Prologue
1988
Hallow House was just as Bella remembered it. The last time she’d visited Pine Bluff, she was only ten years old. She and her mother had fled their home in the middle of the night and climbed exhaustedly up this same path into the warm embraces of their family. A few days later, her father had arrived and made great proclamations of love and promises that he would never keep, and they had left with him soon after. Bella had waved at her aunts through the back window of the old Ford Cortina and stared longingly after the house until only the spire atop the small turret was visible and then that too was lost behind rugged hills and Scottish fog.
Six years later, she was back. She peered through the iron railings, her eyes following the path up to the house, a tall gothic sandstone structure, all Victorian gable trims and too many chimneys. The morning sunlight blinked off the windows and a flag – emblazoned with the Hallow-Hart family crest – flew at half mast; this, she knew, was for her mother and the sentiment warmed her, despite the chill of an early autumn breeze biting into her bones.
Cancer had taken her mother in the spring, and last night Bella’s remaining parent had disowned her approximately thirty minutes after she had tearfully confessed to being
pregnant. She had hurriedly scooped her possessions into a rucksack, so blinded by tears she couldn’t properly see what she was packing. Her father didn’t bid her goodbye, but the front door was left wide open, inviting her to use it, and the noise as it slammed shut at her back ricocheted around the tidy terraced houses in the street.
As for Karl, the nineteen-year-old guitar-playing bricky who had sworn his undying love to her just a few short weeks ago, he had miraculously disappeared the day after she’d told him about the baby. The landlady at his boarding house could tell her only that he’d moved to Yorkshire.
So, she had bought a train ticket and headed for the only people in the world she could rely on. The iron gate was unlocked, and it gave with a shuddering groan when she pushed at it. Aside from the flag, it was as though time had stood still beyond the railings encasing the grand house and its generous gardens. To the front, either side of the path, a profusion of flowers danced across the lawns like a carnival, displaying their colour and fragrance right up to October.
The gardens at the back were filled with glasshouses, cold frames, neat raised vegetable beds and a voluptuous herb garden that her aunts used for cooking, cure-alls, and the occasional spell. Overlooking it was the workshop where her aunt Aggie and her life partner, Aunt Cam, worked alongside each other, looking out of windows with unobstructed views of the Atlantic Ocean. At the far end of the garden there stood a cluster of ancient stone buildings – the oldest structures on the Hallow-Hart land, sheltered from the worst of the coastal winds by a small wood where Bella had foraged for mushrooms with her
aunts while her mother rested. Once upon a time – so she’d been told – you had to walk nearly half a mile from the workshop to reach the cliff edge. Now it was five hundred yards. One day, all those stone buildings would crash down into the sea. ‘Mother Earth reclaims us all, eventually,’ her mother used to say. Some sooner than others.
Granny Hazel had recently retired and was currently trekking in Nepal, while Aggie and Cam ran the family business, designing and constructing Hallow-Hart Christmas crackers. Bella’s father decried it as a frivolous enterprise, unbecoming of Christ’s birthday, and wouldn’t allow them in the house. But the likes of Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason begged to differ.
It was still early, and the welcoming smell of woodsmoke drifted down from the chimneys. She put her hand to her stomach. There were options. She could put the baby up for adoption, let someone older and wiser than her provide it with a good home. Or she could get a termination; the school nurse, a compassionate woman who smelled of cigarettes and TCP, had said that she would help her. ‘This needn’t define your life,’ she had said kindly. But Bella knew that unless she could produce a time machine, she would be changed by whichever path she chose. And since her whole body seemed to revolt against all other solutions to her situation, there really was only one path left. She’d already lost so much; she didn’t think her heart could survive any more goodbyes. She didn’t have much to offer, but she had a lot of love – and since her mum had died, she had a lot of it going spare. She put her hand to her stomach, ‘Well, I guess it’s me and you. Let’s hope the aunts don’t mind the “shame” we’re about to bring on their
household.’ As though her words were a charm, the front door flew open to a waft of baking bread and frying bacon.
‘I told you it was her!’ Aunt Aggie trilled, stomping down ahead of Aunt Cam in her wellington boots and pulling Bella into a hug.
