no one’s arrived yet. You are the first. I don’t believe you’ve met Gravy, have you, William?”
Will blinked at the cat in Ms Tricia’s arms, his mind shifting with the subject. “I can’t say I recognise her. Very nice to meet you, Gravy. I’m charmed.” He patted the creature’s little ginger paw and was delighted when it hissed and tried to scratch him. Showed a lot of spirit and strong personal boundaries. He made an entry in his mental catcyclopaedia: Gravy, ginger, new, has very firm character. Ms Tricia’s cats multiplied at the speed of light so he’d set up a system to keep them all straight in his head.
That dealt with, he followed Ms Tricia into the kitchen. There was a pot of what smelled like curry goat on the Aga, which was also bedecked with a row of tinsel—which might be a fire hazard. He should probably Google that. “Shall I call Jase, see if he’s been held up?”
“Jason, Jason, Jason. You boys, you’re obsessed with each other.” Ms Tricia put Gravy down on one of the bar stools at the kitchen island. Will went to sit down as well, only to find the nearest stool occupied by a lazy-looking tabby by the name of Cassava, if he wasn’t mistaken. He politely chose another chair.
“I’m not obsessed with Jase,” he said honestly, “I just need to ask him something.” Will had spent months working up to this Christmas. The Christmas When Everything Would Change. He had a plan, a foundational plan, a plan whose success (or failure) would dictate how the next year, or maybe the rest of his life, went for him. This plan was everything. So he really needed to run it by Jase before he started. Because Will had two best friends, and one of those best friends was the subject of The Plan. The other best friend was Jase, which made him the only one who could say, “Actually your plan is a pile of wank. Please fix this, this, and this before rushing off to make a fool of yourself.”
(During the course of his life, Will had learned that he needed external voices of reason. He’d been born without one of his own.)
“Well,” Ms Tricia said, “it’s possible Jason isn’t coming today.”
Will blinked slowly. “Oh. Did I get confused?” Sometimes he got confused. Maybe he’d come on the wrong day? Maybe he’d misunderstood on the phone. “I thought you said Jase was—”
“Abigail,” Ms Tricia interrupted. “I said Abigail was coming today.”
Will opened his mouth, closed his mouth, looked at Ms Tricia very hard, and tried to figure out why the nice old lady who used to pick him and the Farrell kids up from school every afternoon would lie to his face like this. Because information often fell out of Will’s head, and he frequently made ditzy mistakes, but he knew one thing for absolute certain: he would never, ever, forget or mistake or misunderstand even the barest mention of Abigail Farrell’s name. Never.
Before he could think of a way to sternly interrogate a woman who’d once caught him drinking squeezy honey from the bottle, the sound of a car engine came from outside. He and Ms Tricia turned toward the window. Ms Tricia’s ancient border terrier, Haddock, remained uninterested and unconcerned in his dog bed. Will wondered if it might be worth gifting Ms Tricia a guard dog for her birthday, now that Haddock was getting on in years. Surely it wasn’t good for an older lady to be alone in the middle of nowhere like this?
Then something clicked inside his head. “Wait. If Abbie is coming today—is that Abbie? Outside? Right now?”
“Maybe. Likely. Yes.”
Shit.
Will rocketed to his feet. This wasn’t ideal. This wasn’t remotely ideal. For one thing, he hadn’t run his plan by Jase. The whole thing could be a wash, and he would have no fucking idea because he hadn’t run his plan by Jase.
Second, the house wasn’t ready. He hadn’t had a chance to put up the rest of Ms Tricia’s Christmas decorations, the ones that required power tools or stepladders. The house was barely festive at all—there weren’t even any lights outside—which meant there was zero evidence of his many practical talents to overwhelm and impress Abbie with.
Although… it suddenly occurred to Will that Abbie didn’t care about lights. Or practical talents. And now he was wondering why lights and practical talents had ever featured in his Very Important Plan when he knew very well that Abbie