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He walks over and leans on the table between Millie and me. “No, sorry, it’s dudes only. But I have a special task for you to test your colouring skills. I want you to design a bookmark for me.”
She brightens immediately. “With unicorns?”
“I love unicorns. Especially rainbow ones.”
“I’ll use all the colours in my pencil box,” she says happily.
“Blair can print you one to colour in,” I suggest, and Blair nods and starts tapping on the keyboard to find a suitable picture. I smile at Mitch and mouth, “Thank you.”
He bumps my arm with his. And then, before I can react, he dips his head and kisses my shoulder. I’m wearing a sleeveless vest, so his lips touch my bare skin.
Opposite me, Emma and Cate’s eyebrows shoot up.
Mitch pauses. Then he says, “I don’t know why I did that.” He straightens, mumbles something, then heads out of the room.
Emma and Cate start grinning, but I give a little shake of my head and glance at Millie.
Luckily, Blair hasn’t noticed. “Okay Mils,” she says. “Unicorns it is. Which pic’s your favourite?”
Chapter Twenty
Vix
I watch Mitch walking out the front gate and head off down the hill, then I turn away from the window to discover Emma and Cate watching me with sly grins. I poke my tongue out at them and lean next to Blair. “How are you doing?”
“All done,” she says. She’s made a page with four different bookmarks on, with the outlines of unicorns and mermaids, ready for Millie to colour in. “Can I print them?”
“Yes please.” An idea gradually occurs to me. “Can you please print, say, ten copies?” I smile at Millie. “On Saturday, you can colour them in and hand them out to people who come to the book sale.”
She’s very excited at the thought of being able to help and jumps up and down as Blair collects the pages.
“Come on, let’s go into the living room,” I say as I hear someone call out from the back door. I extract a bottle of wine from the fridge, and Emma and Cate collect wine glasses from the cupboard.
It’s Harri, with her guitar. We meet her in the living room, and Lettie, Paisley, and Darcey arrive shortly afterward. Millie sits on the floor to do some colouring on the table, and the rest of us sit on the sofa and chairs, and a couple of them on beanbags. Dad comes in and greets them all, then goes off to his study and closes the door.
We chat for half an hour, catching up. Then, finally, someone says, “Are we going to get started?”
Paisley has a tote bag by her chair, and now she lifts it onto her lap and pulls out a folder. “I’ve made these for us,” she announces. We all exclaim as she passes out eight copies of a booklet, made from A4 pages printed and then folded in half. It includes the lyrics and music for twenty Christmas songs.
“I thought we could go through them and talk about which ones we prefer,” she says, “and if I’ve missed any that anyone really wants to include.”
“This is fantastic,” I say, flicking through the pages.
“I’ve included pop songs and folk songs,” she says, “so they’re not all religious. But I thought we could have some carols, if that’s okay with everyone.”
“Of course,” everyone exclaims. Like most Kiwis, we all celebrate Christmas even if we don’t go to church, and we all know the most popular carols.
“The songs have all got chords on them,” Harri says with delight. “That’s terrific, thanks.”
Paisley flushes. “You’re welcome. You can practise once we know which ones we’ll be singing.”
While we sip our wine, we go through the leaflet, familiarising ourselves with the songs, and talking about which ones we like. Paisley thinks we should plan on a thirty-minute performance, which means we need to choose between twelve and fifteen songs.
“It depends on whether you want ones like Twelve Days of Christmas,” she says, “as that’s a bit longer.”
“We might have to sing that one,” I advise, “it’s Millie’s favourite.” I smile at her as she looks up. “A partridge in a pear tree?”
“Yes!” She squeals, and everyone laughs.
