Page 4 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

The Crooked Elm was packed with revelers, many jubilant at having outrun Krampus.

Every few minutes another ruddy-faced runner burst through the door to cheers and back slaps and cold pints.

Some had dressed for the occasion in sportswear, others were in fancy dress like Ryan.

Fred wondered how the woman dressed as a Christmas pudding had managed to outrun Krampus.

A man in a stiff starfish suit seemed to be regretting his life choices as he tried to reach the bar.

Wodges of cash were passed between the winners and losers of bets, and sponsorship monies were collected.

More notes were waved in the air as punters tried to catch the attention of the busy bar staff.

It was noisy and almost oppressively hot after being outside, but the mood was the kind of jolly that, if bottled, would surely taste of apple pie.

A scruffy lurcher and a mastiff with jowls so droopy they seemed to melt along the flagstone floor were sprawled out together in front of the fire.

Rows of horse brasses hooked to the uneven walls glinted in the light from lamps so old they’d transcended being fashionable through to frumpish and would now be considered quaintly vintage.

Pieces of ancient farming equipment were attached to the gnarled ceiling beams, nestled in with long garlands of dried hops; the taller patrons had to duck to avoid being clipped by a scythe or letting loose a shower of crisp yellowing flowers into their hair.

“Here we are,” said Ryan, pushing a hammered copper tankard of mulled wine across the beer-barrel table toward her. “Sorry it took so long.” He pulled out a stool opposite her. She’d managed to snag the last remaining table in the place.

“Thanks,” she said, picking up the tankard by its generous handle and holding it up toward him.

He smiled, lifting his own tankard and clinking it against hers. “Cheers!”

The wine was spicy and sweet with clementine and brown sugar. She had to admit that nowhere down south made mulled wine as good as the pubs in Pine Bluff.

“God, this takes me back,” she said, looking around the pub. “Remember how we used to sneak out to join Krampus Night when we were teenagers?”

“Yup. And the pubs would never serve us because we were underage. You know our parents knew what we were up to, don’t you?”

She laughed. “Yeah, Mum told me, a few years back. They had half the town looking out for us, to make sure we didn’t come to any harm.”

“We thought we were so hard, being out that late on a school night.”

“And the year we were allowed to dress up as Krampus elves, what were we, sixteen?”

“That was the best,” said Ryan. “You had a water bottle filled with booze from the aunts’ liquor cabinet.”

“It was the only way we were going to get hold of any alcohol.”

“It’s crazy to think one of my nephews is almost the same age as we were when we first started sneaking out.”

“No!”

“Yep, want to see a photo?” Ryan flicked through his phone, then handed it to her.

She studied the picture; seven children of varying ages, from preteen down to toddlers, grinned out at her. “These aren’t all Rab’s?” she asked.

“No, four of them are Benj’s. I think my parents have given up hope of getting any grandchildren out of me.”

“You don’t want to have kids?” She placed the phone on the table between them.

“I’d love to—all I need to do is meet the love of my life.”

“No pressure, then.”

“Luck hasn’t exactly been on my side thus far.”

“Tell me about it!”

He bit his lip and held her eyes with his. “I was sorry to hear about your job”—he left a beat—“and everything. That sucks. I mean, it more than just sucks obviously, it’s deeply shit.”

She broke his gaze, her jaw clenched. Three years ago, she was living with her partner, Tim—a university lecturer—in a house in Highbury, and working in advertising at the company she’d been with for five years. Now she had no Tim, no house and no job; she was washed up at thirty-five.

“Don’t pull that face,” Ryan scolded, trying not to smile.

“What face?”

“Your pissy face; the one where you clench your teeth and half squint your eyes. Your situation isn’t common knowledge, so you can relax; Aggie told me in confidence because she thought you might need a friend.”

Oh. Right. His words took some of the wind out of her sails, but she was slightly miffed that her tells hadn’t evolved with age. So much for returning as a woman of mystery!

“Thank you,” she said. Her broken heart over Tim had mended reasonably quickly, but the imprint his behavior had left on her self-esteem would take longer to smooth out. Losing her job hadn’t helped. “Sorry. I get spiky about people knowing my business.”

“The hazards of growing up in a small town.” He gave her a smile of solidarity and she returned it. “But you’re doing okay?” he asked.

