a man who Anna quickly realised, with swiftly multiplying horror, she knew, and what’s more, desperately wished with all her heart that she would never meet again.
    Wondering if would be possible to avoid detection, and the inevitable ensuing humiliation that was bound to follow for the full seven hours of the flight, Anna grabbed the in-flight magazine, opening it at eye level, so that it covered the entire right side of her face, hopeful that her unexpected travelling companion wouldn’t notice that she appeared to read only with her right eye.
    ‘Managed to