I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,3

to enter meltdown mode.

‘And when were you going to let me in on this particular nugget of information, Charles? When we got up to Aviemore and noticed everyone in bikinis?’

‘I don’t mind about the snow, it didn’t matter anyway.’

Robin knew that was a lie. ‘It was the most important thing of all, Charlie.’

‘It’s forecasted though. For the new year apparently.’

‘Yes and the whole of England was “forecasted” to be mild and dry for Christmas. They obviously couldn’t forecast a puddle if they were stood in it. Are all the weathermen on acid trips?’

Robin growled like a frustrated bear, then his attention was snatched away by the satnav, which picked that moment to freeze. ‘Oh great, that’s all I need.’ He stabbed at it with a demanding index finger, spoke nicely to it then swore at it but nothing would coax it to work.

‘Charlie, get maps up on your phone. Look for the nearest town, pub, hotel, anything.’

Charlie tried, but maps couldn’t seem to pick up where they were as a starting point. ‘This is the trouble with modern technology,’ he said. ‘It works until it doesn’t.’

‘Very profound, my love and so helpful.’

‘You can’t go wrong with a paper map. I would have known where we were if you hadn’t thrown the road atlas away.’

‘It was years out of date, Charlie. It showed the M1 as a mud path.’

‘Oh, very funny.’

Robin braked and felt the car struggle for purchase on the road. There was no way he could drive up to Aviemore in this, it wasn’t safe.

‘Mad fools and Englishmen,’ he said, not quite under his breath.

‘That’s midday sun. And it’s dogs.’

‘What?’

‘Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, and it’s by Noel Coward.’

‘Mad fools and bloody Englishmen go out in the bloody snow two days before bloody Christmas, heading for the bloody highlands of bloody Scotland and that’s by Robin bloody Raymond.’ Robin’s neck was now completely red.

‘Shh, having a fit won’t get us anywhere sooner,’ said Charlie, attempting to pour some oil on Robin’s troubled waters. ‘What’s that over there?’ He squinted at something in the distance. ‘You know, I think it’s a sign.’

‘What? Like a burning bush?’ replied Robin dryly.

‘A wooden signpost I mean, as well you know. Drive on a touch.’

For a man six months short of his eightieth birthday, Charlie had eyes like a hawk.

Robin pressed down the accelerator softly, crawled forwards: ‘Oh yeah, I see it now, what does it say?’

Charlie opened the window and snow flew in so he read quickly and closed it again.

‘It said Figgy Hollow, half a mile and a right arrow.’

‘What’s that? A village?’

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said Charlie. ‘And I know these parts like the back of my hand.’

‘It’s a no-brainer, we’ll have to go there then.’ Robin just hoped the car would make it and not choke, splutter and stop as if they were in an old horror film, leaving them stranded at the mercy of some Yeti-like creature. ‘Someone’s bound to take pity on us and invite us in for some soup. Practise looking old and vulnerable.’

‘I am old and vulnerable. Figgy Hollow here we come then,’ said Charlie, annoying Robin even more by making it sound as if they were about to embark on a jolly adventure with the Famous Five and lashings of ginger beer.

* * *

Mary Padgett tried to concentrate on the road and not on her boss talking on the phone in that way he had when he was trying to hang on to his temper. She flashed a look at him in the rear-view mirror. Driving gave her the perfect excuse to glance at him every few seconds and she doubted she’d ever get tired of the sight. Jack Butterly was ten years her senior, just developing silvery sprinkles in his dark, cropped hair, and crinkles around his gorgeous grey eyes. He seemed to grow more handsome with each year that passed, as she seemed to grow more invisible. She loved her boss. Loved him with all her heart and not in an ‘I like working for him’ way, but an ‘I wish he’d lock the door, shove me on his desk and have his wicked way with me’ way, which is why she offered to drive him to a hotel in the north-east when Jack’s chauffeur Fred went off sick with his back – again.

Jack had been trying for months to fix up a meeting with the head of the Chikafuji Bakery company in Japan and the only