Author: Jaimie Admans
Category: Humorous
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About the Author
JAIMIE ADMANS is a 35-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, watching horror movies, and drinking tea, although she’s seriously considering marrying her coffee machine. She loves autumn and winter, and singing songs from musicals despite the fact she’s got the voice of a dying hyena. She hates spiders, hot weather, and cheese & onion crisps. She spends far too much time on Twitter and owns too many pairs of boots.
She will never have time to read all the books she wants to.
Find out more on www.jaimieadmans.com or find her on Twitter @be_the_spark
Also by Jaimie Admans
The Château of Happily-Ever-Afters
The Little Wedding Island
It’s a Wonderful Night
The Little Vintage Carousel by the Sea
Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm
The Little Bookshop of Love Stories
The Little Christmas Shop on Nutcracker Lane
The Wishing Tree Beside the Shore
The Post Box at the North Pole
JAIMIE ADMANS
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperCollinsPublishers
1st Floor, Watermarque Building, Ringsend Road
Dublin 4, Ireland
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021
Copyright © Jaimie Admans 2021
Emoji © Shutterstock.com
Jaimie Admans asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008466930
E-book Edition © October 2021 ISBN: 9780008466923
Version: 2021-09-15
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Jaimie Admans
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Extract
Acknowledgements
Author’s Letter
Dear Reader …
Keep Reading …
About the Publisher
For everyone who still looks to the skies on Christmas Eve and hopes to see something magical.
Chapter 1
Dear Santa,
I wish I could believe in magic again.
From,
Sasha Hansley, aged 12
What’s the best thing that can happen a month before Christmas? Well, it’s definitely not losing your job.
‘Of course I understand,’ I say to my friend Debra on the phone. ‘I’ll find something else. It’s fine.’
And I do understand. I’ve been helping out at her dog grooming parlour on a casual basis, and now her sister-in-law’s been made redundant and needs the extra income so she’s going to help out instead.
‘Family comes first,’ I say cheerily. ‘Especially at this time of year. No worries. I appreciate you keeping me on for as long as you have.’
She hangs up with another apology and thanks me for taking it so well, and I’m glad she can’t hear my gritted teeth through the phone line.
Great. Yet another thing to be joyful about. Where on earth am I going to find another job at the end of November? Even the temporary Christmas positions will have been filled by now.
I drop my phone on the coffee table and throw myself back into the sofa where I’d perched awkwardly on the edge when Debra rang saying she had some news. And I get it. If family need help and you’re in a position to help them out, of course you’re going to. But I’m gutted too. I’ve been working there for a year and a half, and I love it. I get to spend my days hanging out with dogs. Washing dogs, drying dogs, brushing dogs, playing with dogs, distracting dogs while Debra clips their nails and cuts their hair. Walking dogs.
Christmas cheer was already in short supply this year, but losing a job I love is the icing on top of the dried-up fruitcake. Now I’m going to have to be extra careful with money, so I can’t even drown my sorrows in copious amounts of mince pies, mulled wine, and tubs of Christmas chocolates like I usually would.
I’d say it’s been one of those days, but really it’s been one of those years. I open my eyes and blink up at the ceiling. How much worse can things get? I’m probably tempting fate by even thinking that.
At the ripe old age of thirty-six, I’m feeling so old and jaded that I’m ready to give up on life and move to a remote Scottish island where there’s only one house and a few sheep. And maybe a watchtower with a cannon that automatically fires at approaching boats. Unless that was more Viking-era and might be frowned upon in this day and age …
It would be less isolated than I am now. I don’t even have a pet to eat my corpse if I died. I’d be one of those cases where no one realises I’m missing until the neighbours start noticing an odd smell four months later.
I groan out loud. Working at the dog grooming parlour was just about the only thing that was going well for me. I should pick up my laptop to update my CV and upload it onto job search sites, but instead I pull the TV remote over and switch it on.
Cheerful Christmas songs. I switch channels and land on an ad break full of festive adverts, showing laughing families sharing jugs of gravy, singing children, and sentient snowmen. I switch the TV off again. The adverts do nothing but drive home yet another year of being alone for Christmas.
I look at the empty corner beside the TV where my tree used to go. I looked forward to putting it up every December, in the hopes that this December would be the one when Dad finally fulfilled his promise of coming home for the festive season and we’d have a proper family Christmas. As a child, I remember sitting under it, disappointed he’d broken yet another promise. Now I’ve gone from a disappointed little girl to a disappointed adult who gave up on seeing her dad for Christmas years ago and doesn’t even bother to put up the Christmas tree anymore.
