Christmas Is All Around

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Whenever Charlotte was feeling particularly gloomy about the state of the world, finding herself at the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport inevitably made it even worse.

“Don’t mind me,” she muttered darkly, swerving around a couple that was enthusiastically kissing directly in front of her and narrowly avoiding hitting them with her overstuffed weekender bag. Considering she’d booked this plane ticket with approximately forty-eight hours’ notice, she had not managed the world’s most efficient packing job; however, the couple in question was still making out, showing no sign they even noticed that one of them had nearly been accidentally assaulted by a fellow passenger.

“Charlotte!” She peered around at the sound of her name, spotting her sister’s blonde hair, identical in hue to her own. That was before she registered the hand frantically waving in the air or the bright green, flowing dress that looked impossibly chic amid a sea of weary, sweatpants-wearing travelers just off a red-eye from New York. Clutching her bag and tugging her wheeled suitcase behind her, Charlotte made a beeline toward Ava and soon found herself engulfed in a hug.

“I told you I could just catch the Tube,” Charlotte said, once Ava drew back enough to allow her to breathe.

“But where’s the fun in that?” Ava said brightly, and Charlotte was immediately suspicious. She loved her sister, but Ava was not the sort to go out of her way. Charlotte considered the options Ava had weighed to arrive here.

a)Pay the exorbitant cab fare to get to and from Heathrow;

b)Brave London traffic, in an exceedingly small car, while driving on what Ava still, after several years’ residence in the UK, insisted on calling “the wrong side of the road”;

or

c)Take the Tube all the way to Heathrow herself, merely to keep Charlotte company on the return journey.

In other words, Charlotte smelled a rat. She considered how to broach this topic delicately, but delicacy had never been one of her particular virtues.

“What’s this about?” she asked bluntly, allowing Ava to relieve her of her bag as they made their way to the cabstand.

Ava frowned, attempting to look hurt; Charlotte was not convinced. “Can’t a woman want to spend a few minutes with her baby sister without her motives being questioned?”

Charlotte considered for approximately 0.2 seconds. “No.”

“Fine.” Ava waited until they had secured a cab, loaded Charlotte’s bags into the trunk, piled into the back seat, and inched their way out of the frankly terrifying milieu of Heathrow before she continued. “It turns out that the flat on the floor above us has been turned into a holiday rental.”

“Okay?” Charlotte was mystified as to how this related to anything, unless Ava was going to launch into a lecture on the evils of capitalism and the devastating impact of short-term rentals on the property market, in which case the timing still seemed a bit odd. A grim thought occurred to her. “Wait. Are you asking me to stay there instead of with you?” She started calculating how much a six-week rental, in West London, at Christmas, would be, and then wondered how much it would cost to change her plane ticket instead.

“No! No!” Ava said hastily, looking contrite. “Charlotte, you’re my sister . I would never .” Her eyes went misty; Charlotte was unmoved, because Ava had been adept at working up a tear for dramatic effect since she was about five.

“Ava.” Charlotte sensed that someone needed to take this conversation in hand, and, per usual, that person was not going to be her elder sister. “Explain.”

“Kit’s parents have rented it!” Ava burst out.

Charlotte frowned. “For how long?”

Ava leaned forward, with the foreboding air of someone about to deliver a terminal cancer diagnosis. “From now until New Year’s .”

“Good god.”

Ava slumped back in her seat—a clear sign that she was upset, because she was usually irritatingly conscious of her posture, and constantly badgering Charlotte about hers. “I love Kit’s mom, you know—”

“Because she’s your future,” Charlotte said with an angelic smile at her sister. “I deeply do not want to psychoanalyze your husband, but there are undeniably similar… vibes.”

Ava narrowed her eyes at her, but wisely decided not to open that particular line of debate. “ But ,” she continued determinedly, “six weeks is…”

“A long time?”

“Yes.” Ava sighed. “And I wanted to warn you that Simone is very keen on… activities.” She paused dramatically. “ Christmas activities.”

Charlotte allowed a single, muffled whimper to escape her lips.

