Page 10 of A Winter in Wonderland
Chapter 5
In anticipation for Shay pulling a few tricks from up her sleeve over the course of the next twenty-four hours, I showed up on her doorstep at the crack of dawn wearing my sunniest, summeriest clothes.
She opened the door and squinted at me. ‘Are you in a Hallowe’en costume?’ she asked.
In fairness, it was the end of October and I was wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt with a sunshine face on it and cloud-print leggings. Nevertheless, I barged in, and with a smile on my face that said,you think you can outsmart me?I dropped my bag and announced, ‘Merry Christmas!’
From somewhere upstairs I heard Tess groan.
‘Merry Christmas to you,’ Shay answered, her smile sweet. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
She led me to the kitchen, and so far, everything seemed normal. I was expecting Christmas decorations up, festivemusic playing, every trick under the sun to try and get me to slip up. In fact, I’d been awake half the night worrying about it.
Shay boiled the kettle and I asked, ‘Are you staying home today?’
‘Nope, we’re going into work. You’re temping for the day, with me.’
‘Wonderful. Paid?’
‘Of course. Here you go,’ she said, putting a mug down in front of me.
Spices rose, filling my nose with citrus, cinnamon and nutmeg. ‘What’s this?’
‘Just a herbal tea.’
‘What flavour?’
‘Hmm, let’s see … ’ Shay read the front of the box. ‘Christmas Blend.’
I rolled my eyes and Shay threw down the box. ‘Ha! You rolled your eyes!’
‘That was atyou, not at Christmas, that doesn’t count. I was rolling my eyes at you and your tactics. It doesn’t. Count.’
‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘I’ll give you that one, but so there’s no confusion, no more complaining about my tactics because it could turn into a big grey area. Just accept that I have a few …tactics. Which is well within my rights under the terms of the bet.’
Nothing else sneaky happened during breakfast, nor on the Tube ride, nor on the walk to Shay’s agency. Nothinguntoward in the lift. No brass band meeting us as the doors opened. Hmm, what was she up to?
In fact, it took precisely one hour and forty-five minutes of me temping for Shay for her to spring another surprise ‘tactic’ on me.
‘Myla, can you come here a moment?’ she called. I was mid-yawn, hunched over the shredder with snowflakes of chopped paper all around me and the instruction manual in my hand.
‘Something’s up with your crap shredder,’ I commented and looked up to see she was standing beside a big green wall with her colleagues. ‘What is it?’ I said, edging over.
‘We need to send a photo over to our marketing department so they can create an e-Christmas card for us to send out at the beginning of December. I thought you might like to be our model?’ She held out a Christmas jumper for me, big, bright red, woollen and covered in dangling baubles.
‘Did you, Shay?’ I asked with a sweet smile, taking the jumper in my hands. ‘Thank you, I’d love to.’
Five minutes later, I was standing in front of the green wall in the jumper, with antlers on my head, a red nose and holding a sign that said,Thanks to all our workers for sleigh-ing it this year!
‘Oh, wait a minute.’ Shay leaned forward and pressed something in the sleeve of the jumper, and all the baubles began to twinkle and flash.
I smiled wide for the camera, even when Shay put on some Christmas music and encouraged me to ‘dance about a bit to get in the mood’. Even when her colleagues starteddraping me in tinsel and shouting Christmas phrases for me to say into the camera instead of saying ‘cheese’, I got through it.
I got through it later that morning when Shay sent me out shopping for Christmas decorations for the office. Even when I trapped my life-size cardboard cut-out of Jack Skellington fromThe Nightmare Before Christmasin the Tube door and everyone laughed at me. I got through it when, after lunch, she asked me to kick-start the Secret Santa by coming up with theme ideas and I kept getting interrupted and flustered by the phone ringing and not knowing what I was doing.
In the afternoon, as Shay was setting me up on her computer to go through the travel itineraries of the Lapland recruits against a checklist, to make sure everybody’s work permits and flights were accounted for, and I was mopping the tea I’d just spilled on myself, I said, ‘Can I ask you a question? Not a grumble, just a question, I’m genuinely interested.’
‘Go for it.’
