Page 47 of A Winter in Wonderland
But she merely laughed, patted me on the back, and gathered up her toiletries bag to leave the room. ‘It’s Christmas, use your imagination, and remember thateverything is magical at Christmas so sprinkle on some love and it will be loved.’
‘It will be loved,’ she said. Hmph. Not likely.
I was standing in the forest behind the chalet a couple of days later, making the most of the light late-morning while I had a break in work. And in my hands were some sticks.
I held them together, a scrunchie hairband wrapped around their lower halves, trying to figure out why a bunch of twigs looked like a classy bit of room decor when it was bought in a department store, but just looked like the Blair Witch’s pitiful cousin when I tried to do it. I couldn’t give Angelique this. I added one more stick. Nope, definitely not.
Sighing, I took back my scrunchie and dropped the sticks to the ground. Everyone here took Christmas so seriously, how was my gift going to compare? I could just picture it now, Christmas morning, and someone will have knitted someone else the softest sweater. An elf will have created, from scratch, a gingerbread house for one of the guides, a perfect replica of our staff chalet with working lights inside. Another guide will hand-cure some dried reindeer meat for one of the reps, seasoned with their family’s secret recipe. And then I shall present Angelique with the inside of a toilet roll that I’ll have drawn eyes onto.
I wondered if I could cut the Topshop label out of my scarf and pretend I’d crocheted it myself …
Then an idea began to form. I was actually good at one thing, thanks to my degree and previous job. I did have agood eye. And I knew a little about photography, and had a decent camera on my phone. And there was a printer in the activities’ lodge, albeit a black and white one. A sparkle of excitement ran through me, one I hadn’t felt in a long time. Could cold-hearted me be actually looking forward to making somebody a Secret Santa gift after all?
Over the next couple of weeks, as December stretched on, Christmas drew closer and the daylight hours grew shorter, I counted down the days. Not in anticipation of the big day, but more a private Advent calendar of when I could stop holding my breath and waiting for something bad to happen. I figured, if Christmas Day arrived with no disasters, I could consider myself safe this year.
That was my goal: make it to when the clock passes midnight on Christmas Eve night without throwing in the towel. And so, I kept my head down, my work schedule busy, and my sleep restful. I had days where I worked with Esteri, and days when I only saw her when we both crashed onto our bunks at the end of a long day.
Being outdoors all day, every day, was doing something to me – it was opening up my artistic side again. Little flecks of nature would catch my eye or inspire me. Plus, whenever I had the chance, I snapped a candid photo or two of Angelique. Not in a creepy, hiding in the bushes way – I always made it known to her that I was there taking pics, I just didn’t tell her some of them were specifically of her. And one day, while she had one hand on a reindeer and a low sunbeam was just streaming on her from betweentwo trees, and she was laughing her head off at something Esteri was saying, I got my photo.
‘Yes,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Take that, Christmas.’
Converting the picture into black and white on my phone, I was pleased to see it looked even better. I printed it out that night, laminated it (hey, this was home-made) and then stuck it in a cardboard frame that I nicked, also from the activities’ lodge. I hoped she liked getting a picture of herself, and didn’t think it was a bit odd, but I did think it captured a nice moment, a nice memory, if I do say so myself.
During this time, I found myself crossing paths with Josh more and more, each time feeling a flutter of pleasure at seeing him, and then each time getting irritated with him and the lack of being able to hold a proper conversation due to his always being in elf mode.
In fact, it wasn’t until the middle of a mass snowball fight in the forest beside Santa’s cabin – a large group of guests vs their guides and the elves – that he suddenly broke character for a minute.
We’d just ducked into a small, snow-covered woodenkota, a Lappish hut. It was a permanent shelter not far from the Love Adventuring Lapland activities’ lodge which, thanks to the firepit in the centre, was sometimes used to make guest dinners or to host speakers.
Inside, Josh and I huddled together, the smell of woodsmoke within and sounds of muffled shouts and laughter now outside. We caught our breath, ready to run our separate ways and grab new ammunition at any moment. Then he turned to me, his face close to minewhile we squashed together, all damp and panting and peeping through the doorway, and he said, ‘Having fun?’
‘What?’ I asked, surprised to hear his normal voice, albeit as a whisper, and not ‘performer Josh’. ‘I mean, yeah.’
He frowned a little. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, totally. Snowball fights are fine.’
‘Snowball fights are fine?’
I laughed, quietly. ‘I just mean … ’ I trailed off, but he didn’t look away from me.
‘I think I know,’ he answered.
I searched his eyes, a snowball dangling from my upturned fist. ‘You know what?’
‘How you’re feeling.’
‘You do?’ Did he feel the same?
He looked serious for a second, like he was worried that I was worried. ‘I wouldn’t tell anyone, you know that.’
‘What is there to tell?’ I asked.
He leant closer and whispered in my ear so only I could hear, as if while he was there the rest of the world wasn’t. ‘I don’t think you’re quite as into Christmas as the rest of us.’
I pulled away, and my heart began to race.He knows, oh God he knows.‘No,’ I stammered. ‘That’s not true.’
But his arm stayed on mine. ‘It’s OK. If you want to talk about anything, I’m here.’