“It’s just that it’s Alice’s first Christmas, you know,” Ava said hurriedly, naming the very round, very loud offspring she’d produced that summer. Charlotte had already visited once since then; she was not much of a baby person, but she did think—in her totally unbiased opinion—that Alice was quite obviously the most adorable baby on earth. She also, however, happened to be possibly the most demonic. “So Simone thinks we need to take her to meet Santa, and to tea at Fortnum’s—”

“She’s a baby ,” Charlotte said, appalled. “She can’t eat .”

“No,” Ava said with a fond smile, “but she can look adorable in a Christmas dress while we eat.” She paused to consider. “If we shove a bottle in her mouth, she might give us five seconds of peace and quiet, and I can try to remember what an adult conversation feels like.”

“I am going to kidnap your baby and spare both of us from this fate,” Charlotte said gloomily.

“Well, it’s still a better option than Mom and Dad coming to visit for the holidays—”

“Wait,” Charlotte interrupted. “Are they together again?”

“Apparently,” Ava said airily, waving a hand as though this was not of particular interest. Their parents’ relationship was infamously tempestuous; they’d never officially divorced, but had spent a great deal of time and money moving houses, then moving back in together, then repeating the entire cycle over again. It was, Charlotte had been informed on numerous occasions, part of their artistic temperament , although she, who made a living off her art, personally thought it could simply be chalked up to being the two most self-centered people on the face of the planet.

“My point is,” Ava said, “a holiday with the Adeoyes sounds considerably nicer, so I’m not going to complain too much.” A speculative gleam lit her eye. “Besides, they adore Alice, and if that means that I can finagle some free babysitting out of them so that I can seduce my husband—”

“No! No! No!” Charlotte yelped, clapping her hands to her ears. From the front seat, the cabdriver cast a stern look at her in the rearview mirror, but she stared back at him, unrepentant. After a moment, an exasperated-looking Ava tugged at her hands until she lowered them.

“Will you be good?” Charlotte asked severely.

Ava pouted. “I was being good. It’s not my fault you’re a prude.”

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed, deadpan. “That’s exactly the word I would use to describe myself. Should we revisit the string of torrid affairs in my twenties?” She was joking, but also not joking; after her last relationship, years earlier, she’d informed her best friend, Padma, over expensive cocktails that she was swearing off anything serious indefinitely, and she’d been true to her word. Vacation flings? Definitely. One-night stands with life-ruiningly hot bartenders? Sure. But nothing more.

“It has been absolutely ages since I heard someone use the phrase ‘torrid affair,’ and I really think it’s time it made a comeback,” Ava said approvingly. “But if we could return to the point of this conversation—and the whole reason I schlepped all the way out to this godforsaken airport so I could get a moment alone with you—”

“What happened to I just want to see my precious baby sister ?”

“I just wanted to warn you,” Ava said, undeterred. “And if you want to suddenly find yourself unavoidably busy on certain days while you’re here, just to escape for a bit, I understand.” She delivered the offer with the air of someone who clearly expected to be sainted any day now, though by Ava’s standards, this was pretty considerate. “I know how you feel about Christmas.”

“Last time I checked, you weren’t the world’s most festive person, either.”

“It’s true,” Ava conceded. “But I am a parent now. Sacrifices must be made. Plus, I don’t have the lingering childhood-career-associated holiday baggage that you seem to be carrying.”

“What a sentence.”

Charlotte leaned back in her seat, watching the London suburbs creep slowly by as they inched through heavy traffic. She yawned; god, she was so tired. She’d turned twenty-nine this past summer, and was convinced that it had destroyed her ability to sleep properly on a plane, like some sort of horrifying aging switch had been turned on in her body’s wiring.

“Besides, given recent events, I think I’m well within my rights to be a bit of a Scrooge.”

Ava reached over to pat her on the hand consolingly. “Absolutely.” A pause. “Also, that reminds me: the primary school down the street from our flat is putting on a production of A Christmas Carol featuring all the children in costume as Muppets, and Kit’s mom wants to go.”

Charlotte blinked. “You mean, using actual puppets?”

Ava shook her head firmly. “No, the children are going to be dressed as the Muppets. I’m looking forward to seeing a very small child performing Robin the Frog as Tiny Tim—this might be how we spot the next generational talent in the theater world!” She paused, frowning. “I’m not sure how this isn’t going to end in a lawsuit, but a bit of litigation does tend to liven up amateur theatricals, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Charlotte said, and Ava laughed.

