I slide an arm around her and nuzzle her ear as I murmur, “I bet you do,” making her laugh again. Smiling, I kiss her, then out of my bag I withdraw a small gift bag. “And this is for you.”
“Oh!” She takes it from me. “Oh, you shouldn’t have.” Then she winks at me. She opens the bag, withdraws the box inside, and opens it.
“It’s just a small thing,” I saw awkwardly. “Ghost and I wanted to say thank you for… well, everything.”
She takes it out. It’s a simple silver pendant engraved with a dog’s pawprint. “Oh, Cullen, it’s beautiful.”
“Turn it over.”
She does, and reads the inscription on the back. It’s a small space, so it just says ‘C&Gx’.
“I love it,” she whispers. “Thank you so much.” Her eyes meet mine for a moment, and then she bends to show Max.
“Shall I help you put it on, Mum?” he asks.
She nods, and he fumbles at the catch, then places it around her neck and does it up. She rises, looking down at where it rests on her breastbone, then comes over to me and slides her arms around me.
I hug her, looking over her shoulder at Max. I wink at him, and he does his best to wink back, making me smile.
After that, we go for a walk along the beach. Max throws sticks for Ghost to retrieve, and I hold Isla’s hand as we splash in the shallows. The rain has cleared from last night, and although it’s a little cooler than the day before, it’s still a beautiful day.
When we get back, we start making our Christmas lunch together. There’s no room for a turkey, and none of us fancies a big fancy meal anyway. Yesterday, we bought some salmon fillets as Isla said that Max likes them, and we cook them with herb butter in the combi oven, and microwave some baby potatoes and toss them in olive oil and sea salt to accompanythem. Max loves corn on the cob, so we cook three of them and smear them with butter, too. It’s a delicious meal, perfect for the hot day, and we eat it sitting out on the small deck.
For dessert we have a shop-bought pavlova with fresh berries and cream, and soon we’re all stuffed full.
In the afternoon, we play a couple of board games that Max’s grandparents bought him, and then go for a swim once our lunch has gone down.
Later, none of us is that hungry, so we just have grilled cheese toasties, and we sit and eat them while we watchHow to Train Your Dragon, which Max loves because dragons are just like dinosaurs in his eyes.
Soon, his eyelids are drooping, and Isla says it’s time for bed. He has a quick shower to wash the sand from his hair, and then she brings him out to me and urges him, “Go on.”
I put down my phone and smile. “What’s up?”
“Would you read my new book to me in bed?” he asks shyly.
“Of course,” I say, touched that he asked. “But only if Ghost can come, because he lovesA Christmas Carol.”
So Max climbs into the bed and Ghost jumps up next to him, and while Isla tidies up in the living room, I sit on the chair next to him, holding the book so he can see the pictures.
“Why are they wearing funny clothes?” he asks.
“Because this story is set a few hundred years ago, in England, on the other side of the world. There, Christmas takes place in winter. And back then, most people didn’t have much money, and they had very hard lives.”
I begin reading, trying to do a few voices for the ghosts and Jacob Marley to stop him getting bored. Max seems captivated, though, both by the tale and the pictures on each page. It’s a condensed version for children, written in slightly simplerlanguage, but it still manages to capture the magic of the original story.
Toward the end, I glance up to see Isla leaning against the doorpost with a smile. I finish the story, then close the book. “What do you think?” I ask Max.
“It was really good,” he says. “The last ghost was a bit scary. But I liked how Scrooge was nice at the end.”
“Me too. Do you know what a moral is?” He shakes his head. “It means a lesson that you learn from something. What do you think the moral of this story is?”
“Um… That you should help other people?”
“That’s right. It means that being kind and helping others is more important than being rich.”
“It’s like at the Ark, where everyone is trying to help the animals who’ve been hurt.”
“Exactly. See, you only needed to be visited by one Ghost to learn that.” He giggles, and I pat the dog and smile at him. “Goodnight.”
