Page 12 of Christmas Is All Around
“Don’t worry, she made her feelings on the matter very clear to me,” he said dryly, and Charlotte smiled smugly.
“I might have told him to go find a bathroom,” Charlotte admitted, not feeling terribly repentant. “I was trying to sketch the Christmas tree and the fireplace, and wasn’t thrilled when a guy showed up and randomly started removing a reindeer suit.”
“Which is how you know that she draws interiors, too,” Eloise said to her brother. She punched him in the shoulder.
“Have you lost your mind?” Graham inquired mildly. “Last I checked, physically assaulting the person driving the vehicle you’re riding in was a bad idea.” Despite his complaint, his hands hadn’t budged from their spot on the steering wheel, and the Mini Cooper remained firmly in its lane.
“Sorry, sorry,” Eloise said, making a show of remorse. “It’s a famous Christmas tree and fireplace, you know!”
Charlotte stilled. “Is it?” she asked coolly.
“It was in that Christmas film,” Eloise said cheerfully, apparently not noticing anything strange about Charlotte’s tone. “Christmas, Truly—have you seen it? I’m sure you have.”
“I’m not a big Christmas movie fan,” Charlotte said carefully, which was both truthful and not really an answer to Eloise’s question. “Not a big Christmas fan, period.”
“Ha! You wouldn’t last long around Eden Priory!” Eloise said, laughing as she took her phone out of her apron pocket. “We get loads of visitors because of the film—we’re going to host a screening of it on Christmas Eve. ‘WatchChristmas, Trulyin the room where it was filmed’—that sort of thing. And Graham’s decided that capitalizingon Christmas in general is how we’re going to make enough money to get a new roof and not have to live like tragic Dickens characters surrounded by buckets and eating porridge.”
“At least you’ll already have an outfit ready, if it comes to that,” Charlotte pointed out innocently, and next to her, Graham laughed quietly under his breath.
“You know,” Eloise said, sounding thoughtful now as she tapped away at her phone, “if you’re open to commissions, Charlotte, that might actually be a brilliant idea—a print we could sell in the gift shop, showing that scene from the film.”
Charlotte’s unease grew. “I don’t know—”
“I’m sure you’re busy,” Eloise said, still texting away on her phone, only half paying attention; next to Charlotte, however, she could somehow sense that Graham was listening carefully. “That isn’t a bad idea, though—Graham, maybe we should look into having someone else do it? If we can find an artist who’s local? Maybe we’d expand it to other Christmas films, too—not justChristmas, Truly.”
“Maybe,” he agreed neutrally, his eyes still on the road, and Charlotte snuck a glance at him.
“Has your house ever been used to film anything else?” she asked curiously. “It’s got great vibes—that turret alone…”
“No,” Graham said—not curt exactly, but not in a tone that invited any future questions. “Just the one.”
“It’s a shame, too,” Eloise said blithely, “since god knows we could use a nice fat check right about now—”
“We have a plan,” Graham said, his tone firm. “We don’t need a film crew overrunning the house—we’ve plenty of Christmas activities planned to keep us busy.”
“Mmm,” Eloise said, with a slight twist of her mouth, which Charlotte didn’t think was quite meant to express her agreement. “Well,” she said, more briskly, “Charlotte, now that you’ve visited the house,you should watchChristmas, Trulysometime—just to catch a glimpse of the spot you were drawing!”
“I’ll… consider it,” Charlotte said diplomatically.
“Liar,” Graham muttered under his breath, quiet enough that Eloise, in the back seat, couldn’t hear, and Charlotte flipped him off without missing a beat.
And tried not to notice how much she liked it when, once again, he let out that low, dark laugh.
By the time she was deposited at the flat, fussed over tearfully by Ava, apologized profusely to by Kit, subjected to a lengthy lecture by Simone on the tragedy of modern society’s overreliance on technology in order to communicate, and fed exceedingly large quantities of soup by John, Charlotte was ready for nothing more than a glass of wine and a long bath. Both of these things were arranged, although the relaxing, wine-fueled soak was somewhat less zen of an experience than she’d anticipated, interrupted as it was by what she genuinely, momentarily thought was the sound of someone being murdered. (It was actually just Alice staging a protest about being put to bed.)
She eventually crawled out of the tub, happily pruny and a bit lightheaded from the hot water, put on her favorite pin-striped pajama set, and retreated to bed with a hot water bottle, a thick nonfiction book she’d stolen from Kit’s bookshelf, and a vague plan for the work she planned to get done that week, and how she might use it as an excuse to avoid any further planned holiday outings, considering how this one had gone.
She hadn’t checked Instagram all day, and she reached for her phone on the nightstand, opening the app and publishing one of her draft posts—this one a carefully staged photo that her assistant hadtaken of a framed set of her prints decorating a wall to the left of a tabletop Christmas tree, with a reminder about deadlines for holiday shipping. A quick scroll through her DMs confirmed that, while the hystericalChristmas, Trulymessages were still rolling in—a number of them from burner accounts that seemed to have been created solely for this purpose, which was honestly insane—they were at least starting to decrease slightly in number. Her last thought as she fired off a few quick replies to messages of the non–Christmas, Trulyvariety, set her phone aside, and reached for her book was that, if this trend continued, then before too long things would die down entirely, and she wouldn’t have to think aboutChristmas, Trulyat all.
CHAPTER FOUR
It took less than forty-eight hours for Charlotte to be proven wrong.
It was Monday morning, and she’d escaped from the flat to a coffee shop down the street, where she was attempting to make sense of her inbox—which she’d been ignoring with increasing guilt since her arrival the week before—and create some sort of work schedule for herself for the week, to ensure she didn’t fall behind on any of the remaining commissions on her calendar for the month. This time of year was busy; her online shop made five times as much in December as it did in January, and while she’d drastically scaled back the number of commissions she offered in the past year or so, given the increasingly lucrative business she was doing with various brands, she still liked to accept a limited number each month, usually booked months in advance. It was a lot to keep track of—hence the inbox hell she currently found herself in—but, fortunately, two years earlier she’d finally accepted the inevitable and hired an assistant to help with customer emails, maintenance of her website, and general admin, which was an absolute godsend.
She opened her inbox that morning to find an email awaiting her from the creative director of Perfect Paper, a luxury wallpapercompany, which had reached out several weeks earlier, interested in a potential collaboration. Charlotte had sent over some sample sketches, but hadn’t yet heard anything back; now, however, there was an email sitting there, inviting her to a meeting with the team in New York the first week after New Year’s, at which they could discuss Charlotte’s vision for the line and she could present more detailed samples. Her heart pounding, she replied, looping in her assistant, Sarah, to work out the details, and then clicked out of her inbox, reaching for her phone to text Padma.
Charlotte: Got invited to meet with perfect paper after new year’s