Padma : Did you make it? Are you okay? Did anyone attack you on the plane???

Charlotte : Padma ffs

Charlotte : It was one teenager

Padma : Exactly!

Padma : If teenagers are accosting you in public parks, who knows what’s next!

Charlotte : Don’t worry, if anyone tries, I’ll take them to court and hire you as my lawyer

Padma : Charlotte, I’m not licensed to practice in England.

Padma : You understand that, right?

Padma : Charlotte????

Padma : I don’t even understand the difference between a solicitor and a barrister!

Charlotte :

Charlotte set her phone down on the bed in Ava’s guest room, leaning back against the headboard and resisting the temptation to go to sleep right now. By the time they’d made it back to Ava’s flat, Alice had awoken from her morning nap, giving Charlotte plenty of time to bond with her niece (read: place a ginger kiss on her fuzzy head, then hold her at a safe distance and watch her warily, alert to any sudden movements, like some sort of skittish animal) before lunch. Then it was time for another nap—could Charlotte be a baby, please? They just ate and slept; it truly seemed like a dream life—which at least gave Charlotte time to shower, then a long walk around the park once Alice had awoken, which seemed to have done nothing but give her extra strength so that she could scream loud enough for four babies.

The point was: after all that, plus a transatlantic flight, she was tired , and the thought of twelve or so hours of uninterrupted, horizontal sleep was extremely appealing at the moment. Experience had taught her that going to bed at—she checked her phone—five thirty would be a mistake, though, so she instead dragged herself down the hall to the holiday cheer that awaited.

“All right, Charlotte?” asked Kit, Ava’s husband, as soon as Charlotte dared to poke her head into the kitchen. He was wearing an apron in a William Morris print without a hint of self-consciousness, frowning down at a cookbook in a way that Charlotte found worrisome; she adored Kit—he was, truly, one of her very favorite people, and she had shed actual tears of joy for possibly the only time in her life when he and Ava had gotten engaged—but he was a bit… scattered. She wasn’t sure she loved the idea of him attempting a recipe he hadn’t tried several times previously—although she, who largely subsisted on takeout, salad kits, and meal delivery boxes, wasn’t exactly going to offer up her services as sous chef.

“Hi, Kit,” she said, crossing the room to drop a quick kiss on his cheek before heading for the fridge to see if there was any wine already open. “Where’s—”

“ Waaaaaaaa! ” came the howl of a banshee, or perhaps someone possessed by a demon, or even a bird of prey.

“Never mind,” Charlotte amended hastily, retrieving an open bottle of sauvignon blanc and waving it in Kit’s direction. “Want a glass?”

“Go on,” he said amiably, returning his attention to the cookbook. He looked, as usual, a bit disheveled: his curly dark hair, several shades darker than his brown skin, was in a state of disarray, and although he couldn’t have been home from work for more than fifteen minutes, there already appeared to be a disturbing, Alice-generated substance on the shoulder of his white oxford shirt. “It sounds like I’ll need the fortification.”

“Why does she sound… like that?”

He cocked his head to the side as another yowl sounded from the living room, a thoughtful expression on his face. “That’s a hungry cry,” he said wisely. “Not to be mistaken for a sleepy cry, or a needs- a-nappy-change cry, or a general fuck you, parents who put me on this earth cry.”

Charlotte stared at him in horror, handed him his glass of wine, and said, “Parenthood is a gift. Treasure this time.” She offered a serene smile in response to his frown and ducked out of the room. Two seconds later, she heard the clicking of the gas stove, followed by a slight yelp. She immediately poked her head back in, only to find a sheepish-looking Kit hastily turning the knob. “More flames than I was expecting!” he said brightly upon seeing her. “Not to worry! I’ve sorted it!”

