'A heart warmer' Heat Will a magical winter in Lapland help Myla fall in love with festive?
Myla is the UK's least-festive woman. Starting the year she found out the truth about Santa Claus, everything bad that's ever happened to her occurs around Christmas. Nowadays, she wants nothing to do with this time of year, so of course she would lose the bet with her sister and be forced to put herself forward for a seasonal job in Lapland, welcoming tourists to Santa's winter wonderland for the holidays.
Ten weeks, temperatures well below freezing, days that are mostly dark, and the need to stay brimming with Christmas spirit doesn't fill Myla with joy as she heads off to the arctic circle for winter in Finland. But as she discovers that Lapland is more than Santa Claus's Village, the very last person she ever thought she'd fall for turns out to be a man who plays an Elf, and who is bound to stay in character at all times.
Will a little love under the Northern Lights convince Myla that her bad luck might finally have come to an end?
Filled with husky sledding, falling snow and heart-warming seasonal romance, this is the perfect festive treat for fans of Sarah Morgan and Heidi Swain
PRAISE FOR ISLA GORDON:
'Heart-warming and full of hope. I loved it' HEIDI SWAIN, Sunday Times bestselling author
'The most beautiful, heart-warming story. Gorgeously cosy, uplifting . . . utterly lovely book' HOLLY MARTIN, bestselling author
Clickity clackety, clickity clackety. Here I was, super high-powered office exec, typing out reports and living the metropolitan life again. I liked this office, it was one of the swishest I’d worked in this year, with its big, tall windows and faux-leather spinning chairs. There were free drinks and snacks in the kitchen, a chill-out lounge for when work became too stressful, and everybody called me ‘Mylo’ instead of Myla for some reason, but I didn’t mind because it felt like I had a secret, corporate identity.
I’d been here for a little over two weeks now, and I’d just got off the phone to Sophia, my agent at the temping agency, where I’d told her I might just stick this one out.
‘Might?’ she asked me, and I could almost hear her eyes rolling. ‘Myla, it’s a three-month placement. You’re supposed to be there until January … ’
‘I will stick it out,’ I confirmed. ‘Of course, I will.’ Besides, this seemed the perfect place to have a job over Christmas. Everybody kept to themselves, it was very serious and joyless, and I could stay as little anonymous ‘Mylo’, under the radar for the whole thing.
‘Good,’ said Sophia. ‘Well, they seem to like you. I had a check-in with your manager earlier today and she was telling me they’ve got a big project they want your help on now you’ve settled in.’
‘Juicy,’ I commented, sipping on one of the four free kombuchas I’d lined up on my desk. ‘What is it?’
‘She didn’t say, only that it would probably take up quite a bit of your time and that it was the perfect job for a temp.’
‘Bet you ten quid it’s digitising old paperwork.’ I didn’t mind doing that, and it usually meant I got to be on my feet a bit more which I liked, more so than being in front of a computer. Even though the spinning chairs were super comfy.
After we’d hung up the phone, I went back to writing my reports, and that’s when an email came through.
‘Hello, project,’ I whispered, spotting my manager’s name at the top. Most emails that I get at work are company-wide newsletters, or HR asking me again to complete the workstation assessment, or HR thanking me for suggesting they provide bean-bag chairs, which I made during said workstation assessment.
They said they would need to come back to me at a later date about it.
I opened the email, and I liked already that my manager, Evangeline, had jazzed up the request with a meme at the bottom, until I noticed what the picture was.
My heart dropped.
Will Ferrell’s face was beaming out at me from my computer. He was dressed as Buddy the Elf. I’d seen the movie; my friend Willow had me watch it three years ago after telling me it was a ‘heartbreaking drama about a man trying to win the attention of his estranged father’. Sneaky.
I read the body of the email, my mind already mentally calculating how many of those free drinks and snacks I could fit into my shoulder bag when I left today.
