Page 1 of Meet Me Under the Northern Lights

WINCHESTER CHRISTMAS MARKET, WINCHESTER, HAMPSHIRE, UK

‘Why does mulled wine taste so superior to wine that isn’t hot?’ Kat Jenkins smacked her lips together and gave an exaggerated eyeroll.

‘Because it’s freezing?’ Chloe Bellamy offered, stamping her Ugg-clad feet to will life into her soles.

‘No, it’s the cinnamon… meeting the cloves… and saying a big how do you do and Merry Christmas to the beautifully warm alcohol.’

Kat had said the sentence like she was on stage playing a part in her am-dram group and then she gurgle-giggled and Chloe noticed exactly how rosy her friend’s cheeks were.

At least one of them had body parts that were warm.

Because Winchester was freezing tonight, even amid these cosy-looking wooden huts all lit up with fairy lights beneath the magnificent cathedral.

It was so cold Chloe was wearing Michael’s university scarf around her neck.

She hadn’t even known it was still on the coat hooks until it had revealed itself, draped over the hood of her warmest padded jacket.

What it was still doing there when it was almost nine months since its owner had departed carrying everything else he owned in a cardboard box/old suitcase combo, she didn’t really know.

As soon as those test results had come in, two years together had disintegrated more rapidly than a potted Christmas fir on Boxing Day…

‘Aren’t you having any?’ Kat asked, mid-slurp.

She shook her head. ‘Not tonight.’

‘Oh, don’t be one of those pre-Christmas detoxers.

I don’t get that at all. Deny yourself life’s greatest pleasures when they’re all around you, then go crazy from the twenty-fifth to some time before Valentine’s Day when self-loathing hits.

’ She inhaled. ‘I say skip the self-loathing and never, ever skip anything that tastes so good you wouldn’t mind if you actually turned into it. ’

And now Chloe was wondering what life would be like if she had to continue it as a sausage roll…

‘I can’t drink in case I get “the phone call” and have to drive,’ she said, eyes drifting to a chalet stall dishing out ladles full of delicious-smelling hot chocolate.

‘Honestly it feels like the whole “the phone call” scenario has been going on longer than the pregnancy. Actually, make that longer than an elephant’s pregnancy.’

‘Michelle is due on Christmas Day.’

‘How very nativity. Do John Lewis do little gift stockings of frankincense?’

Chloe shook her head. OK, it was far from ideal having spent the past eight months with a boss who went from caring to cataclysmic in 0.

5 seconds such were her hormones, but Michelle was doing a brave thing, having a baby at forty-two.

And, as tough as the situation was for Chloe to be part of, Michelle had been so good to her since she had joined the events company – Celebratey.

She had done the smaller events right at the beginning – made actual cow-pat cakes with farm-loving five-year-olds, modelled balloons at the pro-bono gigs for goodwill mentions on socials – now she had risen quickly through the ranks to be Michelle’s go-to girl.

Any moment now, maybe even like the King’s New Year’s Honours, Chloe was hopeful to get the fully-fledged ‘partner’ offer.

It wasn’t like she had anything else to invest her money in right now.

‘I don’t know why you don’t like Michelle,’ Chloe said, stamping her boots a bit more.

‘You do know why I don’t like Michelle,’ Kat answered. She blew at her mulled wine.

‘Honestly, Kat, how can you hold a grudge about one tiny incident?’

‘She tipped guacamole on me!’

‘She didn’t tip it on you. It was an accident.’

‘She flicked her fork at me!’

‘She flicked it in the air! You know how animated she gets when she talks. It wasn’t deliberate.’

Kat huffed, breath visible. ‘I don’t know why I’m trying to get you to see my side of things. You’re Team Michelle no matter what.’

‘I’m not,’ Chloe said. ‘But, also I wasn’t under the impression that my friendships were in competition with each other.’

Kat whipped her head around. ‘Oh, so she’s your friend now, not just your boss?’

Was Michelle her friend as well as her boss?

