She wanted better for Hyz. She wanted warmth and silliness and the comforting predictability of rituals built over time.
Vic wanted all that too. She just… wanted to control it in a way that made Julia’s fingers itch to gently pry the clipboard out of her hands.
“Hey,” Julia said now, glancing sideways at her. “We’re early. Two whole days before everyone else. You’ve checked the deliveries. You’ve terrorised Mr. Patel. You’ve assigned people their stocking hooks.”
“I have not terrorised Mr. Patel,” Vic said. “He likes me.”
“He likes your enthusiasm in the abstract,” Julia said. “He fears your email frequency.”
“Lies,” Vic said, but she smiled.
From the back seat, there was a rustle of paper. “Thissays we get to decorate cookies the day after tomorrow,” Hyz announced.
Vic twisted again. “Hey, that’s confidential.”
“You left it on the seat,” Hyz said. “Possession is nine tenths of the law. Auntie Erin says so.”
“No, Auntie Erin says that about biscuits,” Vic said. “Which is different.”
“It’s similar,” Hyz argued.
Julia hid a grin. Erin did, in fact, have startlingly strong opinions about baked goods and rightful ownership.
“What else does it say?” Julia asked.
Hyzenthlay squinted at the child-friendly version of the schedule Vic had made—less columns and risk assessments, more stickers.
“It says… tomorrow we ‘inspect the grounds’ and make snow angels,” she said. “And then on the day after that, the Queen arrives with the triplets and we do ‘warm welcome ceremony.’”
“See?” Vic said, smug. “Structured fun.”
“And then there is a picture of a deer with sparkles,” Hyz continued.
“Ah,” Vic said. “Classified.”
“Reindeer,” Hyz said, with the reverence of a kid who’d grown up around crown jewels and still thought antlers were the coolest thing in the world. “I told Florence, and she screamed.”
Julia winced. “You’re not supposed to tell Florence yet,” she said. “Or Matilda. Or Frank. We agreed to keep it a surprise.”
“I didn’t tell Frank,” Hyz said loftily. “He’d tell everybody. He has no sense of operational security.”
Julia glanced at Vic. “Can’t imagine where he gets that from.”
Vic stuck her tongue out at her. “He gets it from Alex,” she said. “She’s the one who live-broadcast her coming out to the entire world. Zero chill.”
“That’s not quite the same thing,” Julia said, but there was fondness in her tone.
The sky had darkened slightly while they’d bickered. It was only early afternoon, but the flat grey had taken on a heavier quality, a weight behind it.
Julia flicked the headlights on and watched the sweep of the beams pick out road signs, hedgerows, the occasional startled sheep.
“Is it starting?” Hyz asked.
“Maybe,” Julia said. “We’ll see.”
They drove in companionable silence for a few miles. The road rose and dipped, curving around low hills. A lorry rumbled past in the opposite direction, wipers squeaking across its windscreen. A cluster of houses appeared and vanished.
The first snowflake landed on the windscreen just north of Pitlochry.
