Under the Mistletoe with You

by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

Genres: Holiday Romance

Synopsis

Ready to spend a quiet Christmas with his nearest and dearest, Christopher has closed up shop in his bakery, he's wrapped up and packed up his presents, and he's found someone to stay in his flat over the festive period. Everything is under control. That is until the mysterious person he's rented his flat to turns out to be none other than...

Nash Nadeau, an actor - and the star of all Christopher's favourite Christmas movies. In fact, he's the guy Christpher's been crushing on for the whole past year. Since last Christmas.

For Nash, this Christmas was a chance to escape Hollywood, to go to a small town and hide away, alone, in a place where no one knows who he is. But when a huge snowstorm hits, the whole country grinds to a halt. There's no way Christopher is leaving, and there's nowhere else for Nash to stay. The two of them are just going to have to weather this together, snowed in for Christmas...

Release date: September 26, 2024

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

Chapter One

Christopher

To Christopher Calloway, the best things about ­Christmas are usually building the gingerbread house, making a wish at midnight, diving back into one of his favourite ­children’s ­fantasy novels, and eating as much as is physically possible.

This year, though, the thing he is most looking forward to is a break.

An actual break.

Well, and the gingerbread house. No matter what happens, he will always want to build the gingerbread house.

Tomorrow, he’ll be in York with his sister, Kit, and her girlfriend, Haf, who happens to also be his best friend, for a very restful, do-nothing-eat-lots Christmas break.

He needs it. He’s exhausted. When he worked in his less-effort-than-it-looked finance job, everyone clocked off early at Christmas, the last few days spent physically there, but mentally checked out. Usually thinking of new things to bake, if he’s honest, while moving his mouse just often enough that his computer didn’t go to sleep. Now that he actually owns his dream bakery, he doesn’t miss those soulless days, but he does miss how tired he wasn’t.

And although part of him feels a little bad for closing up on 20th December, he needs the rest.

‘Need me to do anything else?’ asks Tegan, his teenage shop assistant, who has already hung up her apron and is reaching for her bag in a way that suggests she doesn’t want him to say yes.

There really isn’t anything else for her to do. They’ve not had a customer in over an hour. It may only be 20th December, but it feels as if the world is shutting down for the ­holidays already. Maybe things just stop earlier in this little town. He’s still running on London time.

The bakery has been busy all morning with customers ­collecting orders of Christmas puddings and a few marzipan-­topped boozy Christmas cakes, and buying fresh bread and pastries. Christmas makes people want fancy bread, it seems. It might be the most loaves he’s sold in a day ever. But now . . . nothing.

Tegan had cleaned basically every inch of the café side of the bakery. If anything, she’d gone above and beyond. There really isn’t anything else for either of them to do. He may as well let her go home early.

‘No, go ahead. Thank you, Tegan. Merry Christmas,’ he calls after her as she darts out the door with a ‘Nadolig ­llawen!’

He regrets letting her go after a minute. Time goes much slower when you’re desperate to close up but have hours to go and are now on your own. Not that he and Tegan have particularly in-depth conversations, seeing as she’s a teenage Goth who barely tolerates him, even though he’s her employer. The company is nice though.

There are a few Christmas puddings awaiting collection, plus a few more loaves and biscuits to sell if he can. Plus, the bakery is normally open until five.

At least the one thing he won’t have to worry about is the bakery over Christmas. Kit had suggested he offer it up as a holiday let in case anyone local had family coming in from out of town. After all those window displays and buying an entirely new business, his bank balance was looking a bit . . . slim. Luckily, it was quickly snapped up by someone coming over from America. He’s written up a very thorough hand­over document about staying in the flat, so all he needs to do tomorrow morning is give them the keys, show them round, and head to the train station.

In want of a task that isn’t clock-watching, Christopher wipes down the counter for possibly the twentieth time that day. At least something is happening, even if it’s potentially damaging the already battered wood.

He probably should have saved making treats for his ­family for this lull, but he finished them yesterday – a Christmas pudding, of course, but also shortbread stars to hang on the tree, some gingerbread (not in house form, for ease of transport), and little bags of peppermint candies, ­sea-salt fudge and chocolate truffles. The last three hadn’t even been part of the plan – they were what he’d whipped up in the very early hours of this morning when he was too wide awake not to make a sweet shop’s worth of treats. Hopefully, he can pack them all into his suitcase for the train journey, but if he ends up with spillover tote bags at least he can bribe anyone he ends up squishing with some sweets.

Three hours. Three hours and then he can lock the door, be done for Christmas and the whole of this intense year. He’s never been so excited to check out mentally.

But there are still three hours to go, so wiping the counters it is.