Cam was only seconds behind her, and Bella found herself muscled out of one aunt’s embrace and unceremoniously squished against the ample bosom of the other.
‘How long have we got you for?’ Aggie asked. ‘Please tell us you can stay a while. We’ve been burning herbs all summer, especially on the full moons, asking the universe to bring you to us, but your father’s a tough nut, and we weren’t sure our invocations would work on him.’
Her aunts looked at her expectantly.
Bella took a deep breath. ‘Um,’ she began haltingly. ‘I-I can’t go home. Ever. He threw me out. Because I’m, um . . .’ Instinctively her hand moved across to her stomach and hovered there, protectively. She looked down at it, and the aunts’ gaze followed hers, until they were all three staring at her belly. Though there was no sign of a bump yet, her aunts cottoned on quick enough.
‘It would seem that our dear niece is carrying more than just a bag,’ said Aunt Aggie, knowingly.
‘Then she’s arrived in the nick of time!’ Cam declared. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing –’ she smacked a kiss on Bella’s forehead – ‘you’re home now. We’ll work this through together. Whatever you decide to do, we are unquestioningly here for you. You’ll find no judgement in this house.’
‘Well, don’t keep her out in the cold, Cam. Good Christ, there’s nothing of you, child! Never mind, it’s nothing that
a few home-cooked meals can’t remedy. Come along now, in you come, your room’s ready for you.’
‘It’s been ready since your mother passed,’ added Aunt Cam, throwing an arm around Bella’s shoulders at the same time as Aggie wrestled the heavy rucksack off her back and began to herd them both towards the house.
‘Cam, throw some more bacon in the pan, mushrooms too. I’ll fetch more eggs from the henhouse once I’ve got Bella in front of the fire. And tea! Put the kettle on, I’ve never seen a wretch more in need of tea in all my days.’
Bella allowed herself to be herded and fussed into the house. As her boots crossed the threshold she was engulfed with warmth and a comfort so deep she could have gone to sleep right there on the welcome mat. Dark wood panelling lined the walls of the generous hallway, and a fire crackled in the hearth. On the rug in front of it lay a fat tabby cat and a Labrador shaped like a barrel, who both woke up and stretched before coming to greet her.
‘Hello, Isobel,’ Bella said to the cat as it twisted itself around her legs. ‘Hey there, Gowdie.’ She rubbed the top of the old Lab’s head. ‘I’ve missed you two.’
‘And they’ve missed you!’ said Aunt Cam. ‘But that’s all behind us now. You’re safe and you’re home. And that’s all that matters.’
Wednesday 20th November, 2024
Fred Hallow-Hart shivered as she swiped the key card and pushed open the door to her room for the night. The Forest Inn was situated halfway up the high street. On ground-floor level was a quaint old bar which served real ale and pub grub, and held open mike nights on Tuesdays, or at least it did when Fred had lived in Pine Bluff. The upstairs – which once served as a dingy pool hall and boasted questionable function rooms – had undergone a full renovation and now offered the kind of boutique bedrooms found in the pages of Country Living magazine.
It was in room number twelve that Fred put down her overnight bag before throwing herself heavily on to the generous sleigh bed and closing her eyes. She’d already been recognized on her way from the busy bar to her room. She should have known it would be impossible to sneak back into her hometown; the Hallow-Harts were as much a part of Pine Bluff as the forests of firs and the wild ocean that surrounded it, and her resemblance to her ancestors was striking. Maybe she should have worn a disguise. Her eyes – like all the women in her family – were the colour of forget-me-nots and her long black hair kinked in lazy ‘S’ shapes down her back, past her shoulder blades. She’d never seen a picture of her father; but judging by how
similar she was to her mum and Aunt Aggie, she doubted he’d influenced her looks very much. They all three had the same button nose and high cheekbones, but Fred had the most freckles.
Hallow House was only half a mile up the hill and yet despite having driven for ten hours from London to get here, she couldn’t quite bring herself to close that final distance. She needed to acclimatize, to brace herself; she needed one more night where she could kid herself that she hadn’t officially failed at adulting. Tomorrow she would admit defeat and go home.
