About the Author

JAIMIE ADMANS is a 32-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 read.

Jaimie loves to hear from readers, you can visit her website at www.jaimieadmans.com or connect on Twitter @be_the_spark.

Also by Jaimie Admans

The Chateau 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
JAIMIE ADMANS

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Jaimie Admans 2019

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.

E-book Edition © 2019 ISBN: 9780008331214

Version: 2019-08-28

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

Acknowledgements

A Letter from the Author

Extract

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For my Little Bruiser Dog.

Thank you for making me smile every day for fifteen years.

I will miss you every day for the rest of my life.

Chapter 1

I am never drinking again.

Please tell me that pounding, throbbing sound is not coming from inside my own head. I peel one eye open and severely consider not bothering to open the other one.

I’m slumped on the living room floor and propped upright by the coffee table, with my face smooshed against the keyboard of my open laptop. My movement jogs the mouse and the dark screen comes back to life, and my eyes hurt at the sudden brightness. I wince and push myself away, instantly regretting it when my stomach rolls at the movement.

When I can bring myself to peer blearily at the screen, there are loads of new emails in my inbox – and most of the subject lines say ‘congratulations’. More spam, no doubt. ‘Congratulations, you’re the sole benefactor of a millionaire Nigerian prince, give us your bank details and we’ll pop a million dollars straight into your account. Totally legit, honest.’

There are three empty bottles of Prosecco beside me, and my phone is worryingly nearby. Why do I remember squealing ‘thank you, luffly robot voice, we’re moving to Scotland!’ into the phone at some unmentionable hour of the night? While sitting on the living room floor? With my computer? And my phone? I glance at the empty bottles again.

Oh god, Steve. On the desk in his office. With Lucia from accounting. That’s why I’d broken out the emergency Prosecco. And then the emergency emergency Prosecco. That bare bum thrusting in amongst the spreadsheets was enough to drive anyone to drink. I’d never seen it from that angle before. There in all its spotty, hairy glory. And all that grunting. Did he ever grunt like that with me? I’d always thought it was sexy, but when you walk into your boss’s office and find him humping your colleague on the desk, it sounds more along the lines of ‘stuck pig’. Which, conveniently, is exactly the way I described Steve yesterday, with a few choice swear words thrown in for good measure, as I clambered onto a filing cabinet and announced to the whole office what had been going on, quit my job, and stormed out with a satisfying door slam. I’d then sat in the fire escape stairwell and let the tears fall, hurt and annoyed at myself for trusting him. I hadn’t, at first. I knew he flirted with everyone and didn’t really believe he liked me, but he was so charming, so believable, and I’d let myself be taken in. Why did I ever think it would be a good idea to get into a relationship with my boss? Why did I ignore the rumours that circulated the office about him? Why did I drink three bottles of Prosecco last night? Why … wait, why does that email say ‘receipt for your payment’? I must’ve gone on eBay and bought another pair of shoes that look pretty but, in retrospect, were obviously designed for women much younger than me and with much slimmer feet and more attractive legs than mine, who also possess some ability to walk in heels, which I do not.

I squint and move closer to the screen. That email’s from an estate agent. Scottish Pine Properties. I recognise the name because I’ve been daydreaming about their listing for a Christmas tree farm all week …

I sit bolt upright, ignoring the spinning room and thumping head as I click on the email.

I didn’t … did I?

Dear Miss Griffiths,

I’m pleased to congratulate you on your purchase of Peppermint Branches Christmas Tree Farm. Thank you for your fast payment. I look forward to meeting with you to show you around your new property and hand over the keys. Please give my office a ring at your earliest convenience to arrange a meeting.

I did, didn’t I?

It suddenly comes back in a flood. Oh god, what have I done? Why did I think looking at the online auction for a Christmas tree farm that I’ve been fantasising about since the first moment I saw it was a good idea after so much Prosecco?

Why do I remember shouting ‘Hah! Up yours R-five-hyphens-81, it’s mine!’ at some ungodly hour of the morning, probably scaring a passing cat?

R-five-hyphens-81. The other bidder in the online property auction – privacy maintained by the website only allowing you to see the first and last letters of your opponent’s name. The buzz of the auction last night. Watching with bated breath as they put in a bid with ten minutes to go on the countdown timer. So I put in a bid. Then they put in another. And I added another. We went round in circles until there were four seconds left on the clock. I hit the button one last time. And I won it.

Now there’s a multitude of emails in my inbox that say things like ‘Congratulations on your purchase’ and ‘receipt for your payment.’ The automated phone call from the bank, the robot voice asking me to confirm that it wasn’t a fraudulent transaction, that it was really me requesting to transfer the small sum of fifty grand to Scottish Pine Properties in Aberdeen.

I’ve actually done it. I’ve spent almost all of Mum and Dad’s money on a Christmas tree farm. In Scotland. What was I thinking?

I glance at the empty bottles again. That Prosecco has got a lot to answer for.

Note to self: change security questions. Must be something unable to answer when drunk. The origins of pi or long division or something. Unfortunately I still remember my mother’s maiden name and my first school even after three bottles of fizzy wine.

You know how you get overexcited at eBay auctions and you only want that skirt if it doesn’t go above £1.50 and you’re there right at the end and people are bidding and suddenly you’ve won the thing for £29.77 and you’re absolutely exhilarated until the invoice email comes through, and you realise you do actually have to pay £29.77 plus postage for someone’s manky old skirt that’s probably got moth-eaten holes in it and stitching coming out, and when you get it, it smells of stale cigarette smoke and clearly has never met a washing machine before? This is like that, but I’ve bought a Christmas tree farm. This is so far removed from anything I’d ever normally even consider doing. But somehow, it doesn’t feel like a mistake. That money has been sitting in a savings account, waiting for something to happen to it. I wanted to make something of it, to use the money from the sale of Mum and Dad’s house to honour their memory or make them proud or something. I’ve never known what. That’s why I haven’t touched it since it came through.

Dad grew up in Scotland and always talked about selling their house and buying a farm there in their retirement. He always wanted to return to his Scottish roots. He never got a chance to live that dream. And as I stared at my laptop last night, that auction suddenly seemed like the answer. It wasn’t just because I was slightly worse for wear. It was because, without that Prosecco, I’d have talked myself out of it and convinced myself to do the sensible thing and not buy a Christmas tree farm in Scotland.

I should be terrified. I should be getting onto the estate agents and begging for a refund on the grounds of diminished capacity. Obviously, this is a mistake. Of course I don’t actually want a Christmas tree farm in Scotland. I live in the tiniest flat known to mankind in the centre of London. What am I supposed to do with Peppermint Branches Christmas tree farm in the little village of Elffield in the northernmost corner of Aberdeenshire?

That’s what I expect myself to be doing. But the very small part of me that doesn’t feel completely sick from the hangover is fluttering with excitement. I don’t want a refund. I don’t want to back out. I saw that auction over a week ago and have daydreamed about it ever since. How amazing would it be to own a Christmas tree farm? I’ve spent hours picturing wide open fields, rows of lush green trees, snowy ground, sleigh rides, and the scent of pine needles hanging in the air. Subconsciously, I knew exactly what time that auction ended. I didn’t inadvertently stumble across it just as it was ending, and accidentally enter a bidding war with the other anonymous bidder, driving the price up by a grand each time, until my final bid went in at £52,104. With estate agent fees and whatever other expenses will be added on, that leaves me with under £2000 left in my savings account for whatever investment the tree farm needs. The price was so close to the amount I got from the sale of Mum and Dad’s house that it’s almost like fate.

It wasn’t a drunken mistake. I wanted it, and in the cold light of day, I still do.

And coffee. I definitely want coffee.

***

‘A Christmas tree farm?’ My best friend, Chelsea, says incredulously as I put two pumpkin spice lattes down on the table between us. She deserves that much for abandoning her Saturday morning plans with her husband, Lewis, and coming out for a coffee with me.

‘I like Christmas and I like trees, so why not?’ I say with a nonchalant shrug. I don’t know why I’m trying to act like this isn’t a monumentally big life-changing thing.

‘Well, I like Easter eggs but I’m not going to go out and buy Cadbury’s.’

‘Now there’s a thought,’ I say, my mind drifting to daydreams of owning a chocolate factory. Now that’s the kind of property auction I should have waited for.

‘Leah …’ Chelsea taps the table in front of me to get my attention. ‘It’s in Scotland. You’re seriously going to move to Scotland?’

Like it’s a question I haven’t been asking myself all morning. It’s a big thing, but without Steve, without a job and without Mum and Dad two hours’ drive outside the city, what have I got to stay in London for? Chelsea is the only person I’d miss, and it’s not like we’d lose touch. The more I think about it, the question changes from why I’d move to Scotland to why I’d stay here.

‘I’m stagnating here,’ I say eventually. ‘Since my parents died, I’ve been standing still, waiting for something to happen. I thought that something was Steve, but it clearly wasn’t. And now what? Back to the job centre to hunt for another mind-numbing data entry clerk role that gradually sucks the life out of me day by day? And let’s face it, I’m not exactly going to get a glowing reference from my boss, am I? Not after I stood in front of the whole office and invited him to do unpleasant things to himself with a turnip. And definitely not after I poured a hot cup of coffee down his neck and probably scalded his willy which was still waving about all over the place, and then topped it off by storming out without formally handing in my notice. What’s he going to say to my next potential employer? “Oh yeah, hire Leah, she’s great for a quick fumble behind the photocopier but don’t let her catch you humping the head accountant if you prefer your willy un-scalded.”’

Chelsea laughs and I sigh. ‘After the initial shock of Mum and Dad, the weeks of paperwork and organising funerals and then probate and solicitors and clearing the house and everything … I’ve been motionless, waiting for the punchline to this terrible joke I’m trapped in while life moves on around me. I’m like one of those stagnant ponds full of dead reeds. There might actually be insects living in me.’

‘If there’s green slime, you really need to get that checked out by a doctor.’

‘Ha ha,’ I say, even though I’m trying not to smile. I’m pleasantly surprised that Chels hasn’t told me I’m insane. She knows how I’ve been feeling, but I still expected her to tell me I’m mad for spending so much – literally my parents’ legacy – on a drunken whim, and doing something that will change my life without thinking it through. But I had thought it through. I’ve been thinking of nothing but that auction since the moment I saw a quirky news story about a Christmas tree farm being up for sale last week.

‘What happened with Steve? I thought you really liked him until that series of very drunken text messages you sent me in the middle of the night.’

I cringe.

‘Don’t worry, they were so badly misspelled that even autocorrect had given up. I thought things were going well with him?’

‘Yeah. Turns out things were going well for him and Lucia in accounting too. And Amanda in customer service. And Linda in acquisitions. Even Penny in printing had photocopied their bum cheeks together.’ I tell her the whole sorry story about walking into his office to find him giving the aforementioned Lucia a right good accounting to on his desk with his trousers round his ankles, complete with grotty underwear on show. Why did I never notice his ugly boxer shorts before? ‘I was too trusting. I mean, who really falls for their boss and expects it to work out? It’s a fantasy, isn’t it? I should never have let myself believe it … but I was so lonely that being with him was better than nothing.’ I bite the inside of my cheek as tears threaten to fall again. I can’t possibly cry over him any more than I did yesterday.

She makes a noise of sympathy and I wonder if I shouldn’t have said it. She’s been amazing since my parents died, she’s stayed overnight at my flat on more than one occasion, she’s offered to let me stay with her and Lewis, she’s dropped plans just to sit in my living room and keep me company because I didn’t know what to do. I tried to carry on with normal life while this gaping hole was still inside me, and then Steve got promoted into my department at work and flirted outrageously and it was nice to feel something again, anything. Harmless fun, innuendo in professional emails, the odd stolen snog in the stationery supplies cupboard, a cheeky raised eyebrow in a meeting that set off a round of giggles. Looking back, I see I wasn’t the only one giggling. Other girls went to get a lot of supplies and it took them a mysteriously long time too. I knew that. And I still trusted him.

‘You seem remarkably okay with it?’ Chels ventures.

‘What other options are there? After everything that’s happened in the past couple of years, a man being so much of a pig that it’s an insult to pigs to compare them is the least of my problems. The office is welcome to Steve, I’ve got more important things to think about.’ She can probably hear the wobble in my voice, but there’s nothing I can do but forget about Steve. He doesn’t matter anymore because I bought a Christmas tree farm last night. Even thinking the words in my head seems unreal. It’s like something out of a Christmas movie …

‘What are you going to do with a Christmas tree farm?’

‘I had this crazy idea about growing Christmas trees on it …’

She laughs. ‘You know what I mean. I didn’t know you had any interest whatsoever in plants. Do you know the first thing about growing Christmas trees?’

‘Not really, but I can learn, can’t I?’ I sigh. ‘I know, okay, Chels? I know it’s crazy and I know I haven’t thought it through completely and I know I shouldn’t have done it, but …’ I trail off, unsure of what comes after that ‘but’ or why it’s there in the first place. Really the sentence should end at ‘I know I shouldn’t have done it’.

Whatever it is that I don’t say, Chels hears it anyway. ‘You know, when you called me earlier, I put my legal hat on and tried to remember everything I’ve learned from work about property law. I thought we’d spend this coffee picking through terms and conditions while you begged me to find a loophole to get you out of this contract, but I don’t need to, do I?’

I think about it for a moment because it’s what I expected too. Chels is an assistant at a big London law firm, she’s the perfect person to ask for legal advice if I wanted to back out of this. ‘I felt like I lit up last night,’ I say eventually. ‘I can’t remember the last time I felt as alive as when I won that auction. I know it’s crazy, but something drove me to stay online and not talk myself out of it. I expected to regret it in the morning, but I don’t. I’m excited, and it’s the first time I’ve been excited about anything in a really long time. Or maybe I’m just jittery from the six bucketfuls of coffee I had before I left the flat.’

