Benj gave her a “what are ya gonna do?” shrug.
“What about you, bro?” Rab asked, turning to Ryan. “You doing all right?”
Ryan inhaled deeply and put his hands on top of his head. “Yep. I just really want to smash Warren’s face in right now. I won’t, because that’s not who I am. But Ireallyfucking want to.”
“But you won’t,” said Rab, in full head teacher mode.
“That’s what I said,” Ryan retorted, through gritted teeth.
“He’ll get his, bro,” said Benj. “Don’t you worry. Karma’s a bitch.” He leaned over on his chair to Ryan and pulled him into a headlock, rubbing his knuckles over his head. “You just need something to take your mind off it, that’s all. Don’t worry, I got you, bro.”
“Benj! Oh my god!” Ryan squirmed but his brother held him tightly, not letting up on scrubbing his head.
“But I loves you, baby brother. I loves him so much, I just want to pet him,” Benj said, grinning stupidly.
Ryan tried and failed to wriggle out of his big brother’s embrace, but he was laughing now as he squealed, “Fuck off!” Any tension that had been building in the grotto evaporated, even Fred sniggered into her tea.
“Benj,” said Rab, in an authoritative tone, and Benj let his brother go, shaking his arms out and avoiding Ryan’s swing in his direction.
“Shit…the hair, man,” Ryan moaned, sitting back up on his chair and trying to smooth his hair down. “Why’ve you always got to mess with the hair?”
“Like that barnet ever gets styled,” Benj retorted. “It’s like dead straw. I’ve seen better-looking scarecrows.”
“At least my hair doesn’t stink of fish.”
“We can’t all smell like a Yankee candle,” Benj retorted.
“All right, that’s enough, don’t make me tell Mum,” Rab said.
“I will just say”—Rab addressed Fred, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap—“that any man with so fragile an ego that he has to resort to discomforting a woman to soothe his pride, is probably a very small man indeed and not worth your time.”
Ryan, who had been easing a knot of tension out of his neck, glanced at Fred. Fred returned his gaze and then looked quickly away. She cleared her throat.
“As it happens, I’d already realized that Warren wasn’t the man for me.” This time when she looked at Ryan, he smiled a smile that was just for her.
“And that,” said Rab, getting up and looking pointedly at Benj, “is our cue to leave. Come on, Benj, I’ll give you a lifthome. You all right being left with this one, Fred?” He nodded his head at Ryan.
She laughed. “I think I’m safe with him.”
Fred thanked them again, and then it was just the two of them; her wrapped in a fleece blanket, sitting on a red-and-gold upholstered throne, and Ryan dressed as an elf with haystack hair and vermillion-blotched cheeks.
Fred hadn’t had much opportunity to really study her surroundings up to this point—what with the not breathing and all—and now she looked around her properly. They were in a log cabin made up to look like Father Christmas’s snug. A decorated Christmas tree stood in one corner with presents spilling out from beneath it onto a circular rug in a repeating festive Scandinavian design. From her position on the sumptuous throne, set against the far wall, she could see a garland-bedecked fireplace to her left, complete with log basket and several knitted stockings hanging from the mantel shelf. To her right there was a picture window with pretty holly and berry curtains framing a somewhat incongruous view of a forest outside, given that she knew them to be in an old barn.
“This is lovely,” she said, standing up now that her legs had stopped shaking, and turning slowly to take in the framed pictures of reindeers and elves on the walls and the sacks of presents on the floor.
“I guess it’s a few years since you’ve visited.”
“A few.”
“We’ve done a lot to it in that time.”
“So I see,” she said, putting her mug down and pickingup a snow globe from the small side table beside the throne, and shaking it.
“Want to see the rest of it?”
“Yes, please.”
She followed Ryan out of the cabin and into, well, into a forest.
