Dear Santa, I appreciate this is a busy time of year for you, but if you could see your way to sending a few more customers to the Lochside Welcome and make this the best family Christmas we’ve ever had, I’d be eternally grateful…
The person meant to be making a wish as she blew out her birthday cake candles was Evie, not me. But as this was her first birthday, I thought she wouldn’t mind me appropriating her request. And boy, did we need those customers… Today, however, I would not be dwelling on non-existent punters. I pursed my lips. “Blow, Evie! Like this, one, two, three!”
Ah. Too late. The village’s second-youngest resident, Tamar McMillan, a year and a half older than Evie, sneaked up underneath the table, stuck his head up, blew with all his might and ducked back under again.
“Tamar!” The little scamp’s mother barked at him. He ran from her, giggling. Evie wriggled in my arms, desperate to go after him. Evie loved Tamar. Her feelings weren’t reciprocated. The last time Jolene and I took them swimming together, he did his best to duck her head under the water and keep it there.
“It’s a phase he’s going through,” Jolene had said, “at least I hope so?”
I put Evie down, and she scooted off on all fours—Tamar far more enticing than the prospect of cake.
As Evie was Lochalshie’s youngest resident, everyone had assumed they were invited to her birthday celebration. Our house wouldn’t have handled the numbers, so we hit on holding it in the Lochside Welcome, the hotel we part-owned with six others.
Jack had strewn the bar with the pink, silver and white bunting I had designed and helium balloons. The tables had been cleared away to make enough space for party games.
Xavier, the hotel’s manager and head chef, had gone to town on the food. Brought up in Canada, he was unfamiliar with traditional British party food staples. Most of it made him shudder. But he’d stumbled on an old Nancy Spain cookbook from the 1960s. “Look at zees, Gaby! You slice cucumber up very thin and put it on ze whole salmon, so people think it is scales! Shall I do zis?”
When I pointed out children weren’t always the biggest fans of salmon and many people in Lochalshie promised fish “gies me the dry boak” despite fish having been a natural part of the Scots diet for centuries, he pouted. Then cheered up when he read about the hedgehog—half of a grapefruit studded with cubes of cheese and pickled onions on cocktails sticks. I’d already worked my way through far too many of them, consoling myself that the pickled onions must count as one of your five a day.
The Lochside Welcome’s signature pudding was a chocolate decadence dessert. Xavier had made the dessert Evie’s birthday cake, levelling up the luxury with gold leaf—the gleam of it caught in the flickering flames of the candles.
He reappeared, knife in hand, and sliced the cake into as many pieces as there were people. Tricky given the numbers, but job done, he, Jack and I handed the plates round.
Mhari, taking a break from her semi-official role as party photographer, sat down next to me and filched my cake.
“Hey!”
“Well, my slice was titchy. Cannae expect me to survive the rest of the afternoon on just a wee bittie o’ cake.”
“Can I see the pictures?”
“No. I need tae touch them up. ‘Specially the ones of you.”
Mhari, my Lochalshie self-described best friend, was an acquired taste.
“I got a cracking shot of Jack, though. Look.”
Oh, wow. That one was going on our website for sure. A tough job being the wife of a man as delectable as Jack McAllan, but someone had to do it, right? Mhari had captured him as Xavier placed the cake in front of Evie—the candle flames illuminating the planes of his face, casting exaggerated shadows that only emphasised the similarity to the ancient statues of Greek gods. She must be using an enhanced colour filter too as the red of his hair stood out in sharp relief.
“I took some o’ the outside of the hotel too,” she added, showing them to me. “Looks awfy Christmassy, eh?”
The lights outside the hotel were OTT, though we’d yet to get around to decorating the hotel’s interior. In the garden, a reindeer pulled a sleigh at the front next to an enormous tree dotted with star lights and a gobo that projected holly leaves and berries on the white walls of the hotel. The electricity bills had soared.
“It’s Christmas made camper,” I’d said when we’d set them up a few days before. Jack raised an eyebrow. “Can you make Christmas camper?”
Probably not, but with any luck, the Lochside Welcome’s Christmas lights would be one of those displays people drove to from miles around to see, dropping in for a drink or some food while they were in the area.
My phone buzzed as it had been doing all day—people reacting to my pictures on Instagram or phoning to wish Evie a Happy Birthday.
The screen showed my mum calling again. She’d already phoned early this morning in tears because she couldn’t be here for her only grandchild’s first birthday. Great Yarmouth was too far away to make visits easy, and Mum’s budget too limited for her to able to afford a trip here for Evie’s birthday and Christmas.
“Mum, hello!” I switched the phone to FaceTime mode and showed her the birthday girl now sat on the floor tearing up birthday gift wrap.
“Your brother,” she replied, “wants to apologise for not having posted Evie’s birthday present and card on time.”
Does it count as an apology when you overhear your mum standing behind your brother, hiss-whispering that he needs to say sorry, forgetting that a mobile phone makes all background noise clear as a bell? If Dylan had remembered Evie’s birthday or it crossed his mind that as her uncle, he should buy her a card and a present, I’d eat my Christmas cracker hat.
Mum came back on the line. “I’m so looking forward to Christmas! What a wonderful celebration it will be this year when we are all together.”
“Me too!” We blew each other kisses and hung up. Yes, Christmas shimmered on the horizon in all its glittery glory. But that familiar prickle of worry, whenever I thought about the future started up. Money worries took the shine off somewhat.
This year’s summer had been a stinker. Lochalshie’s weather gods had lulled me into a false sense of security since I’d upped and moved sticks to the north of Scotland. Warm, dry-ish summers, the odd autumn storm and cold but dry winters. This year rain started mid-May, stopped for a day or two in June, and then continued into the autumn when it turned sheet-like and icy. The weather deterred everyone. We’d put up with endless cancellations and days on end when the numbers in the bar didn’t surpass those working in the hotel.
Evie scuttled towards the fire, Jack swooping in to whisk her up as everyone cooed in admiration and remarked yet again on how similar they looked. It’s a truth universally known to mothers… All a dad needs to do is hold his baby, jiggle her up and down a bit, and he qualifies as father of the year. Meanwhile, we women stir ourselves from sleep three hours earlier than we would like, spend our days running around after our tiny tyrants, juggling a job at the same time, and dealing with our extended family, before flopping into bed at 10pm, exhausted.
Two women sharing a bottle of wine watched him, transfixed. They nudged each other, open-mouthed. Snatches of their whispered conversation drifted over. “OMG! He can father my baby any day!” “Yeah! My ovaries have just exploded!”
Just as well I’d grown accustomed to such reactions. If Jack had been a sex god before Evie appeared on the scene, nowadays he was Zeus at the top of Olympus. Women tailed him, tongues hanging out. Even if I stood next to him, waving my left hand in the air. “Ring, fourth finger, placed on said hand by the gent you’re ogling!”
© Emma Baird 2020
