‘We’ve made Christmas heart cookies, to give as gifts to the ones we love.’
That sounded like they might be confusing their holidays, although to be fair Christmas was about giving gifts to the ones you love too, as well as Valentine’s Day.
‘That sounds lovely.’ Alex glanced at Violet.
‘Oh, I couldn’t find the Christmas cookie cutters, so this seemed like the best option,’ Violet shrugged. ‘And they are decorated with Christmas accessories.’
The heart cookies were beautifully decorated with sparkly snowflakes, holly leaves, berries, baubles and little iced snowmen, plus lashings of sparkly sprinkles.
‘They look beautiful,’ Alex said, picking up a tiny sugar snowflake and popping it in her mouth. ‘You’ve worked so hard.’
‘We made loads,’ Zara told her. ‘I’m going to give one to you, Immy, Quinn and Nanny because I love you all. I wanted to give one to Jacob but Nanny said that was probably not a good idea.’
Alex looked down at the dog and Jacob licked his lips in anticipation.
‘No, probably not. Sorry Jacob.’
‘I made you a special one to give to Quinn.’
‘Oh, I…’ Alex found herself blushing and floundering for words. In Zara’s innocent view of the world, of course Alex loved Quinn in the same way that Zara did. She clearly didn’t mean the head-over-heels kind which was closer to the truth.
‘When we were discussing who we were giving themto, I was trying to explain that there are different kinds of love,’ Violet explained, looking flustered herself.
‘That’s true,’ Alex said, not sure if she was ready for this kind of conversation with her daughter.
Just then Quinn arrived in the kitchen.
‘I know that,’ Zara said, as if trying to explain to the uneducated. ‘Mum and Quinn love me because we’re family, but Mum and Quinn love each other with heart eyes like the heart eye emoji. I can see it. So I made you a heart biscuit with extra hearts on to give to Quinn and I made the same for him to give to you because you love each other.’
There was silence in the room as Zara opened the tin and brought out two heart-shaped biscuits covered in tiny red hearts. She offered them out to Alex and Quinn.
‘What’s going on?’ Quinn asked, in confusion.
‘Zara made heart biscuits to give as gifts to the ones we love. She thinks we love each with heart eyes not just because we’re family so she made us special heart biscuits to give to each other,’ Alex quickly surmised.
‘You have to give it to each other and tell them you love them,’ Zara said.
Alex expected more of an awkward silence but Quinn simply shrugged, took the biscuit and handed it to Alex.
‘I love you.’
Alex found herself smiling from ear to ear. It was silly. It didn’t mean anything but she couldn’t stop the big silly grin on her face at hearing those words.
She took the cookie from him and then took the second heart cookie from Zara and handed it to him. ‘I love you.’
He now had the same soppy grin on his face.
‘See, that wasn’t that hard, was it,’ Zara said, before returning her attention back to the cookie she was busily decorating.
Alex and Quinn continued to stare at each other with matching grins on their faces before she remembered that her otherwise distracted daughter was not the only person in the room with them. She took a step back and looked at Violet for her reaction to all this only to find she had a big grin on her face too.
Dear Alex,
My other half doesn’t know I’m St Nick, well not yet anyway. We don’t actually live together so I can paint when I’m at my house, but a lot of the baubles were painted prior to December and that’s why there are so many baubles being delivered every day, otherwise I’d never have time to paint them all.
I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight at Santa’s cottage. I will try to say a few words to you, if it seems appropriate.
Your clue for today is that I’ll also be wearing an elf hat tonight.
