10.
It’s beginning to look a lot
like Christmas
While Keef and his surfie crew carry on ferrying from the coach house, I race around dropping boxes of lights in each room in readiness for the trees, adding throws to the ends of the beds from a pile of lovely fifties print curtains I came across, and spread jars of lights around the windowsills to make up for the lack of curtains. By the time I’ve distributed a big pile of woollen rugs around the easy chairs, and thrown fairy light strings around the mirrors, it’s feeling twinkly and a lot more welcoming.
It’s one of those days when I’m so busy, the clock on my phone’s leaping forward by hours not minutes. By the time I head back to the kitchen to tie up little bunches of pine and juniper twigs with orange and pink bows to hang on the doors, it’s already early afternoon and there’s still no sign of Miranda. The surfie crew are finishing a late chip buttie lunch and are out front taking nets off the trees and bringing them through the open door. Keef gives me a wave of his spade, sticks up his thumb and points at a plant pot. As I rush around the castle hanging the sprigs, tweaking the last of the tables and easy chairs into place, and adjusting the piles of alpine sledges where the bigger trees are going to go, I’m hopeful we might just do this.
Then Bill arrives in the kitchen with boxes of miniature gin bottles, that all need hanging ribbons attaching. By the time I’ve tied ribbons to enough bottles to cover a massive tree, I’m kicking myself for this particular bright idea. I’m also wondering where the rest of the tree decorations I ordered are.
When I eventually track Bill down to ask him, is he hard at work? … is he bollocks. He’s in his room hunched over a laptop screen full of figures. Even worse, I get a full-on blast of that body spray again so I get straight down to business.
‘Bill, have you seen any tree baubles? There should be quite a few boxes.’ Okay, I’ll admit, Imighthave got carried away with my ordering, but there’s nothing worse than bare branches.
He pulls a face but doesn’t look up. ‘The pantry’s rammed with the latest deliveries … and the laundry too …’
It’s like pulling teeth. ‘Could you possibly track the parcels to check they’ve arrived?’ So many orders, I’m ashamed I’m losing count of what’s come. All made harder because the order notifications are all landing in his inbox, and he doesn’t always forward them to me.
If I’d asked him to jump off a cliff he couldn’t look much more appalled. ‘Fine, I’ll do it when I finish this, okay?’ By which time, no doubt, he’ll have forgotten.
‘Thanks for all your help.’Not.The rest of us are running round like crazy things while he does zilch.
He finally looks up. ‘If you need a hand, Miranda and Ambrose are in the hot tub.’ His frown deepens. ‘Theyarewearing swimmers?’ Everything else that’s going on and he’s still banging on about that.
I refuse to get involved, so I ignore that the tune he’s humming under his breath isGhostbusters, and hurry Merwyn out as fast as I can. ‘The hot tub’s your domain, Bill. Merwyn and I are moving on to tree decorating.’
Or we would be if we could find the damn deccies. If we’re talking about boxes, there are just so many, and the stacks are so deep, it’s a shame that Merwyn isn’t a sniffer dog. What was I saying about if a wall is in your way, knock it down? This time when we get into the laundry it’s more a matter of making our way into the box mountain, meticulously opening and checking every box. At times we’re so deep in the cardboard fortifications, it feels like we may never emerge. And it’s the same again in the pantry.
But you don’t just lose thousands of hanging decorations – so long as I look ineverypackage they’ll turn up in the end. I mean, we’llhaveto find them, because without them the trees just won’t work. And time’s running out too. In a mere twenty-seven hours Libby will be here, complete with her expectant entourage. All desperate to be wowed. Which is a thought that would make me hyperventilate if I wasn’t doing it already.
Except the deccies don’t turn up. Instead, as I write the contents on all the boxes in code so as not to give away Libby’s present secrets, and try to rearrange them in some kind of order while not passing out from the fumes from the indelible black marker pen, I hit another time slip. When we finally emerge from the cardboard chaos it’s with empty hands and paws, and it’s almost eight. I’ve been through every stage of despair, and as I make my way to the kitchen at least there’s a lovely tree, its tiny copper wire lights twinkling. The doors to the courtyard are open, my stomach’s growling with hunger, Merwyn’s so pissed off he isn’t even making eye contact, and Miranda’s voice is drifting in with the steam wisps.
‘Ivy, there you are at last, come out and see us.’
I’m so weary I don’t have the will to resist. And Merwyn’s so done in, he doesn’t even give Ambrose’s boxers a second sniff as he waddles past them. From the empty gin bottle in the ice bucket, and the way their Santa hats are slewed sideways on their heads, I’d say these two have had a great afternoon.
Miranda’s waving her glass at me. ‘So what about those twiggy bunches, don’t start without me!’
‘I’m afraid they’re all finished and hung up now.’ That was hours ago.
‘Too bad, I was looking forward to doing those.’ She’s staring at me in that intense way she has. ‘Way more important, have you got to work on that handsome caretaker yet? He might be a total pain in the bum, but he’s very good looking.’
Merwyn’s heard her, and he’s giving me his ‘hell no! don’t even think about it’ look, which I pass straight on to Miranda.
‘Christian Bale and Ian Somerhalder look fabulous too, but I’m not going there either.’ If Miranda’s matchmaking I’m wide awake and ready to run, but I’ll put this one to bed first. ‘Save yourself the trouble, Bill’s got a partner, she’s a supermodel lawyer.’
‘That sounds too good to be true, there has to be a catch there. She’s not exactly here is she?’ Her laugh is soft and throaty. ‘It was going to be a surprise, but there might be someone slightly more human and properly single crossing your path in time for Christmas.’
‘Who? No! Shit! Miranda, I’m absolutely not here to be set up.’ They better bloody not have. But I seriously doubt they would, because every available guy they know has already been hurled at me. At least three times. I used to love getting tagged as Miranda’s fourth child back in the day when we visited Brighton, but with this level of motherly interference, not so much.
She’s giving me that all-knowing look she does. ‘I know times have been hard. But you can’t let your past define your future, sweetheart. Every new man is a whole new world of opportunities.’
‘Lovely to have your input, Miranda.’ But I have a lot less new-age optimism than she does. Hopefully now she’ll shut the eff up, and stop meddling in my life.
But this is Miranda, giving up isn’t in her nature. ‘And just in case that fails, I asked all the hot surfers to keep an eye out on your behalf.’
I let out an appalled squawk. ‘Thanks for that, I might as well die now.’