‘You do know how dodgy it is to buy a property without even seeing it? What about a surveyor? You don’t know anything about this place.’

I shrug. Honestly, I’ve never bought a property before, I don’t know the first thing about what I should have done before handing over that amount of cash, but it’s a bit late now. ‘There are pictures?’ My voice sounds feeble and pitifully hopeful even to my own ears.

She holds her hand out for my phone, and I slide my thumb up the screen and go to my most visited browser tab. Over the past week, the auction listing for the Christmas tree farm has been at the top of my internet history. I had a look as soon as I heard about it and spent a few minutes fantasising about owning a Christmas tree farm, instantly dismissed it as a silly daydream and went back to real life. But since then, whenever things have been slow at work or I’ve been on my lunchbreak, I’ve found myself pulling out my phone and going back there, staring at the photos that show fields and fields of uniform green trees, tall ones that tower above the photographer, medium ones, and tiny saplings planted row by row in fields of grass and earth.

Chelsea scrolls through my phone, expanding the pictures and squinting at them, reading aloud from the closed listing. ‘Twenty-five acres, five species of tree ready for harvesting, dwelling included that needs renovation … Don’t you think “dwelling” is an odd way to describe a house?’

‘Well, yeah,’ I say because it’s something that’s been bothering me too, but by the time I’d decided I was going to go for it, it was too late to ask any questions. ‘It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Chels. Someone else was bidding as well, and I was going to lose it if I didn’t go for it then and there. How often do you see a Christmas tree farm up for sale and at a price you can afford? I made a split-second decision. It doesn’t matter what state the farmhouse is in. My flat’s not exactly posh, is it?’ I think of the dark stairwells that always smell of pee, and you count yourself lucky if pee is the only stench. It’s got to be better than that. ‘All right, so maybe it needs a bit of cleaning and decorating, but I can do that. There’s no point worrying about it now, I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

‘It’s a bit odd that they haven’t even included a picture of it …’ She looks up at my face and trails off.

All right, it is an odd way to describe the cute country farmhouse nestled among a garden of Christmas trees that I’m imagining, and it is unusual that there isn’t a picture of it. ‘Maybe they thought the fact it needs renovation might put buyers off? Maybe it’s got, like, boarded-up windows and stuff and they didn’t think it added to the appeal so they left it out of the auction listing?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ She sips her coffee in an attempt to hide the look of apprehension on her face. ‘I’m sure it’s not important. At least you know there’s a dwelling of some sort there. It probably just needs a coat of paint. I’ve got some spare Dulux in the shed if you want to take it with you?’

I love her for being supportive even though she thinks I’m a maniac. Even I think I’m a maniac. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I’m not sorry I went for it. I just hope I feel the same once I actually get there.

‘You might find your very own David Tennant!’ She squeals out loud at the thought and then ducks her head when several other customers turn to look at us.

Chelsea’s current sexuality could best be described as ‘David Tennant in Broadchurch.’ She and Lewis missed it on TV and have recently binge-watched the boxset. Their surname is actually Miller, and Chels has never found anything sexier than the way David Tennant says ‘Miller’ in the show, apart from the way he says ‘murder’. Even poor Lewis has been forced into doing impressions. I imagine that all their neighbours hear most days is them shouting ‘Miller’ and ‘murder’ at each other in bad Scottish accents. It’s a shame David Tennant isn’t actually a policeman because I’m sure someone would’ve called him by now.

‘Ooh, Richard Madden from Bodyguard. Now there’s a hot Scot if ever there was one!’

‘I’m not looking for a man, no matter how sexy or Scottish they may be. Steve was enough of a mistake for one year. I’m going to concentrate on Christmas trees for a while.’ I give her a false grin that she knows is false. ‘Seriously, Chels. Steve was the last straw for me when it comes to men. I need to learn the trade of Christmas tree farming, not lust after Scottish men. That’s my mantra from now on: no men, just trees.’ She goes to protest but I interrupt her. ‘Not even if Richard Madden himself turns up.’

She sighs like I’m a lost cause. ‘Just find me a sexy Scottish bloke who rolls his Rs and doesn’t mind saying “murder” a lot.’ She drags the R out like a cat’s purr.

‘If I find anyone who actually speaks like that, I’m going to call the local zoo to check for missing animals in heat. And you seem to have forgotten that you’re married.’

‘I only want him to speak! I don’t want to sleep with the man or anything. Although I wouldn’t mind if you found one with good thighs and a penchant for wearing kilts in the traditional way … you know, sans underwear. Purely for educational purposes, obviously. To learn about Scottish culture.’

‘You can find him yourself when you come up to stay with me.’

‘Hah!’ She bursts into laughter, causing the customers who looked at us earlier to turn around and peer at us again. ‘It’s October. It’s freezing and we’re in London which has already got a good ten degrees on the rest of the UK. If you think I’m going to the back end of beyond in the middle of winter, you can guess again. Invite me next summer if the stars align and there’s a heatwave, the rain stops, and all the Scottish midges go away. Does Scotland even get a summer? And you’d better check out this “dwelling” before you start inviting visitors, you might only have room for guests of the equine variety.’

‘You’re my best friend. You’re meant to be supportive.’

‘I am supportive. I’d just be a lot more supportive if you’d bought a vineyard on the French Riviera. Then I’d help you move and probably stay on as your employee to help you out. You could pay me in wine and French pastries. Do you think it’s too late to exchange it for a French vineyard?’

‘You should’ve bought a vineyard and I should’ve bought a chocolate factory and then we’d have been set for life. Wine and chocolate, who needs anything else?’ I grin. ‘Don’t you think a Christmas tree farm sounds magical though? Even the name gives me little tingles of joy. It sounds so delightfully festive, and those photos make it look so pretty. All those trees blowing in the breeze … You can imagine it in the snow, reindeer grazing all around, Santa’s elves dancing around the tree trunks while jingle bells ring in the distance …’

I can tell she’s questioning my sanity. Maybe elves aren’t quite the best thing to base your property-buying decisions on.

‘Your mum and dad would be so proud,’ she says eventually. ‘Your dad used to love getting his Christmas tree every year, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah, and Mum always used to spend the whole of Christmas moaning about pine needles on the carpet, even though she loved Christmas more than any other time of year and always said it wouldn’t be the same without Dad’s tree making a mess in the middle of the room.’ I tear up at the memory and Chelsea reaches over and squeezes my hand.

‘They’d love this.’

I nod and try to will the tears away. They really, really would. Is that subconsciously what drew me to the listing? After they died, I was left their house, but apart from my job and flat being in London, I could never face moving back there with them gone. The best thing to do was to let it be a happy family home for another family, like it was for us when I was growing up. I wasn’t sure what to do when the money from the sale came through. Chelsea’s advice was to get on the property ladder because I’ve moved from rented flat with crappy landlord to rented flat with even crappier landlord for the past few years, but I’ve never found anywhere that felt like home.

‘I can’t believe you’re leaving to become a Christmas tree farmer. Talk about random.’ Chelsea sips her latte again. ‘You hadn’t even considered it twenty-four hours ago.’

I had. I just didn’t realise that my hours of daydreaming about Peppermint Branches were considering it. ‘That’s the thing about fate. Sometimes things happen that you’re not really in control of.’

‘Also known as Prosecco? And the things that usually happen are drunken texts to exes and shoes you can’t walk in, not Christmas tree farms.’

‘You know what I mean,’ I say, even though there are hazy memories of us having girls’ nights out which ended in both messy texts and inadvisable shoes. ‘I don’t have any doubt about this. For the first time in years, I feel like I’m doing the right thing.’

‘Do you have any idea how much I’m going to miss you?’ She bangs her head down on her folded arms on the table and short blonde hair flops over her forehead. ‘I don’t even know what to say, other than good luck. I think you’re going to need it.’

I grin at her. ‘No, I’m not. It’s going to be perfect, you’ll see. Nothing could possibly go wrong.’

Chapter 2

Two weeks later, after handing in notice to my landlord, squeezing all my important belongings into every spare centimetre of my car, and leaving the rest in Chelsea’s garden shed, I’m off up the M40 in my tiny blue Peugeot. Only six hundred miles to go. But the distance doesn’t matter. Nothing has ever felt as right as this. I’m not someone who takes risks or does things without thinking them through, and in the fortnight it’s taken me to pack up my tiny flat and give my keys back to the landlord, no modicum of doubt has crept in yet.

Even though Chelsea was very keen to let me know there’d always be a place for me on her sofa if it all goes horribly wrong.

It’s the middle of October, but I’m moving to a Christmas tree farm, so it’s only right to put on my Christmas playlist. The autumn weather is gorgeous as I drive north on a sunny Tuesday morning, listening to a carefully curated selection of Christmas classics. By the time I’ve detoured around Manchester, I’ve been on the road for six hours, and the afternoon light is fading fast. I stop for the night at a B&B before facing another five-ish hours on the motorway the next morning, singing along to Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé, and Cliff Richard, and everything feels different as I cross the border. I grin at the blue and white Scottish flag road sign declaring ‘Welcome to Scotland’ as I pass it.

Even the endless motorways seem prettier. There are green fields all around and wind turbines spinning in the distance, and the scenery gets even better as I join the traffic towards Aberdeenshire. The sea is far off to my right and the mid-afternoon sun reflects off the water, creating an almost blinding sunburst. As the motorways change into narrow roads, there are fields of lush green trees everywhere I look. The grassy verges at the roadside are a healthy shade of green even though it’s nearly winter, and the farmland around me is all recently harvested fields full of bales of hay, interspersed with patches of uniform dark green fir trees. It gives me a little thrill every time I see them. The roads are lined with a fence of trees towering above the car, a perfect screen separating road and farmland, the remnants of yellow hay peeking through from the other side. I feel a flutter in my belly as I get nearer and nearer to the village of Elffield.

There are neat patches of evergreen trees in the distance and I keep glancing towards them and wondering if they’re mine. Is Peppermint Branches that close? I have no idea how big the land is in reality. Twenty-five acres sounds like a lot, but how far does that actually stretch? How many trees will be growing in that kind of space? The satnav is beeping and telling me that I’m nearing my destination, but it’s a bit weird because the nearer I get, the more the trees surrounding the road start to thin out. Instead of pretty patches of lush green, the car crawls up a narrow road surrounded by a forest of the skeleton branches of dead trees, fenced in by what looks like shredded chicken wire. Surely I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere? I glance at the satnav but it still shows that Peppermint Branches should be straight ahead.

This must all be my neighbour’s land. Whoever he is, he doesn’t maintain his trees very well. Any minute now, I’m going to come out the other side and see rows of beautiful emerald Christmas trees.

But my satnav is repeatedly telling me that I’ve reached my destination, and in a big driveway set back from the road, there’s a man in a smart suit leaning against the door of the shiniest black car I’ve ever seen. He pushes himself upright and steps forward as I approach, like he’s waiting for someone. But it must be a mistake. He couldn’t possibly be the estate agent I was supposed to meet here and there’s no way he’s waiting for me, because this is not Peppermint Branches.

Peppermint Branches was all green trees and Christmassy goodness. It looked like somewhere you’d sing Christmas carols and hear the jingling of Santa’s elves. If you heard any jingling around this place, it would be because the elves were running away as fast as their jingling little feet could carry them.

And that … dwelling … behind him. It couldn’t be the dwelling, could it? It’s only got half a roof and its windows are a thing of history. There’s green ivy scrambling up one side that looks like it’s doing a better job of holding the building together than the crumbling bricks themselves.

I’m so distracted that I nearly mow the man down as he starts walking towards my car. He’s definitely coming over with intent. Surely this is all some terrible mistake and whoever he’s really waiting for will be along any second. My satnav must’ve made a mistake bringing me here. I can ask him for directions and be on my way.

I stop the car and don’t bother to turn the engine off, I’m not staying. I roll my window down as he approaches.

‘Miss Griffiths?’

I freeze. He knows my name. That’s not a good sign. This can’t actually be Peppermint Branches … can it?

The building was a cute farmhouse once, but not for many years. No wonder they described it as a dwelling, and that’s pushing it a bit. I don’t think even bats would fancy dwelling in it. And the trees. Where are the trees? There are fields of trees on both sides of the road, but not one of them looks like it’s still living.

‘Miss Griffiths?’ The man in the smart suit leans down so his head appears in the car window, not looking too happy about having to repeat himself. ‘Welcome to Peppermint Branches. Congratulations on your purchase.’

‘Are you joking?’ I turn the engine off and swing my legs out of the car door. One foot sinks immediately into a muddy puddle. Congratulations, indeed.

I squelch as I try to heave myself out of the mud and onto the weed-covered gravel driveway. God, it’s grim. The sunlight from earlier has faded to a dull grey sky that looks like it’s considering getting dark even though it’s only half past three. The endless skeletons of dead trees rise up against the horizon. I glance behind me at the ‘dwelling’ and look away quickly in case I burst into tears, because tears seem like a distinct possibility. It was supposed to be a flourishing little Christmas tree farm. This looks more like someone’s done the place up early for Halloween. ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’

‘Yes, of course.’ He sounds like he doesn’t understand why I’m questioning it. ‘I’m from Scottish Pine Properties. We spoke on the phone.’

‘This is nothing like it looked on the website.’ I struggle to find words for how shocked I am.

‘Well, it does say that we encourage viewings. We recommend all potential buyers pop by for a look around before making a decision.’

‘Pop by? I live six hundred miles away!’ I snap, feeling a bit guilty because he’s not exactly wrong, is he? It’s what Chelsea tried to say before I stopped her. Who would be stupid enough to spend their entire life’s savings on a property that they’d never even seen?