Hi Myla,
Hope the reports are going well. I have a nice surprise for you. One of the things I’m really keen to have you work on, since you’ll be with us over the whole festive period, is our annual office Christmas party! In fact, I’d like you to organise the whole thing, from the venue to the music right down to the mince pies and mistletoe! I’ll need to approve anything before you book, of course, but otherwise I’d love to leave it all up to you. I’m sure it’ll be a fun job that you’ll have a lot of fun with.
It’s a bit late in the day so let’s get you started ASAP.
Could you begin by finding a date that the directors agree on, and go from there?
Thanks, and Merry Christmas!!!
Evangeline
‘How does that sound?’ came a voice behind me, and I turned to see Evangeline smiling down at my perspiring forehead, her hands on her hips.
‘Um,’ I croaked.
‘Fun, right? Not a bad job. God, I wish I could spend the next couple of months diving into all things Christmas. By the time the party comes around you’ll be the most festive woman in London.’
‘We can swap if you like?’ I asked. I’m sure I could do her job. What was her job again?
Evangeline just chuckled, and plonked a folder on my desk, not so subtly pushing aside the stack of swiped Nakd bars I’d been stockpiling from the kitchen. ‘Here’s some info you might find useful from the last few years’ parties. You need somewhere that can hold a couple of hundred people, and the main requirement is that it’s just as magical as you can make it. We should have got onto the planning of this much sooner so it’s not going to be easy. Just do whatever you have to do to get it proper Christmassy. OK?’
She walked back to her office before I could say another word, so I opened the folder, finding a glossy brochure with a post-it note stuck to the front that read ‘CONFIRMED – Xmas’. The brochure displayed a magical winter wonderland created inside a ballroom, where silver and white decorations, including – wait, were those real trees lining the walls? It was very Narnia. I flicked further into the folder and saw a masquerade ball, a Mariah and Wham! log cabin theme, a shooting stars set-up which seemed to be based around the aurora borealis.
They weren’t messing around; these were proper Christmas parties. They would take work.
A lot of work.
All-consuming work.
Work that I would just absolutely flop at. And someone else out there could, and would, shine at, and love it, and they deserved to be here being paid to do this, not me. Not me.
I guessed I’d better call Sophia back.
I stayed until the end of the week. Nearly. Until the report writing was done anyway, though when my peppy replacement arrived on Thursday morning already wearing a subtle pair of gold reindeer earrings, Evangeline let me go early.
I sat in the Try To Find A Better Temp waiting area, watching Sophia’s closed door. Why did she want me to come in? Did I need to do another typing test, or maybe she had some ideas for my résumé? Normally by now she just calls with a new job opportunity, gives me a stern but kind pep talk, and then emails me the information.
Perhaps I could ask her this time to just put me forward for positions where I work on my own. Like … a lorry driver. Or a work from home role, telemarketing, selling something summery, like paddling pools.
I’m telling you, it’s this time of year. It doesn’t agree with me one bit. If I could, I would hibernate throughout it, but I live in London and rent is steep and so I have to work, which I understand sounds rich right now coming from someone who just walked out of her fifteenth temp position this year. Sixteenth? Who’s counting.
Actually, now that I think about it, it was my twenty-first job this year. Yeesh.
‘Myla.’ Sophia appeared at her door and rode my name atop of a sigh. ‘Come on in.’
‘Hellooooo,’ I said, bashfully, moving through the sleek waiting area filled with other temps, picking my way over neat shoes and past complicated-looking water coolers and into Sophia’s office. I took a seat and avoided her eyes by nudging aside a snow globe and fiddling with the dangly leaves of a spider plant on her otherwise-minimalist desk.
‘It happened again, didn’t it?’ she said, sitting opposite me. I felt like I was in the principal’s office. Only trendier.
‘It did, yes, but next time I was thinking—’
‘I’m going to stop you there,’ Sophia said, prising the delicate leaves from my clutches and moving the plant out of reach. ‘Myla, I don’t think I can help you any more.’
‘Well, actually, I was wondering—’
But she was shaking her head. ‘It’s not really working, though, is it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, we – as an agency – have to maintain a relationship with the companies that use our services. So we need staff to commit to the placements we put them on, and not keep walking out. We have talked about this before. Remember when you walked out of the retail job I put you in during the spring?’