She sat up and checked her phone. It was only half past eight. She’d grabbed a bowl of noodles for dinner at the last motorway services, and now she fancied a glass of wine. She rang for room service but no one picked up, which was not surprising; she could hear the muffled din from the bar through the floor, the place was heaving tonight. There was nothing for it, she’d have to go back down to the bar and hope nobody tried to engage her in conversation. She wasn’t quite ready to admit out loud that a run of bad luck – both financial and romantic –had brought her scurrying home with her tail between her legs. Though let’s face it, half the town probably already knew. Her great-aunts’ community WhatsApp group – the Pine Bluff Jezebels – was the modern equivalent of a town crier.
The bar was even busier now than when she’d arrived, and by the time she’d fought her way through the noisy crowd and put a large glass of red on her room tab, she was feeling stifled and in need of some air. She sidled around a particularly boisterous group of tankard-clanking drinkers
and inched past the huddle near the piano singing ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ badly, and finally made it to the door that led out on to the high street. She welcomed the burst of cold air that washed over her as she stepped outside.
Quiet. Fred sighed contentedly and took a grateful sip of her wine.
She wouldn’t stay out here long, already the chill was eating through her jumper and jeans. Empty pint glasses stood abandoned on the picnic tables, ice crystals forming over the frothy dregs, half-smoked cigarettes hastily stubbed out in the terracotta ashtrays. Clearly, the bonhomie of the wood fire and the enthusiastic piano player inside were a greater enticement than any nicotine addiction.
There wasn’t a soul around. She took another sip of wine and placed her glass on one of the tables. Then she stepped out on to the long cobbled high street. It was laid out in a rough ‘U’ shape, winding downhill and up again at odd angles. To shop the length of it was a workout for the thighs. Here and there, covered passageways led to hidden arcades of cafés and boutiques. Smaller streets acted as tributaries, linking the bends in the long high street, and creating cut-throughs to those in the know.
If it wasn’t for the din coming from the pub, she might have thought she was alone in the town. The street lamps highlighted her clouded breath as she stood in the middle of the road, taking in the place which had once been so familiar to her.
Some of the shops from her childhood remained: Frost’s hardware store looked unchanged, and she was pleased to see Eadie’s bakery was still going after all these years. But
there were many more she didn’t recognize: several artisan coffee shops and delis, a wholefood store, a tanning salon and a beauty parlour that claimed to offer permanent make-up. All the shops were Christmas ready, the windows twinkling with fairy lights as far as the eye could see.
Even the bright lights of Islington couldn’t hold a candle to Pine Bluff at Christmas – and when the Christmas market arrived, the town would really come into its own. She used to love living in London, being a part of its constant rush and bustle. But two years spent in an exile of her own making had rendered her a spectator rather than a participant in the vibrant metropolis, and it had been a lonely existence. Here in Pine Bluff, her long Hallow-Hart roots ensured she belonged, whether she liked it or not.
She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she didn’t hear the sound of running feet until it was too late. She spun round in time for a six-foot Christmas elf to slam into her, knocking them both to the ground.
‘Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry!’ the elf puffed breathlessly as Fred – shocked and acting on adrenaline – struggled to get out from underneath him.
‘Get off me!’ she shouted, flailing and slapping at him.
‘I’m trying! My scarf is trapped under you. Will you just stop hitting me for a moment? You’re strangling me,’ he muttered in a gargled protest.
The elf tore at his throat, choking, and finally freed the scarf from around his neck. Gasping for air, he flopped gratefully to one side of her. Fred tried to scramble to her feet, but the cobbles were slippery and she promptly crashed back down on top of him, one knee connecting with his stomach as she tried to save herself.
‘Oof! Shit. Sorry. Sorry!’ she gasped, landing in a heap beside him.
The elf made a pained sound like a wounded wolfhound and rolled into a foetal position on the cobbles. The zigzag edges of his green velvet tunic lifted in the cool breeze to reveal thick emerald-green-and-red striped tights.
‘Hi, Fred,’ the elf groaned.
Breathing hard, she turned to face the elf; he was still cutting the frightened armadillo pose.
‘Ryan Frost?’ she asked, incredulous. She hadn’t seen him in years. Not since she’d left for university.
He nodded, eyes still squinting in pain.
‘Bella said you were moving back home,’ he croaked.