Not feeling remotely soothed, she retreated again; in the living room, she was greeted by the sound of screeches and baby talk mingling together, which had to rank pretty low on her list of favorite noises. At some point while she’d been settling into the guest room, Kit’s parents had arrived, and they were presently standing huddled together, cooing adoringly over the unhinged monster flailing in the arms of Kit’s mother. Simone, for her part, seemed unfazed by the fact that a small, chubby fist narrowly avoided direct contact with her eye, and she beamed down at her granddaughter. “That’s the spirit, darling!” She was a petite, elegant woman in her sixties, her auburn hair mostly having faded to silver, which she somehow managed to make look like the absolute height of fashion. She was wearing a simple black dress and Chanel flats, and made Charlotte, in the leggings and oversized sweater she’d changed into after her shower, feel distinctly underdressed for Ava’s living room.

John, Kit’s father, reached out to capture the fist in his hand. “Perhaps she’ll be a boxer!” he said cheerfully. He paused to consider. “Might be best to practice on someone other than your gran, though.” He was a tall, lean Black man, several years older than his wife, currently wearing an extremely cheerful red-and-green striped Christmas sweater that felt like a harbinger of the festive nightmare that Charlotte was about to be sucked into. He glanced over at Ava, who was sitting on the sofa—an elegant vintage settee upholstered in beautiful pink silk—with a baby bottle in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. “Perhaps we ought to let you feed her, Ava dear?”

“Only if you value the sound of peace and quiet,” Ava informed him, extending her arms to reclaim her daughter. After a further moment of adoring exclamation—which Charlotte thought was recklessly bold on the part of John and Simone; she valued her personal safety far too much to get that close to a creature making that much noise, even if that creature weighed only about fifteen pounds—Alice was passed to her mother, a bottle was offered, and a moment of silence, punctured only by the eager grunts of a feeding baby, descended upon the room.

“I’m not sure my ears are working after that,” Charlotte said, daring to sink down on the sofa next to her sister. It dawned on her, a bit belatedly, that she hadn’t had a roommate in over four years, and had come to cherish her solitude, but was about to spend the next six weeks in close quarters with multiple other adults and the world’s loudest baby.

“You’ll get used to it,” Ava informed her with battle-hardened weariness.

“Hello, Charlotte!” Simone said brightly, perching on an armchair opposite the sofa with impressive posture. “Was your flight all right?”

“Were you hounded by any Christmas film enthusiasts on the plane?” John asked, a twinkle in his eye.

“Apparently no one on my flight had seen Christmas, Truly ,” Charlotte said.

“Ha!” Ava said darkly. “Unlikely. What’s more likely is that they either didn’t recognize you as that adorable, wide-eyed nine-year-old—”

“You truly did master the art of not blinking for extended periods of time,” Simone contributed; Charlotte was honestly unclear on whether this was intended to be a compliment. It was true, however, that given her resting bitch face and general disinclination to sugarcoat anything she said, she hadn’t been described as “adorable” in a long, long time.

“— or at the very least they’re not unhinged enough to approach a perfect stranger on an airplane to harass them about their professional choices,” Ava concluded.

“One has to admire the forthright American spirit,” John said thoughtfully; this was a man who was prone to putting a positive spin on nearly everything, but Charlotte did have to draw the line somewhere.

“One does not ,” she objected fervently. “At least, not when that means that complete strangers are sending me death threats on Instagram, and a girl who can’t possibly have been older than sixteen is approaching me in Central Park to tell me that I have ruined Christmas for her.”

“Her parents will buy her a new iPhone and she’ll forget all about it,” Ava said absently, looking down at her daughter with a soft, tender sort of expression that made Charlotte feel slightly uncomfortable every time she caught sight of it. It was strange, after nearly thirty years of knowing her sister, to watch her morph into something new before her very eyes.

“Heartwarming,” Charlotte deadpanned.

“Scrooge,” Ava murmured, smiling down at Alice.

“I’m sure it will blow over soon, dear,” Simone said, rising and making her way toward the doorway leading to the kitchen; Kit had been alarmingly silent for several minutes now, which Charlotte hoped meant that he was preparing a simple meal with no great drama, and not that he was dead. Simone leaned down and offered Charlotte a comforting pat on the shoulder in passing.

Simone was probably right, Charlotte knew objectively—the internet had a collective attention span of approximately twelve seconds, and no doubt someone would creepily live-tweet innocent interactions between strangers on an airplane or make a TikTok about a kid who liked a vegetable any day now, and Charlotte could retreat into peaceful anonymity. However, the entire experience of the past week had thrown her for a loop, and she was feeling a bit rattled at the moment.

