Page 13 of A Winter in Wonderland
Chapter 6
Winter
I must be heading to hell, and it’s actually frozen over. How did I get myself tangled into the position where, instead of closing the door on all things Christmas and hiding out until it was over, I’d actuallyagreed,willingly, to go for an extended sleepover at the literal home of Santa Claus?
‘Daaaaaaaad,’ I shouted down from the loft at my dad’s cottage in Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. He lives alone, has done since I left home a couple of years after my sister, but he says he’s happy.
‘Yeeeeeees?’ he called back up.
‘Do you think it could be inside the disgusting old trunk?’
‘It’s worth a look.’
Hmm. He wasn’t going to come up and help me, so I used my sleeve to wipe dust and cobwebs off the latch of the disgusting old trunk, trying not to be perturbed by thelong-dead flies lying in rigor mortis around the surface like they’d made a suicide pact back in the hot summer.
My dad, apparently, had a super-thick and toasty Gore-Tex down jacket stored in the loft from his days working as harbour master. Considering these coats are way way waywayout of my budget, but also supposed to be amazing for Arctic climates which is where I am, apparently, jaunting off to, I don’t even mind if it smells musty and is a bit on the large side. I’ll take it.
Heaving the lid off the trunk, I pushed past some photos of Mum and Dad’s wedding without looking at them, and found the parka, big, squidgy and maroon-red, underneath. ‘Yes,’ I whispered into the attic, and pulled it out, wrapping myself in it. It did smell musty, but also a bit of Dad, which was nice, and speak of the devil, he poked his head into the roof and handed me a cuppa.
‘Ah, you found it!’ He smiled and climbed up, carrying his own cup of tea, and took a seat beside me on one of the old dining chairs we keep up there for some reason.
‘I did. I like it. You sure you don’t mind me taking it?’
‘Not at all, I’d be honoured. Besides, a coat like that deserves to go on adventures.’
‘It probably deserves them more than me,’ I commented, taking off the coat and setting it aside carefully.
‘Why would you say that?’
‘Because Shay is doing me a massive favour by setting me up with this job, and I’ve not been very grateful. I don’t know if I really want to do it, still, to be honest.’
Dad nodded and sipped his tea. ‘I know it’s not veryyou,but there was a time you quite liked Christmas. Maybe this will help you find your festive spirit again.’
‘I’m not really looking to re-spark the magic, though. I just want to get away, and make it through to the end unscathed.’
‘That’s all you want from this? For it to be over?’
‘No, that’s not quite what I mean. I want to enjoy it – the snowy, new location side of it, anyway. I just don’t want anything bad to happen while I’m out there. I don’t want it to be a mistake.’ I paused, studying my mug, a gnawing worry in my tummy.
It was early November now, and I had come around to the idea since losing the bet, and I was excited to finally visit Finland. But I wanted desperately to come away from it having had a good experience, and although I nearly made it through Shay’s twenty-four-hour challenge, I worried that being out there surrounded by Christmas all the time could bring me really down.
‘Hmm,’ Dad said, ‘I understand. I can’t predict the future, love, but I don’t think it’ll be a mistake, I really don’t.’
‘It’s going to be so freezing, though,’ I sighed, but with a smile, ready to lighten the mood.
‘I think I have some long johns I could lend you.’
‘Dad, I do not want to borrow your thermal underwear.’
Good old Primark. Although I nearly wept on the shop floor as shoppers smacked their enormous gift bags against me to the tune of the third rendition of ‘Jingle Bell Rock’I’d heard in as many shops, I managed to escape with a haul of thermal base layers and undercrackers. Now I was back in my flat, which looked even emptier since most of my own stuff was packed and I’d taken Jamilia’s bags to a charity shop. I sat in the living room surrounded by my large backpack, and all my Lapland gear around me, plus a glass of Pimm’s because I would hold on to my fantasy of it not being Christmastime for as long as I possibly could.
‘Thermals, check. Coat, check. Toiletries, check. Finnish phrase book, check. Avalanche kit, check.’
What was I doing? I should not be going somewhere where I’m planning to take an avalanche kit. This was just so beyond what I could cope with, even without the Christmas element.
My phone rang, my sister telepathically herding me forward all the way away in Wimbledon.
‘Hey, you all packed?’ she asked, when I connected the call. She sounded false-chirpy and I was immediately suspicious.