“If you define ‘okay’ as moving back in with my mum and barmy aunties.”

“I thought you were only perching?”

“I am. It’s a long-stay perch situation.”

“A holi-perch?”

She smiled despite herself. “My choices were limited.”

“It could be worse,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Listen, I get it. Five years ago, I was where you are, though for slightly different reasons,” said Ryan.

“I burned out at work and had to leave my job before they fired me, then my girlfriend dumped me for a man whose career hadn’t taken a nosedive, and…

well, the point of my oversharing is to let you know that you’re not the first person to hit a slump.

And as a recovering slumper, I’m happy to lend a listening ear should you need one.

” He twanged his elf ears, and she couldn’t help but smile.

For some reason—perhaps due to him being dressed as one of Father Christmas’s elves—it hadn’t occurred to her that Ryan might have a grown-up life with grown-up problems. He’d always been the joker at school, never taking anything seriously, and unconsciously she had expected him to remain in that same mold.

This seemingly wiser version was going to take a bit of getting used to.

“I’m sorry you had a hard time. I didn’t know that,” she said. Is that true? It was ringing bells somewhere in the back of her head. Did her mum tell her and she was so caught up in her own dramas that it simply didn’t register? What does that say about me?

He shrugged and the jingle bells attached to his multi-petaled green collar jangled sweetly. “It’s okay. I was feeling pretty down on myself for a while there. My pride forced me to hide away from the people who could have helped me out of my hole a lot sooner.”

“Are you talking about your family?” When she was a kid, Martha and Diggory were everything she imagined “proper” parents ought to be. She found it hard to imagine not turning to them in a time of need.

“Yeah. I know you always had them up on a pedestal—and they are great, don’t get me wrong—but sometimes having your parents swoop in and fix everything only makes you feel like even more of a loser.”

She could understand that.

Three more Krampus escapees burst through the pub door to boisterous congratulations and whistles.

One of them was dressed like a turkey. Their cheeks were crimson apples from the cold, and Fred shivered at the idea of walking back to the Forest Inn in the frigid night air.

She looked at her watch. It was almost eleven o’ clock.

Krampus had one more hour of mayhem before being relegated to myth and legend for another year.

“How long did it take you before you felt normal again? Relatively speaking,” she added, pointedly looking at his costume.

He looked thoughtful as he turned a cardboard beer coaster over and over on the table.

“Once I’d opened up about what I was going through, and let the people who love me help, things got better quickly. Eventually, I found a new path that suits me better. My folks were great.”

“Yeah, but you have your family. I’m about to move back in with a woman who, when not making Christmas Crackers, is making out with every loser in town, and two octogenarians who think that custard and advocaat are legitimately interchangeable.”

He laughed. “When we were kids, everyone wanted to live with your family. You never knew how good you had it.”

She was about to reply when a man with a thick handlebar mustache and a beard big enough for crows to nest in banged his tankard on the tabletop and shouted, “Little Freddie Hallow-Hart, as I live and breathe! I heard tell you’d be back, but I didn’t expect to see you out on Krampus Night.”

Oh, for god’s sake.

Ryan looked at her and nodded. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” Then he turned to the man and said, “I regret to inform you, Mr. Bishop, that she is not back, she’s merely perching, like a swallow.”

Fred scowled at Ryan, and he grinned back at her.

“What in the bollocky-billy-goats does that mean?” Mr. Bishop roared.

Fred sighed. “It means I won’t be stopping for long, Mr. Bishop. Anyway, how are you?” She forced a smile. And so, it begins.

“Not too bad.” He scratched his chin, and his entire hand disappeared inside his beard. “Not too bad at all. I hope you two aren’t going to be up to any of your old tricks now the band is back together, as it were.” His eyes twinkled beneath two foxtail eyebrows.

“Not back together,” said Fred. “Never actually together.” There were some humiliations a girl never got over—and being rebuffed by Ryan Frost in a rowing boat when they were sixteen was one of them.

Ryan smirked.

“Young Ryan here’s a reformed character, these days. I don’t want you being a bad influence on him, Freddie Hallow-Hart.”

She smiled sweetly up at Mr. Bishop. “I will be on my best behavior.”

“You’d better be. You don’t want to wind up on the Naughty List. Again!”

“Dad repainted the chalkboard yesterday in readiness for her arrival,” said Ryan, grinning.