‘In my defence, I don’t think you were quite clear on that one. You said it was a decoration shop. I thought you were sending me to Oliver Bonas, not a year-round Christmas store.’ Which I took one look at and walked straight back to your office, I added internally.
‘And before that? The fashion assistant role was an absolute diamond of a job and yet, you quit.’
‘Ah, yeah.’ I smiled for a moment, remembering. ‘That was good. Fast-paced. A whole new ball game, as they say.’
‘Right?’ Sophia said, the twitch of her fingers giving the game away that she wanted to reach across her desk and slash at my cheek like an angry cat. ‘It was exactly what you asked for.’
‘But don’t you remember? The designer then screamed at me in front of the whole office just because I didn’t know what “Nordic Fair Isle” was.’
‘Yes, yes, I remember. It’s the knitted Christmas jumper-type pattern, isn’t it? I do think in situations like that you could just ask rather than heading out of the studio for the whole day to collect samples and coming back with … what was it?’
‘One cream cushion I’d bought at a Norwegian furniture shop in West London. It was a nice cushion. It just, apparently, wasn’t going to help with inspo for the next autumn-winter collection.’
See? Christmas causing trouble again, even in February.
‘I got better though,’ I argued. ‘I stayed at lots of things over the summer.’
‘That’s because I was mainly putting you in short-term jobs, a few days here, a week there. What about the PR firm I sent you to in Chelsea? You barely lasted two days.’
‘I stayed three days!’ I shot back with triumph. ‘But anyway, I didn’t gel with the boss, so that wasn’t really my fault.’
It totally was my fault, and both of us knew it.
Sophia raised her HD brows at me. ‘What was so wrong with the boss?’
‘Don’t you remember him? Big white beard? Booming laugh? Personality just a bit much?’
‘I do remember him. Nick’s my father-in-law, actually.’
A sinkhole opened under her desk and in I slipped, never to be seen again. Gulp. ‘He’s a lovely guy. Maybe that was more to do with me than him.’ His name was Nick Klaus, and it just gave me a bad feeling.
‘I thought you wanted to make an effort and that’s why I agreed to try you again with longer placements.’
‘I did, I do,’ I protested. ‘But I just couldn’t bring myself to do this project, that’s all.’
‘There’s always an excuse though, Myla. Either it’s not close enough to your dream job, or it’s too far to travel, or it doesn’t excite you, or it’s too exciting, or they want you to plan the Christmas party, God forbid.’
I chewed on the peely bits of my bottom lip, my heart thumping. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying we need to stop representing you.’ She squinched up her face like she was dreading my reaction, but I’m pretty sure all I did was continue to stare at her. I was getting fired from my temp agency? ‘It feels a bit like a break-up, doesn’t it, although in this case it really isn’t me, it’s you.’ Sophia laughed, then coughed. ‘Sorry, that was a bad joke, a bit inappropriate really.’
What had become of me? Less than a year ago I was working in that elusive, wonderous ‘dream career’, and I was happy. And then Christmas had hit, and I was let go. And now, ten months later, I couldn’t hold down a job. I couldn’t even stick out a short-term temp job.
‘I’m sorry, Sophia, could I have another chance? I’ll work really hard at the next one, no matter what it is.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s too late.’ She stood. No – not the please leave my office stand-up?
‘It’s not too late. I can change.’
‘I think you’ve said that a few times before.’ She walked to her door and opened it. ‘It’s out of my hands now, and I’ve been asked to let you go.’
I stepped out of my chair and collected up my bag, the last of my stolen Nakd bars falling to the floor. I picked it up, took a breath, then picked myself up.
‘No hard feelings?’ Sophia said, with a sympathetic face and a one-armed hug, the other hand not leaving the door in case she needed to slam and bolt it with haste.
‘Of course not,’ I answered. ‘I do understand. Maybe if anything comes up you could still consider me? Even just a one-day thing?’ By this point I was talking to the closed door, and I turned, leaving the agency, and stepping into the blustery October air.
