I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Milly Johnson Page 0,43
‘pick a name out of the hat. If you pick your own, put it back and pick another. We’ll carry on until everyone has someone else’s name. Don’t say who you’ve got, it’s secret.’
It took three attempts but eventually they all had a piece of paper that didn’t bear their own name.
‘We should each put one of our socks in front of the fireplace to fill,’ said Mary, as the idea came to her.
‘Ooh, I like that,’ said Robin, standing to collect the plates. Bridge started to help him.
‘Who’s for a coffee and a mince pie?’ asked Robin.
‘Oh, why not,’ said Charlie. ‘And see if you can find some brandy butter while you’re in there.’
‘Cholesterol!’ barked Robin, and Charlie chuckled.
‘I’m going to decorate the tree this afternoon,’ said Mary. ‘And make some paper chains, that’ll pass some time.’
‘I’ll do the chains while you do the tree,’ Bridge threw over her shoulder as she headed to the kitchen to help Robin.
‘Jack and I will get some more logs after we’ve finished eating,’ said Luke. A mini video hijacked his brain: he and Bridge with two carrier bags going into the park to collect snapped-off branches for kindling and any stray logs. The park keeper was a bit keen so they had to hide behind trees when he was patrolling, trying not to giggle. They’d been so very much in love, he couldn’t get enough of her. She was mad and exciting and loving and damaged and he wanted to mend her. He wondered if he had now, after damaging her more first.
Bridge brought in a big jug of coffee and Robin a plate of warmed mince pies, a bowl of brandy butter and one of rum cream. Robin opened his mouth to remonstrate as Charlie loaded his pie with a huge blob of the butter, closed it again, let him be.
‘If this is the start of a nuclear winter and we are discovered by scientists years later, they will wonder why our skeletons are so fat,’ said Luke, through buttery crumbs of pastry, which made them all laugh.
‘You can’t have a fat skeleton, idiot,’ said Bridge.
‘I bet you can if you eat like this for a while,’ Luke argued.
‘I can’t see this clearing for days, can you?’ said Robin with a sigh. ‘I do hope the travel insurance company don’t class this as an act of God and refuse to pay up. I shall tell them that I’m an atheist and see how they like them apples.’
‘Are you?’ Bridge asked him. ‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a non-believer.’
‘If it means I’ll get our money back for the hotel in Aviemore, I’ll say I’m a Jedi Knight,’ said Robin. His voice softened then. ‘I’m a good Catholic boy. Well, a bad one actually. Lapsed – very lapsed in fact. But I do know going to church is no guarantee of being a good person. I think it’s far too late for me to go back to it properly. If I went into a confessional booth to catch up with all my undisclosed sins, I’d not come out for a year.’
‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ said Bridge.
‘What about you, Charlie?’ asked Luke. ‘You a believer?’
‘I am,’ said Charlie, already on his second mince pie. ‘Plus I want to believe in a heaven after all this. It would be a shame for the things we have learned and the connections we have made to be for nothing in the end. I just hope I’m following the right god, that’s all. The one with the kind face and nice beard. What do the Norwegians say about the afterlife, Mary?’
‘Oh, they’re big believers in the afterlife,’ she answered.
‘I’m a dyed-in-the-wool atheist myself,’ said Luke. ‘I think afterwards is the same as what we had before – the wheel turns and we come back to nothing, oblivion. In saying that, it would be good to be proved wrong. I think as humans, we’ve over-evolved, made it too complicated for ourselves by not accepting we simply stop and that’s it. All we can be sure of is the here and now.’
‘How cheerful,’ said Bridge, deadpan.
Charlie was drinking every word in though. ‘That’s… insightful, Luke.’
‘If I’m wrong, then I have no fear of a god on judgement day,’ said Luke. ‘Just because I don’t believe, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a pronounced sense of right and wrong. You don’t need a god to tell you that you should look out for your fellow man.’