‘Yes, I’m glad you’ve arrived, I’ve been waiting for ages. Here’s the paperwork.’ He pushes a clipboard towards me with blue page markers at the places I need to sign.

‘The photos made it look different.’ I ignore the clipboard in his hand. ‘What happened to the trees? They’re all dead.’

He glances behind him like this is surprise news. ‘Well, it’s winter, isn’t it? Trees drop their leaves at this time of year.’

‘They’re meant to be Christmas trees. They’re evergreen by definition.’

‘Not these ones.’ He gives me a cheerful shrug and looks at the field of bare branches to our left again. ‘I suppose the photos may have been a little outdated …’

‘A little outdated?’ I repeat. ‘Judging by the state of the trees, it looks like they were taken centuries ago!’

‘They were taken when the property went on the market, and it’s been on the market for a very long time. No misrepresentation here.’

‘How long?’

‘I say, is that the time? It really is late, isn’t it?’ He feigns a look at his watch, completely ignoring my question.

Why has it been on the market for so long? It didn’t say anything about that on the auction listing. I thought it would be in high demand. I thought there would be loads of bidders and that I was the luckiest person in the world when I won that auction. Who wouldn’t want a Christmas tree farm, after all?

The estate agent taps the clipboard when I make no move to sign anything. ‘You got an absolute bargain here, Miss Griffiths. Twenty-five acres of land, a viable business, an … er … residential property.’ He glances at the building behind me and quickly looks away.

I’ve only been here for three minutes and I can already tell that it has that effect on people. It’s not the kind of building you want to look at for too long.

‘A viable business?’ I say. ‘It’s a Christmas tree farm and there isn’t one living Christmas tree on it.’

‘Yes, but so much land.’ He rubs his hands like he’s trying to show me just how cold he is from waiting and his eyes flick to the clipboard again. ‘And your main area of Christmas trees is down there.’ He points down the lane between the house and the dead trees. ‘Look, I can see some green bits in the distance. I’m sure plenty of them are still living that you can cut and sell.’

Cut them? I glance at the dead trees with peeling bark and broken branches. Most of them look like they’re going to fall over at any moment and save me the trouble. ‘This is a matter for trading standards. You’re selling something that’s nothing like it was advertised.’

‘Everything’s mentioned in the brochure.’ He flicks up a page on the clipboard and taps it with his pen. ‘PDFs were available on our website for all potential buyers to download, and if you’d checked the terms and conditions, you would’ve seen the disclaimer that all photographs are for guidance only.’

Another page full of tiny print held out to show me and I sigh. He’s right again, isn’t he? I got so caught up in a daydream and a bidding war that it didn’t even cross my mind to check things like terms and conditions. Magical images of a Christmas tree farm and the possibility of owning one overruled the more menial things like common sense.

‘It’s all yours now, Miss Griffiths. To be honest, I’m glad to see the back of the place. I’ve been out here hundreds of times to do viewings, but no one’s ever decided to make an offer for it. I’ve never understood why.’

I risk a glance at the house again. Even calling it a house is an insult to houses. To be honest, it’s an insult to a garden shed. This guy must be over the moon that an idiot like me came along.

‘The auction was the last shot before we gave up on it completely. Some properties aren’t financially worth the trouble,’ he continues. ‘It’s an unconventional property and we decided to try an unconventional way of selling it, and it certainly paid off in the end.’

‘Right, and do you think the cashier at the supermarket is going to accept my unconventional way of paying for my next shop via IOU note?’

He laughs, even though I wasn’t joking. What little is left in my savings has to be spent on the farm, and after looking at the place, it’s clearly not enough. And I’ve emptied my current account to get up here. I doubt I could even afford the petrol to go back to London and sleep on Chelsea’s sofa.

He flattens the papers on his clipboard again and pushes it towards me, back on the page with the markers showing where I have to sign.

I hesitate. Could I still get out of this? The agreement is made and the money exchanged. I signed something electronically, but this is the first time putting actual pen to actual paper.

He nods pointedly towards the pen that has somehow ended up in my hand and gives me what is probably supposed to be an encouraging smile. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet in his haste to get out of here with a signature.

I take a deep breath of fresh, fresh air, and already I can tell that it’s so different from London. Even the air feels different as I look around again. We’re on a big gravel driveway outside the house, and in front of us is a farm gate that leads down a wide lane, past fields of weeds which seem to be the only thing flourishing on this land. Beyond that, I can see the tops of some dark green trees. That’s got to be a promising sign.

I take a few steps towards the wide wooden farm gate, peer at the trees in the distance and feel that little flutter in my stomach again. I thought the butterflies that I’ve been feeling since the auction had all dropped down dead the moment I pulled in, and if not, then one look at the house had certainly finished them off. But as I look out from the gate and survey the chaotic mess that is somehow my land, a little flutter comes again. It might not look like the pictures, but it did once. I could make it like that again, couldn’t I?

‘I don’t mean to rush you but I really do have to get back. I’ve got a lot of work to do before we close tonight, and I’ve been waiting a while for you to arrive …’

He does mean to rush me, that’s exactly what he’s trying to do. He’s probably terrified that I’m going to try to pull out of the contract and he’s going to be lumbered with trying to find another idiot who doesn’t read terms and conditions to offload this place onto. He’ll likely get a handsome bonus for finally getting shot of such a problematic property.

This isn’t what I expected, but I still don’t want to pull out. A branch in one of the fields creaks ominously. I reconsider for a moment, and then I press the pen against the paper and sign my name on his dotted lines.

All right, it’ll be more of a challenge than I thought it would, but I wanted a challenge. I wanted something completely different from what my life has been until now. It’ll be fine. As long as I don’t look at the house. If I look at it, I’ll start crying.

‘Phew.’ The estate agent can’t contain his relief as he skips across to whisk the clipboard out of my hands before I’ve even finished the s at the end of my surname. He unclips the papers and shuffles them, pulling some sheets out with a flourish and slipping them into his shiny briefcase. He taps the rest into a neat pile and hands them to me, then he removes a jangle of keys from his pocket and waves them in front of my face.

‘Congratulations, Miss Griffiths. If you have any queries, feel free to get in touch with the office at any time.’

I can almost hear the unspoken ‘but don’t expect an answer, I never want to hear the words “Peppermint Branches” again’ that he desperately wants to tack onto the end of that sentence.

‘It’s all yours now. Good luck.’

He rushes back to his shiny car and speeds out of the driveway faster than a rocket full of monkeys with extra jet fuel.

Surely it’s not normal for estate agents to wish you luck?

Chapter 3

As the engine of his car echoes down the empty road, I stand in the driveway and look around, feeling a bit lost. I expected a friendly estate agent to show me around fields full of neat rows of trees like the ones I’ve passed on the way up here. I expected him to point out exactly what’s mine and tell me something about Christmas tree farming, maybe stop for a cup of tea while we signed paperwork in my quaint farmhouse.

But that would be a Hallmark movie, not real life.

In reality, the ‘quaint farmhouse’ looks like it could be part of the set for a zombie apocalypse movie, and the neat rows of Christmas trees look like indistinct greenery in the distance, and the map that the estate agent has left me with may as well be written in ancient Greek because I can’t work out how it translates into actual, real-life land.

I text Chelsea to tell her I’ve arrived safely and avoid mentioning the state of things. It seems a bit scary to venture down the lane towards the tall trees, and even scarier to face the farmhouse, so I lean into the car and grab a black bobble hat from the passenger seat and pull it down over my long hair. It’s cold today, the kind of cold that creeps in and numbs your fingers before you even realise it, and I shove my hands into my pockets as I wander up towards the road.

I cross the tarmac and peer over the broken wire fence. There are loads of different trees in there. The bare branches of something that’s already dropped its leaves for winter, the blaze of red, orange, and yellow of a few oak trees in their full autumn glory, and the first sign of a few Christmas trees. Unfortunately, they’re all in shades of yellow to brown. The healthiest looking ones have a few sprigs of green in amongst the brown dead needles. I don’t know much about trees, but I’m fairly positive that that is not what an ideal Christmas tree looks like.

I turn around and look back across the road towards the battered old farmhouse and the land stretching out behind it. It can’t be that bad. All right, it’s a bit neglected, but the map shows loads of land behind the house, the Christmas trees must be there, and they can’t all be in this state … can they?

To my right is farmland that looks neatly maintained so obviously belongs to someone else, and adjacent to my house are fields and fields of pumpkins growing. I can see a farmer in one of them, crouching down by the large orange vegetables on the ground. In the distance is a picturesque farmhouse with smoke pouring from its chimney into the dull afternoon sky, looking cosy and perfect.

I go back across the road to my crumbling old house and have a look around outside. At the back is a little garden enclosed by what’s left of a rotting fence. There’s an abandoned caravan run aground in the overgrown grass, surrounded by the broken glass from its smashed windows. There are piles of roof tiles in such a state that I can’t work out if they’re to repair the broken roof or if they’re the ones that have fallen off it. There are tools and cracked buckets and shards of wood, the bones of what was once a washing line, and unknown parts of unidentifiable machinery.

There’s a noise inside the caravan and I edge a bit closer. You can guarantee there are rats or something living inside it, although given the state of it, I’m not sure even rats would deign to inhabit it – and maybe it says something about my day so far that rats are the least of my problems. Maybe it’s not rats. Who knows what could be living up here outside of civilisation? Apart from the other farmhouse in the distance, there’s nothing else around. It’s been hours since I passed a garage or a shop. Species that don’t exist further south could be thriving here. It’s a different world to the city I’m used to.

Glass crunches under my boots as my weight presses it into the ground and I take a tentative step towards the caravan and look in through the jagged window frame. Inside, the caravan has been ransacked, everything is torn out of its fittings and upside down on the floor, and it’s full of grime, mud, and god knows what else.

‘Oi,’ I say to the unseen occupant. ‘When I find the nearest shop, I’m going to buy a nice big box of rat poison. I’m giving you a choice, mate, all right? If you pack up now and move out, we’ll say no more about it. If you stay, I promise an untimely and probably painful death. You might have been living in comfort here, but I’ve bought the place now, and I don’t know what you are, but I suspect you’re the unwelcome kind of lodger.’ I take another step and tap the side of the battered old caravan. ‘And if buying a Christmas tree farm without thought was insane, god knows what a one-sided conversation with an unseen rodent about the ins and outs of squatters laws would be considered. So go on, matey, off you go.’

I whack the side of the caravan again with the flat of my hand, and there’s a thunk and a scrabbling noise from inside. I peer into the window again to see what my squatter is, and a squirrel suddenly drops down from the ceiling and hits me square in the face.

I scream and stumble backwards as the end of a bushy tail flashes through the window, dashes onto the roof of the caravan, and hurls itself into the grass and scarpers to safety.

Bloody Nora. I expected rats scurrying around the floor, not a squirrel going for the World Gymnastics title.

At the sound of my scream, a dog starts barking, and there’s a shout of ‘Gizmo!’

My heart is pounding from the shock and I put a hand on my chest and try to catch my breath. Of all the things that have been a surprise about Peppermint Branches so far, a squirrel to the face was definitely the most unexpected of them.

There’s still a dog barking, and I look up to see the farmer racing across the rows of pumpkins in the next field as a tiny white and brown dog dashes towards me.

The pumpkin field is fenced in by a short picket fence, but the dog leaps over it easily, and I back out of my garden and crouch down to intercept him before he reaches the road.

The Chihuahua barrels straight into my outstretched arms, barking and spinning in excited circles.

‘Oh, aren’t you adorable?’ I hold my hand out and he licks all over my fingers with his tiny tongue, making me giggle as he puts both paws on my hand and stands up on his back legs, his whole body wagging with excitement. The farmer jumps the fence surrounding his pumpkin field and slows to a walk as he reaches the grassy verge that runs along the edge of the road. He lifts a hand in greeting and I do the same, and while I’m distracted, the dog paws at my trouser leg like he wants to be picked up.

‘You’re so friendly. You don’t even know me and you want me to pick you up?’ I glance behind – there’s no traffic and doesn’t look like there’ll be any anytime soon, but better to be safe than sorry. The dog clearly runs a lot faster than his owner, and it’s a good excuse for a doggy cuddle. It’s been ages since I had a doggy cuddle.

I pick him up and carefully settle him under my right arm, and he licks my chin and his wagging tail tickles my arm, making me giggle again. ‘You are just too cute, aren’t you? Yes, you are, you are. What’s a good boy like you doing out here all by yourself, hmm? Aren’t you a lovely little boy?’

I rub his ears and coo at him, and he turns his head towards every ear rub. I don’t realise I’ve degenerated into baby talk until someone clears their throat and I look up to see the farmer standing in front of me with his arms folded across his wide chest and a dark eyebrow raised.

And he is way hotter than he looked in the distance.

I take in the long dark hair in waves around his shoulders, the red plaid shirt and faded denim jeans that make his thighs look like they’re made of solid steel. Since when are farmers this gorgeous? I thought farmers were all old scruffy types with bits of hay in their grey beards and a faint smell of cow dung. I catch a waft of juniper aftershave. Definitely not cow dung.

I climb to my feet with the dog still under my arm and look up into eyes halfway between blue and green, set off by the darkness of his almost-black hair and unshaven dark stubble. If I was interested in men right now, it would be enough to make me go weak at the knees, but I’m not, and my knees are completely steady. I stamp one foot against the ground because it’s clearly uneven and that’s what’s causing any shakiness there happens to be.

‘Sorry about that,’ he says in a deep Scottish accent, and I can’t take my eyes off the piercing in his lip. It’s just one silver ball nestled in the dip of his upper lip, but it looks so out of place with the outdoorsy clothes that my eyes are drawn to it as he speaks. ‘Usually I trust him to stay with me but he heard your scream and came to rescue you.’

