Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,50

lights. But he couldn’t find a damn thing anywhere.

Every year from time immemorial, the town council had voted that money that would otherwise be spent on Christmas lights would be diverted to provide a lighted path for the children down from school, which was at the very top of the hill, the old redbrick building a happy sight, normally overrun with boys and girls even after the school day was over; the gates were never locked, and in the light summer evenings there would be a game of football or hopscotch, and anyone who wanted to could join in, pretty much.

From the back of the school there was the cobbled road downward. There were few cars on the island, and they mostly knew to go painfully slowly, not just for the children but for the occasional sheep or cow who wandered into the road at will.

But in front of the school was a grassy hill with a winding path, and this was always a much more attractive prospect. You could roll, tumble, or simply tear down the gradient, or if you had a scooter, you could attempt to steer it round the worst of the mud on the path. It was a universal option, and for years the council had lit it up—it was private land, but almost nobody could remember who on earth it belonged to; it was certainly too steep to build on—so that when it got dark at 3:00 or 3:30, there was still a way to get down, although it guaranteed you would be covered in mud and anything covering your knees would probably have a hole in it. The rule about wearing shorts to school (for the boys) had once been abolished some time before, but the mothers of the town, weary from darning the knees of trousers ruined on the wee brae, had revolted and insisted it be brought back for boys and girls. So now the only casualties were a few skinned knees, and the people of Mure were very much of the unfashionable opinion that you couldn’t be a kid without a few skinned knees.

Colton, however, was from California, where you’d sue someone for letting a kid skin their knee, and he found the entire thing incomprehensible. He’d also grown up in Texas, where people started putting lights on their roofs and huge inflatable Santas on their lawns and vast displays in every single window straight after Thanksgiving, and felt it was a basic human right to have a bit of the same in Scotland, particularly when it was so goddamn dark all the time.

So he’d left a provision in his will for a set of lights to be lit up at Christmas—and Joel had overlooked it completely. Joel had known only miserable Christmases in and out of foster homes as a child. Decorating and doing something up would simply never have occurred to him.

Flora, on the other hand, adored Christmas: had her cake all ready, had the gifts ordered—or she normally did. Even with her being busy up at the Rock, they still had the tree up, hung with carefully wrapped ornaments from years gone by, every year supplemented with something new—this year, from Mark and Marsha, a large “D” for Douglas, beautifully carved out of a dark hard wood, covered in leaves that reflected the firelight and gleamed. Dougie put out a pudgy little hand and tried to stick it in his mouth and nearly brought the entire tree down, but it had been saved, and its dark green fragrance lit up the entire room. Underneath it parcels had started to appear, which were being feverishly policed by Agot, who had to be regularly warned off them, as well as to stop pressing the buttons that made the lights on the tree flicker on and off as she was giving everyone a migraine.

But there it was in black and white: a large, very generous budget to decorate the town. What did he mean by “decorate”? How did that even work? Would it need planning? Would it have to pass the council? This was, frankly, a ballache he could absolutely do without. He was a lawyer, not a bitching . . . well, whatever this job was.

He sighed and picked up the phone. Perhaps if he called Malcy, who ran the local council, he would list a stream of objections and there wouldn’t be a meeting before Christmas and it absolutely couldn’t be done in time, and Joel would have to