* * *

It doesn’t help his sense of time that the last year has gone by at two very different speeds – horrifyingly fast, and drudgingly slow.

It had all started last Christmas. For reasons he is admittedly a little embarrassed about now, he’d spent the ­holidays in his family home with a fake girlfriend, Haf, in a hare-brained scheme to deflect any questions about him potentially taking over his father’s business, and to avoid being set up with anyone else. Naturally, the course of ­terrible schemes and fake romance never did run smooth. For a start, Haf fell in love with his sister, Kit, in a matter of days, which is totally preposterous. And then Christopher rejected a job from his dad at the Christmas dinner table. On the drive home, he had instead started to form his own plan for a very different future.

Barely a month later, he had jacked in his fiscally ­sensible but soul-destroying job and was studying ‘Pâtisserie and ­Boulangerie’ at the most prestigious cooking school in the country. Six months of full-time kitchen life, covering everything from the foundations of breadmaking all the way up to fiddly and complex molecular gastronomy, surrounded by other hungry people determined to work in kitchens around the world. There was really nothing like it. It was the happiest – and busiest – time of his life.

And then, it was over, so suddenly – frankly, it’s no wonder his sense of time is entirely warped now – but he wasn’t ready to slow down; he couldn’t. While he was looking for jobs, he had offhandedly mentioned to Haf and Kit that really, what he wanted was his own kitchen. This somehow made its way to Haf’s mum, Mari, who mentioned the ­bakery a few towns down from her on the North Welsh coast, which stood empty. He should come and look at Pantri Bach, they had said. Someone needed to reopen it.

It was silly to even consider it. And yet, the thought kept nagging at him.

It made sense to just look it up, he decided.

Looking it up quickly turned to driving up to view it in person with Kit and Haf. The town, Pen-y-Môr, was so close to the sea that he couldn’t believe it. He’d grown up in the landlocked Cotswolds and lived in London for so long that he couldn’t imagine a town could be literally on the seafront. It was small, perhaps smaller than he originally imagined, with one long high street running from the sea up to the coastal mountains that crowded in at the back of the town. It was probably only a little larger than Oxlea, where he grew up, a few thousand people clustered together. But he liked that idea: the intentional intimacy as opposed to the anonymity of London. After all, the biggest towns nearby were either Llandudno or Bangor, still significantly smaller than London. Living here carried the prospect of a whole new way of life.

When he got to the bakery, it was clear the insides needed more than a lick of paint, but the estate agent insisted the recently serviced kitchen with all the equipment was included in the price. Upstairs was a tiny little run-down flat he could live in, with views of the sea and the mountains. Even his architect sister agreed it looked as if it had good bones, despite the peeling wallpaper and holey walls where pictures had been taken down. With some cosmetic fixes, some new furniture in, café side, and a decent coffee machine, it could be something totally new. Something that belonged to him.

He couldn’t stop looking at the light, by God, the light. You only get light like that with big skies.

Could it be a home to him? It felt as if it could be.

His friends seemed to think so, too.

Before he could overthink it, he’d put in an offer for as much as he could afford, and he’d put his flat in London on the market too. Somehow, his offer was accepted, his flat sold, and before he could really blink or breathe or think about what the hell he’d done, his friends were loading up a moving van to drive him to Wales.

It had been a trial, not necessarily one by fire, but certainly something painful and tricky to navigate. Perhaps trial-­by-swamp, if that was a thing. For the first few weeks, he ­worried every night that he’d made a terrible decision, but all his friends seemed so on board with it that he hoped they were right. They usually were. His brain often got the better of him, after all.

And now, he is happy.

He is.

It’s just been . . . harder than he thought it would be. Thinking about what he could sell had been great, but now he has to think about things like overheads, profit, turnover . . . keeping the lights on. And that buzz, that spark he felt at cookery school, seems to have just dulled, or perhaps burned down.

And he’s barely made any friends here. It’s hard to be so far from everyone he loves.

Needless to say, he hasn’t hung up any mistletoe in here this Christmas. Call him superstitious, but he doesn’t want to tempt fate. There’s been enough chaos in his life for one year.

* * *

When Christopher glances up at the clock, somehow only a few more minutes have passed. What torture is this? When he was procrastinating in his old job, he would dream up new things to bake, but, well, that creative spark hasn’t really been burning quite the way it used to. The little creative energy he has left has gone on the aesthetics of the café and the few reliable if basic things he can regularly make and sell.

At least the Christmas puddings look nice, wrapped in coloured paper and tied up in ribbons – a touch his mother had insisted on, because if he was going to sell things for a special occasion, they should look special. She was right, of course. Turns out a bit of ribbon goes a long way. Perhaps it was Esther who had all the business sense. His father, Otto, might have been the businessman, but she ran the house, and half the town, based on all the committees she was on.