I don’t even know where he is in the world. He’s always off, here, there, and everywhe— My phone buzzes on the table and cuts off t
he thought.
‘Speak of the devil,’ I say out loud when “Dad” flashes up on the screen.
He’s early. He usually leaves it until December 23rd at the earliest to tell me he won’t be coming home for Christmas after all.
‘Let me guess,’ I answer the phone, ready for yet another excuse. ‘A spacecraft landed in the middle of the road to the airport so you can’t get home? Maybe aliens have taken over the population of Morocco or wherever you are, and you simply can’t abandon them in their time of need? Perhaps a giant squid has invaded the village and you’re the only one who can save them? Pirates? Dinosaurs? Man-eating jellyfish?’ I’ve certainly heard more outlandish justifications over the years for why he’s missing yet another dad-and-daughter Christmas.
‘Sasha?’
I sit up straight. His voice sounds shaky and frail, and there’s a wobble in it that I’ve never heard before. ‘Dad? What’s wrong?’
‘Now I don’t want you to worry …’ He speaks slowly, almost a whisper, like he’s struggling to get the words out.
It instantly sets alarm bells jangling. No one ever says that unless there’s something to worry about and my mind jumps into overdrive about all the accidents he could’ve had on his latest crazy adventure. Kicked by a camel in the desert? Fallen down a mountainside in Asia? Stampeded by a herd of elephants on the African savanna?
‘I’ve had some health trouble …’
His voice is so quiet that I have to press the phone closer to my ear to hear him.
‘The thing is … I’ve had a heart attack. I’m absolutely fine and you mustn’t worry about me—’
‘Dad! A heart attack? That’s serious serious!’
My mouth goes dry and I can’t hear myself think over the rush of blood in my head, like I’ve stood up too fast even though I’m sitting down. I definitely jinxed things by wondering how much worse this year could get.
He never takes anything seriously, but even he can’t ignore a heart attack.
‘When was this?’
‘Two weeks ago—’
‘You had a heart attack two weeks ago and you’re only now telling me?’
‘I didn’t want you to worry. I feel fine—’
‘You don’t sound fine.’
He gives a weak cough as if on cue. ‘I thought the doctors would send me straight back to work, but they’re telling me – quite sternly, I might add – to take it easy.’
I scoff. Take it easy. My dad doesn’t know the meaning of the words. He’s nearly eighty but he acts like he’s in his twenties. To be honest, twenty-year-olds would look at him and wonder where he gets his energy from.
Plus, taking it easy could be difficult depending on his location in the world. Taking it easy on a beach in the Bahamas, okay. Halfway up Mount Kilimanjaro might not be so okay. I clench my teeth again and ask the dreaded question. ‘Where are you?’
I brace myself for the answer. It’s always different. All answers are equally worrying. He’s never in the same place twice, and he never does things that most seventy-nine-year-olds would do, like pottering in the garden or doing crosswords with a nice cup of tea. He’s always got to be scaling mountains or wrestling crocodiles or sailing across some previously un-sailable body of water where forty-eight boats have sunk in trying.
‘I’m in Norway.’
Norway. Okay. Norway sounds like it might be a reasonably safe and calm country. What kind of scrapes could he get into in Norway? Ice fishing? Fjord crossing? ‘Doing what?’
‘I’m running a reindeer sanctuary.’
‘Of course you are.’ Reindeer. Why didn’t I think of that? At least the word sanctuary sounds quiet, a world away from my dad’s usual activities. ‘Is that a difficult job?’
‘Well, that’s why I’m phoning …’ Dad gives a weak cough again, and I wait while he takes a few breaths, and even though I’m trying to tell myself that he’s had a heart attack and he’s still alive so that’s got to be a good sign, I’m panicking because his breathing sounds laboured and his voice sounds so feeble that he can barely form words.
‘I need your help.’
Those are words my dad has never said to me before. He never asks for help with anything, and the fact he’s asking now might be the most worrying part of this conversation so far. ‘With what?’
‘The reindeer. The doctors have forbidden me from doing any strenuous work, and I’m struggling to manage on my own.’
‘Come home,’ I say instantly. ‘Move back in here. You know I have room. Let me take care of you. This has to be a sign, Dad. You can’t keep running off around the world on these hare-brained adventures. Come back to the UK.’
‘I was thinking more along the lines of …’ He gives another cough and has to catch his breath. ‘Maybe you could come out here? I’m on my own, Sash. I can’t abandon my reindeer – there’s no one else to look after them. I can’t come home.’
