The Christmas Lights Read online

  ‘Couldn’t,’ Zac grinned, tightening his arm around her shoulders and squeezing, making the hammock rock slightly. It was stretched out from the decking area jutting over the beach, or rather the water when the tide came in. ‘It just burst out of me, there was no stopping it. I was lost to the moment, bro.’ He reached over and kissed her again.

  Bo beamed, resting her head on his shoulder and looking out to sea happily. They had swum and dived in the hidden lagoon until the first of the daytrippers turned up, Lenny recording it all – as ever – from his perch at the top of the cliffs. But then they had gone off plan, stealing a few private hours to celebrate by themselves by hiding out of shot and sneaking away from the lagoon. Bo didn’t know how long it had taken for Lenny to realize they had left him there, but when he had returned to the beach he had knocked at their door intermittently for hours, she and Zac giggling under the bed sheets as they waited for his footsteps to retreat again. They didn’t feel bad about it – Lenny wasn’t usually at a loose end for long, women loved him.

  ‘Well, it’s great and all that shit – you’re two crazy, free, very photogenic spirits. But you’ve left us with a problem now that there’s no footage.’ As their official photographer, Lenny’s life was ruled by ‘footage’ and ‘material’ and his every waking thought was dominated by ‘hits’ and ‘engagement rates’; he was the one taking the insouciant couple shots where she and Zac lay, legs entwined, gazing at a sunset or a rainbow, or of her piggybacking her fiancé on a mountain ridge or a pink sand beach.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Bo asked, lifting a bare leg and lazily wrapping it around Zac’s. Her thighs were freckled from so long in the sun; they had been travelling through the South Pacific for four months now and northern hemisphere concepts of snow, coats and fires seemed almost cartoonishly ridiculous and unreal.

  ‘Well, proposing in an underground ocean tunnel might be romantic but I don’t suppose you thought to film it, did you?’ he asked Zac.

  Zac pulled an apologetic grimace. ‘Sorry, dude, I turned it off automatically when we surfaced. Like I said, I didn’t actually know I was going to do it there and then. I had planned to ask on the platform, like we’d discussed.’

  Bo wriggled slightly to look at his face. He and Lenny had discussed it?

  Lenny gave an irritated sigh, then shrugged. He was well used to Zac’s spontaneity. ‘It’s fine, we’ll just have to come up with something else, that’s all. And fast, given that tomorrow’s our last full day here.’

  ‘What do you mean come up with something else?’ Bo frowned.

  ‘It’s no biggie. Zac can just propose again, can’t you, Zac?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You mean, like a mock proposal?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, sort of. Zac can redo it the way he should have done – with me there getting it all on film – but you’ve got to look surprised.’

  ‘So you want me to act? We’re faking our engagement?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘Hey, chill, it’s not fake. You guys are doing all this anyway. It’s just a matter of having something to show the followers.’

  ‘But it’s a private moment, Lenny. One of our only ones. I don’t want to share it.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can’t when you’ve got 9.4 million people emotionally investing in your life together.’ Lenny shrugged. ‘They’re gonna feel pretty cheated if you just drop the E bomb on them but shut them out of all the excitement and drama.’

  She looked up at Zac. ‘You don’t agree with this, do you?’

  ‘Well no, but—’

  ‘There’s so little that’s actually just ours. We share almost everything about our lives. I want to keep this as our private thing.’

  ‘I totally agree, baby.’ Zac kissed her again. ‘It was our moment.’

  Was it though? He had already discussed it with Lenny – set it up for the perfect shot, seemingly. ‘I assumed you asked me down there because it was just about the only place we could go where Lenny wasn’t,’ she murmured, resting her head on Zac’s chest and looking up at him.

  ‘– I did,’ Zac said.

  ‘– Thanks!’ Lenny huffed at the same time.

  ‘You know I don’t mean it like that, Len,’ she said, looking over at him. ‘But you’ve got to see it from our point of view; when are Zac and I ever truly alone? Sometimes a moment is ours, and it’s not available to the rest of the world just because it’ll get good hits.’