The problem, in short, was this:

Twenty years earlier, Charlotte had appeared in a movie.

This wasn’t as surprising as it sounded—her father was an ac-claimed director of critically beloved, commercially underperform-ing art-house films, but his closest friend directed commercial hits, and he’d been looking to cast a precocious, well-spoken, extremely adorable kid in his ensemble holiday rom-com. It had taken nothing more than a look at Charlotte—quietly working on her math homework at the kitchen table—for the wheels to be set into motion. She had not particularly enjoyed the experience—the number of people who stared at you every time you had to recite a line was not something she’d been warned about, and she’d found it mildly terrifying—but it had been easy enough to put the whole thing behind her. Her parents had been—continued to be—disappointed that she’d had no further interest in an acting career, but she should have been able to move on and never think about it again.

Except for one problem: the movie in question— Christmas, Truly , which Charlotte continued to believe was the stupidest title for any movie made this century—had been a hit.

A big, big hit.

The sort of hit that appeared on television multiple times every holiday season, that people quoted from, that was the subject of endless memes on the internet. That sparked countless think pieces on whether the various plotlines were sexist, fatphobic, deeply problematic on every level. (To which Charlotte could have easily replied: yes, yes, and yes. It was made in 2004! It was not a good time for The Culture!)

All of this ultimately didn’t affect Charlotte’s life much, particularly once she grew older, cut her long mane of blonde hair to her shoulders, and got contacts. She’d changed her look just enough, and been just young enough at the time of filming, that she got recognized far less frequently these days than she had in middle school and high school, which was just how she liked it. She’d completely ignored her parents’ dreams for her future, studied at RISD, and then, after graduation, used the padding in her savings account provided by the residuals she’d earned from the movie to set up her own business as an artist. She hadn’t been above using her minor fame at times in the past when it was convenient for her—a splashy profile in an online magazine about “Tallulah from Christmas, Truly ’s adorable new stationery line” had caused a bump in much-needed sales as she was starting out, to be honest—but, for the most part, her brief career as a precocious child star hadn’t had much of an impact on her life as an adult.

Until now.

Until Variety had published a piece absolutely bursting with quotes from an “anonymous source” who was “well-placed at the studio” that revealed that the entire cast of Christmas, Truly had been convinced to sign on for a reboot of the original.

Except for one Charlotte Lane. (Or, as she’d been credited in the original movie, in horrifyingly cutesy fashion, “Charlie Rose Lane.”)

And since a large part of the vision for said reboot involved Charlotte’s character, Tallulah, marrying the other former child star from the original movie, this had cast a huge wrench into these plans. Charlotte didn’t see why they couldn’t just write around her—or recast her , for god’s sake; it’s not as though there wasn’t a bountiful supply of blonde actresses in Hollywood who’d be delighted to land this job—but the entire article had been written in such a way as to cast blame on her for the reboot’s failure to get off the ground

Charlotte hadn’t predicted this level of hysteria. The people had already been appeased with a Mean Girls reboot—how much more tepid revisiting of early aughts pop culture was necessary? But her Instagram—which had a sizable following, since she used it to promote her artwork—had been flooded with messages ranging from disappointed to distraught to hostile to extremely disturbing. Charlotte had utilized the block button with cheerful abandon and told herself that the entire thing would blow over soon enough.

Until the encounter with the wildly indignant child ( fine , teenager) in Central Park, which had been the last straw; before she’d even arrived home that afternoon, Charlotte had been on the phone with Ava, confirming that it would, in fact, be all right if her weeklong visit at Christmas turned into a six-week vacation instead.

And here she was.

And all she could do—aside from hoping to god that Kit and Ava had been exaggerating the extent of Alice’s current sleep regression, because Charlotte did not function well on anything less than eight hours of uninterrupted slumber per night—was hope that it would blow over soon enough.

She was in London, not New York. Surely no one here cared. Surely she could have a peaceful English respite, get ahead on work, and return to New York in the new year feeling refreshed and—crucially—no longer fearing for her safety at the hands of rogue sixteen-year-olds.

Surely.