Page 15 of The Cosy Travelling Christmas Shop

Chapter 4

‘Oh good, you’re early. Don’t take your coat off, we’re going out,’ Seren’s father announced, as she walked into the house.

Seren blinked at him. ‘I’ve only just come in. Can’t it wait? I’ve had a hell of a shift. A delivery lorry got stuck in the loading bay, and I’ve been sworn at because we didn’t have any bread. One of the tills decided to play up and managed to charge some poor soul nine hundred and forty pounds, instead of nine pounds forty, and we’ve got two people off sick. My feet are killing me.’ She’d been on earlies today and had been dreading the manager asking if she could stay on for a bit since she’d been in at six a.m. Thankfully, Pamela hadn’t mentioned it and Seren had been glad to escape. Now that she was home, she wanted nothing more than to have a cup of tea, put her feet up, and watch some late afternoon telly.

‘I’ll make you a coffee in your travel mug and you can drink it on the way – all you’ll have to do is sit there. I’ll do the driving.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘It’s a surprise.’

Seren looked at him doubtfully; she’d been on the receiving end of a couple of his surprises before, and they weren’t always good. Take that time he’d booked them both in for morris dancing lessons. Seren had nothing against morris dancers – she just didn’t want to be one. Her father had thought it might be something they could both do together after she’d made the mistake of lamenting that she hadn’t had ballet lessons when she was a child. He’d wanted to get a bit fitter and had thought morris dancing was an ideal way to go about it. He’d not factored in all the jumping and hopping around, which had come as a bit of a shock to his sixty-four-year-old knees.

‘Anicesurprise,’ he added, seeing her expression.

‘You always say that.’

‘This time it’s true.’

‘Does it involve exercise, because I’m whacked. You’ll be lucky if I can manage to walk to the car.’

‘No exercise, I promise.’

‘What time will we be back? I’m starving. What’s for tea?’

‘I thought we could pick up some fish and chips on the way home.’

‘On the way home fromwhere?’

‘Oh, now, that would be telling.’

Seren threw up her hands in frustration and gave in to the inevitable. Her dad was behaving like a dog hearing the word ‘walkies’ – full of excited nervous energy and hopeful looks – so she went along with it. At least there was the promise of a fish and chip supper at the end of it, and her mouth watered and her taste buds tingled in anticipation.

She got in the car and settled back in the seat. ‘Are we going far?’ she asked, wondering if she had time for a snooze.

‘Can’t say.’

‘For goodness’ sake! You can at least tell me how long it will take. If it’s more than ten minutes I can catch forty winks.’

‘About thirty-five minutes, according to the satnav,’ Patrick said, then shot her a worried look and put his hand over the screen.

Too late, she’d seen the postcode. Giggling, she picked up her phone and typed it in. Not sure what she was expecting to find, she was surprised to see the postcode was for a street in the middle of a housing estate.

She zoomed out, and saw there were a couple of shops and businesses highlighted, but nothing she would have thought her dad would be interested in.

Too intrigued to doze, Seren watched the world go by and wondered what he was up to. There was one thing to be said for living with her dad – he was unpredictable. But in a nice way. Sometimes she wondered who was the most mature out of the two of them, because he could, and did, act like a teenager at times.

Eventually Patrick indicated left, and the car turned off the main road and into the housing estate Seren had seen on the map, so she sat up straight and gazed around, although she wasn’t sure what she was expecting to see. Nothing would surprise her when it came to her dad.

‘We’re here,’ he declared, pulling into the side of the road in front of a house with an ice cream van on its drive.

‘Where ishereexactly?’ Seren asked. It was starting to get dark, and all she wanted to do was to go home, have something to eat, and paint a bauble or two. She had lots of ideas and some new metallic paints she wanted to try out.

‘We’ve come to collect that,’ her father said proudly, pointing towards the house with the ice cream van sitting outside.

‘What?’ Seren looked but she couldn’t see what he meant. It was just a house. And what did he mean by ‘collect it’?

‘I’ve bought it,’ Patrick said.

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