  ‘Now that’s just being naive,’ Lenny said, swigging another gulp of beer. ‘I get that you want to keep this private, Bo, but the reality is there’s always a picture frame around your life. You don’t get the population of a small country watching you by accident. It’s design. It’s why you hire me . . . Unless you’re saying you don’t need me?’

  ‘Hey, hey, no. Bo didn’t mean that,’ Zac said quickly. ‘We both know what you’ve done for the brand since coming on board. I guess . . .’ He sighed. ‘I guess I can see it from both points of view. Bo wants to keep our engagement private – as do I. But Lenny can see the followers are gonna be hacked off if we just present them with a fait accompli.’ He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, pulling his arms away from around Bo’s shoulders and sitting himself in a crossed-leg position on the hammock. He ran a hand through his buzzcut, his dark eyes like hot coals as an idea came to him. ‘But you know what, the more I think about it, the more I think Lenny’s got the right idea.’

  ‘Zac!’

  ‘No, no, hear me out,’ he said, holding his hands up. ‘You want us to keep our moment sacred. Special, right? Well, if we mock up a fake proposal, we can do exactly that. Everyone will think they’ve shared it with us, but we – you and me, baby – we’ll know the real truth: where it happened, when, how . . . No one else will know the details and, that way, it can remain ours, completely private.’

  Bo stared at him. She supposed there was a twisted logic to it.

  ‘Exactly!’ Lenny said, looking pleased he had an ally, even though Zac always seemed to side with him in the end. ‘And I can guarantee you’ll get a massive spike in engagement on this. If we run the video as a story, we’re looking at three million views, easy. And then we’ll spool the shots out over the squares for several days and that should be, what – five million likes, I’m guessing?’

  ‘Great,’ Zac shrugged. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘Well, we can go back tomorrow morning and do it all over again—’ Lenny suggested.

  ‘No!’ Bo said, a little too quickly. ‘I don’t . . .’ She didn’t want to go back in the tunnel again. ‘I don’t want it to be in the same place. If we’re going to do this, then it has to be somewhere completely different. I don’t want a single element of the fake engagement to overlap with the real thing.’

  ‘Well that’s easy enough,’ Zac said with his easy smile and warm eyes. ‘We can do it on the next stop, then. Norway’s about as different to this as you can get.’

  Bo considered for a moment. He was right – Samoa and Norway couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to one another. Hot, cold. Beach, mountains. Summer, winter. Nothing about a second proposal there would seep into and stain their special moment together. And yet . . . She bit her lip. ‘I know it makes sense in principle; it just still feels wrong somehow.’

  ‘Hey, no. It’s the perfect solution – we’re giving the followers what they want, whilst keeping the real thing for ourselves. Private. Ours. You get me?’

  She smiled, seeing the intimacy in his eyes. ‘Yeah. I get you.’

  One of their unspoken moments exploded between them, making the air crackle, and he crawled over the netting towards her again.

  ‘No. Wait!’ Lenny said quickly, knowing exactly what was going to happen. ‘Before you . . . Listen, we’ve got to talk about tomorrow,’ he said urgently. ‘Seeing as it’s our last day and we’ve got to get over to the sliding rocks in Papaseea first thing. I got a driver picking us up at four . . . Guys? Guys?’

  Chapter Two
r />   Alesund, Norway, three days later

  ‘Holy mother,’ Zac hissed, rubbing his arms around his shoulders in the freezing temperatures as they followed the receptionist up the steps to their suite – an upgrade Lenny had negotiated for them with one mention of their social media following. It had a fjord view, four-poster and a balcony, but the suites were also in a separate building from the rest of the hotel and, right now, even a two-minute walk through the polar chill in shorts and T-shirts was two minutes too long.

  ‘You have come from far?’ the receptionist asked, putting the key in the lock.

  ‘The South Pacific,’ Bo smiled tiredly.

  ‘Oh my,’ the woman replied in surprise. ‘That is very far.’