‘I’m not moving back,’ she snapped. ‘I’m . . .’ She fumbled for the words. ‘Perching. Like a swallow taking a breather during its journey south for the winter.’ She huffed. Yes, that was exactly it; she was perching. She was not back. Categorically not back.
‘I think you ruptured my spleen,’ Ryan moaned.
She huffed again as she helped him up to a sitting position.
‘I did not rupture your spleen. Why weren’t you looking where you were going? And why are you dressed like an elf?’
Together they staggered to their feet.
‘I borrowed the costume from the grotto for Krampus Night. I’m doing the run,’ he said, straightening his elf ears beneath his hat. Ryan’s dad, Diggory, was Pine Bluff’s Father Christmas. And his mum, Martha – best friend of Fred’s mum, Bella – played Mrs Christmas. Each year the Frost family ran the grotto to raise money for local
charities. ‘Why were you standing in the middle of the road?’
Fred opened her mouth to speak but was stopped by the vibrations rumbling up from the cobblestones and into her boots.
‘Oh, no. It can’t be! It’s too early. It isn’t even December!’ Fred rounded on Ryan.
‘Tell that to Krampus!’
‘Nope!’ Fred turned and ran towards the inn.
‘It’s too late,’ Ryan protested, running after her.
The legend of Krampus – Krampus being the ‘naughty’ to Saint Nicholas’s ‘nice’ – and the ensuing celebrations hailed from the Austrian Alps but had somehow been enthusiastically adopted by the small Scottish town of Pine Bluff. Fred reached the door in time to hear the clank of heavy bolts being drawn across from the inside, along with much laughter.
‘Let me in!’ she yelled, banging her fists on the door.
More laughter.
‘Sorry, Freddie Hallow-Hart, you know the rules!’ came a disembodied voice from behind the door.
‘I am a paying guest at this hotel.’ She almost stamped her foot in frustration.
Whistles and guffaws from inside met her protestations.
‘I don’t care how much you’ve paid, missy, this is Krampus Night, so you’d better get running!’ returned the voice through the locked door.
According to the folklore, by showing due respect to Krampus – and proving to the demon that you were no bah-humbug – he would leave you alone for the season, and thus ensure the townspeople enjoyed a merry and
prosperous Christmas market. Each year, on Krampus Night, a resident of the town volunteered to play the demon while others opted to be part of the grisly goblin army. Garbed in rags and gruesome masks, they banded together and paraded up and down the high street, singing and carousing and hunting for victims. For the rest of the participants – called ‘runners’, which now included Fred –the object was simple: don’t get caught.
This annual event was marketed as a bit of fun but, as with many traditions, it was steeped in superstition, and nobody wanted to risk the success of the market by bucking against it too much.
‘It’s no good,’ said Ryan, grabbing hold of her hand and trying to pull her away. ‘We need to leave now, or we’ll both get locked up.’
‘Oh, for god’s sake!’ she shouted in exasperation, before breaking into a run beside the elf. ‘This town is bloody ridiculous!’
The sound of Fred and Ryan’s boots slapping against the cobblestones echoed around the empty street – but a distant roaring, getting louder by the second, signalled that they wouldn’t be alone for long. Fred’s lungs were burning with the exertion and her boobs were jiggling up and down, barely contained by the lace of her bralette – what wouldn’t she give for a decent sports bra right now! Ryan still had hold of her hand, and when the indistinct rumble became the sound of beating hooves and drums, she wondered if this was how she would die.
Howls and hollering filled the air. Fred turned in time to see four horses round the corner, pulling a replica of a
medieval tumbril with prison bars. The rider on the box seat, playing the part of Krampus, was cloaked in furs and wore a hideous mask with two long goat-like horns twisting up out of his head. Running alongside the carriage were dozens of fur-clad goblins wearing equally terrifying masks; they carried broomsticks and shook their pitchforks.
‘Shiiiiiiiit! ’ she yelled.
On Krampus Night one of the pubs in the town was declared ‘home’. It was the only establishment to remain open; all the others would bar their doors, the customers singing and drinking with equal gusto to keep the spirit of Krampus away from their homes this Christmas. Bets would have been laid weeks in advance on which runners would be caught or reach home triumphant.
‘Where’s home?’ Fred gasped.
