Page 77 of Winter Nights at the Bay Bookshop
‘It’s a bit childish but we love it,’ Lily said.
I nodded in agreement. ‘If you can’t be a kid at Christmas, when can you? Christmas is huge in Iceland and most Icelanders admit to beingjólabörnwhich meansChristmas children. There’s a saying –Ég er mikið jólabarn– which translates asI’m a total Christmas-child, meaning you still look forward to Christmas in the same way you did as a child. Excitement, magic, loving all the sights and sounds that go into the season.’
‘I love that,’ Lily said, her eyes sparkling. ‘We could do with more Christmas children in the UK.’
‘Cookies are a massive part of Christmas in Iceland too. They get baked and eaten throughout December.’
Lily and her family seemed really interested in Icelandic Christmas traditions so the conversation continued over our evening meal. They asked about the cookie flavours and I explained that there were lots of popular choices and a good household would make at least seven or eight varieties across the season, especially if there was a member of the household not working and able to bake, but the most classic of Christmas cookies werepiparkökur(gingerbread) andsörur, also known as Sarah Bernhardt cakes.
‘Sarah Bernhardt? Wasn’t she a French actress?’ Shelby asked, and I nodded. ‘Did she have a connection to Iceland?’
‘No. The cookies were actually created by a Danish patisserie in honour of her visiting Copenhagen in the early 1910s so nobody’s quite sure how they became such an intrinsic part of Icelandic traditions but there you go. The Swedish have their own version too and, I have to say, they’re delicious so whatever randomness brought them to Iceland, I’m glad it happened.’
They wanted to know what was in them, which was a real test of my memory. Nanna had kept the cookie-making tradition going for several years but I got too busy with My Study Hub to make them with her so that tradition ceased. I couldn’t remember any of the quantities but the base was definitely marzipan, sugar and egg whites. A ganache made from butter, sugar, vanilla and cappuccino powder was added to the flat side and then covered in melted chocolate. My mouth watered as I finished and Shelby said she’d be online tomorrow searching for a recipe. I told her I’d ask Nanna if she still had ours although she’d cleared out a lot of recipe books as part of her move so I wasn’t hopeful.
After we’d eaten, we returned to the lounge and it was time to put the decorations on the tree. Every single one was gold, red or wooden and the designs varied massively from elaborately decorated glass baubles to simple wooden stars. I’d loved Pia’s technicolour approach but the Appletons’ tree was beautiful and classy. It didn’t so much shout at me as tease me with its elegance.
I thought we’d finished but Lily handed me an old ice-cream container, a mischievous grin on her face. ‘One more box of decorations to put up. These ones are extra special.’
I lifted the lid to examine the contents and started laughing. ‘Are these your primary-school decorations? Oh, wow! You weren’t exaggerating when you said special.’
I lifted out a set of people made from old-style wooden clothes pegs who, from the clothing, were clearly the cast of the nativity. I held up one dressed in blue. ‘Any particular reason for Mary having a beard?’
That tickled Marcus and Shelby and out came a story about how Lily came home from school in floods of tears because she’d spent every art session across the week creating her peg people, carefully dressing them, only to fall at the final hurdle when, after adding beards to the kings, wise men and Joseph, she’d accidentally done the same to Mary.
‘She’d been telling us all week how proud she was of them and how much praise the teacher had given her,’ Shelby said. ‘We couldn’t wait to see them and I’ll never forget her little face, all crumpled up, tears flowing.’
‘She tried to flush Mary down the toilet and managed to block it,’ Marcus added. ‘That was an expensive near-drowning.’
Lily hung her head but I could see she was smiling.
‘Mum managed to convince me that the rest of the peg people loved Mary, beard and all, so she needed to stay.’
‘Rummage a bit further,’ Shelby said. ‘There’s another peg person in there.’
I found a woman with long black hair, a purple dress and a beard but it looked more professionally made than the others.
‘It’s Lettie, the bearded lady fromThe Greatest Showman,’ Lily explained.‘When I saw the film, I couldn’t resist making a friend for Mary so Lettie’s also part of our nativity cast now.’
The tub contained various other decorations only a parent could love including a terrifying three-eyed snowman made by Hendrix and a robin Kadence had made which somehow managed to look more like a blood-soaked bat. I was stunned to discover they all got added to the tree when everything else about it was so perfect.
‘Scary as some of them are, they represent the magic of Christmases past so they belong here,’ Marcus said.
I hung bearded Mary on the tree and added Lettie by her side, smiling at the handiwork of child Lily and adult Lily.
‘Huge plus points for creativity,’ I said, ‘even from a young age.’
When we finished the tree, Shelby helped us display various other items around the room including the light-up houses they’d mentioned earlier. There was a large house, a small cottage and a bookshop which captured their family perfectly.
‘Where’s the Paperback Pixie?’ Shelby asked.
My stomach lurched at the mention of my alter ego and I looked up from where I’d been plugging in the bookshop, expecting to find them all looking in my direction, my identity somehow rumbled, but they were preoccupied with looking through boxes.
‘In this one,’ Marcus said, removing something protected by bubble wrap from the box on the sofa beside him.
Lily took the item from him and showed it to me. ‘Look what we found a few years ago! Our very own Paperback Pixie. Okay, it’s an elf really but, seeing as we have no idea who the real Paperback Pixie is, we’ve got our own fake version.’
The Christmas elf was about eight inches high with fairy lights around its neck. Santa’s list was draped over one arm, partly checked, but the elf was evidently more interested in the open book in his other hand. As Lily gave him pride of place on the mantelpiece, my thoughts turned to the books I was going to leave out this Christmas. I always aimed for one last gifting on 12 December because it was the first day of the Icelandic Advent but also my birthday. Bad weather often meant gifting a day or two either side of the 12th as, even though I put the books in protective bags, there was no point putting any out in the rain – very few people around and too much risk of damage. This year I’d be late. The 12th fell on the Friday of Cassie and Jared’s wedding and I’d be working on the Saturday but I’d leave them out on the Sunday, weather permitting. I’d decided that every book would give a clue as to my identity. Although the general public wouldn’t have a chance of guessing, the books would mean something to Lily. I was dying to share my secret with her but I wanted the reveal to be exciting and romantic. From everything Lily had told me about Ewan and Wes, they’d never done anything romantic for her and I wanted to show her that she was worth it.