His accent makes ‘to’ sound like ‘tay’. I’m so fixated on the piercing that I forget he’s standing there waiting for a response while I pet his dog’s ears and stare vacantly at his upper lip.

I swallow a few times but my voice still comes out as a squeaky remnant of the baby talk. ‘Yeah, sorry. There was a squirrel.’

‘Utterly terrifying.’ His voice is sarcastic but the expression on his face doesn’t change.

‘It made me jump. I’m not scared of squirrels, I just didn’t expect it to hit me in the face.’

‘If you’re here for a viewing, the place is off the market, it was sold a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Yeah, I know. I bought it.’

‘You?’ That eyebrow rises again. ‘You bought Peppermint Branches?’

I nod, wondering if he needs to sound quite so incredulous.

‘Oh, right.’ He sounds a bit taken aback. ‘Are you in the Christmas tree industry?’

‘No, I’m a data entry clerk. I worked for a company that analyses retail sales figures in London until a couple of weeks ago.’

He looks completely confused. ‘So what are you doing here? Some sort of admin?’

‘No. I’m going to run it.’

‘Run it?’ He scoffs. ‘Run it as what?’

‘As it is. As a Christmas tree farm.’

His eyes flick towards the patch of trees in the distance. ‘But it isn’t a Christmas tree farm. It was, once, but it’s been abandoned for over four years now. As the owner of the adjoining land, I can tell you it’s in a hell of a state. How on earth do you intend to sort it out?’

‘Four years?’ I say in surprise. ‘It didn’t mention that on the auction site either.’ I avoid his question because I have absolutely no idea how I’m supposed to sort it out, and I try not to think about the little stone of dread that’s settled in my stomach at his words. It confirms the niggling fear I’ve had since I arrived: that this isn’t a viable business and it will need a hell of a lot of work and investment – work I know nothing about and money I don’t have – to make it viable again.

He ignores my ignoring of his question. ‘You’re not what I expected at all.’

He runs his eyes down me from the cable-knit bobble hat weaved with sparkly thread to my black coat which I now realise is no match for the Scottish autumn air, and my muddy winter boots that were clean before I got out of the car.

‘What did you expect?’ I feel myself bristling, certain this conversation is going down some sort of sexist route.

‘Well, I had this daft idea that someone buying a Christmas tree farm might know the first thing about Christmas trees.’

‘How do you know I don’t? I could be the world’s leading expert on Christmas trees for all you know.’

‘You could.’ He gives a nod of agreement. ‘But your pristinely sparkly car has clearly never seen a dirt track before, your shiny boots have clearly never stepped in a puddle before now, your nails are clean, and from the look of horror and confusion on your face, I’d guess that this place is not what you thought it was going to be.’

I try to arrange my face into a non-horrified, non-confused look, but it probably makes me look like I need an ambulance.

All right, I don’t know the first thing about Christmas tree farming, but is it really that obvious? Between getting paperwork exchanged with the solicitors, getting hold of my landlord, and the small matter of packing everything I own, I figured I could learn when I got here.

‘I’m Noel.’ He holds out a hand and I stop rubbing his dog’s ear long enough to shake it. His earth-blackened hand is warm despite the chill in the air, and his rough skin rubs against mine as I slip my hand into his huge one. ‘That’s Gizmo.’

I grin at the name. ‘As in the Gremlin?’ I pull my head back and look at the dog, who’s got gorgeous markings – a white chest and brown sides, and around one eye is a big patch of white that extends over his head, making one side brown and one side white. ‘That’s such a perfect name, he looks just like Gizmo from the film.’

‘Ah, Gremlins. One of the most underrated Christmas films.’ He whistles the song Gizmo hums in the film, and the Gizmo in my arms turns his head to the side and his tail wags like he’s heard the tune many times before. I suppose if you have a dog named after Gizmo, why wouldn’t you whistle Gizmo’s song to him at every opportunity?

‘I’m Leah.’ I realise I haven’t let go of his hand yet and quickly extract my fingers and go back to rubbing Gizmo’s ears. ‘I asked Santa for a mogwai every year when I was little. Never got one though. Can’t imagine why.’

‘Probably because they’re not real?’

‘Oh, really? I had no idea that a race of animatronic fictional creatures from an Eighties’ Christmas film didn’t actually exist. You’re not going to tell me that Santa doesn’t exist next and that reindeer can’t really fly, are you? What about the tooth fairy? It’s not the parents all along, is it? And what of Jurassic Park? Are you trying to say that it wasn’t a documentary?’

‘Hah.’ He laughs but his face shows he has no idea if I’m being sarcastic or not. ‘I’m sorry. You’ve totally thrown me. I expected the person who’d won the auction to be a property developer intending to flatten the place and build something new, not someone turning up and intending to run it as a tree farm again. And you’re seriously telling me that you’re not in the industry and you haven’t got any experience? Do you have any idea how much of a state this place is in? What on earth were you thinking?’

‘I was a little bit drunk, okay?’ I snap, annoyance creeping in again. ‘What’s it got to do with you whether I have any experience or not? I’d just caught my boyfriend cheating with half the office and I wanted to change my life. All right, it needs a bit of work, but I wanted a challenge. What’s wrong with that?’

‘You were drunk?’ His voice goes high with indignation. ‘Didn’t you even come for a viewing?’

‘Look, with hindsight, I realise that not viewing it first was a bad decision, but it was on the spur of the moment; the auction was ending and I had to decide then and there whether to go for it or not. There was another bidder and I didn’t even realise how much I wanted it until I put the very last bid in with four seconds to go.’

‘Four seconds.’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘How do you even do that?’

‘I buy a lot of shoes on eBay?’ I offer, hoping it might make him laugh but no such luck.

‘You bought a Christmas tree farm like it was a pair of shoes?’

‘No, I used my experience of buying shoes to win an auction. Not that it has anything to do with you, obviously.’

His eyebrows rise and he has the decency to look a bit guilty. ‘No, of course it doesn’t. I was only trying to figure out how insane my new neighbour might be.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t accost a complete stranger on the road and start telling them what they’re allowed to do with their money and make judgements about how they intend to run their property.’

‘People around here are going to comment, you may as well get used to it.’ He lets out an annoyed huff. ‘You bought a Christmas tree farm, with no experience of the industry, because you were drunk? What did you expect? Did you think you could stand back and watch the trees fell themselves, net themselves, and toddle off to market on their own?’

‘Maybe. Well, apart from the toddling bit. If Christmas trees were going to move independently, it would be more of a leaping sprint, don’t you think?’

I can tell he’s trying not to smile. His piercing shifts as his lip twitches. And then he shakes himself and frowns again. ‘This could be someone’s life, someone’s livelihood. Peppermint Branches was important once, it really mattered to the community of Elffield, and you think you can snap it up on a drunken whim and lark about here until, what, the heels of your designer boots sink into the first cowpat, and then you can sell it on to the next idiot who comes along?’

‘These are Primark, not designer.’

He looks down at my feet. ‘I don’t know what that means.’

I go to start explaining but stop myself. I don’t think a Scottish pumpkin farmer is interested in the pros and cons of high-street brands. ‘I don’t want to sell it on,’ I say instead. All right, it’s not what I expected, but I wanted to do something that made me stop feeling like I was standing still waiting for the grief of my parents death to dissipate. ‘Why can’t I learn how to run a Christmas tree farm? When I started data inputting, I had no idea what I was doing, but I learnt. No one starts a job knowing exactly what’s what. This is a job like any other.’

‘This isn’t just a job. This is a life. Living and working on a place like this is all-consuming. This isn’t an office that you leave behind at 5 p.m. every night. You live it, day in, day out, 365 days a year, and no, you don’t get Christmas off. You don’t get holidays and pensions and medical insurance. You spend every day trying to keep these trees alive. You don’t look like the kind of person who’d be very good at keeping things alive.’

‘I think a séance might be the only way to help these. They’re already dead, look at them.’

He glances towards the area of dead branches on the opposite side of the road. ‘I wouldn’t worry about those, they’re the windbreaker fields. The northern fields are healthier. Marginally.’

‘Northern fields?’

‘Oh, for god’s sake.’ He gives me a withering look. ‘You don’t even know what you’ve bought, do you? You have a northern and southern patch of land. South.’ He throws a hand out towards the patch of dead-to-dying trees in front of us like I’m an imbecile. ‘Road.’ He stamps his foot on the tarmac like I don’t know what a road is. ‘House. Beyond house, trees. Yours.’

‘You Tarzan, me Jane?’ I say in an attempt at humour.

It goes down like a lead brick with an elephant tied to it. Probably just as well. The image of him in nothing but a loincloth is a bit too much for me.

‘You don’t know the first thing about trees, do you?’

‘Well, I …’

He points to a large green thing behind me, one of the only green trees in sight. ‘What type of tree is that?’

I squint at it. Is this a trick question? I pluck a species name out of thin air and hope for the best. ‘Fir?’

‘Cedar.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Cedrus Libani, actually. But I’m sure you knew that.’

‘Oh, right. Of course. I knew that, I was just making sure that you weren’t bluffing.’

‘And what’s that tree dying of?’ He points in the opposite direction towards a sad looking spindly thing that probably had leaves on both sides once.

It’s another trick question. It doesn’t look like there’s any dying about it, it’s almost certainly already completed the process. ‘Creeping brown deadness?’

‘Aye.’ He gives me a scathing smile. ‘Otherwise known as windburn. It happens when the wind pulls water out of the needles faster than the roots can replace it. I can see this is going to go really well.’

‘But I can learn this stuff. You weren’t born knowing this, you learnt it.’

‘Over years of living here. I grew up on a farm. From the age of ten, I came over here every weekend to help Mr Evergreene. You’re not going to pick it up after five minutes with a How to Identify Trees book. It takes more than Trees For Dummies.’

I make a mental note to check whether he’s being sarcastic or if this book actually exists. Trees For Dummies sounds like just the ticket.

Also, Mr Evergreene – seriously? ‘There’s no way that was the previous owner’s name. You’re making that up. Who runs the local garage – Mr Petrol? How about the manager of the nearest supermarket – Mr Tesco, is it? If there’s a bakery owned by Mr Croissant, I want to go there.’

‘Peppermint Branches is an amazing place,’ he continues, ignoring me. ‘A special place, a beautiful tree farm that was once famous and could be again if it had someone to take care of it and restore it to its former glory.’

His green-blue eyes are fiery with passion. He must really love this place. ‘I could do that. Why couldn’t I do that?’

‘You know what, rather than answering that question, I’m starting to think I should go home and let you figure it out for yourself. I predict it’s going to be fun to watch.’

‘You could give me some advice rather than trying to make me feel stupid,’ I snap. ‘I want to restore it to its former glory. I want to make it a functioning Christmas tree farm again. You seem to know so much about it, tell me where I need to go to learn how. Tell me what books I need to read, what websites I should visit. Tell me what its former glory was like and how I can restore it.’

‘Why? So you can do two weeks here, realise it’s too difficult, and swan off back to London?’

‘I’m not going to do that. I’m committed to this. I want to make a go of it.’

‘I’ve heard that before. It lasts until you spoilt city women get bored of not having the luxuries of designer shops and posh restaurants at your fingertips.’

I want to ask him where he’s heard that before and why he sounds so bitter, but I get the feeling he doesn’t like me very much and would tell me to mind my own business. ‘Have you seen some of the things those posh restaurants serve up? The contents of a vacuum cleaner bag look more appetising. And given the amount of money I’ve spent on this place, even Primark will be out of my designer shopping budget for the next thirty years.’

His mouth twitches and I can tell that he’s trying not to smile. I’m entranced by the little silver ball again as we stand there staring at each other.

‘So, what do you grow?’ I ask when I suddenly realise it’s a bit weird to stand on the roadside with a stranger’s dog under your arm while you stare at said stranger’s upper lip. I tear my eyes away from his piercing and nod towards the field he came from. ‘Pumpkins?’

‘No, Brussels sprouts.’

I look over at the field and lift my hand to shade my eyes from a sun that isn’t there in case it’s distorting my vision. ‘Those round orange things trailing along the ground? They’re pumpkins … aren’t they?’

He throws his hands up in despair. ‘The fact you even had to question that …’

‘Obviously I know they’re pumpkins. I was being polite. It could’ve been a new variety or something.’

‘When have there ever been round, orange, giant sprouts that grow along the ground on vines?’ He sounds exasperated.

‘That’s not fair. That’s like me showing you a designer handbag and expecting you to guess the designer and then laughing at you for not knowing.’

‘But I haven’t bought a business selling designer handbags. Forgive me for my mistaken assumption that someone who’s just entered the Christmas tree farming business might know something about growing things.’

‘I know plenty of things about Christmas trees.’

‘What, that they’re green and look pretty with lights and a fairy on top?’

‘No,’ I huff, racking my brains for something I might actually know about trees. Any tree would do at this point, not even a festive tree. Come on, Leah, there are trees in London. ‘Antarctica is the only continent where trees don’t grow.’ Hah. That’ll show him. And prove to my Year 7 geography teacher that I was paying attention in class all those years ago.

His dark eyebrow quirks at the perfect angle to show exactly how unimpressed he is. ‘Oh, there you go then. My concerns are unfounded. I’m sure you’ll be wowing hordes of early customers before the week is out. So dazzled will they be by your intrinsic knowledge of Christmas trees that they’ll be queuing up to buy them six weeks early.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ I mutter. I know he’s being sarcastic, but I can’t let him get to me, even though if I’m completely honest, he’s kind of got a point. Meeting a real farmer who knows this land and thinks I’m a lunatic for taking it on … I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t got me worried.