‘The Crooked Elm,’ Ryan replied, hoarsely.
‘We’ll never make it!’ she wheezed.
‘Quick, in here!’ Ryan tugged her sharply left, into a dark ginnel between a butcher’s shop and a souvenir store calling itself the Tartan Emporium. She squeaked indignantly as he pushed her into a deep doorway and squished himself in beside her. ‘Shhh!’ he implored, passing her a floppy collapsible water bottle.
She looked him up and down, taking in his short green tunic and tights. ‘Where were you keeping this?’ she whispered, the feel of it both comfortingly and worryingly warm in her cold hands.
He flashed her a grin. ‘Never you mind.’
Fred grimaced but unscrewed the cap and drank deeply.
As the thundering parade passed their hiding place, they both flattened themselves against the wooden door in the
wall. Steam plumed out of the horses’ nostrils and Fred could see all the waifs and strays who had been captured by Krampus and the evil elves. The prisoners rattled the bars of the giant cage, laughing and shouting, passing beer bottles and hip flasks between them. For kids growing up here, it was seen as a rite of passage. Every year, friends dared each other to take part in the exhilarating and slightly terrifying tradition; one travel writer had described it as being ‘like Halloween on cocaine’. It was a hoot when you were eighteen; less so when you were thirty-five and had anticipated a quiet night in your hotel room with a few glasses of wine and The Real Housewives.
‘Aren’t you a bit old for all this nonsense?’ Fred hissed as her breathing began to calm. She was dripping with sweat which was fast turning icy.
‘Who are you calling old? I’ll have you know I am at the peak of physical fitness.’
Fred attempted a derisive snort, but it turned into a kind of death-rattle choke as her lungs continued to gripe about the unplanned exercise.
Ryan had the gentlemanly decency to ignore her unladylike splutterings and said, ‘I’m doing it for charity. The British Heart Foundation. Fancy sponsoring me?’ In addition to the thrill seekers, the night also encouraged community-spirited souls to run the gauntlet for charity; dressing up was an optional extra. Dressing up like one of Father Christmas’s elves just seemed like asking for trouble, in Fred’s opinion.
Each year, on the last day of the Christmas market, Father Christmas and Krampus had a face-off outside Frost Hardware to decide who would own Christmas. It
was a tradition that had been going for as long as anyone could remember. As far as Fred knew, Father Christmas had always been triumphant.
‘Who’s playing Krampus this year?’ Fred asked.
‘Bettina O’Toole.’
‘Little Bettina with the pigtails and permanently sticky face?’ Fred asked, incredulous.
‘She’s now twenty-eight and a professional baker, she’s mostly taken over from Eadie.’
‘Oh. Twenty-eight?’
Ryan laughed. ‘Yes, Fred. Contrary to what you might think, time doesn’t stand still in Pine Bluff.’
‘And yet here we are, hiding from a pagan demon.’
As the last of the goblins blundered past, one of them stuck his furry head into the ginnel and looked about, causing Fred and Ryan to shrink further into the doorway. Thankfully, a screech out on the street alerted him to another victim on the run, and the goblin returned to the pack. Fred let out a sigh of relief.
‘Come on, if we cut down Harbour Street and through the alleyways, we should be able to get to the Crooked Elm without being caught. There’re plenty of deep doorways we can hide in along the way,’ said Ryan.
‘I want to get back to the hotel,’ she said, hearing the whiny baby in her voice.
‘They won’t reopen the doors until midnight. So, you can either hide out here in the cold and the dark – and hope Krampus doesn’t find you – or you can let me treat my old friend to a mulled wine at the Crooked Elm.’
‘Less of the old!’ she said. Though she had to admit a glass of mulled wine sounded pretty good right now.
‘Come on, live a little. Where’s that firecracker Fred we all knew and loved?’
‘I killed her with my bad life choices.’
Ryan frowned at her. She bit her lip. He was right, she wouldn’t be allowed into the hotel until after midnight, and she didn’t fancy freezing her tits off in a draughty ginnel waiting to be kidnapped by a demonic sprite.
‘Fine.’ She tried her best to sound begrudging. ‘Where do you keep a wallet in that ensemble?’
He grinned at her and tapped the side of his nose.
