Page 78 of The Secret Christmas Bookshop
‘Let’s see, shall we?’ Harry raised an imperious eyebrow, and Sophie got so distracted by his expression that she made the tangle worse, and Dexter had to take charge of the situation.
Half an hour later they were having the same issue, but Sophie and Harry were now twenty feet up, their ladders leaning against the trunk on opposite sides of the oak tree.
‘How the fuck did Winnie do this for so many years?’ Harry called, as he leant forward and tried to drape his lights over a particularly thick branch.
‘She got a helicopter in,’ Dexter shouted from the safety of the ground.
Harry stared down at him. ‘Fuck off.’
Dexter grinned. ‘Yeah, I’m joking. I have no idea. One day the tree was bare, the next it was decorated. You didn’t think to ask her?’
Sophie and Harry exchanged a look, and she saw her own frustration mirrored in his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare lean out too far,’ Harry called to her.
‘Or you,’ she shot back. ‘How the hell are we going to do this?’
Harry rested his forehead against the trunk. ‘Ask Winnie? Hope it isn’t actually a helicopter?’
There was a commotion from below and Sophie looked down, getting a sudden sway of vertigo as Simon and Jason appeared, each carrying ladders.
‘You’ve been trying to get the lights up just the two of you?’ Jason called up.
‘We thought it would be fine,’ Sophie shouted.
Jason shook his head, said something that sounded likeamateurs, then Simon called, ‘We’ll come and help you!’
‘That would be amazing!’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Harry added grumpily. She shot him a knowing look, and his returned gaze was incendiary. ‘No risks, Sophie. I mean it. I’m not enjoying this a whole lot, and I’m usually fine with heights.’
‘It’s my least favourite bit of festival wrangling so far,’ she agreed.
‘We’ll have to come up with a way to burn off the adrenaline later,’ he said, against the metal clank of two more ladders finding purchase on the oak tree’s sturdy trunk.
‘I wonder what,’ she replied with a smile, as the married couple came to join them and, it turned out, make the job of draping the oak tree in its festive cloak a hundred times easier.
Soon, their centrepiece was festooned with trails of lights: rainbow-coloured globe bulbs nestled among the branches, next to the dangling book lights Sophie had picked out,and little gold acorns that added a touch of twinkling glamour to the ends of the smaller twigs.
‘Is it too much?’ Harry leaned back on his ladder, and Sophie’s stomach twisted unpleasantly.
‘Nah.’ Jason shook his head. ‘You can’t have too much where this festival is concerned. You might get complaints that it’s too subtle.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Simon said, ‘it looks great. Just the right side of gaudy.’
‘Brilliant.’ Sophie sighed. ‘And we still have our pièce de résistance.’
‘What’s that?’ Jason asked, as he started his descent.
Sophie felt a wave of relief when her feet found the firm-ish ground of the green. She wobbled, and Harry was beside her in an instant, his hand on her waist.
‘I thought you would have forgotten about that,’ he said in a low murmur.
‘Never.’ She grinned up at him.
‘What are we missing?’ Dexter asked.
‘The goat!’ Sophie said triumphantly.
‘Goat?’ Simon, Jason and Dexter echoed in unison.
