Page 65 of Christmas Every Day
‘I did offer.’
‘You’re sure it’s okay if I drive it? Just until this gets sorted? The owner won’t mind?’The owner – or for the purposes of this conversation shall we refer to her asMrs Mack?
He nodded. ‘It’ll do it good to get a run out. And you can use it in exchange for storing it in your shed. I’ll pick up a new battery and give it a once-over. The last thing you need is to break down in the middle of nowhere.’
‘I’ll pay for the battery.’
Mack frowned, about to say no. Then he paused. Looked at me. Looked down at his bowl. ‘Thanks. I’ll let you know how much it is.’
He glanced at his watch during the awkward silence that followed. ‘Don’t you have to leave soon?’
I checked the clock. ‘Damn. Yes. And I don’t have time to cycle the long way now.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ He got up. ‘Give me two minutes to get changed.’
‘You have a bike?’ I called after him, already out of the back door.
‘I don’t need one,’ he retorted. ‘I’ve got legs.’
‘Really?’ I huffed. ‘And you think your legs can keep up with my wheels? We’ll see about that.’
Which was probably the whole point, I realised, pumping my way along the path, Mack a blur alongside me. Even bearing in mind the bumps slowing me down, he could at least have had the decency to be gasping for breath by the time we reached the Common.
I hopped off and wheeled the bike towards the village exit, waving at Sarah through the café window. She wiggled her eyebrows and smirked when she spotted Mack, mouthing ‘call me later’ while holding an imaginary phone to her ear.
‘I’m fine from here,’ I said, indicating towards the dog-walkers milling about up ahead. ‘Thanks for keeping me company.’
‘What time do you finish?’
‘Oh, I’m staying late again this evening. Ellen and Will are going out for their anniversary and won’t be back until ten. I’ll—’
‘I’ll be there at ten.’ Before I could reply he had sprinted off into the trees.
‘Traitor,’ New Jenny jeered at the smile that refused to stop curling up the side of my mouth all the way to school.
24
The rest of the evening was, to put it mildly, freakin’ exhausting. Hamish and Jonno were playing a new game about an invisible snake that slid up their trousers and into any holes it could find there, causing Billy to wet himself, too afraid to pull down his underwear when required.
Maddie was trying to learn ‘Baby Shark’ on the recorder, taking seriously her teacher’s comment that practice makes perfect while simultaneously proving it to be false.
Dawson was having a bad day. His class had been on a museum trip. Although he refused to talk about it, he spent a long time drawing Squash Harris getting trapped by the bad guys in a museum storeroom with no windows or lights, teeming with monster spiders and rats, their beady eyes glowing in the darkness.
‘I woke up trapped in a car with some rats not so long ago,’ I casually mentioned, when I came in to check if he had any homework.
‘And I care about that because…?’ he said in a monotone.
‘Because it’s an interesting story ending in my total humiliation in front of another person. I thought you might want to hear it.’
He swapped his pencil for an eraser and dabbed at the corner of the page. ‘I’m busy.’
‘Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.’
‘I won’t,’ he replied in a sing-song voice as I shut the door behind me. I closed my eyes and wished very, very hard that whatever Mack was doing with the sample comic-book, he would get some good news soon.
Then a scream broke out from the other side of the house: ‘I HATE YOU AND I HATE INVIBISLE SNAKES I’ll CHOP OFF ALL YOUR HEADS AND TAILS WITH THIS AXE!’
I opened my eyes and hurried downstairs to avert the slaughter.
