Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm

I put the bag on the unit I wiped clean earlier. It’s warm to the touch, and when I undo the zip, the most gorgeous spicy cinnamon smell wafts out.

‘Thermos of hot pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread just out of the oven, another slice of pumpkin pie, and a flask of tea,’ he says before I can question what’s inside.

‘And if you don’t like pumpkin?’

‘You’re stumped.’ He laughs at his own joke. ‘Stumped, get it? You know, tree farm, et cetera?’

It does actually make me laugh, mainly at how pleased he sounds with himself for such a good pun. ‘Anyone would think you were a pumpkin farmer.’

‘Well, I think we’ve proved that I’m not a comedian.’

This time my laugh is genuine as I unload the bag and set the lovely things Glenna has sent out on the unit. The sight of a flask of tea makes my eyes sting again. I knew I was desperate for a cuppa, but I had no idea quite how desperate until this moment. I force myself to swallow and bite my lip until I’m certain I won’t cry again. ‘Thank—’ I go to thank him but my voice breaks on the first word.

I can’t believe I didn’t even think to bring any food with me. I just thought I’d pop down the street to one of the many shops or takeaways, like I do in London. I didn’t even consider how remote this place is and how vast the countryside seems.

I can feel his eyes on the back of my head, and he seems to know that I’m barely holding it together in the face of warm, pumpkiny food and PG Tips.

‘And yeah, don’t ever eat with us if you don’t like pumpkin. I grow eight thousand pumpkins a year, we have a lot to use up afterwards.’

‘Eight thousand?’ I say in surprise. ‘Your farm must be massive.’

‘So’s yours.’ He sounds nonchalant. ‘Bigger than mine, even. You’ve got about six thousand Christmas trees.’

‘Six thousand?’ My voice has risen to a pitch only audible to whales. He’s got to be joking. ‘And they’re not all dead?’

‘Of course they’re not. But don’t go getting too excited, they’re not in sellable condition either.’

‘What am I supposed to do with six thousand Christmas trees?’

‘Origami?’

It makes me laugh again. I can hear him doing something behind me, so I turn around and watch as he goes to a cupboard under the stairs and comes back with a mop. He takes the keys the estate agent gave me off the unit and lets himself out the back door. Outside there’s a bucket of steaming soapy water waiting, which he must’ve left there on his way over. He plunges the mop in, squeezes it out, and comes back inside to start swiping over the floor.

‘Are you seriously mopping my kitchen floor for me?’

‘There’s no point in putting clean things down in this mess. It won’t take a second.’ His eyes are twinkling in the low light and there’s something in his smile that makes me smile. ‘Have a cup of tea, you look like you need one.’

I can’t argue with him there. I gratefully guzzle tea from one of the plastic flask cups. Within minutes, the kitchen floor is a totally different colour than it was before, and Noel’s unfolding the air mattress and spreading it out. He inserts the nozzle of the foot pump into the hole and starts pressing his foot up and down on it.

‘I can do that,’ I say, thinking I should probably start doing something to prove I’m not completely useless at fending for myself. I’ve pumped up a few paddling pools and inflatable flamingos over the years, when the summer’s hot and Chelsea decides to put a kid’s pool in her miniscule back garden and sit in it drinking wine.

I go over to where he’s standing and try to take over without losing any of the air he’s already pumped in, but the process of me standing on one leg was never going to be a neat one – what I actually do is stamp on his foot and nearly overbalance. I flail around like a drunken great white shark trying to perform the Bolero routine and clutch the sleeve of his flannel shirt to stay upright. When did he take his coat off? I glance through the open kitchen door and see it hanging on the rack in the hallway, along with the hat he was wearing earlier. He’s wasted no time in making himself at home.

Once we’ve established that I’m not going to fall over and I’ve got a rhythm going with the foot pump, he goes back to the collection of things he dumped by the refrigerator and takes the heater outside to fill it. When he comes back in, he sets it on the floor, lights it and puts the safety guards in place, and sits back on his knees to show me the knobs to operate it. It makes the room smell like a Saturday morning at the garage. ‘This can burn quietly all night to give you a bit of light and warmth. The fumes will burn off in a minute, and you’ve got no roof or upstairs windows so there’s plenty of ventilation.’

I can feel the heat emanating from the little heater already, and it makes something that’s been tight in my chest since the moment I set foot in this house start to loosen.

He nods towards the pump. ‘Are you all right carrying on with that? Can I go and have a look around?’

‘Do you need a tour guide?’

‘This was my second home growing up, I know my way around.’ He takes a few steps across the kitchen but stops before he reaches the door. ‘Unless you want to give me the grand tour, that is? This is your house now, I have no right to walk around uninvited.’

I wave a hand dismissively and nearly overbalance again. ‘Be my guest.’

He adopts a French accent, which doesn’t work at all with his deep Scottish tone, and sings a few lines of ‘Be Our Guest’ from Beauty and the Beast. It makes me laugh so much that I nearly overbalance yet again. Disney songs and imitating singing candlesticks are the last things I expected from him, and his French accent gets progressively worse as he goes up the stairs and strains of the song filter down through the floorboards.

The mattress is starting to take shape, and I manage to switch legs without falling over when my thighs start to burn. I listen to the creaking floorboards as he crosses the landing and goes into the rooms above me. I like that he thought to ask if I wanted to show him around, even though he undoubtedly knows this house better than I do, and I’m strangely comforted by the sound of his footsteps upstairs.

