Page 27 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Ryan grinned and struck a muscleman pose. “I was actually on my way up to deliver some more Christmas coffee trials before my shift in the grotto, but since I’m here…” he said.

Fred was looking around the kitchen floor. “It looks like a grenade went off in Whoville.”

“We were bringing the Christmas decorations in from the storeroom; we wanted to surprise your mother by having the place all sparkly by the time she got home from the market,” said Aunt Cam, taking the straw from Aunt Aggie’s lips and using it to stir the green drink.

“I slipped on a puddle of water,” Aunt Aggie said, outraged but seemingly unfazed by her predicament. “I’ll survive, but I think that radiator in the bathroom has finally given up the ghost.” She raised one arm and winced. Aunt Cam stuffed the straw back into her mouth.

Fred looked up and noted a steady dripping from the ceiling, which was being soaked up by a life-sized plush fawn that usually stood beside the big Christmas tree in the hall but was currently lying beside her aunt with one of its hind legs twisted at an unnatural angle.

Her aunt saw her looking. “Better him than me,” Aggie remarked.

“I went down like a drunk uncle at a wedding,” she continued, moving the straw to the side of her mouth so she could speak more easily and still drink.

“Landed on poor old Father Christmas,” and she nodded toward a large metal painted Father Christmas with his face caved in, who was propped awkwardly against a dresser.

Fred doubted he would ever be the same again.

“And the cocktail is medicinal, I suppose?” Fred wagered.

“Absolutely,” Cam nodded, with feeling. “It’s called a Grinch’s Heart. Good for shock. Very fruity, with enough peach schnapps and rum to numb an amputation. Not that I think we’ll be needing one.”

Fred looked at Ryan, who raised his eyebrows but stayed quiet. “Okay, let’s get you up,” she said, moving to one side of her aunt. Ryan was already moving into position on her other side.

“Let me at least finish my cocktail,” Aunt Aggie grumbled, but Aunt Cam took the straw away. In another moment, Ryan and Fred had her up and were gently lowering her into a tartan wing-back chair by the Aga.

“We should really get these looked at,” said Fred, gently handling her aunt’s wrists. “They could be broken…” The skin on her aunt’s arms was pale and soft and delicately stippled with age spots, and Fred was suddenly filled with a melancholy that made her chest ache.

“Bollocks to that! I am not going to the hospital! I refuse to sit in a waiting room for ten hours, only for them to tell me I’ve sprained my wrists, which I already know, and stick compression bandages on each arm.”

“And we’ve got those in the first-aid box in the cottage,” Cam added. “I’ll make her a couple of nice cold poultices and keep her fluids topped up.”

Fred wondered what kind of fluids she had in mind. “But to be on the safe side…”

“ No! ” said Aunt Aggie. She tried to fold her arms, winced and then covered the pain with a disdainful sniff.

“I understand where you’re coming from,” said Ryan.

“But Fred’s right. You ought to get yourself checked over, for all our peace of mind.

And let’s be honest, if my mum gets wind of this, which she will, and finds out that I didn’t personally escort you to a medical practitioner, I will be in a world of trouble.

Do you really want me to have to face the wrath of Martha Frost? ”

Ryan’s mum was as cozy and comforting as a hot chocolate with marshmallows, but she didn’t suffer fools, and she spoke as she found.

“He has a point,” said Cam.

Aunt Aggie huffed out in defeat, “Fine. But if anyone tries to put me in a wheelchair, I’ll headbutt them.”

“Understood,” said Ryan, soberly.

In the end, Cam wouldn’t leave Aggie’s side, Fred felt obligated to be there, and Ryan said he’d drive because Fred’s car was only a two door—and neither aunt could fold herself into the back seat.

Fred called her mum and, using her most I’ve-got-it-all-under-control voice, explained the situation.

Bella wanted to close the stall and join them, but Fred assured her that she could handle things and promised to keep her posted.

When Bella thanked her and told her she was grateful to have Fred there, she felt useful for the first time in a long while.

It was a mercifully quiet afternoon at the nearest NHS walk-in center.

Their little party received a few double takes when they arrived; two octogenarians in Indian block-print kimonos accompanied by an elf rather stood out against the clinical decor.

When Aggie’s name was called, after only forty-five minutes, she told Fred and Ryan to bugger off and get coffee, while Cam accompanied her into triage.

