‘My boy!’ Jeannie croaked. ‘My boy is dead!’
7
SNOW, LIES AND SURVEILLANCE
14thDecember 2025
Went to that pitiful Christmas-tree farm we go to every year where the Nordmann firs are already half dead by the beginning of December. Tristan had to select one still planted in the ground, the pre-cut ones were too shabby. Forever the gent with the can-do attitude, Tristan was straight in there taking over everything.
While everyone was distracted, I managed to sneak away and put on a face mask used by the farm workers, as well as finding a green overcoat and hard hat in one of the nearby sheds. I trailed him, and he soon called me over when he found the tree he liked, thinking I worked there. I kept my head down low, got into the nearby vehicle used to cut down the trees and started it up. He could barely hear me anyway, what with one eardrum out of action. He bent down low, examining the base of the tree and I put my foot down. He barely had time to turn before I accidentally rammed the saw straight into him. I had meant to cut the tree down, I swear.
It had been a long time coming for that lying, cheating son of abitch.
Imanaged to wrestle Jeannie away from the scene before she could see the full extent of the gore.
Miles ran like a madman trying to locate Mimi and the girls. He found Mimi first, standing next to her car in the car park. He told me she didn’t even speak to him as black tracks of mascara snaked down her cheeks, and she clutched her phone to her ear. He said whoever she was talking to, she was begging them to help her, asking if she could come and stay with them.
He found Beebee and Ceecee shortly after. When he informed them what had happened to their father, I was sure everyone in a five-mile radius could hear Beebee’s chilling wails echoing throughout the countryside. She fought like a wildcat to see her father, unable to believe what she was being told. The outburst seemed to snap Jeannie out of her shellshocked state. Suddenly, she was aware of the very public scene unfolding, and donning her PR hat with terrifying speed, she forced Mimi and the twins into a taxi and back to the house. Ceecee’s eyes were wide as she was bundled into the backseat, there were no tears, and for once she seemed at a loss for words.
The police had inquired amongst the staff who had been responsible for cutting down the trees and operating the machinery. Only two members of staff operated the tree cutter, and both were taking their lunch break together at the time and had several other members of staff to corroborate. Of course, most of the employees were quite young, and no one would want to admit they might have accidentally just mown down a customer instead of a Douglas fir.
Jeannie kept muttering like a woman possessed about how these children barely out of their mother’s womb were probably looking at their phones or listening to their podcasts instead of keeping their wits about them, and that she and Artie Peverill were going to sue the farm owner so thoroughly that this would be the last Christmas he’d remember what it was like to have a pot to piss in. The kids and I stayed with her, watching her hands unfurling and clenching again as she ran through all the things she was going to do to whoever was responsible for the accident.
Once the police and an ambulance arrived to take Tristan away, I drove Toots, Jeannie and the kids back to the house, watching Miles recede in the rear-view mirror as he spoke to the officers. They had taken the names and numbers of everyone there and assured us they would be in touch to begin to conduct a full-scale investigation.
Jeannie kept referring to it as a terriblebloodyaccident. I wanted to ask her if she thought it was a terriblebloodymurder, but I thought that might be a tad inappropriate at this early stage.
The ride home was eerily quiet. Jeannie stared blankly out of the passenger window, her face pale. In the backseat, the kids gave each other furtive glances; even Callum didn’t have his earphones in, as if even that was too much, given the gravity of the situation. I didn’t notice how hard I was clenching the wheel until my fingers began to tingle. Toots had said only one thing:I knew this was going to happen. I don’t know what the hell she meant by that, but I couldn’t help but think it would have been good of her to warn us if she thought her grandson was going to get run through with a saw blade.
Jeannie looked like she was going to throttle her, so I dropped Toots back at the residential home, which she seemed pretty content with. Toots got out and slammed the door of the car, trotting up the path to the home like we’d just dropped her back after a few hours at Sainsbury’s.
Classic Weiss behaviour.
They were like something out of the early twentieth century, like the passengers on theTitanicwho didn’t want to don lifebelts because they would cover up their bejewelled ensembles, or the royal family turning away their Russian relatives because they didn’t want to compromise their position. A time that, although Toots didn’t live through most of it, was referred to by her as ‘the good old days’. It had taken me the best part of eighteen years to get my head around this family, and they still continued to surprise me. Sometimes I even envied their stiff upper lip… Until I realised how it drove them all batshit insane bottling up their emotions like that.
I barely remembered arriving back at Weiss Manor. As we pulled into the driveway, I noticed Mrs Harlow was upstairs, peering out at us from the curtains. We clambered out of the car and once we were inside the house, we stood staring at each other in the foyer, dumbstruck for the second time in two days. Each of us entirely at a loss as to what to do or say.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ Jeannie said, her voice sounding very far away, ‘I need to lie down.’
The kids’ faces looked drawn. They hadn’t seenit, thank God… Hadn’t seen their uncle lying there… I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at myself. I couldn’t stop my mind from trying to piece together the puzzle of clothes, flaps of skin and blood. I felt the mulled wine making its way back up my oesophagus, so I tried to pretend I was my badass orc warrior general and thought about what she would do upon seeing one of her own slaughtered. She would hunt down the killer, execute an impressive shield-hook, turning into a forward flip before smashing their skull in with her mace and spitting on their corpse. Not something I was probably going to pull off in this scenario, but it was a fun way to prevent myself from going mad. I quickly compartmentalised whatever it was I had seen in the ‘lock it up and throw away the key’ storage area of my brain.
I hugged Callum and Martha tightly before telling them to go and watch TV, lie down, play on their consoles, do anything to take their minds off what had just happened. I promised I’d bring everyone tea and biscuits. Tea and biscuits would solve sweet FA, but it would at least give the illusion for a second or two that things weren’t completely and utterly out of control.
I headed towards the kitchen like a ghost, unhearing and unseeing. I busied myself with the kettle, grateful for a mundane task to occupy my hands and mind. The clink of mugs and spoons seemed unnaturally loud within the oppressive silence of the house. As I waited for the water to boil, I caught sight of my reflection in the kitchen window. Someone was standing right behind me.
The china cup I was holding dropped from my hands, smashing on the floor. I whirled around to see Mrs Harlow standing there.
‘Mrs Harlow,’ I breathed, ‘you scared me!’
Mrs Harlow stared at the cup. ‘Oh dear, that was one of Jeannie’s best sets,’ she said, stooping to pick up the pieces.
‘Let me do it,’ I said as I bent down to help her.
‘Is it true?’ she said in a hushed tone, ‘about Tristan? Is he… is he dead?’
I reached to pick up a particularly jagged piece of bone china.
‘Who told you?’