‘Let me ask you something,’ he says. ‘I know how long this place has been up for sale and I know how much the price has dropped and I know they were trying of offload it in an auction as a last resort, so I’ve got a good idea of how much you paid – very, very cheap. Did that not start any alarm bells ringing?’

‘I didn’t know how much they cost. I’ve never bought one before. There’s no price comparison site for Christmas tree farms.’

‘No, but there’s this weird, and obviously miniscule in your case, thing called common sense. I see it’s a completely foreign concept to you, but did it not cross your mind that fifty grand was cheap for twenty-five acres? Have you not heard of the phrase “too good to be true”?’

I huff in annoyance. He might be gorgeous, but I’m starting to really dislike this bloke. He speaks sense that I should’ve realised before I ploughed all my money into a failing Christmas tree farm. ‘Just how desperate were they to sell it?’

‘It’s been on the market for over four years. There must’ve been a couple of hundred viewings over those years, but it’s worthless land because you can’t do anything with it. The trees have gone wild. Pruning them back into shape and selling them is an almost impossible job, and cutting them all down and replanting means any potential buyer has got roughly ten years to wait for them to grow to a saleable size. No wonder no one’s bought it, but an idiot had to come along sooner or later. It’s the law of averages.’

I don’t even bother to be offended. I haven’t seen much further than the driveway so far and I’m inclined to believe that he’s not being totally unfair in that description. ‘Am I unreasonable to want something that even vaguely resembled the pictures on the auction site?’

‘No, but you’re unreasonable to buy a property without looking at it, without hiring a surveyor, doing any background research, or using the common sense that would tell most people that if they’re getting something so big for such a ridiculously cheap price, it’s probably not that much of a bargain after all.’

‘I don’t call fifty grand cheap.’

He does another sarcastic laugh. ‘Cheap in relation to size. Thinking you were going to get a working, functional Christmas tree farm that you could simply step into and start raking in money for that kind of price.’

‘I knew there would be work involved,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘Did you see the auction listing?’

He scratches the back of his neck. ‘No.’

‘There were pictures of living trees on it. So far, that seems to be a complete misrepresentation.’

‘This land hasn’t been maintained in four years. It would resemble the pictures. If it had been maintained, which it hasn’t. For four years. That’s more than half a Christmas tree’s lifespan to average selling age. It’s a lot of work to get them back into shape if any of them are salvageable, but they’re not all dead. Yet.’

I look at the brown to browner shades of the trees behind me. ‘No, what are they then? Dressed up in their Halloween costumes? Performing a horticultural re-enactment of Night of the Living Dead?’

His lip twitches again. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much about these ones. These are your windbreaker fields.’ He sighs at my blank look. ‘They’re to protect the Christmas trees from the worst of the Scottish weather. Strong winds can distort branches and desiccate needles, and that’s if you get lucky and the wind doesn’t take the trees down altogether. Good farmers plant windbreaker fields to take the full force of it instead of the Christmas trees.’

I look around for some sign of these Christmas trees, and he waves towards the land behind the farmhouse like he knows exactly what I’m looking for. ‘They’re that way.’

‘Oh, brilliant,’ I say, genuinely overjoyed by this news. Gizmo licks my chin in approval and his tail wagging amps up. ‘When I was growing up, my mum and dad had a houseplant in the corner of the room, and once a month, my mum would drown the poor thing, and every time I’d fish it out, drain it off, and nurse it back to health. If anything on this farm is alive, it’s better than I expected when I drove in. I’m going to go and have a look around.’

He doesn’t say anything, but he turns his head upwards and looks pointedly at the darkening sky. It’s gone 4 p.m. and it’s well on the way to getting dark. I can’t make sense of the estate agent’s map in the daylight, never mind the dark, and the unseen forest of trees at the end of the lane beyond the farmhouse looks intimidating, but I don’t want to let him know I’m bothered because he thinks I’m an idiot anyway, it’d make his day if he thought I was afraid of the dark too.

I decide to be brave and point towards the gate closed across the lane. ‘There’s not going to be anything out there, right?’

‘Like what?’ He’s got that smug eyebrow quirked up again, waiting for me to say something stupid. ‘Worried you might run into another big, scary squirrel?’

‘No.’ I wish I hadn’t said anything now, but it looks remote and scary. Apart from him, there doesn’t seem to be anyone around for miles. If no one’s been on this land for years, anything could be lurking out there and no one would know. ‘Didn’t someone float an idea of reintroducing wolves to Scotland once? And what if I put my foot in a bear trap or something? I’ve seen wilderness films – there’s always a bear trap when you least expect one.’

‘Wolves and bear traps? Seriously?’ He pushes a hand through his hair and shakes his head in despair. ‘You do know that this is the United Kingdom, right? You may have driven a long way but you haven’t actually left Great Britain. There are no wolves and no bears to require the use of a bear trap. Have you mistaken Scotland for northern Alaska?’ He’s using a saccharinely sweet voice and it kind of makes me want to punch him. And I’d had such high hopes given the gorgeous dog and love of Gremlins.

‘Well, thanks for the warm welcome,’ I snap, and spin on my heel to walk away. ‘It was a joy to meet you.’

‘Leah?’ He calls after me.

Hah. One well-placed sarcastic comment is all you need to make someone realise what a miserable twat they are. He’ll try to backtrack and apologise now, no doubt.

‘Can I have my dog back?’

Oh. Bugger. I forgot I’ve still got Gizmo in my arms.

I pull my head back so I can look into Gizmo’s big brown eyes. Would it be petty to say no? ‘You’d come home with me, wouldn’t you, lovely?’ I murmur to him, pressing my mouth against the brown side of his head.

His tail wags against my side in agreement, but I stomp back towards Noel guiltily. Even though I think this lovely animal deserves a much nicer owner, I didn’t mean to dognap him.

Noel holds his big, dirty hands out and I somehow manage to transfer the wagging, licky dog into his arms, my skin brushing the surprisingly soft sleeve of his red plaid shirt as Gizmo pushes himself up to start licking the dark scruff of Noel’s neck, excited at being reunited with his owner. The dog must see a nicer side than I do. I’ve only known Noel for ten minutes and I’d happily never be reunited with him again.

‘Thanks,’ he mumbles, his voice muffled behind the dog trying to give him a facial. ‘Feel free to give me a shout if you need anything. Cup of sugar, a pumpkin to carve for Halloween, help building a bonfire which is probably the best use you’ll get out of most of the trees, the address of some local demolition companies …’

‘Yes, thanks for the sterling, solicited advice you’ve given me so far,’ I mutter, even though he’s been more helpful than the estate agent was. ‘I’m going to go and look around my farm now and figure out what’s best to do with my Christmas trees for myself. Goodbye.’

I only get a few steps before he calls my name again. ‘I wouldn’t go out there in the dark.’

‘Why not?’ I say to the empty road, not giving him the satisfaction of turning around. I will retain the moral high ground here.

‘Mountain lions.’

‘What?’ I turn to look at him in shock, all pretences of the moral high ground or any form of dignity disappearing, although I think the dignity was already lost when a Chihuahua came to rescue me from a squirrel.

He points towards the trees and nods knowingly. ‘Mountain lions.’

I wait for his mouth to twitch up in a grin or for him to burst into that sarcastic laughter again, but he doesn’t. ‘You’re winding me up.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Oh, come on. If there are no bears or wolves, there are no mountain lions. You’re having a laugh.’

‘Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. The only way to find out is to venture into those trees at night.’

We stare at each other in silence for a few long moments. I’m still waiting for him to continue the joke, but what’s he waiting for? Me to run screaming to the car and zoom off back to London?

‘Also because the fence between your property and mine is flimsy in places and I don’t want you stumbling into my vegetable garden in the dark and destroying my livelihood. And there’s a river running through your property that’s not marked on the estate agent’s map, and most of its banks are worn away. It’s too cold to fall into a river at this time of year, so wait until it’s light to go exploring, all right?’

‘Do you think I’m incapable of using a torch?’

‘No, but if you get lost and die from starvation or hypothermia or get eaten by mountain lions overnight, having to give a statement to the coroner is really going to delay my morning and I have a lot to do tomorrow.’

I gulp. There’s no way he’s serious about the mountain lions.

I don’t give him the satisfaction of responding. I turn around and stalk along the grassy edge of the road until I turn into my driveway. I open the car door and lean in, pretending to hunt around for something on the passenger side so I don’t have to see his smug face again, and I don’t look up again until I see him and Gizmo walking back across the pumpkin field in the distance.

I sigh and stand up, stretching my back out and looking up at the rapidly darkening sky and then down the lane towards the trees in trepidation. I’m not going out there in the dark. Even though there are no mountain lions.

Probably.

Chapter 4

I’m annoyed enough by him to face the farmhouse. There’s nothing more inspiring than someone implying I can’t do something to get me motivated.

At the top of the three crumbling steps, I shove my key into the rusty lock and push aside a spider that crawls out, trying not to think about what it says for the house if even the spiders are trying to get out. The door creaks as I open it and peer in cautiously.

It’s just a house, I tell myself. An old empty house that’s been old and empty for many years. I stand in the doorway questioning the wisdom of watching The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix last week when I was meant to be packing.

Maybe it would be braver to face the mountain lions.

Inside, it’s so dark that it’s hard to tell what condition the farmhouse is in. I find a light switch near the door, but nothing happens when I flip it. Great. So there’s no electricity either. I step inside and close the front door behind me, but it does nothing to alleviate the draught blowing through the place.

I stand still and wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark, half-expecting something to jump out at me, but nothing breaks the silence. It’s quiet in a way things never are in London. In my flat, you can hear the neighbours shouting through the thin walls, the traffic, the general hustle and bustle of the street outside, and the ever-present sirens in the distance. Here, the only sound is the rustling of the breeze blowing through from the empty window frames and missing roof.

It’s a small house, even smaller inside than it looked from the outside. I’m standing on a threadbare doormat that’s still got the dried remnants of mud from someone else’s boots on it. There’s a wooden staircase in front of me, to the left is what looks like the kitchen, and to the right is a living room. I can see the outline of an upside-down sofa covered with dust sheets. I hold the banister of the staircase, my fingers leaving lines in layers of undisturbed dust as I walk up slowly, using my phone to light the way. Upstairs, circled around a narrow landing walkway, I find a storage room, a tiny bathroom, and a bedroom with a single bed on its side and the wardrobe knocked over with one door hanging off. Telltale stones lie among the broken glass reflecting from the floor, evidence of what happened to the empty window frames. No one’s even bothered to board over the upstairs ones.

Half the landing and the storage room have brown stains of water running down the walls, a freezing wind is howling around my neck, and there’s the constant flapping of tarpaulin sheets where someone’s tried to repair the roof and the repair has fallen in too.

In the bathroom, there’s still toilet roll unravelling from a rusty holder and when I try to flush the discoloured water in the loo, nothing happens. Great. No electricity and no water. The estate agent had plenty of warning that I was coming today, shouldn’t they have got everything turned back on? I glance in the cracked mirror on the wall. Maybe they didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to live in it. It’s not exactly inhabitable by any stretch of the imagination.

The stairs creak under my feet as I go back down them. There’s a curtain of cobwebs blocking the living room door, and I pick up an old umbrella that’s leaning against the wall by the door and use it to swipe them away. I scan my phone light across the room, aware that I won’t be able to charge it again until I can get the electricity turned back on. The room looks like it’s been ransacked. Apart from the upturned three-piece suite, there’s a sideboard on one wall with an old-fashioned TV perched on it that was probably modern once but not this side of the Seventies. There’s a bookshelf on its front on the Eighties-style damask patterned rug, surrounded by limp books that have fallen from it, and a table that’s listing dangerously to one side with half a leg missing. There’s an open hearth in the middle of the back wall, and two sets of windows, one at the front that looks out onto the driveway and another at the back that must look out to the garden behind the house. Both sets have got gaps in the wood boarding them up and look riddled with the holes of a woodworm infestation.

I turn away and trudge back through the hallway to the kitchen to see if that’s any better. The upper hinge of the door has rusted away, and it leans dangerously into my hand when I go to move it. Just as I’m trying to prop it back into the frame, there’s a knock on the front door behind me, which makes me jump out of my skin in the silence. Maybe it’s the estate agent come back to tell me he’s dreadfully sorry but he’s made a huge mistake and taken me to the wrong property after all?

I cross my fingers as I open the door.

‘Oh, hello,’ I say in surprise at the sight of the little old lady on my doorstep in the darkness. There’s a yellowed porch light above us, but it doesn’t look like it’d work even if the electricity was on.

‘Hello, flower. It’s Leah, isn’t it?’ She thrusts an age-spotted hand out, but I’m too surprised to take it, so she reaches over and grabs mine, pumping it enthusiastically. ‘I’m Glenna Roscoe. You met my son and his dog earlier.’

‘Oh!’ I say in realisation. No wonder the news travelled fast. Let’s hope she’s a bit nicer than her offspring. ‘Yes, he came to rescue me when I screamed at an unexpected squirrel. He’s so adorable, he spun in circles and let me give him a cuddle.’

‘Noel does that sometimes, you’ll have to excuse him.’

It takes my brain an embarrassing amount of time to realise she’s joking, so I laugh hysterically to overcompensate and by the time I’ve finished, she’s looking at me like I’ve got at least one screw in need of tightening.

‘It’s an easy mistake to make, they’ve both got barks that are worse than their bites.’

In Gizmo’s case, I believe her. In Noel’s case, not so much. Noel and biting makes my mind wander to that … For god’s sake, I’ve got to stop thinking about that sodding lip piercing. It might’ve been hot, but the hotness is regulated by the twattishness.