The health center was small but a godsend for the town and neighboring farm communities, who would otherwise have to travel an hour or more to the nearest big hospital.

Fred and Ryan followed the signs to a small volunteer-run cafeteria.

The coffee was dispensed from an urn overseen by a tall, grandfatherly man with round glasses and white wispy hair, who reliably informed them it had been brewing since eight o’ clock that morning, and so they both opted for a hot chocolate.

The tables were occupied by a smattering of people whose expressions ranged from pensive to bored, but they managed to find an empty space with two seats, near the “book swap” shelf.

“I’ve never given much thought to the aunts getting older,” said Fred, slowly turning her paper cup.

“I suppose on some level I must have, but they don’t seem to age like other people do; it’s like they do it sideways or something, becoming more eccentric with each spin around the sun.

It scared me, getting that call from Cam.

When she said Aunt Aggie had had a fall, it was like a bucket of cold dread being dumped over me. ”

“I can understand that. It’s hard when you realize that your guiding lights aren’t immortal.”

“You’re thinking about your dad,” Fred said gently, suddenly understanding how it must have felt when he’d got the call to say Diggory had had a heart attack.

Ryan looked at her and smiled. “Yeah. But he’s fine and so is Aggie, aside from two sprained wrists.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m back. At least while I’m here, I can muck in with the business and help keep an eye on the aunts; try and take some of the pressure off Mum.”

“I don’t think Bella would let you stay if she thought you felt she needed help. She’s as stubborn as you are. Were ,” he corrected himself. “You might have changed since we knew each other.”

Fred smiled. “No, I believe that personality trait is still alive and kicking. But I think maybe I’d like to be around; the aunts won’t be here forever.” She shivered at the thought and pushed it away. “And it could be fun to help with the business.”

“Help or join?”

“Join? Maybe?” She cocked her head to one side as she tested the thought.

“I was so sure that the family business wasn’t for me.

But when I was looking through the Hallow-Hart socials the other night, I had all these ideas, you know?

All the stuff I’ve learned, all the campaigns I’ve put together for other companies; I could be using my skills to benefit the family business. ”

“Is the business struggling?”

“No, no, it’s fine at the moment, but it’s working from an old business model, and that isn’t going to cut it for much longer.

Right now, they’re relying on customers who repeat-buy out of nostalgia and habit, but sooner or later the people who’ve been buying our crackers for the last fifty or sixty years won’t be any longer.

And if we don’t put strategies in place to catch the attention of new consumers, then in another ten years there won’t be a Hallow-Hart Crackers, certainly not one that can sustain itself. ”

“I can just imagine the aunts on TikTok,” said Ryan.

Fred laughed. “Yes, so can I. There is so much we can do with social media. We don’t make nearly enough noise about using local artisans for cracker gifts, or that all the papers are designed in-house.”

“Sounds to me like you already know what you want to do.”

“Hmmm. I think you could be right.” She shook her head, laughing humorlessly. “I was so full of it, you know? All ‘Look out, world, here I come!’ I didn’t bank on how badly the world would kick the shit out of me.”

“Yeah, it can do that,” said Ryan kindly.

Fred remembered that he’d had to start again too. It felt good to talk to someone who understood.

“I think maybe you confused cutting your own path through life with cutting yourself off,” Ryan went on, gently. “Your input could be the difference between another hundred years of Hallow-Hart Crackers, and their extinction.”

“Liam said pretty much the same thing. I do feel fired up about what I could do here. I just need to—”

“Get over yourself?” Ryan cut in.

“Yeah,” she smiled. “That. I can’t believe I’m taking life advice from an elf.”

“Never underestimate the wisdom of Father Christmas’s little helpers.”

—

In the end, Aggie was diagnosed with one sprained wrist, and one badly bruised, and was issued a splint bandage for each.

She was most aggrieved by her situation, and even Bella arriving home with Liam and a Chinese takeaway wasn’t enough to stop her angrily shouting “Bunkum!” at her splints every time she caught sight of them.

However, her mood was pepped immeasurably when Ryan returned after dinner, having swapped his elf attire for jeans and a hoody, bringing with him his parents, brothers, their partners and their children to help put up the decorations that had been scuppered by her accident.

On that score, Benj had called in a favor from one of his mates who happened to be a plumber, and who was quickly taken to the bathroom to fix the cause of all the trouble.