Vic huffed. “Fine. Team effort.” She grabbed the schedule off the table, tucking it under her arm. It felt less like a flawless blueprint now and more like what it probably should have been all along: a guide. A plan. Not gospel.
The universe might have just kicked Operation: Perfect Royal Christmas in the shins, but the operation was not dead yet.
As they headed for the door, she flicked her phone awake again. A new flurry of messages blinked on the screen—Patel with updated forecasts, a note from the head of security, and a fresh email from the caterers with that horrible phrase again: may be delayed due to snow.
She swallowed, squared her shoulders, and stepped into the corridor.
“Okay,” she muttered under her breath. “Snow: one. Vic: still in the game.”
She was halfway down the hall when a new thought hit her.
Alex and Erin were somewhere downstairs, probably wrestling three damp, overexcited children out of boots and into something approaching dry clothing. They were exhausted. They’d come here, like everyone else, hoping for a break. For a chance to reconnect.
Vic had promised herself she’d give them that. That was part of what this whole ridiculous, over-planned, over-ambitious operation was about.
Feeding them. Delighting the kids. Managing the chaos so Alex could be just Alex for a while, not the Queen juggling ten crises.
She looked at the words on her phone screen again. May be delayed due to snow.
Then she looked at the 43-page plan tucked under her arm.
“Not on my watch,” she said quietly.
Even if she had to personally dig a path through the snow to the nearest turkey, Christmas was going to happen.
She just hoped the reindeer got the memo.
4
JULIA
By the time the snow started to fall for real, Julia had already had the feeling.
It wasn’t anything concrete. Just a prickle, a quiet, professional intuition honed by years in palace corridors and briefing rooms. The same instinct that had whispered This will be bigger than they think during a minor constitutional wobble, or That MP will be a problem the first time a certain backbencher had opened his mouth.
This time, it had arrived in the shape of a five-year-old in the back seat.
“It’s going to break,” Hyzenthlay said calmly, somewhere around Perth.
Vic, who was in the passenger seat fussing with the satnav, the playlist, and a folder marked OPERATION: P.R.C. (Perfect Royal Christmas, obviously), glanced over her shoulder. “What’s going to break?” she asked.
“The weather,” Hyz said. “It’s going to break and go all sideways.”
Julia’s hands tightened very slightly on the steering wheel. They were on the A9, traffic thin, sky an uninterruptedflat grey. The sort of grey that promised a lot and delivered selectively.
“Sideways,” Vic repeated. “Like… wind?”
“Like everything,” Hyz said serenely, kicking her little boots together. She’d insisted on the red ones, the ones with polar bears. Her coat had polar bears too. It was like dressing an omen in fluff.
Julia smiled despite herself. “Someone’s been listening to the forecast,” she said. “They did say there might be snow.”
“They said there might be a ‘weather event,’” Hyz corrected. “That’s different.”
Vic twisted in her seat, one hand braced on the dashboard. “You’re five,” she said. “Why do you talk like a meteorological goth?”
“A what?” Hyz asked.
“Never mind,” Vic said quickly. “Point is, the schedule can handle a bit of snow. We factored it in.”
