Page 42 of Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm
‘I got some postcards and flyers printed up and they’re amazing.’ I know I’m sporting a gleeful smile, and the lad at the stall designed them, not me, but it feels good to be taking steps to make Peppermint Branches work, even small ones.
The candlemaker clears a space on her stall so I can put the box down, and all three of them gather round and ooh and ahh as I open the box. She plunges her hand in and pulls out a handful of flyers. ‘I’ll tuck one of these in with every candle I sell. Lots of people come here to buy their Christmas gifts, no doubt they’ll be wanting a tree come December too.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to do—’
She interrupts my protest. ‘Nonsense. We help our own here. And Fiona was telling me you’re going to be festifying our market with lots of trees, so it’s the least I can do.’
‘Thank you. That’s really kind.’ I hadn’t got as far as figuring out what I was actually going to do with these yet, but I’m genuinely touched by how welcoming the stallholders are here and how quickly they’ve accepted me.
‘Leave me some postcards too. I’ll pop a little stack of them on the stall for people to take. Ask the other stalls too. I’m sure everyone will be more than willing to help you out.’
I thank her and we move on to the baker’s stall, where Fiona shuffles round the back with a stack of flyers and asks him to hand them out too, getting a similarly enthusiastic response.
‘I’ve been getting my tree there every Christmas since I was a boy,’ he says to me. ‘’Twas devastated when it closed. I’ll be your first customer this year, you mark my words. And let me know if you need anything else.’
Fiona shows him the postcards and he asks for some of them to display on his stall too, and honestly, I have to turn away for a minute because everyone’s kindness is enough to make my eyes start filling up.
‘You okay?’ Noel steps nearer and ducks his head to whisper as Fiona hands out business cards and postcards to the bookseller, stopping for a well-earned gossip.
I swallow and paste a smile on, and turn back just in time to catch Fiona furtively pointing a finger towards the two of us.
I elbow Noel in the ribs even though he was watching anyway. ‘We’re being talked about.’
‘You’re new round here. What I’ve learned is that there will always be gossip in a place like this, and the more you try to fight it, the more you make everyone think you’ve got something to hide. Don’t worry about it. Someone’s budgie will escape tomorrow and go and mug some parakeets and it’ll all be forgotten about.’
I snort and we get raised eyebrows from both Fiona and the bookseller.
‘You’re not helping,’ I hiss at Noel.
‘Nah, if I wasn’t helping, I’d do this.’ He strides across the aisle to the flower seller, picks up a bunch of pink roses and makes a loud clang of change as he hands the bloke a few coins, ensuring every eye in the vicinity has turned in our direction. He comes back and presents them to me with a flourish and ends with a bow. ‘To brighten up the stall,’ he says close to my ear. ‘You can carry them.’
‘You know no one heard that, right? They just think you bought me flowers.’
‘Why’d you think I said it so quietly?’ His eyes are dancing with mischief, but he makes up for it by talking the florist into popping a postcard inside the wrapping of every bouquet.
‘So you want them to gossip about us?’ I shift the flowers to my other arm so I can still hold the notebook and pen when Fiona’s finished her chat.
‘People are going to gossip about us no matter what we do. If a feminine-looking pigeon comes in twice, Fiona thinks it wants to ask me on a date and Fergus starts asking around for bird-friendly restaurants.’
It makes me laugh again. ‘Will you stop being so funny?’
He grins. ‘Ah, let ‘em talk. You’re way out of my league. I’m honoured if they think you’d look twice at me.’
I don’t hide the double-take. ‘Are you jok—’
Of course, Fiona chooses that moment to finish her conversation and point out the location of another tree. I hastily mark it on my scribbled map of the market, but she’s already hurried onwards and we both rush to follow her. It stops me thinking about what he’s just said and how he could possibly think that. He’s literally the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen in my life. His shoulder-length dark hair is ridiculously sexy, soft and touchable but just scruffy enough to look rugged and handsome as well, blue eyes that look closer to green when he’s outdoors, with the dark shadows of a thousand early mornings that make it look like he’s wearing natural eyeliner, that lip piercing nestled in the deep dip of his Cupid’s bow that I can still barely tear my eyes away from. More importantly than any of that, he’s hilarious and kind. He’s literally the most thoughtful person I’ve ever met. He’s been popping over to help fix remaining things in the house and we’ve been working on the caravan together. He’s even managed to get a pane of double-glazing from somewhere and replace the kitchen window. How he could think anyone was out of his league is beyond me. Even the Queen would be lucky to have him. If she was into dating 38-year-old Scottish pumpkin farmers. She’s probably not.
It’s early November now, and Halloween passed in a blur of carving pumpkins, helping kids craft their own scary masks at a workstation outside Roscoe Farm, and watching Noel chase people around the maize maze while dressed as a scarecrow.
Admittedly, the sexiest scarecrow ever. Including Fiyero fromWicked. Andhetakes some beating in the sexy scarecrow stakes.
‘Do you have decorations for all these trees?’ I ask as we complete a full circle of the market and return to the pumpkin stall, where Fergus has moved onto dipping a gingerbread piano into his marmalade.
‘No budget.’ Fiona isn’t really paying attention, she’s still scouting around for any spare inch where we could squeeze in another Christmas tree. ‘We’ll ask the stallholders to bring in their own decs from home, maybe even ask the customers to donate any old ones that they don’t want. I bet loads of people have got boxes of decorations gathering dust in their attics and would be glad of a way to get shot of them.’
‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ I picture those gorgeous trees decked out in faded foil lamettas, fire-hazard lights with half the bulbs missing, and moth-eaten paperchains that had seen better days before the Nineties, let alone now.
Noel meets my eyes like he can tell what I’m thinking. ‘The trees deserve better than that.’