In the hand that’s not still shaking mine, she’s holding a plate with a slice of pie on it, and I don’t realise how much I wish it might be for me until she clears her throat and I realise I’m staring at it and probably drooling.

She extracts her hand and holds the plate wrapped in cellophane out to me. ‘A slice of pumpkin pie freshly baked this afternoon. It’s not much of a housewarming, but I didn’t know you were coming or I’d have baked something for the occasion. Welcome to Elffield, Leah.’

The kindness of the gesture and the gentleness of her voice makes my eyes fill up involuntarily. ‘Thank you,’ I murmur as I take it from her.

The underneath of the plate is warm and I breathe a sigh of relief as my fingers touch it and heat spreads through them. I didn’t realise how numb they’ve gone and how cold I am until this moment. There are airholes in the cellophane and cinnamon-spiced steam is rising through them, making my mouth water because I hadn’t realised how hungry I was either. As if on cue, my stomach lets out the loudest growl of hunger I’ve ever heard, and Glenna giggles. ‘Noel said you weren’t local. You must’ve had a long day of travelling?’

‘London,’ I mumble, my cheeks burning with redness. First I nearly cry in front of her, and now my stomach is auditioning for the role of Pavarotti. And I bet her charming son told her exactly how much of an idiot I am, so I must’ve made a stonking first impression on my nearest neighbour so far. ‘And I didn’t bring any food with me. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for this. A pumpkin pie from a pumpkin farmer – thank you.’

‘Noel’s the farmer, flower. I make use of the produce to save it going to waste. We have a lot of pumpkins.’

‘Do you want to come in?’ I look behind me into the dusty, dark hallway, but the look of distaste on my face is mirrored on hers. ‘I mean, you’re welcome to but I wouldn’t recommend it …’

‘Let me guess – no water, no electricity, and quite a lot of spiders?’ She leans forward and peers in the door. ‘You’re not really staying here on your own, are you?’

‘Well, I have nowhere else …’ I start, before swallowing hard as I realise I really am alone up here. Tears threaten again so I paste on a smile. ‘The sooner I get started on cleaning up, the better.’

Which is true, but my smile is so false that it actually hurts my cheeks to hold my face in that position.

‘What a lovely positive attitude. You must be very brave.’

Am I? I don’t feel brave. I feel cold and lonely and like the idiot her son thinks I am.

‘Aren’t you freezing?’

‘I’m fine,’ I say breezily, despite the fact I’m hugging the pumpkin pie to my chest in an attempt to absorb any residual warmth from it because I’m so cold that I genuinely can’t feel my toes and I’m surprised she hasn’t noticed my teeth chattering by now.

‘Noel said you weren’t in the farming industry?’

Oh, I bet he did. ‘I’ve got a lot to learn,’ I say, using the same cheerful voice and wondering if she can tell that my teeth are gritted.

‘Have you had a chance to look around yet? Such a lot of land and an excellent bargain too.’ Her Scottish accent isn’t as deep as Noel’s but it has a way of making things sound sincere, and she seems like she’s making friendly conversation with a new neighbour rather than being judgemental and insulting like her son.

‘I didn’t have a chance,’ I say. ‘It got dark so early.’

‘You’ll have to get used to that, flower. I’m sure you’ll have fun learning all the quirks of Peppermint Branches. It’s such a special place, it deserves a special owner too.’

My body betrays me by letting my eyes fill up again. It’s the first positive thing anyone’s said about this place, and it’s been a long time since anyone thought I was a special anything.

She gives me a sympathetic look and reaches over to pat my arm. ‘It must seem overwhelming, but you’ve definitely got the right mindset.’

I get the feeling she knows that if she stands there being nice to me for much longer, I’m not going to be able to hold back the tears, and no one wants their new neighbour sobbing all over them.

‘You’ve obviously got a lot to be getting on with so I won’t keep you. I only wanted to say hello …’ She hesitates and winds her finger in a lock of grey hair that’s loose across her shoulders. ‘You know where we are if you need anything? If you want any advice or help with moving in, Noel’s a strong young chap, he’d be glad to help you with any furniture or anything you want shifted when you clean up and clear things out.’

Yeah, I’m sure. ‘I’m good, thanks,’ I say, hoping she doesn’t notice the shudder at the thought of him helping me with anything. ‘Thanks for the pie,’ I add quickly, because I don’t know what I would have eaten without it.

‘You’re very welcome. It was lovely to meet you, Leah. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. Come by anytime. I’ve always got a hot kettle and a warm slice of pie for my only neighbour.’

‘Are you okay getting home?’ I say as she walks away.

‘Oh yes, thank you. It’s only across the field, I know every ridge like the back of my hand, don’t you worry. Cheerio!’

‘Give Gizmo an ear rub from me!’ I call after her.

‘Sorry, flower, I didn’t quite catch that,’ she calls back. ‘Did you say Gizmo or Noel?’

‘Gizmo!’ I shout loud enough for astronauts on the International Space Station to hear me.

No response. Great. Sending Noel’s mum home to give him an ear rub on my behalf would be the icing on the cake of this ridiculous day, wouldn’t it? If I was going to ask her to give Noel anything, it’d be a swift whack with a broom, but I’d be worried she might take the pie back.

I take the plate into the kitchen and squeeze around the broken door, which is now hanging halfway between closed and open, and use my phone light again to survey the damage. Like the living room, it’s got boarded up windows at the front and back, a sink and draining board built into an empty counter that runs along one wall and curves around the corner and underneath the front window. I use my sleeve to wipe part of the unit free of the muck and grime that’s settled after years of not being cleaned and put the plate down. I’m starving and I could murder a cup of tea, but I settle for the bottle of water I’ve got in my bag and make do with giving my hands a good anti-bac wipe before I unwrap the slice of pie and take a bite. I’ve never had pumpkin pie before and the sweet creaminess of condensed milk and pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger combine to make it taste like autumn in a mouthful. It’s a good job the only neighbours are likely to be of the rodent variety because I’m definitely having a When Harry Met Sally moment. I hadn’t even realised how hungry I was until the first mouthful filled my belly with warmth, and I stand there in the dark kitchen, taking bite after bite, washing it down with lukewarm water that’s been in the car all day. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for a cup of tea right now.

There isn’t much to see in the kitchen. There’s a rusty old fridge-freezer standing next to the passageway that goes under the stairs and straight through to the living room, past a back door that leads out into the garden where the caravan is. Cupboards line the upper walls, and it smells like someone never got around to throwing out whatever was left in them, because the kitchen is heavy with the smell of food that’s been gradually rotting for years.

My phone pings on the unit where I’ve put it down and I look at the screen. Another text from Chelsea, asking me if it’s a magical winter wonderland, following on from the one she sent earlier asking if I’d seen any elves yet, which I ignored because I couldn’t face answering with the truth.

How do I tell her that my magical winter wonderland is full of spindly dead trees and fluffy-tailed rodents and the most elf-like thing I’ve seen since I got here is a Chihuahua called Gizmo who qualifies only on the basis of his pointy ears? How do I say that, far from a couple of coats of Dulux, the only thing likely to improve this ‘dwelling’ is the application of a wrecking ball, and that when we joked about it being a stable, it would actually be better if it was?

I put the phone back on the unit without replying. How can I do this? How can I stay here? How can someone who doesn’t know the first thing about trees suddenly decide to run a Christmas tree farm? What was I thinking? I must’ve genuinely thought I was part of a made-for-TV Christmas movie and forgotten real life for a moment. I’d pictured stepping onto the set of a film, saving the gorgeous little tree farm from the edge of destruction with my annoyingly upbeat personality and perfect hair. Neither of which I possess in real life, so I’d definitely mistaken myself for a film character.

For the real me, this is overwhelming. I can’t sort this mess out. How can I stay here with no water and no electric and nowhere to sleep? All the positivity I was feeling earlier has drained away in the cold dark of the night. I spent all of Mum and Dad’s money because they would have loved a Christmas tree farm. And now I want to run away. I hate myself for wanting that.

My phone pings simultaneously with a low battery warning and yet another message from Chels.

Have you found David Tennant and run off with him and that’s why you’re not answering my texts?

I pick it up and try to formulate a reply that sounds more cheerful than I feel, but it beeps again before I can think of anything.

Are you buried under a vat of gorgeous-smelling pine needles? Are you building a snowman to welcome your first customers? Why do I imagine it’s snowing there? Ooh, have Richard Madden AND David Tennant turned up and you’re off having a naughty Scottish threesome under the Christmas trees?

The low battery warning gets more persistent as I stand there and stare at it.

I could go and charge it in the car. That’s not a bad idea actually. I could even sleep there. There’s too much stuff in the back to lower the seat, but I can sleep upright a lot more comfortably than I could sleep anywhere inside the house. And, more importantly than anything, it’s got a heater.

It’s nearly seven o’clock by the time I slide into the driver’s seat. I plug my phone into the lighter socket and start the engine. I flip the light on above me and turn the heater up to full and hold my shivering hands over the air vents.

I reach into the back and snake my hand between boxes and bags until my fingers close around the soft edge of a Christmas blanket that Chelsea bought me last year. I pull it out inch by inch as the bag holds onto it tightly in the squashed space. I drape it over myself and wrap it around my face and breathe into it, trying to warm up my cold nose. I’m still unsure of what to say to Chelsea, so I let my phone charge for a bit and reach over to put the radio on instead. It’s still tuned to my favourite Christmas station, and the car is immediately filled with Mariah Carey singing ‘Miss You Most At Christmas Time’. I wish I’d stuck to my playlist. The songs on there are safe. They won’t remind me of my parents and how much I miss them.

I swallow hard. I should turn it off, but I sit and listen to it instead. It’s a song I’ve successfully avoided since the first time I heard it after they died and ended up having a breakdown in the middle of Debenhams while Christmas shopping in my lunch hour.

As if the universe knows this, Mariah is immediately followed by ‘Something About December’ by Christina Perri, a song about childhood Christmases and memories feeling closer in December, and I don’t even realise I’m crying until tears drip onto the blanket.

God, what am I doing here? How can I have made such an awful mistake?

I can feel panic creeping up my chest. I have nothing left and nowhere else to go. I look up at the dark house in front of me and the sight of its crumbling bricks and missing roof makes me cry harder. How can I have been so positive yesterday? Driving along sunny motorways, singing along to ‘Carol of the Bells’, glad no one could hear me because I haven’t got a clue what the words actually are, to this – sitting outside what was supposed to be my dream home, sobbing because Elvis is on now. This probably wasn’t what Elvis had in mind when he sang ‘Blue Christmas’.

My phone beeps again.

LEAH! Will you answer a flipping text, please? I’m starting to get so worried that I broke out the capital letters. Send me a picture of the place or something! Is the dwelling better than we expected?

I hit reply and my fingers hover over the empty text box. It’s great, I type and then delete it. I can’t lie to her but how can I admit that I’ve made such a huge mistake? I know she’ll try to help. I know she’ll tell me to come back to London and sleep on her sofa, and she’ll offer to help me find another job and probably get someone from the law firm to draft a letter to Scottish Pine Properties demanding my money returned because the pictures were inaccurate, and that would be great, but how much of a failure can one person be? I made this mistake, I should be the one to fix it.

More tears blur my eyes as I sit there staring at the screen of my phone, hating myself because I don’t know what to say to my best friend. Chelsea and I text each other all day, even when we’re in work and aren’t supposed to have our phones on us. Thinking of something to say to her has never been a problem before.

I push the phone onto the dashboard and cry harder. I know she’s going to ring in a minute because I haven’t answered, but I’m crying so much that I can’t even see the screen to type now.

I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt before. I just want my mum. What would she tell me to do? What would she and Dad do in this situation? I already know the answer. Mum would’ve found a mop and bucket and started cleaning the house and Dad would’ve gone out for a good look around to assess how bad things actually were before panicking about it. Mum would’ve whipped out a gigantic bar of chocolate and somehow produced a cup of tea, and promised that things would look better in the morning.

I don’t know how long I sit there having a good cry. I miss them, and I don’t allow myself to miss them very often, because I inevitably end up as a snot-drenched wreck, but none of this would’ve happened without their accident, their money, and their love of Christmas and the real Christmas tree that stood proudly in front of our living room window every December. I let the grief consume me in a way I haven’t for many months now. In front of Chelsea and Lewis, Steve, work colleagues, and acquaintances who were friends once but have barely spoken to me for the past two years because they don’t know what to say, I pretend I’m fine. The last time I sobbed in my own flat, a neighbour banged on the door and yelled at me to keep it down.

I look up at a glimpse of light coming towards me. It must be headlights on the road – the first car that’s passed since the estate agent zoomed off. It’s moving slowly for a car though, and as I blink tears away, I see it’s only one beam of light, not two, and it’s on the grassy verge, not the road.

Just a dog walker, I tell myself. Mountain lions wouldn’t carry torches so it’s nothing to worry about.

Until whoever it is stops at the edge of my driveway and the beam of the torch settles on the house, and then slides across the gravel to point directly at the car. Or, more specifically, my red, wet, snotty face in the car, and the owner of the torch moves towards me.

I recognise the faded jeans and the fall of dark hair across shoulders.

Oh, come on. It’s like he’s got radar to detect the worst possible moment and time his arrival accordingly. I’ve still got tears streaming down my face and I’ve been crying so hard that I can barely catch my hitching breath. I cannot deal with him right now.

If I stay still, maybe he won’t see me, but I know it’s hoping for too much. It’s dark and the light is on inside the car – I’m literally a flame to a petulant moth. I sink down in the seat and pull the blanket up further over my face so I can barely see out, but it’s no good, I can feel the beam of torchlight on me, coming closer.