The Crooked Elm was packed with revellers, 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 towards 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 towards 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 pre-teen 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 behaviour 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 mould. 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 multipetalled 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 moustache 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 fox-tail 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 behaviour.’
‘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.
The Naughty List was a six-foot chalkboard fixed to a wall outside Frost Hardware. In a tradition almost as old as Krampus Night, people would chalk the names of the naughty on to the board in the run-up to Christmas. No one under twelve was allowed to be named; it was mostly done in fun, and definitely not for terrifying kids into behaving. As a counterbalance to the Naughty List there was also a green post box into which people would post written details of all the kind deeds people had done that year. At the Krampus versus Father Christmas Face-off, Mrs Christmas would
read out all the kindnesses and decide whether there was enough goodwill to banish Krampus for another year.
‘Well, I have no intention of being on the Naughty List. I have evolved,’ Fred assured Mr Bishop.
Mr Bishop looked sceptical. ‘Do you remember the time you dared one of my farmhands to sprint naked through the summer fair?’ he asked. ‘Now what was his name?’
‘Devlin McGee,’ Ryan offered, helpfully.
Fred squinted her eyes at him. ‘That was a long time ago,’ she said.
‘Devlin, that was it.’ Mr Bishop slapped his thigh. ‘You fair bewitched that boy. Was that the same summer you freed McCalister’s pigs, right before they were due for slaughter? He never did find them all. And what about when the pair of you climbed down the cliff and got trapped by the tide, and we had to call out the coastguard? Silly arses. Or –’
‘Yep,’ she interjected loudly, in an effort to curtail his trip down memory lane. ‘I remember. But you can rest assured I am not the same person I was back then.’
‘Who is?’ added Ryan, and she smiled at him gratefully.
‘Pity,’ said Mr Bishop. ‘I always secretly admired your spirit.’
She and Ryan had been thick as thieves when they were kids, always getting into some scrape or another. But something had shifted between them the year they turned sixteen, and after that they’d drifted apart. Ryan fell in with a group of lads she didn’t like, and she’d focused her efforts on getting into a university far, far away.
‘I suppose it was just your Hallow-Hart blood made you contrary,’ Mr Bishop concluded.
She didn’t call out the inequality of focusing on her rebellion which had been relatively short by comparison to Ryan’s; his was still going strong when she’d left for university.
‘That must be it,’ agreed Fred, taking a deep swig of her mulled wine.
She had never enjoyed being likened to her mother or her great-aunts. Growing up, her family’s eccentricities had been a source of mortifying embarrassment, and she’d tried desperately hard to be ordinary. Living in a household fuelled by unchecked personal freedoms had made her yearn for ground rules, curfews and consequences; when your normal is extraordinary, you crave banality. Her home life had been the envy of her peers, and her obvious disdain for it only served to make her look like a brat.
The publican produced a large bottle of whisky – ‘the good stuff’ – which he thumped down on to the bar, inducing a surge towards it that thankfully included Mr Bishop.
‘Thank god!’ she sighed as the burly farmer muscled his way between a man dressed like a Nutcracker and a woman in a Sexy Santa dress. ‘It’s like he kept a diary of all my misdemeanours.’
‘I think it’s all done with affection. I’ve had my fair share of ribbing.’
She rubbed her eyes. Lord, she was tired. ‘Anyway, that was years ago. I have been very sensible for a very long time.’
‘I see.’ He nodded. ‘So, I guess you’re too sensible to wonder whether our time capsule is still buried in the sandpit at the golf course?’
She’d forgotten about their time capsule. What did we put in that thing?
The edges of his mouth pulled up into a mischievous smile that was so familiar to her it was like being yanked back through time at top speed. Her stomach lurched, and for one fleeting moment she entertained the idea of grabbing his hand and heading for the golf course right now. But that wasn’t who she was any more. She was not like her mother. Being an adult meant not acting on your every impulse.
‘I think my days of searching for buried treasure are over,’ she said. Sadness knocked inside her chest as the words left her.
She watched the sparkle in his eyes dim when he replied, ‘Pity.’ And she felt a pang for the kids they’d been. But she had grown up; it wasn’t her fault if Ryan was chasing a Peter Pan reality. She had put away her childish things a long time ago.
