A Winter Flame

by Milly Johnson

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Santa, baring his teeth. He reached into his sack again and pulled out another book labelled ‘Girl – under 10’. This time he made sure he asked her to put it under her tree before she opened it. Santa’s cheeks were growing as purple as his nose. There was a vein in his neck throbbing so much that Eve thought they ought to get out before it exploded.

  Eve took Phoebe’s hand and led her out of the back of the shed where the spotty elf with the dodgy ear was waiting for them, holding a photograph of a very unsmiling Phoebe and the tattooed Santa.

  ‘That will be five pounds please,’ he said, holding his palm out.

  ‘Do you eat a lot of chocolate?’ Phoebe asked, staring up at his face.

  Oh God, thought Eve. ‘Er, isn’t a photo included in the price?’

  ‘Ooh no,’ said the elf.

  ‘It’s okay, I don’t want it, Auntie Eve. He’s not the real Santa,’ said dear Phoebe. But Eve paid up. She wanted this photo very badly. She would put it on her desk as a reminder of the start of it all – the moment when she realized that Great Aunt Evelyn wasn’t as barmy as she first thought.

  Chapter 4

  As hoped for, Phoebe was totally and utterly unimpressed by Shite Christmas. In the car on the way home, Phoebe was only too happy to give a list of all the things she hated about it: plastic reindeer rather than real ones, no husky ride, very ugly elves with droppy-off ears. Although she did give the chicken nuggets nine out of ten.

  ‘Phoebe, if I had a theme park like that, would you help me choose what sort of things I would need?’ asked Eve.

  Phoebe’s face lit up as if someone had switched on a 1,000 watt lightbulb behind her eyes. ‘Oh, Aunt Eve, can I? Will you have a reindeer like Comet in the Santa Claus films that pumps?’ And she giggled and made some very impressive farting noises. She was only seven after all.

  ‘Well, er, not sure about the reindeer,’ Eve brushed over that one quickly. She had seen Aunt Evelyn’s plans for a reindeer enclosure but that wasn’t going to happen. They would smell and need feeding and cleaning out and all that complicated stuff. Far too high maintenance. And possibly a health and safety hazard too with those antlers. She didn’t want to get sued because a reindeer had kebabbed a small child.

  ‘You need ice cream,’ said Phoebe. ‘Lots of ice cream. And chicken nuggets. But you could call them something much more Christmassier, like—’ she mused heavily for a moment ‘—penguins’ feet.’

  ‘Great idea,’ Eve encouraged, although she wanted to gag slightly. Maybe they wouldn’t go with that idea either. Phoebe May had a bit of a way to go in marketing yet, but she was spot on with the ice cream. Eve had made plans to ring her cousin Violet as soon as she got home. Violet was the queen of ice-cream making and it would be a good excuse for a long overdue catch-up. Once upon a time they had been nigh on inseparable, but since Jonathan had blasted into Eve’s life, turned it upside down and left her so suddenly, Eve had been embarrassingly lax about seeing her family and her friends. She had been reminded, after visiting Alison, how good it was to talk and have a coffee too – and how little time it took up really. Her business hadn’t collapsed for taking a few hours off – she could have seen more of Violet and her mother – Auntie Susan – if she had really tried harder.

  ‘Lots of Christmas trees with sparkly lights and snow,’ continued Phoebe, on a roll now. ‘And nice shops and cakes and elves and a real Santa’s workshop. And mince pies and rides and white horses.’

  ‘If I got this right, I could be sitting on an absolute goldmine,’ Eve mused as Phoebe reeled off a list of essentials from polar bears to snowball-fighting arenas. Shite Christmas, with its smoking elves and Father Christmases not old enough to start shaving was a revoltingly brilliant money-spinner despite being absolute rubbish. So how much revenue would a really good, top-notch, winter theme park bring in?

  Phoebe fell asleep an hour into the journey, exhausted from thinking up all her ideas. Eve’s brain was in overload. Having visited Shite Christmas, she saw first-hand just how much work was involved in running a theme park, but boy was she excited about getting started.

  ‘I put it to you, Eve Douglas, that you could do this,’ said that silky, seductive barrister voice in her head. ‘If anyone can, you can.’

