Page 3 of The Merry Christmas Project

‘Watch out, world,’ he said, giving me a kiss. ‘Merry is going to set you alight with her candles. Get it ?’

‘Very good.’ I smiled weakly. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that from what I’d read and heard, there was never a right time to start a family and if we were to wait for a time when Daniel wasn’t putting his energy into his greengrocer’s, we both might have retired. Before I had chance to word it in a way that didn’t provoke him, his phoned beeped loudly with a text message.

‘I didn’t think I’d get a signal this high up.’ Daniel frowned as he whipped his phone out. ‘It’s from Tom.’

I pulled away from him while he read his younger brother’s message and I picked up some crisps.

‘Cheese and onion or beef ?’ I asked, holding out the choice to him. ‘Or would you like some hummus and … Daniel ?’

He was miles away, gazing out at the hills below us, the hand holding the phone still out in front of him. I felt a wave of fear.

‘Daniel ?’ I said again. ‘What’s the matter ? Everything OK ?’

‘Um, yeah.’ He blinked a couple of times before briefly looking my way. He pressed the button on the side of his phone to lock the screen. ‘Tom says they’ve recruited a new head teacher finally.’

The head teacher at Wetherley Primary School where Tom was the deputy had suddenly gone on long-term sick leave before the summer holidays and there’d been a scramble to recruit a replacement before the start of the new school year.

‘Oh, good. Anyone we know ?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Well, I do. You don’t,’ he laughed awkwardly and shoved the phone back in his pocket. ‘It’s a woman. Tasha Sandean.’

‘How do you know her ?’ I said, crunching on a crisp.

He rubbed his fingers along his jaw. ‘Friend from school, primary and secondary. She left Wetherley to go to university and never came back. Very bright girl. Top set for everything and brilliant at French because her parents were from Mauritius. They moved back there when they retired, I think. I haven’t thought about her for years.’

He was certainly thinking of her now, I noticed, because he appeared to be blushing. Had she been a friend, or more than that ?

‘We can invite her round when she moves back; you can get to know her again,’ I suggested, testing my theory. ‘Reignite the old friendship.’

‘Maybe.’ He opened the beef crisps and chomped on a large handful. ‘Funny story. When we were seventeen, we both got temporary Christmas jobs at a garden centre working in Santa’s Grotto. I asked if I could kiss her under the mistletoe, but she dodged out of reach.’

‘Aw, poor Daniel,’ I teased, dotting his nose with my fingertip. ‘Spurned and still sore about it.’

‘It took a lot of courage, I’ll have you know,’ he said, grinning. ‘It’s not easy for boys ; trying to work out whether girls like them or not.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘So you had a crush on her ?’

He looked wistful for a moment.

‘Everyone did.’ He polished off the rest of his crisps and pinched one of mine. ‘But we made a joke of it. She said if I wasn’t married by the time I was forty, she’d kiss me then.’

‘Like one of those marriage pacts to be each other’s stand-by if you’re still single by thirty or whatever ; that’s so funny !’ I laughed, although something about the look in his eye niggled me. Then I remembered. ‘Hey, you’re forty this December.’

‘I know.’ He rummaged in the rucksack. ‘Got any chocolate ?’

‘No, sorry,’ I said vaguely, imagining him as a love-struck teenager mooning over a girl. ‘Daniel ?’

‘Hmm ?’ he said, biting into an apple.

‘If Tasha is going to be back in Wetherley this Christmas, maybe she’ll want to kiss you under the mistletoe. If you’re not married.’

I was only half teasing. I wasn’t the jealous sort as a rule. But I didn’t want some very bright girl, top set in everything, former crush of my boyfriend thinking she could just turn up with a sprig of mistletoe and expect him to pucker up for old times’ sake.

He looked at me, amused. ‘I’m sure she won’t even remember it.’

‘You remembered it,’ I pointed out.

‘She might be married,’ said Daniel, laughing. ‘Let’s change the subject. It was just a silly story ; I wouldn’t have told you if I’d known you’d take it so seriously.’