Well, it was difficult to have that kind of multifaceted relationship when someone had to be the authority figure, the one in charge.

And Chloe didn’t really confide in Michelle like she confided in Kat.

Michelle didn’t even know all the details of what had happened between her and Michael.

In fact, Michelle didn’t know any of the details of what had happened between her and Michael.

And, come to think of it, Michelle hadn’t actually ever asked…

Then it struck her. This wasn’t anything to do with Michelle. Kat was just in a mood. And Kat only behaved like this when a certain person was on her mind. ‘Kat, has your mother invited herself for Christmas Day?’

‘Oh my God! So now you think I’m hating on your friend, Michelle, because my mother has invited herself for Christmas Day!’ Kat exclaimed.

Chloe waited, watching Kat and briefly tuning out the carol music rising in the frosty air. A hard task when they were being accompanied by a very out of tune trumpet…

‘OK!’ Kat bellowed. ‘So my mother’s invited herself for Christmas Day!’

The exclamation was so loud children turned away from the sugared doughnut stand to look.

‘And now I can feel a panic attack coming on! I need a paper bag! I need… something!’

Before Chloe could do anything, Kat downed the rest of her mulled wine in one great glug and started to breathe, open-mouthed like she was auditioning for a lead role of a ferocious dragon.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ Chloe said, hand on Kat’s back now, gently patting.

Although, Kat’s mother, Rula, was a force to be reckoned with.

She was the kind of woman who knew what the word ‘no’ was, because she used it a lot herself, but when it came to recognising its meaning with regard to others, it fell out of her personal dictionary.

‘It’s not going to be OK,’ Kat answered, all breathy like she’d swallowed mouthwash that had taken a layer of skin from her tongue.

‘She will criticise everything. From the garland on the front door – too much greenery, Katherine, not enough berries; the turkey – I find it can be a particularly dry meat if it’s not cooked just right; to the King’s speech – does he look a bit peaky to you or is it your television?

I thought his cancer had all cleared up. ’

‘Kat—’

‘And you know she never stops. Last year I spent an hour in the bathroom pretending to have constipation just so I could get some peace.’

‘Why don’t you tell her to stop criticising?’ Chloe asked. ‘Stop’ had to work better than ‘no’, right?

‘And have her criticise my inability to accept criticism?’

Chloe’s phone began to ring. A dart of panic hit when she saw the screen. ‘It’s Michelle.’

‘Ugh, trust Guac One to interrupt in my time of need!’

‘It could be the baby,’ Chloe reminded. She answered. ‘Hello.’

‘Where are you?’ Michelle said abruptly.

‘I’m just at the Christmas market and?—’

‘OK, good. So, you need to get home and pack a bag.’

Chloe’s heart started to race. It was the baby. It was too early. Weeks too early. But she needed to be calm like she always was. She was the woman who’d learned magic from YouTube in sixteen minutes when an international conjuror hadn’t shown…

‘OK, well, my bag is already packed and you said the private hospital has a high-end kind-of Just Eat option so?—’

‘What do you mean your bag is already packed? I know you’re good, Chloe, great even, but you’re not a mind-reader surely.’

‘My bag’s been packed since the start of the second trimester.

I’m sure I told you that.’ She had definitely told Michelle that.

She told Michelle everything she was on top of so Michelle knew she was consistent, reliable, not about to jump ship any time soon…

Much better to tell your boss these things rather than the fact your long-term boyfriend left you because you were medically deficient.

‘Oh my God! Chloe!’

‘Is it a contraction?! How far apart are they? I am leaving, right now!’

She didn’t get more than a few steps away from a gesticulating Kat before Michelle spoke again.

‘I’m not in labour, Chloe!’

Chloe stopped, unexpectedly jostling someone in the queue for smoky bratwursts. ‘What?’

‘I’m not in labour! I have a few weeks to go yet and the head is less fully engaged than Milo during the NCT classes.’

Now Chloe didn’t understand at all. ‘But what bag are we talking about if it’s not my not-the-daddy-but-the-work-baddie bag for the birth?’