I do the sensible, adult thing and stare stubbornly at the house, pretending I haven’t seen him. Maybe he’ll get the hint and go away? I stare resolutely ahead, even though I can sense the shadow outside the car window and see the beam of light disappear as he turns the torch off.

It still makes me jump when he knocks on the window.

Bugger. I sniff hard and turn away to swipe my hands over my face, trying to brush away the evidence. Maybe it’s dark enough that he won’t notice the red puffiness?

I paste a smile on my face and turn back to roll down the window just as he’s about to knock on it again.

‘Noel,’ I say, my voice thick, the fake smile pulling painfully on the skin of my lips.

‘What are you doing out here?’ His voice has that same half-amused half-sarcastic tone that he had earlier. He rests his arm along the open window and his head appears in the gap, but he suddenly looks taken aback and his voice turns serious. ‘Are you crying?’

Well, one point for observation, I suppose.

‘No.’ I don’t know why I’m bothering to deny it; if the tears streaming down my face don’t give it away then the snot definitely will.

‘What’s wrong?’

I should turn around and snap something at him, but his voice is soft and those two simple words sound so caring and genuine. No one has asked me that in months. I struggle to keep my emotions hidden in public, and when I hang out with Chels, if I slip up and look upset for a moment, she gives me a hug but she doesn’t ask me what’s wrong because it’s obvious.

I go to say ‘nothing’, but it comes out as noth-urrth as another sob gurgles out of my throat and more tears fill my eyes and spill over. God, why am I like this? Why can’t I even hold it together in front of this rude man? He’s going to love this, isn’t he? He already thinks I’m stupid, and now he finds me crying in the car. He’ll have a field day with this. He’ll probably go and tell all his mates about this silly girl who thought she could run a Christmas tree farm and make sure the whole town has a good laugh about it.

I turn away again and bury my face in the blanket. I can’t even pretend not to be crying now. Maybe allergies?

My nose is running and I know there’s a pack of tissues in the glovebox, but the passenger seat is so jam-packed that I can’t open it fully. As I’m trying to snake my hand in the inch-wide gap and feel around for them, a packet appears in front of my face.

I take them from his hand and wrestle the packet open with wet fingers. They’re soft and thick and large, and I pluck one out and hide my whole face in it. If I can’t see him then he can’t see me either, so maybe he’ll go away? That’s bound to work, right?

I breathe into the tissue for a few minutes but he doesn’t go away.

I can feel the warmth of his presence beside the car, hear his breathing and the crunch of frozen gravel under his boots with every movement. Even the scent of juniper and dark cinnamon aftershave has wafted into the car and it’s unfair that someone who is this much of a twat can smell so good.

I wipe my face on the tissue and blow my nose, managing to make the most undignified sound someone has ever made in front of a fellow human before. I take a deep breath, and force a smile onto my red, puffy, tear-stained face, and … well, I intend to turn to face him, but I lose my nerve at the last second and end up staring intently at the steering wheel instead.

‘Are you okay?’ He speaks before I have a chance to say anything. His Scottish accent sounds warm and gentle. It makes tears well up again because it’s another question that people usually ask me when they know full well that the answer will always be a cheerful ‘yep, thanks’ no matter how I really am, but he says it so earnestly that I feel like I could tell him.

Not that I’m going to, obviously. Finding me like this has probably made his day, there’s no need to make his month too.

‘Fine, thanks.’ My voice is thick and it shakes on both words. I swallow hard and try again. ‘What was it you wanted?’

‘I came to see if you were okay.’ He’s quiet for a moment, which gives my eyes plenty of time to start watering again because he’s got a caring tone that he has no right to have. ‘Which you’re clearly not.’

‘Well, there you go then,’ I snap, betrayed by the sob that comes out instead. ‘You’ve found out what you wanted to know. Goodbye.’ I have to feel around for the window button, intending to roll it up, but I press the wrong direction and it makes a clunking noise because it can’t go any further down.

‘I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re okay, Leah. I can’t walk away and leave you sitting out here in the cold. What’s wrong?’

Even if I wanted to, I can’t answer him because I’m crying too hard. Snot is dripping from my nose again and tears are streaming down my face, dropping onto the blanket, and I wrestle another tissue from the packet on my lap and try to restore some semblance of dignity.

‘Is this because of me?’ He asks gently. ‘Because of what I said earlier?’

‘Hah. Don’t flatter yourself.’ I snort and a snot bubble escapes. I’m doing an amazing job of the dignity thing so far.

‘I didn’t mean it in an egotistical way. One of the reasons I came over was to apologise. I was too harsh earlier and I overstepped the line, and I am sorry, really.’

I hate him because he sounds so genuine. Maybe it’s the accent. He has a way of sounding sincere that leaves me unable to tell if he is or isn’t.

I blow my nose again and scrub my hands over my face, telling myself that I need to tell him it’s fine and say goodbye, but a really really microscopically tiny part of me doesn’t want him to go yet. Before I’ve figured out how to say anything, he moves out of the window and the car door is pulled open from the outside, and he crouches down beside me.

The movement surprises me and I look at him without thinking. He looks even better tonight than he did earlier. He’s got the same well-fitting jeans on, black welly-boots halfway up his calves, a long waterproof coat with wooden toggles closing it diagonally across his chest, and his dark hair is sticking out from under an oversized bobble hat, looking windswept and touchable.

He nods towards the radio, where ‘Fairytale of New York is coming out of the dashboard. ‘I’ve never been a fan of this song but is it really that bad?’

I reach over and switch it off.

‘You can leave it on. It’s never too early for Christmas music.’

‘Finally, someone who understands,’ I say, so surprised by someone who agrees with my stance on festive music in October that I forget about crying for a moment. ‘I told my friend I’d dusted off the Christmas playlist for driving up here and she nearly disowned me because it’s too early.’

‘It’s nearly the middle of the month. That makes it practically Christmas. If mince pies are in the shops, it’s fine to play Christmas music.’

I can’t take my eyes off that lip piercing again as he grins.

‘So,’ he starts, pressing one hand against the doorframe to balance himself, ‘my mum came in earlier, rubbed my ears and said “that was from Leah.” Would you happen to know anything about that?’

An unexpected laugh bursts out at the crystal-clear mental image. ‘Oh, for god’s sake, I said Gizmo, not you.’

‘Yeah, he probably would’ve appreciated an ear rub more than I did.’

‘Has she got problems with her hearing?’

‘Aye, but it’s undiagnosed because doctors can’t do much about “selective” hearing.’

‘I think all parents have that. My mum was the same …’ I trail off and swallow past the lump in my throat. I’ve just about got the tears under control, I can’t start crying again.

There’s a charged silence. I know he’s picked up the ‘was’ in that sentence, and I can almost hear him deciding on the best thing to say.

‘At least you didn’t tell her to give me a Bonio.’

That makes me laugh again but I can feel his eyes boring into the side of my head.

‘Go on then,’ he says eventually. ‘Apart from having no water, no electricity, no heat, and no food, why are you outside crying in the car?’

It sounds as pathetic as it must look, but he doesn’t seem as harsh and judgemental as he did earlier.

I take a few deep breaths and lean my head back and close my eyes. ‘It’s not because of what you said, it’s because you were right. This place is a disaster and I have no idea what I’m doing. The house is cold and damp and broken, my phone ran out of battery because I had to use it as a torch, and my best friend has been texting all afternoon asking how wonderful it is, and I haven’t replied because I don’t know how to tell her the truth about what a stupid mistake I’ve made.’

His coat rustles as he shrugs. ‘Tell her it needs work but you wanted a challenge. Here, give it to me, I’ll write it for you.’

I don’t know why, but I take the phone off the dashboard and put it in his open hand. I never trust anyone with my phone, but I don’t think twice about handing it to him.

I’m almost hypnotised by his fingers as they fly across my screen. I watch him with a strange mix of gratitude and amusement, until he turns the phone around and shows me what he’s written.

It’s a great area and the neighbours are the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. Farm needs a bit of work but I wanted a challenge.

I laugh at the remark about the neighbours and give him the nod to press send.

It beeps with a reply before he’s even had a chance to hand it back to me, and he laughs when he looks down at the screen.

Have you found a gorgeous, sexy farmer in a kilt yet?

Noel laughs. ‘Please let me reply to that?’

I nod. In for a penny and all that. When he holds up the phone to show me what he’s written before sending, it reads:

Yes, I have! The only thing missing is the kilt – too well-ventilated – but the wellies are sexy enough to make up for it! We might have a romp amongst the pumpkins next door!

I burst out laughing again, thankfully minus any snot bubbles this time. ‘Romp? Who uses the word “romp” these days? Have you time-travelled from a Charles Dickens novel?’

He shrugs as he presses send again. ‘Made you laugh though, didn’t it?’

The skin of my face is taut where the tears have dried, but I can’t deny it. ‘Chelsea’s going to know I didn’t write that.’

‘She’ll probably think you’re hanging out with your sexy new neighbour in his kilt and welly-boots.’ He winks at me, making the lip piercing shift and glint in the light of the car. ‘And before you go getting any ideas, I would never defile the pumpkins like that.’

Before I can say that I’d rather snog a Jack O’Lantern than romp anywhere near him, Chels texts back again.

Romp? Bloody hell, are you in Scotland or the 1870s?

I take the phone back and quickly type a response.

That was Noel, he thinks he’s clever, and also of the Victorian era, apparently.

She replies instantly.

Ooh, sexy name! Fittingly festive! Please tell me he sounds like David Tennant!

I hold the phone up to show him and he laughs. ‘Do I?’

‘No.’ I don’t tell him he sounds better than David Tennant. Instead, I type back to Chels:

No, but he looks like the sexiest version of Luke Evans you’ve ever seen.

I go to throw the phone back onto the dashboard without showing Noel my reply, but he plucks it out of my hand and reads it.

‘Cheeky bugger,’ I mutter, realising that talking about his looks while he’s crouched next to me was probably not the best idea.

Chelsea sends back a series of drooling emojis and he laughs again. ‘I don’t know who that is. If I Google him, I’m going to find he looks like the back end of a mangled cow, aren’t I?’

It makes me laugh again. ‘No. Surprisingly, that wasn’t an insult.’ I take the phone back out of his hand and push it onto the dashboard. He leans heavier against the doorframe of the car and shuffles his feet with a wince. He’s been crouched there for ages, his legs must be getting sore. And I need to stop thinking about his legs in those well-fitting jeans.

‘It’s not as bad as you think, you know.’

‘What, this place?’ I glance up at the tumbledown house looming over us. ‘I think it’s the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. The only way it could be worse was if I’d accidentally bought a slurry pit. Which, in some parts of the house, is actually not an unfair description.’

‘What I said earlier … I was out of line. You took me by surprise and it’s taken until now for my brain to catch up with my mouth. I shouldn’t have been so blunt.’

‘But you were right. I don’t know the first thing about Christmas trees. The extent of my horticultural experience is pulling dead branches off a houseplant and putting some crocus bulbs in the lawn for Mum one winter. How did I ever think I could be a Christmas tree farmer? It would be bad enough if it was the working farm I’d imagined, but this … I can’t do this.’

‘But you were right too,’ he says gently. ‘You can learn. And it really isn’t as bad as it seems. You’ll see when you look around tomorrow. Your trees aren’t all dead. Most of them are overgrown, but they can be sheared. Weeds can be pulled. You have fields full of saplings that didn’t survive so you can dig the ground over and start again in the spring. There’s so much potential here for someone who isn’t afraid of a challenge.’

I didn’t think I was, but I’m definitely having a wobble tonight.

‘If you phone the electric and water companies in the morning, they’ll have you back on by lunchtime. As for the house, it probably needs a few repairs but it’s still structurally sound.’

‘There’s ivy holding it up.’

‘Ah, but it’s structurally sound ivy.’ He looks towards it, nearly overbalancing with the movement and his hand grabs at the seat to stop himself falling, his arm brushing against my thigh. ‘Can I tell you what I think?’ He shifts his hand back to the doorframe, waiting for a response. He wasn’t unforthcoming with his opinion earlier, but now I get the impression that if I told him to mind his own business, he would. ‘I think you come from a flat in London which has always got hot water, electricity, and central heating, and whatever you expected Peppermint Branches to be like, it wasn’t this. And now your fight or flight response has kicked in, and you’re sitting here wanting to run away, and you’re disappointed in yourself for wanting that, and you’re also a bit embarrassed because you’ve built it up so much in your mind, and seeing the actual place has left you deflated and panicking about how you’re going to deal with it.’

I try to muster up some indignation and tell him he’s wrong, but he’s hit the nail on the head with surprising accuracy. ‘How do you know that?’ I ask instead, my voice so quiet that he has to lean in to hear me.

‘You’re not the only one who’s ever made a mistake.’ His voice is just as quiet and he looks away for a moment and then turns back to me. ‘I know this house well. I don’t think there’s anything that can’t be fixed. Can I see inside?’

‘What, now?’

‘Well, mainly I’ve got to get up because my legs are killing me with cramp. I’m too old to be crouching like that for long, so I was just looking for an excuse not to admit I’m old and creaky and in agony here.’

I can’t help watching as he stands up and stretches. He looks in his late thirties. I’m 36 and he can only be a couple of years older than me. I should look away, but I can’t tear my eyes off him as he shifts from one foot to the other and stamps his feet, keeping his hands on the car for balance.

‘I’ve not been inside since Mr Evergreene died, but the outside gives a good indication of the state of things. Maybe I can help?’ He hesitates. ‘And I’ve just realised that I’m a complete stranger and I didn’t make the greatest of first impressions earlier and you probably don’t want to be alone in a dark house with me, so don’t worry about it. I didn’t mean to be pushy.’