  And Eve knew that was true. She was a master at organization and covered every base. She had built up a reputation of being a shrewd, resourceful businesswoman who left nothing to chance – her clients trusted her to do a polished job and she delivered every time.

  Eve hadn’t really known what she wanted to do when she left school, so drifted into office jobs and then to a building society where, eight years ago, she took a voluntary secondment into the Events Coordination department and found her niche in life. When the secondment ended, she knew there was nothing else she wanted to do but more of the same and took a leap of faith by starting her own events-organizing company. She’d been lucky, as one of her first clients had been let down at the eleventh hour when the organizers of his wife’s fiftieth birthday bash went bankrupt. Eve found a barge, caterers, comedian and a band, set up a bar and had the boat decorated in pink balloons and bunting all within eighteen hours. That client was delighted – and very well connected. Bookings began to fill Eve’s diary and recommendation followed recommendation.

  If people wanted a James Bond party, Eve Douglas didn’t just supply the music and a gold statue, she drafted in lookalikes of Bond villains complete with white cat, arranged for vodka martinis (shaken not stirred) to be served on arrival, Aston Martin taxis, and on one occasion engineered an appearance by Pierce Brosnan. Eve went the extra mile with everything she did and the result was that her accountant was a very happy man. Eve’s Events was a profitable and growing business and she had been approached on three separate occasions the past year alone by companies wanting to buy her out. She had kept their details, never thinking she would open the file. But Eve knew that she couldn’t run Eve’s Events and Winterworld. Well, she could at a push, but Eve’s style wasn’t diversifying – she liked her energies channelled to one place. She would need to think very carefully about which path she was going to take.

  Eve carried a sleeping Phoebe into Alison’s lovely barn conversion of a house.

  ‘She’s out for the count,’ she smiled, putting Phoebe down on the sofa in the lounge.

  ‘Come and have a coffee,’ said Alison, waddling into the kitchen. ‘I’m not letting you go without giving me some more details on your inheritance.’

  Eve took a seat at the island in the centre of the huge kitchen/dining room and watched Alison making coffees. She had never seen her usually tall and waif-like friend so round – or as content. Serenity was coming off Alison in waves.

  ‘You look so beautiful,’ said Eve.

  ‘Piss off,’ laughed Alison. ‘I haven’t seen my feet for weeks and I’m ravaged by heartburn and backache. Tell me something to take my mind off things.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know everything. I still can’t believe it all. Rupert thought I was drunk when I told him.’

  ‘I know how he feels,’ chuckled Eve. ‘I can’t take it all in myself. Aunt Evelyn of all people, with all those secrets under her belt. It’s . . . crazy.’

  Alison brought over two mugs and an opened biscuit tin.

  ‘Dunk one of those chocolate ginger biscuits, they’re to die for,’ she commanded. ‘Are you still going to keep Eve’s Events running?’

  ‘I don’t see how I can. It’s more than a full-time job and I can’t do two full-time jobs. I’ve had a couple of offers to sell over the years, so I’m going to put out some feelers.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Alison. ‘You’ve worked so hard.’

  ‘Well, I took a leap of faith starting it up so I’m just going to have to take another one letting it go,’ Eve sighed, reaching for a biscuit. ‘Oh and I haven’t told you the best bit. Aunt Evelyn only left me half of it. The other half she left to a
total stranger – A Mr Jack Glass. I can’t wait to find out who the hell he is.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Alison stopped mid-biscuit chew.

  ‘You heard right. Aunt Evelyn never mentioned him at all. But yet he’s one of the main beneficiaries of her will. And that is as much as I know about him. Until I meet him in a few days.’

  ‘And she never mentioned the name to you?’

  ‘Not once.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Two months before she died,’ replied Eve with a small cough. Usually she visited her aunt once a month but her work commitments had been so heavy recently she’d missed a visit and rang Aunt Evelyn instead. She felt rather ashamed of that now – especially as it would only have cost her a couple of hours of her time and she could have spared that really if she’d tried. Her Aunt Evelyn looked forward to seeing her so much.

  ‘Dear God,’ said Alison, resuming scoffing of biscuit. ‘Your aunt really did have a lot of secrets in her life, didn’t she?’

  ‘So many that I don’t think I knew her a quarter as well as I thought I did,’ sighed Eve.