‘A bag that you can fit warm clothes in. Very warm clothes. Along with all the ingenuity I know you have, and all the savvy entrepreneurship I’ve passed along.’

‘I don’t think there’s a bag big enough for all that savviness, Michelle.’

‘Cute, Chloe. But seriously, you can’t fuck this up.’

Chloe didn’t even know what ‘this’ was. Only that it wasn’t being there with Michelle and Milo as their newborn slithered down the birth canal. Kat was looking at her now, probably wondering what was going down on the call.

‘You’re going to Iceland. Tomorrow.’

Iceland the supermarket. Michelle had to mean Iceland the supermarket. She tried to speak but quickly realised she was struggling even to draw breath and that smoky sausage aroma in the air wasn’t aiding inhalation.

‘Remember Lincoln?’

The place? A car? Biscuits?

‘I—’

‘Chloe, have you caught my baby brain? Lincoln Sinclair! The CEO of Sinclairz Chairs.’

Sinclairz Chairs was a global company that made chairs guaranteed to support every sinew of you and realign your spine or you got your money back.

Chloe had been sceptical of how this guarantee was activated without every customer getting a before and after MRI scan, but it seemed there was barely a household or office without one of the Sinclairz chairs in residence.

And Michelle and Chloe had met Lincoln Sinclair at a mother and baby expo in Birmingham that Chloe remembered more for devouring three Big Mac meals after what felt like the longest, most exposure therapy day ever and crying into her king-sized bed, than she did for the CEO’s nursing chair.

‘Chloe!’

Chloe inhaled. ‘Yes, Lincoln Sinclair, I remember.’

‘He wants us to pitch for a huge event for Sinclairz Chairs’ tenth anniversary next December.’

‘O-K.’ And he wanted catering from Iceland? From what Chloe could remember, Lincoln Sinclair was definitely more a Waitrose man than an Iceland man. Marks and Spencer’s good sushi at the very least.

‘So, your flight is tomorrow morning. I know it’s last minute, but it has to be now, otherwise how are we going to know what kind of thing there is for a CEO and his troops to do?

He wants festive and fabulous in Reykjavik and he is going to pay whoever gets the job – that means potentially us – a very pretty sum to organise everything.

And the most brilliant thing is… you speak Icelandic, so you are going to be able to negotiate everything in the native tongue and get the best price. ’

Icelandic. Reykjavik. Not the home of cut-price pizzas and Mayflower curry sauce.

Iceland the country. And finally, having never had to face the reality of her embellished CV before, her lies were coming back to haunt her.

She couldn’t speak Icelandic! She had no ties, language or otherwise, with the country in the Arctic Circle!

And now, right when she was ready to throw even more than everything into her career, exactly when she was poised to leap onto a partnership offer she knew had to be coming, she was about to be exposed as a fraud in the worst way.

She had to confess, quickly. Hope that Michelle soon becoming a mother had softened her ball-breaker attitude just a tad. She opened her mouth to speak.

‘I mean, Chloe, this is such a huge opportunity for us! Potentially organising an event for Sinclairz Chairs! The Sinclairz Chairs! Their anniversary celebration at Christmas time, in Iceland. And do you know how many influential people Lincoln knows? If we win this and then go on to do it brilliantly we could be talking business with people who have been to royal garden parties or… on Graham Norton’s sofa. ’

‘Great!’

That was the word she had chosen? One word. Not the many words she should be saying that explained how she didn’t know Icelandic!

‘Are you excited? Because I am so excited! More excited about this than having to dilate ten centimetres in a few weeks if I’m honest, but don’t tell Milo that!

I wish I could go! But, Chloe, I know you are going to do just as good a job as I would, better with your linguistic skills, even.

So, I will put everything you need to know in an email and… ’

As Michelle carried on wrapping up, Chloe looked to Kat who was coming closer, new steaming paper cups in her hand. This time she was not going to refuse the mulled wine. What did ‘no’ mean again?