  ‘Yes. We’ve been travelling for over thirty hours now.’

  The door opened and they walked into a blonde-wood entry hallway, an umbrella hanging from a hook on the wall, a vast armoire making barely an impression in the large space. A colourful woven mat stretched the length of the hall and a door to the left led to the bathroom. They followed the woman into the main room and Bo thought she might collapse in relief at the sight of the giant floor-to-ceiling cabin bed: painted matt black and dressed with a fluffy white duvet, woollen blankets and a cloud of pillows, she had never seen such a welcome sight.

  ‘Your bags were sent ahead,’ the receptionist said, indicating the two suitcases on the luggage stands, and Bo gave a silent note of thanks to Lenny. For all their clashes about boundaries and what not to share, he always kept the wheels on their never-ending roadshow, making sure visas were in place, transfer transport arranged and that they were upgraded at every possible opportunity, as well as having the right clothes shipped to their new destinations. This was what they called their basic ‘winter pack’: jeans, underwear, base layers, T-shirts, jumpers and boots. Lenny had dropped off most of their summer kit – beach clothes and swimwear – to local charities as they made their way to the airport and sent the remainder back to their Left Luggage storage in London. She and Zac liked to travel light, both mentally and physically. They didn’t own more than they could carry – not a home, not a car, not a dog – and whatever earnings were left over from funding their next adventure went straight into a joint account.

  ‘I hope he remembered the crampons,’ Zac said, walking over and unzipping their trusty giant yellow North Face bags. Bo smiled at the mere sight of them and his coiled ropes; they had become symbols of their wintry escapes.

  ‘There was also a separate delivery for you,’ the receptionist said, pointing to several taped boxes stacked beside the wardrobe.

  ‘Great.’ Bo knew it would be the merchandise from their new sponsors. Ridge Riders were a small Norwegian-based company looking to make the leap from being known as just a technical mountain kit brand – for skiing, hiking and climbing – to the sexier athleisure market. They wanted to be Nike, North Face, Napapijri, and they were convinced that hooking up with Zac and Bo was the way to achieve it.

  ‘If there’s anything else . . . ?’ the receptionist asked.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Bo said. ‘This looks awesome.’

  ‘Dinner is served till nine thirty. Please feel free to come to the drawing room for drinks beforehand.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bo nodded, looking longingly at the bed. They had travelled on four planes in the past thirty hours – flying from Samoa to Sydney, and then on to Oslo via Doha, before catching a local flight to Alesund – and she knew they would both be awake at two in the morning, regardless of the age-old advice to shift their routine to local hours and stay awake for as long as they could.

  The door closed behind the receptionist with a soft click and Zac went over to one of the boxes, opening it with the edge of the bottle opener on the nearby media cabinet. ‘How much are they paying us again?’ he quipped, pulling out polythene-bagged heaps of labelled clothing and equipment in bright colours and waterproof fabrics that looked harsh to Bo’s eye. After several months of drifting about in swimwear and sun-bleached cotton and linens, they looked artificial and the padded shapes comically outsize.

  Bo watched as he shrugged on an orange soft-shell jacket over his T-shirt and zipped it up, her tanned and bare-chested free-diver transforming in an instant to a mountain tourer. But then he was all those things. All those men. ‘It looks great,’ she smiled.

  ‘You’ll look great in this,’ he said, holding up an insulated butter-yellow hooded parka with furry trim. ‘That’ll shoot really well.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Bo collapsed on the bed and closed her eyes. She didn’t care about what would look good in a photograph right now.

  ‘No, no, don’t sleep,’ he grinned, tossing the jacket on the suitcase and launching himself onto the bed, straddling her. ‘You know full well we’ve got to stay awake until at least ten o’clock.’

  ‘But I’m too tired,’ she mumbled as he began nuzzling her neck.