Home. He still thinks of Britain as home then, despite the fact he hasn’t lived here for a couple of decades. He hasn’t even visited the country since I met him at a London train station when he was inter-railing around Europe three summers ago.
‘I don’t know who else to turn to,’ he says quietly. ‘I need someone stable who I can rely on.’
I never knew my dad thought that about me. It might be an insult really, like he thinks I’m an actual building. Me being “stable” and always staying in one place is usually something he criticises – he’s constantly disappointed by my lack of adventurous spirit and refusal to visit him whenever he stops in one place long enough. He once invited me to meet him in Japan and climb inside an active volcano, and was surprised when I didn’t fancy it.
‘I’m struggling, Sash. I need your help. The reindeer need a lot of care, and it’s not so easy for a man of my age to get around with all the snow.’
‘It’s snowing there?’
‘It’s Norway. It’s been snowing for weeks.’
‘That sounds cold.’
‘Oh, no, not at all. It’s only minus-fifteen today.’
‘Only?’ I say in horror. I love snow, and we don’t get nearly enough here in Oxfordshire, but surely a pensioner who’s just had a heart attack shouldn’t be roaming about in those temperatures? ‘Dad, that’s madness. You have to come home.’
His breathing is harsh down the line, but I can tell he’s not particularly enamoured with my plan. And I’m still struck by the idea of my dad actually asking for help. It leaves me with no doubt that this really is serious.
My dad is a larger-than-life character who will always be there. Despite his love of travelling and his daredevil spirit, it’s never before crossed my mind that he isn’t immortal. That one day, and one day soon given how frail he sounds on the phone, he won’t be there. We might not always see eye to eye, but he’s always been in the background of my life, off on his adventures, nothing more than the occasional postcard dropping through my letterbox. A phone call every few months. A Christmas card with a few banknotes inside it every year. A birthday card that invariably arrives two weeks late.
‘I know you can’t take time off from your job at the drop of a hat, and I know you must be owed loads of holiday time because you never go anywhere or take any holidays.’ He gives another wheeze. ‘And I thought it might count as a family emergency …’
The word “emergency” sets my alarm bells ringing again. Does he think … is he really that close to death’s door?
‘And I thought … after all these years working at that fancy hotel … and you are the boss, after all …’
Ah, yes. That. There’s the small matter of how my dad thinks I work at the Hotel Magenta, and that I not only work there, but I’m actually the manager. He got the wrong end of the stick a few years ago, and I never had the heart to set him straight. So whenever he asks me how work’s going, I mumble something about it being great, and don’t tell him that the management position never went to me, or that I’ve been through several dead-end jobs since he t
hought I became the manager of a posh hotel.
‘We— I … I could really use your help and expertise. Not many … sanctuary owners would get a chance to consult with one of the top hoteliers in the country.’
‘For the reindeer?’ I ask in confusion. ‘Are reindeer in regular need of caviar and champagne via room service, breakfast in bed, and five-star dining every night? Do they need a concierge to attend their every whim?’
‘Well, they probably wouldn’t complain.’
I don’t laugh at his attempt at a joke. No matter how much he tries to brush aside the heart attack, this isn’t funny. ‘You have to come home,’ I try again. ‘You can’t stay out there alone in snow and below-freezing conditions. You’re clearly not well.’
‘Don’t write me off yet, Sasha. There’s still plenty of things I need to do with my life. Space tourism, for a start. I’ve seen a lot of the world, and now I insist on living long enough to get a place on the next rocket to the moon.’
‘No! No space tourism! Terra firma is bad enough!’ I say, even though the idea of him not living long enough makes my stomach roll.
I should tell him I’ve lost my job, even though it wasn’t the job he thinks it was. The most exciting thing I do in my life is curl up in front of the TV with a cuppa and a packet of biscuits. I’ve never done anything my dad would consider “fun”. I’ve never even left Britain. The only time in my life that he’s ever been impressed by anything I’ve done is when I got that job. I don’t want to disappoint him more by admitting I’ve been fired from a totally different job or that I never got that one in the first place. ‘Maybe I could come out there for a little while …’
Even as I say it, I wonder what I’m thinking. Am I really saying I’ll get on a plane to Norway to help my dad out with his reindeer sanctuary? It’s not the most unusual thing my dad has ever asked me, but it’s got to be in the top three, after the volcano climbing, and possibly that time he asked if I’d like to visit the wreck of the Titanic for my sixteenth birthday.
‘Fantastic! I’ll email you the flight info. I’ve booked your tickets for tomorrow.’