  As soon as Eve got home, she unfolded her aunt’s simple plans and those far more detailed drawings by the architect over her large dining table; she saw more possibilities every time she did so. In the middle of the land, her aunt had foreseen ‘an enchanted forest’ of Christmas trees with a twirly path cutting through the middle. Evelyn had drawn a horse and trap on the path along the route with the word ‘snow ponies’ written above it, and a miniature railway line was also present. At the left side of the forest was a reindeer enclosure and stables. To the right were a collection of log cabins, one labelled gift shop, one a restaurant and some unnamed. At the far end of the development was a funfair dominated by a sketch of a huge carousel. Santa’s grotto was one of five more log cabins next to the funfair. Three of the cabins were bracketed together and called ‘honeymoon cabins’. One was marked as ‘the wedding chapel’. Eve peered at it while shaking her head. Surely her aunt wasn’t that batty as to think that anyone would seriously want to be married in a theme park? This was South Yorkshire, not Las Vegas after all. A vision of Santa in black sunglasses and tassels, singing ‘Suspicious Minds’ whilst smelling of peanut butter and burgers, suddenly came to mind. It wasn’t a pretty image.

  Eve put her pen down and closed the book. Organizing a black-tie corporate event with dancing waterfalls was one thing – seeing that this ridiculously ambitious theme park was built, marketed, advertised and managed was another.

  Eve looked up at the ceiling and imagined beyond it, right up into the stars, where her aunt would be sitting with Stanley looking down at the havoc she had caused in her great-niece’s brain. She would know that Eve wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge she had set her.

  ‘You wicked old bird,’ said Eve to the sky. ‘What the hell have you done to me?’

  Ideas were crowding to get into her brain. She needed that smoking elf to keep them at the door and let them enter one at a time. But first things first – she better meet up with this ‘Jack Glass’ and suss him out as a business partner. Eve worked alone as a rule, but for ‘quite a few million pounds’ she just might be persuaded to see if she could put up with the man.

  Chapter 5

  Over the next few days Eve worked on tying up the future of Eve’s Events, as well as overseeing a fortieth birthday party and sourcing a consignment of green-tinged champagne for an Irish wedding. If she were going to sell up, she wanted to make sure that the right people took over and things went as seamlessly as possible for her clients. She met with the three companies who had expressed interest in buying her out. By far the best offer was from the biggest of the three: ‘Paul’s Parties’. Paul Hoylandswaine was a local entrepreneur with his finger in more pies than a room full of Little Jack Horners. He was a bruff but straight man who didn’t do bidding wars or time-wasting: he knew what he wanted and went straight for the jugular. He said that if Eve was serious about letting her enterprise go, she wouldn’t find anyone who would look after it and continue to build it up more than he would, and he’d have contracts drawn up in two days for her to sign. Eve hadn’t wanted to move quite that fast, but Paul Hoylandswaine said he wasn’t going to ‘fanny about’ whilst she hummed and ha-ed. The deal was on the table with a now or never sticker on it; he didn’t stop balls rolling when they were in motion. Eve had a massive moment of panic. If Winterworld folded, she would have nothing. She knew where she was running Eve’s Events, but Winterworld was a trip into the dark, scary unknown. But the moment passed and Eve found her hand extending to shake his and the deal was done.

  Winterworld would have to be a success, because Eve didn’t go backwards – at least not in business. She might have been stuck in the past in her personal life, but in her career, she would only ever allow herself to move forwards. She wasn’t a natural gambler but this was an extraordinary business which merited out-of-the-box thinking. As she signed on the dotted line she knew that however much of a knobhead this Jack Glass turned out to be, she would have to get on with him now.

  Eve loved working for herself with no boss to answer to and she was disciplined enough to do that. Winning new clients excited her; earning lots of money thrilled her. People liked her and trusted her and found her easy to deal with – that was indicative in the repeat custom she received. She knew she was taking a massive gamble on Jack Glass being the same. What if he was an obnoxious cretin whom no one wanted to do business with?

  She remembered taking Jonathan off to a very expensive hotel in Denmark for the weekend after banking a particularly massive cheque. These days she hadn’t anything as exciting to spend it on though. All her money went into the bank and sat there twiddling its thumbs.