  ‘No you’re not. I’m going to get the shower going for you. That’ll wake you up. Then we’ll explore the place and then we’ll come back here and finish this . . .’ He kissed her once on the tip of her nose and jumped off the bed again. Rolling her head to the side and watching his puppyish lope out of sight, she wondered where his endless energy came from. They lived the same days, doing the same things, and yet she was always dropping into bed by the end of the day whereas he could, it seemed, just push on through.

  A knock at the door made her close her eyes in frustration. ‘Come in, Lenny,’ she called without even having to check. It would be him. It was always him. She and Zac were never just a couple, but a trio. He was there at every meal, on every walk, always in the next room, and his knock at the door was as identifiable to her as Zac’s tread on the floorboards.

  Lenny was their friend, naturally – it was inevitable, and frankly vital, when they spent so much time together – but as the third spoke in their wheel, his constant presence inevitably changed things. In the three years that he had been working for them, his role had tacitly evolved into something more managerial than the photographer they’d originally hired, a role that had become a necessity once their following had got to a certain size. What started as a personal lifestyle and travel mission for both her and Zac, had – once they had fallen in love and blended their brands – become a global juggernaut and they were now the beacons for honeymooners wanting the most romantic, secluded getaways; first-footers for the adrenaline-junkies searching for their next fix; models for the clothing and lifestyle brands that wanted to be associated with their free-spirited lives. Critical mass now meant they were paid to do all the things and visit all the places and wear all the clothes they would have wanted to anyway. In essence, they were being paid just to lead their lives and she knew they were incredibly privileged. She knew that. But recently she had begun to feel the balance had shifted and that the loss of privacy was becoming absolute. She kept trying to ring-fence areas of her and Zac’s life that she didn’t want to share but every day the public gaze somehow nudged a little closer to their feet.

  But it wasn’t Lenny’s fault, she knew that. He was a good guy, just doing his job – a job that meant considerable sacrifice on his part as he had to subsume his own life to theirs. In spite of the generous salary they paid him and the global travel opportunities that were one of the main perks of the job, there was no way he could sustain a home life or a relationship when he spent eleven months of the year on the road with them. Not many people would be prepared to do that. And besides, she knew Zac was grateful for his company and equally gung-ho spirit when it came to setting up and shooting the extreme stunts he was known and famed for.

  She opened her eyes to find Lenny standing by the side of the bed. He had changed out of the black Metallica tour T-shirt he had travelled in and was wearing the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon one; Bo had joked that his collection of vintage rock tees justified an Instagram following of its own. ‘Tired?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she sighed, curling herself up off the mattress and dropping her
head in her hands. ‘I just want to sleep but Zac’s insisting we explore the place first.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Lenny said, turning and walking over to the drinks tray set up on a cabinet. He tonged a couple of cubes of ice into a glass and poured her some sparkling water. ‘Drink up. Rehydration will help.’

  ‘Thanks.’ His role was a fluid one: sometimes photographer, sometimes logistics and tour manager, other times mother. She took it from him and dutifully sipped, just as Zac walked back in, a towel around his hips, his tanned skin damp and warm.

  ‘Len, how’s your room?’ he asked.

  ‘Great. View of a tree.’ Len had a deadpan delivery that would have made Eeyore proud.

  Zac laughed. ‘Helluva pretty tree, I bet though.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Babe, the water’s hot,’ Zac said to her.

  ‘Thanks. I’m going to wash my hair,’ she sighed, pulling out her long plait and shaking her hair free. She got up from the bed and walked into the bathroom, her hand trailing lightly over Zac’s bare stomach as she passed. He grabbed her hand and kissed her wrist, before letting her go again with a wink.

  ‘In which case, we’ll see you in the main house, shall we?’ he called after her. If there was one thing Zac was no good at, it was sitting around waiting. He always had to be doing something.

  ‘Sure thing,’ she mumbled, disappearing into the plumes of steam already escaping from the bathroom.

  It was over an hour later before she was ready. Twenty minutes had been spent just standing under the running water, feeling her tired muscles begin to ease from the stiffness of the long-haul flight. Flatbeds were all very good in theory but she could still never sleep over the sound of the crew slamming doors and clattering about in the galley.