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‘I left you a message, but you didn’t get back to me.’
‘Yeah, sorry about that. I… er…’
Freya tugged on Seren’s arm. ‘Can we go? I’m starving.’
‘You’re always starving,’ Seren said. ‘Sorry, what were you saying?’ she said to Tobias.
Tobias blinked. ‘Oh, I was about to ask you how the van was running. Any problems?’
‘None at all. She’s running like a dream – although now I’ve said that something is bound to go wrong. I should have knocked on wood.’ She tapped Freya gently on the head. ‘Touch wood.’
‘God-Mummy! Stop! I’m not a tree—’
‘I have to go. Got a date,’ Tobias said abruptly, interrupting her.
Seren smiled, unsurprised. She suspected guys like Tobias always had dates. ‘OK, bye. I’ll keep an eye out for that invoice,’ she called after him and he walked away.
‘You do that.’ He waved a hand in the air without looking at her and she watched him stride off.
‘Who was that man?’ Freya glared at his retreating back.
‘He’s the man who turned the ice cream van into a Christmas van,’ Seren told her.
‘Is he your boyfriend?’
‘No, my little sugar plum, he’s not my boyfriend. My boyfriend is Santa Claus.’
Freya’s eyes were huge. ‘Is he?’
‘Yes. I can take you to see him, if you want.’
‘At the North Pole?’
‘No, silly, that’s too far away and it’s really, really cold. It’s so cold there, that your nose would turn blue and fall off. And then how would you smell?’
‘I don’t know,’ Freya said, touching the tip of her upturned nose with a mittened finger.
‘Awful!’ Seren tittered.
Freya scrunched her face up. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said, so Seren explained the joke.
‘I’ve got one,’ Freya said after she’d stopped giggling. ‘What do you call a fish with no eye?’
‘I don’t know, what do you call a fish with no eye?’
‘Fsh.’ Freya squealed with laughter, and Seren joined in, a flood of love for the child threatening to overwhelm her. Freya might not be hers, but she loved her as fiercely as though she were.
‘Come on, missy, Let’s get you fed,’ Seren said, pushing open the door of the fast-food restaurant and letting Freya go ahead of her.
‘Will you really take me to see Father Christmas? And is he really your boyfriend?’
‘I will, unless your mummy and daddy want to take you instead, and he definitely is my boyfriend,’ Seren said.
She hoped Nicole would say yes, because she had a feeling Daniel would adore Freya, and she couldn’t wait to show him off, even if it was to a five-year-old!
Seren couldn’t stop humming the Wishy-Washy song. It had been stuck in her head on autoplay ever since the audience had been encouraged to sing along to it last night. It was so annoyingly catchy that she hadn’t been able to rid herself of it, despite the noise of the market as everyone set up their stalls and the tunes blasting out of one of the open shop doorways behind her.
Dippy was more or less ready and, after watching several of the stallholders having to unload trestle tables and display stands, plus boxes and crates of assorted goods, Seren was relieved that all she needed to do was to unroll the awning and open the window and she would be able to start serving. Of course, she did a few other things as well, which mainly consisted of hanging up the samples of wreaths, garlands and table decorations (she’d carefully put the new ones she’d made in bags and had labelled them meticulously so she knew which ones were which), and the final touch was to don her flashing antlers and grab a coffee.