  She had scribbled quite a few alterations on Aunt Evelyn’s plan for the park as well. The wedding chapel had been changed to a second gift shop and café, for a start. Food, that’s where the money was – not in silly whimsical chapels that would probably bring in one booking a year and be a total waste of a building. The reindeer enclosure had been changed into a coffee shop and picnic area. Livestock only ran up vets’ bills although it did, she supposed, make some commercial sense to have the ponies, if they were to be working and earning their hay or straw or whatever they ate pulling hired carriages and were not just stuck in a field pooing. She even wondered if there was any mileage in the idea of selling snow-pony poo to gardeners (it was just a thought). She had also claimed one of the log cabins near the restaurant as an ice-cream parlour. If she could get Violet on board that would be fantastic. Not just because she made the best ice cream in the world, but because she would have an ally firmly in her camp in case Mr Glass turned out to be a right old tosser with no business acumen at all. Any friendly weight on her side would help in levering him out. She would be meeting him tomorrow anyway. And all the many questions she had about him were at last going to be answered. Or so she thought.

  Chapter 6

  Sitting in Mr Mead’s office, Eve rolled his name around in her mouth. The spelling, she had learned, was Jacques Glace, not Jack Glass. She imagined a number of personalities which that name would suit. A fifty-something French fop with frilly cuffs, a giant quiff and a blue rinse. Carrying a toy poodle. Or a very young, arrogant, nerdy-student type with a big coat and a Masters in philosophy, a long Dr Who scarf wound around his neck. Eve still couldn’t work out how Jacques Glace had managed to jointly inherit a very valuable chunk of land from her aunt. She considered the possibility that Aunt Evelyn had acquired a young, slim, six-packed Jacques Glace as a gigolo, and the land was his payment for ‘services rendered’. She dismissed that immediately as being totally daft and so out of character for Aunt Evelyn it couldn’t be taken seriously for a second. Then again, everything she had learned about her aunt recently was out of her character – did she really know old Evelyn that well? The disclosures of the past couple of weeks had made her wonder. The sweet, quiet Aunt Evelyn who lived surrou
nded by very old sepia-coloured memories and had a penchant for Mr Kipling cakes was not the woman she recognized from all the recent revelations. It was how Lois Lane must have felt when she discovered who Clark Kent really was.

  Eve had thought of nothing else but plans for the park since she had visited White Christmas. But she wanted to run it her way and not have to make joint decisions. Maybe – she hoped – he’d be willing to act as a silent partner and let her get on with it. With two cooks, the winter broth was more than likely to get spoiled. Anyway, Mr Glace would soon realize that he couldn’t be as imaginative or good at organizing as she was; and when he saw that he would recede into the shadows and go and buy a boat to live on and ring up every year to check on the profits. She could live with that arrangement, she supposed.

  Eve looked out of the window at a very rainy, bitter October day as they waited for the arrival of Jacques Glace. The Christmas lights were already up, strung across the central Barnsley street. If the start of Christmas became any earlier, Britain was going to end up being like Aunt Evelyn’s house and not bother taking its decorations down. The shops had been filling up with Christmassy things since early September, forcing everyone to start feeling the pressure. Eve could have quite happily taken a flight to somewhere hot and sunny as soon as she saw the first Christmas card on a shelf and not returned until 2 January. However, Christmas for Eve’s Events was a lucrative time – she had to stick around and be tortured by it.

  As she sat waiting for Mr Glace to turn up – he was already late by an annoying ten minutes – she mused about Christmases past. She supposed she must have had some happy memories about the season, but they were buried beneath the weight of the unpleasant ones. For every recollection of being at her Auntie Susan’s, stuffed full of good food, there were five of her mother either drunk, sleeping off a party or snogging like a teenager on the sofa with a transient boyfriend. Eve remembered having fish fingers for Christmas lunch once because her mother was too stoned to cook anything else. Ruth Douglas flitted from man to man and home to home like a not-altogether-there butterfly and Christmas was an excuse to become even more of a sybarite than usual. Eve always felt as if she were outside a huge snow globe looking in at other people’s merriment and enjoyment of Christmas whilst being unable to be part of it. The memories of her Christmases past were scented with cannabis, stale beer, and cheese and onion crisps. And the one Christmas which she felt might herald her entrance into that giant snow globe was the unhappiest and most terrible of them all.