The fact that he’s aware of that makes me trust him a lot more. And honestly, the thought of going back into that house by myself is a much scarier option. He seems knowledgeable and if he could give me even an indication of where to start … ‘That’d be great.’

He looks surprised that I’ve agreed and moves away from the car to give me space as I swing my legs out and groan when I stand up because I’ve been sitting still for too long.

He’s still trying to get feeling back in his legs with some demented version of the Hokey Cokey.

‘Why are you being so nice?’

‘I don’t know whether to be offended that you think I’m such a horrible person or just to apologise for being such a twat earlier.’ He sighs. ‘Because I can’t bear seeing people cry. No one with a heart could watch someone else cry and not try to help in any way they can.’

The way he speaks is so gentle that it’s a war with myself not to start welling up again.

‘If you’re anything like me, you just needed to let out a bit of frustration before you pick yourself up and get on with it.’ He leans across and pushes his torch into my hand. ‘Here. Let me go and grab some supplies and I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Supplies? At this time of night?’ I call after him because he’s already started walking off across the driveway, his shoulders hunched and his hands shoved into his pockets.

‘You’ll see,’ he replies without turning back.

‘Watch out for those mountain lions,’ I call before he reaches the road.

He laughs, and this time he does turn back, the wind blowing his wavy hair across his face. ‘There aren’t any mountain lions.’

‘I knew that,’ I mutter, but I don’t think he hears me.

Obviously there are no mountain lions. I knew that all along. Mountain lions in Scotland. Hah. No one would’ve fallen for that.

Chapter 5

It’s not long before there’s a knock and I open the front door to find Noel at the top of the three steps, laden with stuff. ‘What’s all this?’

‘Supplies.’ He hands me a folded-up air mattress and a foot pump, and then pushes a sleeping bag at me. Then he bends down to collect something else from the ground by his feet while adjusting the rucksack on his back.

‘Are you moving in?’ I look at the array of things in bewilderment. How did he manage to carry all this at once? His arm muscles are obviously as strong as they looked through his shirt earlier.

‘No, you are.’ He shoos me out of the way while he drags a little heater and bottle of paraffin in with him and closes the door behind us.

I watch as he stomps his boots on the remainder of the doormat and looks around. The smell of his autumnal woody aftershave and the chemical hint of paraffin from the bottle he’s carrying have almost obliterated the cloying smell of damp emptiness that permeates the entire building. His eyes fall on the half open kitchen door and he shakes his head. ‘Evergreene had been meaning to fix that for years.’ He glances between that and the living room and then up the stairs before looking back at the kitchen. ‘That’ll be the cosiest room. Let’s take everything in there.’

He watches in amusement as I squeeze through the gap, pushing the air mattress through first, tossing the pump after it, then squishing myself through, getting my boobs unpleasantly squashed, and pulling the sleeping bag in behind me. When I’m finally in the kitchen and panting for breath from the exertion, his hand slots around the edge of the door and he lifts it easily, pulling it fully open. He gives the hinge a good smack with the flat of his hand and it stands upright, making me feel like a bit of a fool. Why didn’t I think of that?

He looks around by torchlight. ‘If I set up this heater and pump up the mattress, you’ll be nice and cosy in here. You can “camp out” until you’ve got the bedroom sorted.’ Before I have a chance to say anything, he shrugs the backpack off his shoulders and holds it out to me. ‘Mum sent this over for you.’

I put the bag on the unit I wiped clean earlier. It’s warm to the touch, and when I undo the zip, the most gorgeous spicy cinnamon smell wafts out.

‘Thermos of hot pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread just out of the oven, another slice of pumpkin pie, and a flask of tea,’ he says before I can question what’s inside.

‘And if you don’t like pumpkin?’

‘You’re stumped.’ He laughs at his own joke. ‘Stumped, get it? You know, tree farm, et cetera?’

It does actually make me laugh, mainly at how pleased he sounds with himself for such a good pun. ‘Anyone would think you were a pumpkin farmer.’

‘Well, I think we’ve proved that I’m not a comedian.’

This time my laugh is genuine as I unload the bag and set the lovely things Glenna has sent out on the unit. The sight of a flask of tea makes my eyes sting again. I knew I was desperate for a cuppa, but I had no idea quite how desperate until this moment. I force myself to swallow and bite my lip until I’m certain I won’t cry again. ‘Thank—’ I go to thank him but my voice breaks on the first word.

I can’t believe I didn’t even think to bring any food with me. I just thought I’d pop down the street to one of the many shops or takeaways, like I do in London. I didn’t even consider how remote this place is and how vast the countryside seems.

I can feel his eyes on the back of my head, and he seems to know that I’m barely holding it together in the face of warm, pumpkiny food and PG Tips.

‘And yeah, don’t ever eat with us if you don’t like pumpkin. I grow eight thousand pumpkins a year, we have a lot to use up afterwards.’

‘Eight thousand?’ I say in surprise. ‘Your farm must be massive.’

‘So’s yours.’ He sounds nonchalant. ‘Bigger than mine, even. You’ve got about six thousand Christmas trees.’

‘Six thousand?’ My voice has risen to a pitch only audible to whales. He’s got to be joking. ‘And they’re not all dead?’

‘Of course they’re not. But don’t go getting too excited, they’re not in sellable condition either.’

‘What am I supposed to do with six thousand Christmas trees?’

‘Origami?’

It makes me laugh again. I can hear him doing something behind me, so I turn around and watch as he goes to a cupboard under the stairs and comes back with a mop. He takes the keys the estate agent gave me off the unit and lets himself out the back door. Outside there’s a bucket of steaming soapy water waiting, which he must’ve left there on his way over. He plunges the mop in, squeezes it out, and comes back inside to start swiping over the floor.

‘Are you seriously mopping my kitchen floor for me?’

‘There’s no point in putting clean things down in this mess. It won’t take a second.’ His eyes are twinkling in the low light and there’s something in his smile that makes me smile. ‘Have a cup of tea, you look like you need one.’

I can’t argue with him there. I gratefully guzzle tea from one of the plastic flask cups. Within minutes, the kitchen floor is a totally different colour than it was before, and Noel’s unfolding the air mattress and spreading it out. He inserts the nozzle of the foot pump into the hole and starts pressing his foot up and down on it.

‘I can do that,’ I say, thinking I should probably start doing something to prove I’m not completely useless at fending for myself. I’ve pumped up a few paddling pools and inflatable flamingos over the years, when the summer’s hot and Chelsea decides to put a kid’s pool in her miniscule back garden and sit in it drinking wine.

I go over to where he’s standing and try to take over without losing any of the air he’s already pumped in, but the process of me standing on one leg was never going to be a neat one – what I actually do is stamp on his foot and nearly overbalance. I flail around like a drunken great white shark trying to perform the Bolero routine and clutch the sleeve of his flannel shirt to stay upright. When did he take his coat off? I glance through the open kitchen door and see it hanging on the rack in the hallway, along with the hat he was wearing earlier. He’s wasted no time in making himself at home.

Once we’ve established that I’m not going to fall over and I’ve got a rhythm going with the foot pump, he goes back to the collection of things he dumped by the refrigerator and takes the heater outside to fill it. When he comes back in, he sets it on the floor, lights it and puts the safety guards in place, and sits back on his knees to show me the knobs to operate it. It makes the room smell like a Saturday morning at the garage. ‘This can burn quietly all night to give you a bit of light and warmth. The fumes will burn off in a minute, and you’ve got no roof or upstairs windows so there’s plenty of ventilation.’

I can feel the heat emanating from the little heater already, and it makes something that’s been tight in my chest since the moment I set foot in this house start to loosen.

He nods towards the pump. ‘Are you all right carrying on with that? Can I go and have a look around?’

‘Do you need a tour guide?’

‘This was my second home growing up, I know my way around.’ He takes a few steps across the kitchen but stops before he reaches the door. ‘Unless you want to give me the grand tour, that is? This is your house now, I have no right to walk around uninvited.’

I wave a hand dismissively and nearly overbalance again. ‘Be my guest.’

He adopts a French accent, which doesn’t work at all with his deep Scottish tone, and sings a few lines of ‘Be Our Guest’ from Beauty and the Beast. It makes me laugh so much that I nearly overbalance yet again. Disney songs and imitating singing candlesticks are the last things I expected from him, and his French accent gets progressively worse as he goes up the stairs and strains of the song filter down through the floorboards.

The mattress is starting to take shape, and I manage to switch legs without falling over when my thighs start to burn. I listen to the creaking floorboards as he crosses the landing and goes into the rooms above me. I like that he thought to ask if I wanted to show him around, even though he undoubtedly knows this house better than I do, and I’m strangely comforted by the sound of his footsteps upstairs.

‘So, what do you think?’ I ask when he comes back into the kitchen.

He cocks his head to the side. ‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Not that bad? There are more bits of the house missing than still in existence.’

‘Your main problems are the roof and the windows. Everything else is superficial. Things will look better once you have electricity, water, and some cleaning products, but the windows all need replacing.’

Considering there are no windows left to replace, even I could’ve guessed that. ‘How much is that likely to cost?’

‘I don’t know. A few thousand, at a guess. You haven’t got one whole bit of glass in the house.’

My eyes widen in shock. ‘I can’t afford that.’

‘You could afford this place,’ he says with a shrug.

‘Yeah, exactly. That was it. I put everything I had into buying it.’

‘And you didn’t think you might need to set aside some of your budget for essential repairs?’

‘Well, yeah, but I have a very limited amount left and it has to be prioritised.’

‘And there was me thinking you were just another rich city girl with more cash than sense and enough money to wake up one morning and say “I think I’ll be a Christmas tree farmer today” while dear old Daddy pours money into your trust fund.’ He must clock the look on my face because he looks suitably guilty. ‘Sorry. That wasn’t meant to be as offensive as it sounded. I’ve met people like you who come up here thinking it’ll be an easy get-rich-quick scheme in a film-worthy setting. They’ve seen the size of the land and dollar signs appear in their eyes. I assumed you were the same.’

‘The last thing I thought about was getting rich. I bought it because my parents would’ve loved it.’

‘Would have?’ he asks gently.

‘They died. Just over two years ago. I had the money from the sale of their house. I didn’t know what to do with it, only that I wanted to keep it for something important, and then I saw the auction and … I don’t know. It spoke to me. My dad always wanted to move back to Scotland. He loved Christmas trees and my mum loved Christmas, and I knew they’d love it. It seemed magical from the pictures.’

‘It was, once upon a time. A real winter wonderland.’ He looks around the dingy kitchen. ‘But that was a long time ago.’

There’s emotion in his words that makes me look at him, really look at him. I take in the slump of his wide shoulders and the sadness in his voice, and he realises it too because he shakes himself. ‘You could replace the windows one at a time to spread the cost. If you want me to, I can come over tomorrow and board up the remaining ones upstairs. And Evergreene had been intending to fix the roof for years, so there’s new roofing felt in the barn. I don’t mind nailing that over the hole as a temporary fix until you can afford to get it repaired properly. It’s a priority because the more water that gets into this place, the more damage is being done.’

My stomach drops like I’ve just got into a lift. How many Christmas trees will I have to sell to afford this sort of thing?

‘And I’ve got a builder who does all my building repairs. If you want his number, he’ll give you a decent price on the roof. Most of the materials are already here. The replacement tiles are stacked in the garden. You probably came across them when you were running from the monster squirrel earlier.’

‘It wasn’t the squirrel, it was the shock of the squirrel,’ I say, knowing that I’m never going to live it down, no matter what I say in my defence. ‘I’ve never been confronted face to face by an unexpected squirrel before, okay?’

He raises both eyebrows with a look of scepticism on his face. ‘From a spectator’s point of view, it was hilarious. I only wish I’d had my phone out to record it. Millions of views on YouTube beckoned. I’ve never heard such a bloodcurdling, ear-piercing scream over something so small and cute before. I thought you’d found Theresa May doing a dance or something equally horrifying.’

His ability to create the most random mental images is impossible not to laugh at.

‘Thank you,’ I say when the mattress starts letting out squeals of air because it’s full. I watch as he gathers up the pump and puts it back with the pile of other things, and sort of hovers next to it, paused halfway between helping with something else and picking up his stuff and leaving.

‘How about a cup of tea?’ I ask, because I don’t want him to leave yet. ‘I’m knackered after all that pumping.’

He is, of course, not even slightly knackered. He hasn’t broken a sweat and he isn’t gasping for breath or anything. ‘That bodes well for the amount of Christmas trees you’ll have to lug around if you really are going to get this place up and running again.’

‘Thanks for pointing out my complete lack of fitness. I’m so glad you noticed,’ I wheeze as I unscrew the flask to refill my empty cup and the other one for him.

Instead of replying, he gets the sleeping bag out and lays it on top of the mattress. Finally, he throws a camping pillow next to it, and sits down cross-legged on the floor next to the heater.

I take the two cups of tea across the room and hand him one, his fingers brushing against the back of my hand as he takes it. I wonder how his skin can be so warm when it’s still chilly in here, even with the heater going. I go back and collect the tin with a loaf of pumpkin bread in it. It’s still warm from the oven and the smell of cinnamon and spice that wafts up is mouthwatering. I sit down opposite him on the clean patch of floor, surprised to see the tiles are actually cream and have delicate beige leaf patterns along each edge. Patterns and colours are something that was lost under the grime earlier. I put the bread between us and push the tin towards him, and the way he hesitates before pulling the crust off is quite sweet.

We eat in silence for a few minutes. I want to look at him, to watch that lip piercing because I can see it out of the corner of my eye, catching the glow from the heater as he eats, but I tell myself to stop being weird. I concentrate on the chunk of pumpkin bread in my hand instead.

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