Snowy hugs,
St Nick
The decorating of Santa’s house was probably the biggest night of the year in the Lovegrove Bay calendar and also the most secret. Which of course meant most of the town would know. Only the elves were supposed to know the date, well that was the theory. As most of the elves were parents of young children, those children needed babysitting while their parents sneaked out to do elf duties. The elves’ plans had to be cancelled or rearranged to fit in with being an elf so, by the time the big night rolled around, almost everyone knew. Apart from the children. The magic of the house being decorated overnight was such a special thing for the kids of the town that the adults at least took that part very seriously. There were never any pictures thrown up on social media of the decorating process just in case it was seen by innocent eyes. Any children who lived near or around Christmas Gardens were often squirrelled away to relatives’ houses for the night so they wouldn’t inadvertently look out of their windows and ruin the magic.
Alex loved doing it, she always looked forward to this night but with the limited sleep she’d got the night before lying in bed thinking about Quinn, and the busy day today playing in the snow, she was exhausted. Still, she did have an extra reason to look forward to tonight as she’d be spending it with Quinn again, or at least shewould after all the elves had gone home. She couldn’t wait to be with him again.
She was also looking forward to seeing St Nick, even if she still didn’t know who it was. She would be on high alert when any of the male elves spoke to her and especially any wearing an elf hat. She knew a few of the elves liked to dress up in character, although most people didn’t.
She saw Quinn ahead chatting to someone but stopped dead when she saw he was wearing an elf hat.
Her heart leapt. Was Quinn really St Nick? She thought back to her messages with St Nick. Quinn lovedMidsomer Murdersand all the cosy mysteries, just like St Nick did, and they would often watch them together. Quinn wasn’t a painter and he worked in a place with a lot of footfall. Even Flick had thought it was Quinn a few days before. Why had Alex dismissed that when she started getting the messages?
But as she glanced around she realised that pretty much every person there was also wearing an elf hat.
She couldn’t help smiling. St Nick had tricked her. Although now the idea had been planted, she would be looking at Quinn a little bit more closely. She tried to be practical about it. She’d never seen Quinn painting but he was always very good whenever they played Pictionary with Zara and Immy, although his drawings were never as detailed as the baubles were. St Nick had called his wife or girlfriend – probably his girlfriend as they didn’t live together – his other half. But when St Nick sent that message, she and Quinn weren’t together.They weren’t technically together now, but they had certainly been less together then than they were now. The term ‘other half’ was normally reserved for someone you’d been dating a while or were married to, not just a friend. A lot of things pointed to him being St Nick but there wasn’t anything conclusive right now.
She walked closer. He was talking to someone about the fake glittery snowy roof they were going to attach to his roof. It went on in large custom-made panels but overlapped in such a way that it looked like one big snowy roof. They would have to clear the real snow off to put the fake stuff on, which felt counterintuitive but the real snow probably wouldn’t last long. In fact the whole of Christmas Gardens was supposed to be covered in fake snow as part of the decorating. Alex wondered if they still intended to do that or maybe come back later considering how beautiful the real stuff looked right now.
It was as if Quinn sensed she was there as he suddenly turned round and a big smile spread across his face, probably matching the one on her own.
Someone came up to him to talk to him, gesturing at the roof and he turned to face them which was probably a good thing. People would start to notice, just like Chloe had when they were stupidly staring at each other while they were sledging earlier that day.
She noticed there was a group of women excitedly talking about something and as she stepped closer she realised that one of them had one of St Nick’s coveted baubles.
‘I just found it over there, under the tree,’ Suzie said, as the other ladies admired it.
Alex stepped a bit closer, not wanting to appear nosy but desperate to see what was painted on this one. She could see it was a little potting shed, surrounded by flowers, a pair of wellies and a spade. It was lovely.
‘What will you do with it?’ Frankie said.
‘I’ll give it to my hubby, he loves his little allotment, probably more than he loves me.’
The women laughed.
‘Don’t you mind that he spends all his time there?’ Aggie asked.
‘Mind? When he’s there I get some peace and quiet.’
All the women laughed again and Alex moved away.
So many of the townspeople had received a bauble, she wondered how St Nick had the time to make them all. He did say that a lot of them had been painted prior to December but it was still a massive undertaking. And surely someone would have noticed St Nick hiding the baubles around town by now, but no one had. How was he managing to do it so secretly?
She sighed because, although the clues were helping, she was still no closer to working it out. Especially if he was throwing her red herrings like the elf hat.
She looked around as preparations were made to start decorating the house and gardens. There were some decorations that were reused year after year, like the lights on the fences and around the windows and eaves of the house and some of the Christmas trees, but other than that there was a different theme each year.Last year it was a space theme and there’d been lots of googly-eyed cute aliens positioned around the gardens. Quinn had even donated some of his cute cutlery monsters.
This year the theme was ‘enchanted forest’ and lots of lanterns had been made in the shape of forest animals and, because it was enchanted, there were also fairies and unicorns. These were currently being unpacked out of a large van and it was Alex’s job for the night to lay them out around the house and gardens in such a way that it looked like a forest scene, not just dumped out of the van. Another van was unloading Christmas trees and other forest-type trees to help with the scene so she decided to start helping to unload those and positioning them around the house and throughout the garden. It was a lot easier to create the enchanted forest scene once the forest itself was in place.
She went to the back of the van and climbed in. Some of the trees were quite big and she wasn’t sure she could move them by herself. Although they were fake so might be a lot lighter than they looked. She was just trying to decide which trees to move first when Quinn hopped up into the van.
‘Do you need a hand?’ he asked.
‘Aren’t you on roof duty?’
‘Yes, but they are going to clear the snow off the roof first, so I’m not needed for a bit. I can help you unload.’
‘I’m not sure how heavy they are, they are only plastic after all.’ She lifted one of the bigger ones. ‘Oh, they’re not too bad. Maybe you can help me lift themdown off the van and then I can put them in the right positions.’