It was half past twelve when Fred let herself unsteadily back into her room at the Forest Inn. Though she hadn’t drunk that much, the combination of alcohol and tiredness after her drive had left her very tipsy. At midnight, bugles had sounded throughout the town, signalling the end of Krampus Night, and after one for the road – and some dancing? Dear god, had she been dancing? – Ryan had chivalrously walked her back to the inn. It had felt so familiar to be back beside him, zigzagging down the road after a night of high jinks, and she’d linked her arm through his as they walked. She’d always felt safe with Ryan. He’d been a good-looking teenager – the secret crush of lots of the
girls at school, including Fred – but maturity had chiselled those boyish good looks into something more characterful; his soft edges had become sharper, and the fine lines at the corners of his eyes told of a man who smiled often.
Downstairs, the pub was still heaving. All the participants of Krampus Night had now been freed and were distributed around the pubs of Pine Bluff, enjoying a wellearned pint.
She changed into her pjs and climbed gratefully into bed. Surely, after the day she’d had, she would slip easily into oblivion. But alas, the moment she switched off the bedside lamp, unwanted thoughts blipped to the surface like the bubbles in a pan of boiling water.
She’d had it all worked out. Not for her the fly-by-night men with their pie-crust promises; she wouldn’t be a slave to romance like her mother, hopelessly throwing herself at every man who paid her the slightest attention. She was going to do it right. Tim had been the antithesis of the men who frequented her home when she was growing up, sloping sheepishly out through the back door on the mornings after, or worse, sticking around until the aunts had to practically shoehorn their feet out from under the table. Tim was no rolling stone or freeloader. He was a university professor and lecturer in philosophy. He was grounded, sensible, pragmatic. He was twenty years older than Fred, but she didn’t care; he was everything she’d ever wanted in a man, and she had fallen hard.
They used to attend a lot of faculty gatherings – highminded affairs with expensive wine, fish eggs on blinis, and cheeseboards. Life with Tim was grown-up; they moved in intellectual circles and drank good wine while discussing
things that mattered. She was living the kind of life she’d always dreamed of – the kind other people wanted.
He was ruggedly handsome in that Dr Indiana Jones kind of way, and at least once a month a besotted student would turn up on their doorstep, hoping for some ‘private tuition’ with him. He would turn them away gently and then, behind the closed door, make it very plain that Fred was the only object of his desire. Back then, her pride in him was so elevating it was like watching the room from the ceiling. He was eloquent and charming, and she loved observing him work a room, seeing the way people stopped and listened to him, as captivated by him as she was. He would introduce her to people as his ‘better half’ and it felt intoxicating; when he spoke about her in front of his friends, it was with such reverence that she felt bad for anyone who hadn’t experienced that kind of love. Being loved by Tim had felt sacred, and she would have done almost anything to continue walking in his light.
She’d been more than happy to miss her work dos and after-hours drinks with colleagues, because she and Tim were the kind of people who ‘prioritized their relationship’. She’d ended up spending more time with Tim’s friends –not something she was proud of now, but she’d got swept up in his world. Tim needed her, and he wanted her with him all the time. How many partners could say that? How could she feel anything but honoured by such devotion? He made her feel special; he made her see that she didn’t need promotions at work to validate her. And she didn’t need her so-called friends and her family with their ‘angry feminist agenda’ making her feel bad about her choices. She was part of something they could never understand . . .
But hindsight afforded her the uncomfortable truth that a person can be trained to crave the love of another by judicious love bombing, followed by bouts of withholding affection. Tim had painstakingly educated her in the art of being subservient. It had happened so slowly that she hadn’t noticed she was becoming a human iceberg until she had drifted away from everyone she knew. And having set her course quite willingly, she felt she had no one to blame but herself. She came to realize that Tim needed her to be small. It had been an unspoken bargain within their relationship: I will give you all my love, and in return all I ask is that you diminish yourself, become less than me, and remain happy to be so. And she had tried. But eventually, she simply couldn’t make herself any smaller. Any-sized piece of paper, no matter how big, can only ever be folded a finite amount of times before it simply can’t shrink any more. Fred had reached her maximum number of folds, and she still hadn’t been small enough.