Around me, brown leaves scratched along the pavement in twos and threes, pushed by the breeze. The ground was as grey as the skies, the buildings and the power suits that passed me by without a second look. Wind slipped inside my coat and I pulled it tighter around myself.
I considered jumping on the nearest Tube and going home, but I knew I should save my money. So I walked, the long walk back from Tottenham Court Road to Earl’s Court. And though I tried not to think about Christmas, it was sneaking into my subconscious from all around me. Shop window displays, some men fixing Christmas lights atop a lamp-post, shopping bags with their seasonal makeovers swinging from hands.
To distract myself, I called my older sister. She’d know what to do.
‘Hi, Shay,’ I said, in a super-casual manner. ‘Just wondered how you were?’
‘Uh-oh,’ she answered. ‘It’s mid-morning on a Friday and you’re calling to say hi, this is not good.’
‘No, it’s fine, everything’s fine, so fine,’ I lied. ‘You still work in recruitment though, right?’
I heard a sigh, followed by the grunt of a pregnant woman (my sister) lifting herself off the sofa. ‘Hold on, I need a drink for this.’
‘Wait, Shay—’
‘I mean a cup of tea. I’m going to put you on speakerphone a mo.’
‘All right. Is Tess there?’
‘No, Tess is at work, and I was also working,’ she replied pointedly. She works at home on Fridays. ‘Now why are you asking about my job?’
Reaching Marble Arch, I turned off the road and entered Hyde Park, following the path of autumn leaves. ‘I’m just in the market for a new recruitment agency, that’s all, so I thought of my sister.’
‘You know I recruit for international seasonal work, right? Are you planning to run off and live abroad? Besides, I thought you got on with … Sophia, was it? She certainly seemed patient with you.’
‘Sophia and I have decided to part ways. A conscious uncoupling, as it were.’
‘Why?’
‘They say absence can make the—’
‘Myla. Why?’
Hmm. I thought I’d better come clean. ‘I walked out of another job?’
‘Another one?’ I heard a teaspoon being furiously thrown into a sink. ‘Why? What happened this time?’
‘They wanted me to plan a party for them. It’s not my expertise.’
‘A party? That was it? You do know probably ninety-nine per cent of people have to do some things they don’t like as part of their job, right?’
‘Yes, I know, but this was different. It was a very large party and it was going to be my main big task for like, at least two months.’
Shay sighed and then was silent for a moment, except for the sounds of angry clattering around her kitchen. ‘Wait … what kind of a party was this?’
‘A Christmas party.’
‘The Christmas thing again? Myla, come on.’
‘I didn’t ask it to come around every year,’ I protested. ‘Maybe it’s time to let it go,’ Shay said, her voice softening just a little.
‘Maybe it’s time I move somewhere that doesn’t celebrate Christmas and then I won’t have to deal with this.’ I heard her sigh down the phone. ‘It’s fine, I’ll find a new dream job again soon and then everything will be fine.’
‘Oh, the “dream job”,’ Shay replied, clearly adding quotation marks around the phrase. ‘And how’s it been going – any luck finding that new dream job yet?’
‘No … but you know it took me a long time to get that role before, so … ’ When I’d landed the position of Junior Artworker in the art department of a big advertising firm in the City, it felt like the stars had aligned. Having studied Art at university, and worked my way through various jobs to gain experience in office work and design, I’d finally been offered one that I could do well and that I was happy in.
Then, I wasn’t in it any more. And all that hard work fell flat, and, I don’t know, I became a little disillusioned by the whole thing. Leaving that job was heartbreaking, and since then I’ve slipped in and out of roles like they meant nothing.
Shay and I were getting a little scratchy with each other, so I bid her adieu and went back to my stroll through the park.
I know everybody finds my Christmas thing bothersome, but I can’t help it. Every time the winter rolls around, I feel my guard going up, because I don’t want to have to relive these memories, or add any more to my collection.
