‘Have you totally lost your marbles this time?’
She might have a point. But not one I intend to concede to. ‘I could be the undercover hotel inspector, poking about in his dark corners and uncovering the truth. I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of a sleuth.’
‘You said you wanted to stand in front of him, so he can’t ignore you.’
The girl has a point. ‘Stop being picky. Anyway, that’s after I’ve poked about and written a witty and scathing piece about the state of his ski-lifts and skirting boards.’
‘Skirting boards?’
‘That’s where the dust gathers, apparently.’ Not that I’d know; I’m not a big-on-dusting kind of girl.
‘Do log cabins have skirting boards?’
‘Sam!’
‘Sorry, just trying to help.’
‘Anyway, I’d get a staff discount.’ Always look on the bright side, as my Aunt Lynn likes to say, and the one very bright side to working in her travel agency is that I get to travel on the cheap.
‘They should be paying you to go there.’ Sam taps a few buttons on her computer, then draws a deep breath. ‘Listen.’ I don’t really need to listen, I know the crap reviews off by heart, but she’s going to read them out to me anyway. ‘The worst Christmas we have ever had. The only good bit was the hot chocolate—’
‘– until they ran out of marshmallows.’ I finish the review for her. ‘But I could always take some with me.’
She ignores me. ‘I mean, who runs out of marshmallows? It’s like . . . like . . .’
‘Running out of wine?’
‘Like a margarita without the salt round the rim.’
‘Serious stuff, then.’
‘Well, you’d feel cheated, wouldn’t you? And how about this one? Cosy this place is not – unless you’re related to a polar bear, it was warmer out than in.’ Sam glances up to check I’m still listening. ‘The website promises husky-drawn sleds, and the nearest we got was being allowed to take the dog a walk. Aw, I quite like the idea of that. Jake’s thinking about teaching Harry to pull a sled, but there’s never any snow here, is there?’ I refrain from commenting. Cute as her boyfriend’s dog Harry is, I’m pretty sure sled dogs are usually twice his size. ‘And this one’s from last Christmas, Guide refused to take us ski-ing because it was snowing! Cheese fondue was ace, let down by untidy dining room and rude waitress. Amazing place, just a shame the new owners have let standards slip. A magical Christmas this was not.’
‘So, I should go, shouldn’t I? Look, that place used to be the best on our books; it was magical, fabulous, festive – you know, all those F words.’ I’ve run out, but she knows what I mean.
‘And now it’s a flop, Sarah, but it’s not our job to put places right, is it? We just recommend somewhere else. You don’t have to actually go there.’
‘Aunt Lynn used to.’ I think I might be sounding a bit sulky.
‘To check places out, see if they were holidays she wanted to sell. Not put them right. Oh Sarah, why not just drop it, find somewhere better?’
‘Because . . .’ Well, partly because I’m stubborn and don’t like to admit defeat. ‘It’s not just Auntie Lynn that loved it.’ I take a deep breath as the prickly heat of tears in my eyes takes me completely by surprise. I mess around with the paperclips on my desk so that I don’t have to look at her. ‘It was where she and I spent our first Christmas together.’ There’s a lump in my throat that shouldn’t be there, and I’m blinking faster than the lights on a faulty pelican crossing. I swallow, hard. ‘I want to thump Will Armstrong.’
‘Oh hell. Why didn’t you say? Not the thump bit, the Christmas bit, I mean.’ Sam squeezes my hand and I pull away slightly, because sympathy always does me in. I don’t want to end up in tears, not here, not at work. Well, not anywhere, really. Crying is something I learned not to do a long time ago. It’s pointless.
Our first Christmas at the Shooting Star resort had been magical. Which I suppose is what Auntie Lynn intended.
She’d never been that close to her sister, my mum, they’d been too different. Camembert and brie, as Lynn liked to say, and the subtle differences had run deep. Mum had married young, had me, taken me off on magical mystery tours in a camper van. Lynn was single, resolutely childless and loved to spend time in unexplored corners of the world. They both had wanderlust, but their lust and their wandering had taken them in very different directions.
Up until then, I’d hardly known Aunt Lynn; our paths had never really crossed until that Christmas.
The Christmas when she’d been there to try and save my little family, and instead had been left with me when my parents had left. Without me. For a ‘spot of adult time’ as Mum had laughingly put it, and I’d never seen them again. That jokey comment and her tinkling laugh are the last I remember of her.
She didn’t wear perfume, so there was no lingering smell of lavender or Chanel N°5 to give me a part of her back. She didn’t even leave a discarded jumper, or treasured trinket. Life isn’t always like they tell it in the movies. There was nothing; no part of her for me to hold on to, except for the sound of her laughter and a hazy memory of her big, green eyes.
It had been my last Christmas with Mum and Dad, my first with Auntie Lynn.
We’d spent another week there. Just the two of us. I’d been bewildered, feeling lost, waiting for my parents to appear at the door and for everything to go back to normal. They didn’t.
Mum would never be able to go back anywhere now, she was sleeping with the stars. And Dad? Well, as far as I was concerned, my dad no longer existed.
That Christmas we’d spent our days building snowmen, walking in the snow, patting the huskies and feeding the reindeer. And in the evenings we’d curl up together in the log cabin, staring into the flames and making wishes. The same wishes I’d carried on making for years afterwards. Until I realised wishes never come true anyway.
I blink away the past and ignore the one tiny tear that manages to squeeze its way past my defences.
‘It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point, is it?’
Sam is frowning at me and doesn’t look convinced, so I ignore her and tap away on my keyboard, which means I can brush away the dampness on my cheek without her noticing.
‘But what about Lynn? You always spend Christmas together.’
Sam is right again. Ever since that one in the Shooting Star Mountain Resort, Aunt Lynn and I have spent every Christmas together. She’s my family, my whole family, the only one I’ve got, and she’s amazing.
I love Auntie Lynn. Totally. If it hadn’t been for her my life would have worked out totally differently. I would be an insecure, unloved mess and I would also be totally boring and bored. Auntie Lynn has brought me up with cuddles and creativity, and she has taught me that being the only guardian at parents’ evening with striped hair and questions about what I thought rather than what the teacher thought