‘So, what do you think?’ I ask when he comes back into the kitchen.

He cocks his head to the side. ‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Not that bad? There are more bits of the house missing than still in existence.’

‘Your main problems are the roof and the windows. Everything else is superficial. Things will look better once you have electricity, water, and some cleaning products, but the windows all need replacing.’

Considering there are no windows left to replace, even I could’ve guessed that. ‘How much is that likely to cost?’

‘I don’t know. A few thousand, at a guess. You haven’t got one whole bit of glass in the house.’

My eyes widen in shock. ‘I can’t afford that.’

‘You could afford this place,’ he says with a shrug.

‘Yeah, exactly. That was it. I put everything I had into buying it.’

‘And you didn’t think you might need to set aside some of your budget for essential repairs?’

‘Well, yeah, but I have a very limited amount left and it has to be prioritised.’

‘And there was me thinking you were just another rich city girl with more cash than sense and enough money to wake up one morning and say “I think I’ll be a Christmas tree farmer today” while dear old Daddy pours money into your trust fund.’ He must clock the look on my face because he looks suitably guilty. ‘Sorry. That wasn’t meant to be as offensive as it sounded. I’ve met people like you who come up here thinking it’ll be an easy get-rich-quick scheme in a film-worthy setting. They’ve seen the size of the land and dollar signs appear in their eyes. I assumed you were the same.’

‘The last thing I thought about was getting rich. I bought it because my parents would’ve loved it.’

‘Would have?’ he asks gently.

‘They died. Just over two years ago. I had the money from the sale of their house. I didn’t know what to do with it, only that I wanted to keep it for something important, and then I saw the auction and … I don’t know. It spoke to me. My dad always wanted to move back to Scotland. He loved Christmas trees and my mum loved Christmas, and I knew they’d love it. It seemed magical from the pictures.’

‘It was, once upon a time. A real winter wonderland.’ He looks around the dingy kitchen. ‘But that was a long time ago.’

There’s emotion in his words that makes me look at him, really look at him. I take in the slump of his wide shoulders and the sadness in his voice, and he realises it too because he shakes himself. ‘You could replace the windows one at a time to spread the cost. If you want me to, I can come over tomorrow and board up the remaining ones upstairs. And Evergreene had been intending to fix the roof for years, so there’s new roofing felt in the barn. I don’t mind nailing that over the hole as a temporary fix until you can afford to get it repaired properly. It’s a priority because the more water that gets into this place, the more damage is being done.’

My stomach drops like I’ve just got into a lift. How many Christmas trees will I have to sell to afford this sort of thing?

‘And I’ve got a builder who does all my building repairs. If you want his number, he’ll give you a decent price on the roof. Most of the materials are already here. The replacement tiles are stacked in the garden. You probably came across them when you were running from the monster squirrel earlier.’

‘It wasn’t the squirrel, it was the shock of the squirrel,’ I say, knowing that I’m never going to live it down, no matter what I say in my defence. ‘I’ve never been confronted face to face by an unexpected squirrel before, okay?’

He raises both eyebrows with a look of scepticism on his face. ‘From a spectator’s point of view, it was hilarious. I only wish I’d had my phone out to record it. Millions of views on YouTube beckoned. I’ve never heard such a bloodcurdling, ear-piercing scream over something so small and cute before. I thought you’d found Theresa May doing a dance or something equally horrifying.’

His ability to create the most random mental images is impossible not to laugh at.

‘Thank you,’ I say when the mattress starts letting out squeals of air because it’s full. I watch as he gathers up the pump and puts it back with the pile of other things, and sort of hovers next to it, paused halfway between helping with something else and picking up his stuff and leaving.

‘How about a cup of tea?’ I ask, because I don’t want him to leave yet. ‘I’m knackered after all that pumping.’

He is, of course, not even slightly knackered. He hasn’t broken a sweat and he isn’t gasping for breath or anything. ‘That bodes well for the amount of Christmas trees you’ll have to lug around if you really are going to get this place up and running again.’

‘Thanks for pointing out my complete lack of fitness. I’m so glad you noticed,’ I wheeze as I unscrew the flask to refill my empty cup and the other one for him.

Instead of replying, he gets the sleeping bag out and lays it on top of the mattress. Finally, he throws a camping pillow next to it, and sits down cross-legged on the floor next to the heater.

I take the two cups of tea across the room and hand him one, his fingers brushing against the back of my hand as he takes it. I wonder how his skin can be so warm when it’s still chilly in here, even with the heater going. I go back and collect the tin with a loaf of pumpkin bread in it. It’s still warm from the oven and the smell of cinnamon and spice that wafts up is mouthwatering. I sit down opposite him on the clean patch of floor, surprised to see the tiles are actually cream and have delicate beige leaf patterns along each edge. Patterns and colours are something that was lost under the grime earlier. I put the bread between us and push the tin towards him, and the way he hesitates before pulling the crust off is quite sweet.

We eat in silence for a few minutes. I want to look at him, to watch that lip piercing because I can see it out of the corner of my eye, catching the glow from the heater as he eats, but I tell myself to stop being weird. I concentrate on the chunk of pumpkin bread in my hand instead.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.