OK, I’d better explain. I don’t want to get really into it, but first, there was …
CHRISTMAS 1999 ~ AGED EIGHT
This was the start of it all, really. My sister, Shay, and I, got into a huge brawl in the middle of watching Home Alone 2 about whether or not Santa Claus was real. Long story short, I ended up spending that Christmas in hospital with a scratched cornea and accompanying head bump. But you should have seen the other guy! Just kidding. My sister was fine, other than a sore bit on her crown from where I’d pulled a fistful of hair out. But it hurt, and it was scary, and it wasn’t like any Christmas I’d had before.
Then there was …
CHRISTMAS 2004 ~ AGED THIRTEEN
It was the first day of the Christmas holidays, and Mum came downstairs with two suitcases. Shay and I didn’t know what was going on at first, I think I shouted something about, ‘Are we spending Christmas in DISNEYLAND?’ before I saw my parents’ red-rimmed eyes. After months of bickering, Mum was leaving. The house, Dad, us. She walked out with days to go before the big day, and though my dad tried to make everything normal and happy for us, there wasn’t quite enough merriment in the house to go around.
Mum lives in Malta now. With a whole new family.
Anyway, then followed the always-horrendous few years of growing up as a teenager, which wasn’t helped by …
CHRISTMAS 2007 ~ AGED SIXTEEN
I’d been ready, more than ready, for my first kiss. And at the school Christmas dance I was finally going to tell Rick, my friend who I’d been in love with since for ever, how I felt. But as ‘Bleeding Love’ played out of the speakers, my heart was doing just that. There on the dance floor was Rick, wrapped instead in the arms of my other friend, Ashley, looking like they were just beginning their own happy ever after. And I stood, alone, under the mistletoe.
I know that unrequited high school love might not seem like much now, but at sixteen, it was everything.
It was around about here I think I started to distrust Christmas in general. The (many) happy memories began to sink to the bottom of my mind while the rising tally of bad memories stayed buoyant. Like how you can receive a hundred compliments but the one insult is the one you sew onto your shoulder and carry with you.
But it was another four years before the next bad Christmas happened, and this was a big one. One that scared me then, and scares me to this day …
CHRISTMAS 2011 ~ AGED TWENTY
I’d been looking forward to coming home to the Isle of Wight for Christmas, after a particularly stressful term at university. My sister would be coming home too, and it would be nice for us to all spend some time together again; I hadn’t seen her in months. Only, when I arrived home, Shay wasn’t there, the house was quiet, the lights around the door hadn’t been switched on. Inside I found Dad on the phone, and we found out from her friend that Shay had been silently suffering with alcohol addiction, and had been rushed to hospital. That Christmas she wouldn’t come home at all, instead moving into a rehab clinic. I never even knew anything was wrong; I should have been paying more attention.
Shay’s been sober since that day. But that Christmas was hard, not being able to see her, hold her, not being able to comfort Dad who thought he’d failed his eldest daughter. Going home to Dad’s for Christmas never felt the same after that. Excited anticipation had moved aside for nervous anticipation, that was only relieved when I rounded the corner and I saw the lights on around the door.
After that, along came …
CHRISTMAS 2016 ~ AGED TWENTY-FIVE
It was meant to be a joke at my own expense. My friend Callie was having a Christmas party to celebrate her engagement. Trying to combat my nervous energy, I started performing what, at the time, I thought was a funny, self-deprecating monologue about how I hate Christmas (which was so silly, since, as mentioned, I don’t actually hate Christmas). It escalated to me mocking Callie’s decorations, and accidentally pulling over the beautifully perfect tree. It ruined her big night. I ruined a friendship.
I still feel awful looking back. My stomach twists in knots, not letting the mistake lie. Callie said she forgave me, but I couldn’t forgive myself, and I let us drift apart. I really wasn’t good company at this time of year, so now I just don’t tend to get involved if my friends are doing something festive. It’s safer for everyone that way.
And most recently …
LAST CHRISTMAS ~ AGED TWENTY-SEVEN
This was last year, right before our office Christmas party at my drea. . .
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