Page 86 of The Secret Holiday Kiss

‘There’s an emperor penguin, isn’t there?’ Lucy said.

Jazz nodded. ‘And a king penguin.’

‘What about the cheesy pasta?’

Imogen’s smile was slow and smug. ‘Macaroni penguin,’ she said. ‘They have a yellow crest on their head. I remember stumbling across an article about them when I was looking for a Macaroni Pie recipe.’ Lucy held out her hand for a high five.

‘OK, so we need to find a penguin,’ Jazz said. ‘There’s a little clue on the map, which looks like an anagram. Cows Stoop.’

‘It should have been a goat, not a cow,’ Lucy declared.

‘Not if it’s an anagram,’ Imogen said, ‘because you need the right letters. What else could Cows Stoop be?’

‘Maybe it’s not an anagram,’ Jazz said. ‘Is there anywhere in the village where cows have to go under a gate or anything?’

Daisy stared at her sheet and blurred her vision, which was how she worked out anagrams. ‘Ah ha!’ she said, after a few seconds.

‘You’ve got it?’ Imogen asked.

‘I think so. Lucy, what’s your favourite place on Perpendicular Street?’

She folded her arms. ‘The bakery.’

Daisy laughed. ‘Of course. Sorry. After the bakery.’

‘I love ice cream,’ she said. ‘So Two Scoops.’

‘Right.’ Daisy waited for the girl to work it out.

‘That’s an anagram of Cows Stoop!’ Lucy said in a shouty whisper. ‘That’s where we need to go.’

‘Lead the way.’ Daisy gestured for her to go ahead.

Imogen fell into step beside Lucy, Jazz tucked her arm through Daisy’s, and she realized how much fun this was, tromping around Mistingham less than a week before Christmas, her cheeks already pink from the cold, with people who might, if she was going to be here any longer, become her friends. And it surprised her, because this wasn’t usually her sort of thing at all.

Mistingham was alive with people on a Christmas mission, scurrying to the manor and the seafront and up and down Perpendicular Street. The air was full of laughter and shouted suggestions and ‘quick, this way’, and Daisy had managed to keep her competitive spirit at bay, helping the others coax the answers out of Lucy, the four of them – and Artichoke – filling in their treasure hunt sheet slowly but surely.

Daisy wanted to find Avery, to tell him that he was a genius, that his sculptures were beautiful and that she couldn’t believe he’d got them done alongside everything else that had been going on.

They were all smooth lines and simple shapes, but with enough detail that you could easily distinguish each animal. And he hadn’t been weatherproofing them, but had been adding definition in glossy, pastel paints. You couldn’t see them until you got up close, but they were lovely, subtle embellishments.

‘OK, one left,’ Jazz said. They were on the seafront, the salty wind whipping their hair into their mouths, and they’d just solved the clue about the reindeer. A reindeer, Daisy hadn’t failed to notice, that had a paper chain garland painted in a soft, pastel pink around its neck.

‘What other Christmas animals are there?’ Lucy asked.

‘No idea,’ Imogen said. ‘Maybe the last one is an angel or something?’

‘Nope.’ Jazz read the question out. ‘Which baby animals were sold as Christmas presents by a farm in the Northern Territory in 2017, on the stipulation that buyers needed to get a permit, then return them to the farm when they got longer than sixty centimetres?’

‘Something Australian, surely?’ Imogen said.

Daisy laughed. ‘Crocodiles?’

‘I bet that’s it. So where are we going …’

They walked up Perpendicular Street, back towards the green, because the map’s clue had led them to the hotel. Daisy was trying to think of other Australian animals that might have a Christmassy connection, but koalas and wombats and kangaroos did not make her think of mince pies or snowdrifts.

‘It is a crocodile,’ Lucy said, pointing.