Page 54 of I’ll Be Home for Christmas

“Do you have writing paper?” Fred asked her great-aunt.

Ryan had left to check in on his dad and locate an elf costume for her. It hadn’t been easy to stop kissing him. She could still feel the delightful tingle of his beard from where he’d trailed kisses along her throat, and found her hand moving to stroke where he’d been.

“Of course!” said Cam. She was busying herself at the kitchen table, threading slices of dried orange and bay leaves onto a long piece of string. “The art of letter writing is still alive and kicking in our generation. To whom are you writing?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Doukas, the Campbells, and the Riccis at Nonna’s Olive Branch for starters. I need to explain that I didn’t set them up for Warren’s article but also apologize for it. What do you think?”

“I think they’ll appreciate the gesture,” said Aunt Cam, piercing another shiny green leaf with her yarn needle and adding it to the garland.

“Hopefully, they’ll tell everyone else before the town reinstates the ducking stool just for me.”

Aunt Cam chuckled lightly. “You’re a Hallow-Hart; they think you’re a witch already.”

Fred shrugged in agreement. “Also, I have an idea that could help build some bridges, but I want to run it by the family first.”

“Well then,” said Aunt Cam, securing the end of the garland by tying a cinnamon stick to it, and standing up, “I’ll fetch the writing paper; you summon the coven.”

Ten minutes later, Cam reappeared with Aggie. She handed Fred a flattish wooden box, open to reveal a sheaf of paper faintly patterned all over with pine trees, and a separate compartment filled with envelopes. Fred lifted the box to her nose. “Did you spray the paper with perfume?” she asked.

“We gave it a spritz of lavender, patchouli and ylang-ylang to soothe the senses of your recipients,” said Aggie.

“And a drop or two of geranium for its antianxiety properties,” added Cam.

“Oh,” Fred sniffed it again. “Thank you, that’s very thoughtful.”

“And I brought you this too.” Aunt Cam handed her a small pot of gel.

“What is it?”

“A little soothing aloe vera for that beard rash you’ve got going on around your chin and neck.” She smiled knowingly.

“Oh Goddess!” Fred put her hands to her face, but she laughed, opening the pot and dabbing some of the cooling gel around her chin.

The aunts settled themselves at the table and Fred flicked on the kettle for tea.

A moment later, Bella walked in with Liam. Fred thought she’d never seen her mum look more radiant.

“Are you staying, Liam?” Fred asked, her hand hovering over an extra mug.

“No thanks, love, I’ll leave you ladies to your business. I’ve got to get down to the stall. And I have some arrangements to make—romantic getaways, and so forth.” He smiled broadly at Bella, who beamed back at him.

Fred couldn’t help her own smile in response. How had she missed seeing how happy they were around each other? Their auras were practically glowing…she pulled herself up short. Did I just think about auras? This place really is rubbing off on me . She smiled even harder.

With mugs of tea and a plate of digestives present and correct, the meeting began.

“So, here’s what I’m thinking,” Fred began.

“I’ll record an intro for Hallow-Hart Crackers, and then—if they’ll let me—I’ll do interviews at all the places Warren slagged off in his article.

I’ll make the videos fun, and add in a ‘getting to know the town’ montage, and then I’ll upload one a day to Instagram and TikTok.

I’ll tag the restaurants and make them collaborators on the posts, and that way the traffic generated goes direct to them. ”

“Sounds great to me,” said Bella.

Aunt Aggie nodded. “I can’t see why they wouldn’t want to be a part of it.”

“And I wondered if—provided they agree—we could include a Dinner-for-Two voucher, one for each restaurant, in some of our cracker boxes for the Christmas market; make it a part of our campaign, like a lucky dip? I’ll tag the market’s Insta page in the promotion.

I know it’s a lot to ask of people who’ve just had their businesses slagged off, to give away freebies, but this would be a fantastic way to get new patrons through their doors.

It would get people talking about the place in a good way again,” Fred went on, buoyed by the enthusiastic expressions of her family.

“I agree,” said Aunt Cam. “Warren’s newspaper article will be festering on compost heaps in a few days, but if you can get your TikTok to be trendy on the line…”

“Yes, make them a virus,” added Aunt Aggie.

“Exactly, a trendy virus, that’s how they all do it now, even Dame Judi Dench had one of those,” Aunt Cam agreed, and then added in a low whisper, “Dame Judi is my free pass!”

“I didn’t know that,” said Bella. “Who’s yours, Aunt Aggie?”

“Oh dear, touchy subject,” said Aunt Cam, sighing.

“It’s not my fault they keep bloody well dying!” exclaimed Aunt Aggie. “First, I lost Honor Blackman, then Diana Rigg. Free passes are not to be chosen willy-nilly. At the moment it’s between Anjelica Huston and Shirley Bassey; I like my women sassy.”

“I’m not sure how we got here,” said Fred.

“I think that might be my fault,” Bella replied. “But anyway, I think it’s a great idea. I fully support it. If you like, I can talk to Andreas at the Forest Inn, see if he wants to offer a voucher too. I’ve almost become a part of the furniture since Liam’s been staying there.”

Fred made sure to catch her mum’s eye and give her a smile.

“And we’ve got a Jezebel at the Crooked Elm, so leave that with us,” said Aunt Aggie.

“Okay, that just leaves me to write these letters. I think it’s going to take me a while.”

“We’ll leave you to it, dear,” said Aunt Cam. “I’ve got to prepare for our PBJ life-drawing class.”

“Mr. Bishop is our model for this evening,” added Aunt Aggie.