He’d never hit her, and he’d never raised his voice while quietly dismantling her, brick by brick: her self-esteem, her self-worth, her ability to make decisions, her ability to trust her own thoughts. Control is a shapeshifter that can look and feel like love, and by the time it reveals its true form, the person in its thrall is emotionally pinioned like a butterfly in a glass case.
It would be easy to cast Veronica – his even younger mistress – as the villainess of the piece, but in truth, it had been a relief to be usurped. She’d lost the confidence required to leave of her own volition, and if it hadn’t been for Veronica she might be there still. Tim had denied the affair at first, adding gaslighting to his skillset, but Veronica
was smitten and only too willing to provide the unequivocal proof Fred needed. And then it was over. Her release, when it came, was the equivalent of being discarded like a used tea bag. She thought about Veronica sometimes. Fred hoped she was stronger than she had been.
It took two years of therapy to unpick the intricate tapestry of their relationship, the slow disentangling of Fred’s life from Tim’s, until finally she had pieced herself back together, her frayed sense of self reinforced and strengthened, her colours brighter now that she had emerged from his shade.
Though she couldn’t blame her relationship with Tim for her redundancy and subsequent eviction, her reticence to put herself forward for the big campaigns (because they would have impinged on her home life) meant that she became viewed by her seniors through a lens of diffidence. She had made herself dispensable.
Don’t dwell! she chided herself now. She took a deep breath and centred herself. Yes, being jobless and homeless was undeniably shit. And no, she couldn’t change the past. But the ability to be unapologetically herself, imperfect as she was, was bloody brilliant. She could do this. Her therapist had told her so.
Another muffled roar of joviality rose up through the floor of the Forest Inn.
Fred, tired of the sound of her own thoughts, tuned into the noise below. Eventually, the hazy sounds of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ being sung like a football anthem in a stadium lulled her to sleep.
Bella
Bella stared out of the workshop window as she sipped her first coffee of the day. The pine workbench which ran below the window was old and scarred after a century of service. It was littered with cutting tools, large reels of ribbon, the glue gun responsible for continuously coating the finger pads of the Hallow-Hart women with boiling glue – rendering them almost impervious to heat – and finally several piles of the stiff patterned papers which made up the body of the crackers. Her hands worked almost of their own accord as she looked out over the Atlantic Ocean, watching the pale winter sun glint in citrine sparkles over the waves.
She let her fingers dance over the papers and settled on the winter botanicals print, one of Aunt Cam’s designs created using the linocut printing technique. Bella laid the thick paper with its intricate colour-printed carvings of acorns, rosehips and mistletoe face down on the bench and placed a piece of thin card the same size, with vertical lines scored across it, over the top of it. She secured the cracker snap with two dobs from the glue gun and then, watching out of the window as a pair of seagulls fought mid-flight over a piece of food, reached for Granny Hazel’s heavy ceramic rolling pin. Many cylindrical objects had been
experimented with down the years for their cracker rolling capabilities, but none compared to Granny Hazel’s rolling pin. Thanks to the power of the World Wide Web, they had been able to source several identical vintage rolling pins for posterity. She curled the papers around it and sealed them with a line of hot glue before slipping the rolling pin out, the stiff paper allowing the cracker to hold its form.
She looked down briefly and chose a pretty rock crystal bracelet made by Eadie, who ran the bakery in town, and inserted it into the cavity of the cracker along with her card (should the recipient of the gift wish to order more of Eadie’s jewellery). To that she added a humorous printed limerick and a paper crown in the same winter botanicals design as the cracker itself. Then she snipped two precise lengths of thick grosgrain ribbon in holly green and tied one around each end of the cracker before executing two perfect bows. The finished cracker was nestled into its cardboard box – the exterior and interior both printed with a Hallow-Hart design – and Bella began assembling another.
The orders for the big stores had been fulfilled and sent off in August but the online orders were still trickling in and would continue to arrive until Hallow-Hart’s last day for shipping on December the twentieth. And, of course, there was the Christmas market. People came back year after year to visit the Hallow-Hart stall, and Bella always made sure there were a few bespoke designs for the market. Her fingers hovered above the little box of handmade gifts and settled on an exquisitely carved wooden egg cup, whittled by Meg from the Coffee Cup Café, which she popped into the cracker cavity.
