Page 87 of The Secret Holiday Kiss

Daisy followed her outstretched arm, and saw that the crocodile, in all its wooden splendour, was tucked alongside the hotel, up the lane that led to the construction site. She wondered why he’d put it there, when he had to drive his van past it every day, and it was already a snug fit.

‘Maybe they’ve finished for Christmas,’ she murmured.

Jazz nudged her shoulder. ‘Their last day is Monday. The team are staying in the hotel like you suggested, so they can all come to the ball.’

‘Oh, amazing!’ Daisy flushed, because she’d been busted wondering out loud about Avery.

‘This crocodile has shoes on,’ Lucy said when they reached it, and she was right. Avery had carved little wooden shoes onto each of the crocodile’s feet.

‘Crocodile shoes,’ Daisy said, her brain connecting the dots in a way nobody else would be able to. Jimmy Nail’s other well-known song. But could Avery really … he couldn’t have done this, could he? For her? It must be a coincidence.

‘Crocodile shoes are shoes made of crocodile skin,’ Jazz pointed out, ‘not crocodiles wearing shoes.’

‘What’s the clue to the final part?’ Imogen asked, peering at the sculpture.

‘OK, the question is …’ Jazz said: ‘These animals have a special reflective layer behind the pupil known as tapetum lucidum which allows them to stalk prey in the dark. What is a side effect of this?’

‘That’s a difficult question,’ Imogen said. ‘Can you find the answer anywhere, Lucy?’

Lucy got up close to the crocodile, looking for the little image on the sculpture that would help them with the answer, in the same way a tiny globe painted on the penguin had highlighted the southern hemisphere, and Jazz remembered that was where they came from – not the northern hemisphere – and was the reason they were such unlikely Christmas animals.

‘I can’t see anything,’ Lucy said, so all of them got close to the crocodile, which smelled of wood shavings and something slightly chemical. This one also had the pastel paint in a few places, and Daisy could see that its eyes had been picked out in a light yellow. As she was peering at it, a strange thing happened.

It was starting to get dark, the December afternoon slipping quickly towards night, and as it did, as the alley got gloomier, what Daisy had thought was pastel paint started to shine, the crocodile’s eyes glowing bright yellow, its shoes coming to life in luminous pink and green details.

‘Woah,’ Jazz said, stepping back. ‘Was this here before?’

‘The paint,’ Imogen said. ‘It glows in the dark. Goodness, that’s pretty.’

‘Its eyes shine!’ Lucy said, and Daisy glanced behind her, seeing that several other groups had come to inspect the crocodile, to unearth its secrets. ‘That’s the side effect of the tapetum … whatever. The crocodile’s eyes shine in the darkness, like this paint.’

‘They’ve all got it on,’ someone called. ‘You should come and see the robin and the squirrel – they look amazing now the sun’s going down!’

‘What a clever fucker Avery is,’ Jazz said with a laugh, ‘turning his animals into Christmas decorations. Beautiful sculptures that light up at night, all over the village.’

‘It’s so lovely.’ Imogen was smoothing her hand over the painted crocodile, its colours shining brighter as the darkness intensified. ‘Glow-in-the-dark paint.’

Daisy needed to find Avery. She needed to find him and ask him about the crocodile and the shoes, the reindeer with paper chains and – and everything, because really, what was he doing? What did it mean? ‘Phosphorescent,’ she said quietly, then cleared her throat. ‘It’s phosphorescent paint.’ Like the villain in The Hound of the Baskervilles had used to turn his huge dog into a hell hound, with fiery eyes and glowing teeth.

Avery had taken the paint and used it for good, and Daisy couldn’t help thinking he’d done it because of her. He’d put a hidden meaning in his treasure hunt that, instead of leading to a wooden crocodile wearing shoes, or a luxurious Christmas hamper, led to somewhere else instead.

She felt as if his treasure hunt led straight to her.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Daisy didn’t see Avery that night, because after he’d spent the morning adding phosphorescent paint to all his animals, he had gone to work on the house, and even though Daisy had been standing next to his crocodile, only a short distance from the site, it had been blocked off with barriers so no exploring villagers could wander into somewhere unsafe. He messaged her after eight, saying he was exhausted and that he would see her tomorrow.

Daisy had so much to say to him. Her brain, usually so good at navigating complicated to-do lists and juggling a hundred different things, putting them into a perfect, manageable order, was so overloaded she could barely think straight.

She hadn’t told anyone else her hypothesis, about the crocodile with its shoes and the paint and The Hound of the Baskervilles, because what if she was reading too much into it? Stefan had been very straightforward with his love. There had been expensive, traditional gifts, grand romantic gestures, but nothing ambiguous. Nothing that might have said, My feelings for you go deeper than a holiday fling, or, I found this cool fact about a farm in Australia selling crocodiles as Christmas gifts and isn’t this phosphorescent paint amazing?

Daisy replied to his message, told him that of course he needed sleep, and that she would see him tomorrow. She sat at the kitchen table, scrolling through their message thread, darkness crowding in at the windows. But the fire crackled in the hearth and the dogs were snoozing in front of it, Terror snoring like a freight train.

‘Avery not coming over tonight?’ Sophie sat down, and Daisy pushed over the hot chocolate she’d made for her while she’d been feeding Felix.

‘No, he’s exhausted. Understandably.’

‘It’s been a mad few days.’ Sophie peered at her. ‘How are you?’