“You’re not holding it here, are you?” asked Fred, aghast. “I’m not sure Mr. B’s nakedness is something I could come back from—not after the day I’ve had.”

Aunt Cam chuckled. “Don’t you worry, sweet thing, you’re quite safe from Mr. Bishop’s birthday suit; the vicar has offered us the use of the church hall for our classes.”

The kitchen cleared out, and soon it was only Fred and her box of paper left. She made herself another mug of tea and settled down to write. It had been a long time since she’d put pen to paper in this way. But once she got started, she found the process quite cathartic.

She had fallen in love with her hometown by degrees, hardly noticing it was happening at all until this morning, when faced with losing its good opinion of her.

This community in this small town had only ever offered her a soft place to land; had reached out with many hands to pick her up—sometimes literally—when she’d fallen; had seen her home safely when she was a slip of a girl running wild; had given her the benefit of the doubt more times than she could count.

This was her home, and she was determined to make sure she deserved it.

The Aga hummed and ticked to itself in the corner and as the afternoon light slowly ebbed away, she lit candles to write by. Outside, snowflakes brushed against the windowpanes, and the seabirds screeched, but inside, all was calm and bright.

—

Fred hand delivered each letter through the recipients’ letter boxes. By the end of Tuesday, she’d heard back from all of them and was relieved to find that not only was she off the hook over the article but they were happy to take part in her collaborative marketing plan.

“People rarely want to stay angry,” said Aunt Cam on Wednesday morning, as she cleared the table after first breakfast. “It’s tiring carrying all that extra weight around, makes you ill; most of the time, folks want to shuck it off as quickly as possible.”

Fred was scribbling down some final notes and reminders for her first video. Her mum was already in the workshop, and Aunt Aggie was locked in a battle of wills with some snails that were hell bent on munching the sprout trees she’d earmarked for Christmas dinner.

She leaned back from her notebook, idly chewing the end of her pen as she thought about all the Mum baggage she’d lugged around for most of her adult life. She wondered how much of those negative energies had seeped into her life, slowly poisoning it. She had no one to blame but herself.

“Do you think I ruined my own life by being angry at Mum? Like, did I push out so much spite that it boomeranged back around to me?”

“Gracious, child, the very notion. Ruined? Your feelings on that subject were a mere speck on your overall blueprint—one molecule among the trillions that make up your story. And that story has barely begun, how could you have possibly ruined it?”

“I feel like I wasted so much time and energy on blaming Mum for everything.”

“And now you’ve let it go. It’s done. Don’t lament it. Celebrate all that free space you’ve got inside you, waiting to be filled up with silver linings.”

“You have such a good way of looking at things.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to practice. And plenty of time to get it wrong and make it right again. Life is one long game of Snakes and Ladders; the trick is to keep getting back on the ladder.”

“I seem to have slipped down a lot of snakes recently.”

“But your feet are still on the rungs.” Aunt Cam nodded toward her notebook. “How are you feeling about what you’ve got planned for today?”

Fred put her hand to her stomach as the queasiness gave another churn. “Nervous.”

“There’s no need. Just think of yourself as a spotlight pointed toward our friends, giving them a chance to shine in the light.” There was a knock at the door. “That’ll be your young man.” Her aunt smiled knowingly at her, and this time Fred didn’t correct her.

“Greetings!” Ryan smiled at her, holding up an elf costume on a coat hanger in one hand, and clutching a green hat and pointy ears in the other.

She beamed at the sight of him, and her smile lingered when he leaned across the threshold to kiss her.

“Come in and I’ll get changed.”

“You’d better put a coat on over the top of it; you’re only a part-time elf, after all. It’s freezing out, and you don’t have the magic of the North Pole to keep the chill out.”

She shook her head as she took the hanger from him, and slipped into the sitting room to change while he popped into the kitchen for a cuppa.

The red-and-white striped sparkly tights were mercifully thick, and Martha had lent her a pair of her green Dr. Marten boots to wear with them.

The green velvet skater-style dress was short, but not sexy-short, with a red organza frill at the bottom—so she wouldn’t have to worry about exposing her bottom every time she bent over—with a matching red Peter Pan collar.

She pulled on the long-sleeved green bolero and then fitted on her pointy ears.

Last of all, she fixed on the hat with the little bell that jangled when she moved.

She’d left her black hair loose, and it tumbled down around her shoulders.

Fred wasn’t usually one for red lipstick—she always felt it popped too much against her pale complexion and dark hair—but this outfit seemed to cry out for it, just as Aunt Aggie had said it would when she’d pressed the Mac lipstick into her hand earlier.

She slicked it over her lips now and checked herself in the mirror.

Yep. She looked like a thirty-five-year-old elf.

Ryan was leaning against the worktop, mug in hand, when Fred walked into the kitchen. He stopped talking mid-sentence when he saw her, and stood with his mouth open.

“Try not to dribble on your shoes, dear,” Aunt Cam said to him, smiling.

Ryan flushed and closed his mouth. She watched him swallow, and enjoyed the thrill of pleasure she felt low in her abdomen.

“You look”—he swallowed again—“cute.”

Fred raised her eyebrows. “Cute?”

He recovered himself. “I think you look more appealing in your outfit than I do in mine.”

“Oh, don’t do yourself down, Ryan,” said Aunt Cam. “You make a very fetching elf. As do you, Fred, my love,” she continued. “You look as pretty as a picture.”

“Thanks. Okay,” she said, pushing down the sudden flutter of nerves that had erupted in her stomach again. “Let’s get started.”