It wasn’t just the puddings he’d made look special, either. Ever since he opened the bakery, Christopher had made sure there was an intricate window display. Yes, they took time and a lot of effort, but people did stop and stare and even very occasionally come in to buy something. In truth, he did it more for himself than his customers. When he couldn’t sleep, he would sketch out plans for seasonal themes. Currently, he was working on a romantic set piece to be in the window from St Dwynwen’s Day to Valentine’s Day – a riot of reds and pinks and flowers, both real and sugar.

The Christmas window was probably his favourite one so far. Jewel-colour-wrapped presents – empty boxes of course – nestled in leftover white packing peanuts that looked like snow if you didn’t get too close, sailed over by gingerbread reindeer and angels and stars, suspended from the ceiling on wire. Around them he’d placed empty Christmas pudding bowls wrapped in bright paper, and an upturned cake tin that he’d decorated with icing and marzipan to look like a real Christmas cake.

Thanks to the fact that the bakery sat on the main road that ran through Pen-y-Môr, the displays always drew looks from people heading down to the beach or train station, and the other way, up into the town, towards the other shops. It wasn’t a roaring trade, but he was getting by . . . just about, despite his extravagant taste for window displays (which admittedly he’d partly paid for out of his own pocket a few times). But he had a few loyal customers, and he’d started to recognise the faces peering into the window, even if they didn’t come in very often.

A little sprucing goes a long way, Esther had said.

Before he can ruminate on the inevitability of becoming his parents, the bell over the door jingles. Shaz stalks in, dressed in an enormous knee-length puffy coat, complete with woolly hat and mittens, all in various lurid shades of yellow.

‘It’s pure witches’ tits out there,’ she says, flinging herself into a chair right in front of the counter. As she pulls her woolly hat off her head, her thick, almost-silver-blond hair sticks up with static.

‘Afternoon to you too, Shaz,’ Christopher says, resisting the urge to wipe the counter down once more.

She groans. ‘Don’t remind me. If it’s afternoon, then I’m officially behind on my to-do list, and I’d rather live in ignorance if that’s all right with you.’

‘Good . . . day?’ Christopher offers.

‘Better. I’ve come to get the pud, but if it’s peachy with you, can I just sit here with my eyes closed for a few minutes?’

‘That bad?’

Eyes firmly closed, Shaz makes a noise that Christopher takes to mean absolutely.

Not only was she the first friend he made here, Shaz is also his first friend with kids. It turns out that having ­multiple ­children of indeterminate age – somehow he’s never ­managed to work that out and now it’s absolutely too late for him to ask – means you live with a permanent look of ­confused fear etched onto your face.

When Christopher had opened the bakery in September after a furious month of redecorating, Shaz was the first customer who walked in. Loud, brash, Scouse, and determined to get him talking, Shaz was like a hurricane in Christopher’s absolutely dead bakery. At first, he was worried she was a competitor or just trying to get the gossip on why he, an arguably plummy Englishman, was in this little Welsh town. But he quickly realised that, for some reason, she liked him, and she showed up every single day the bakery was open. Since then, she occasionally will literally drag other people in with her and heavily insist they buy something, especially towards the end of the month when the frown lines get deeper.

From what Christopher can gather, Shaz used to work at the primary school doing slightly too many jobs for one ­person. A bit of admin and finance, some teaching ­assistance. But then the school budget shrank, and she was out of a job (or five). Perhaps that’s why she’s in here basically every day – he’s her water cooler.

No matter the reason, Shaz brought life to the café – and to Christopher – when he most needed it.

Plus, the gingerbread reindeer biscuits he’d started making in November had become the talk of the town thanks to her. And luckily for her, he’d decided to make one last-­minute batch that morning.

‘Would a gingerbread reindeer help?’

One eye opens and fixes on him. ‘A biscuit I don’t have to share with piranhas masquerading as children? You’re offering me a Christmas miracle.’

Christopher slips two reindeer into a paper bag. ‘And one to hide in the car, for later.’

‘You’re a good man.’ She violently bites the head off. Her eyes close again, this time with the joy of eating. Christopher will never get tired of that look.

Without another word, he makes her usual frothy latte with many packets of sugar on the side and deposits it in front of her.

‘Oh, you absolute beaut.’ Shaz dunks a bit of leg into the hot froth. ‘Must you close for Christmas? How will I get by without this every day? I’m too used to it. And you. You’ve ruined me. Plus, I heard the pub had a burst pipe and the whole place is wrecked so that’ll be shut too. Where am I going to hide from my children if you leave?’

‘You’d have to buy a lot more coffees for me to stay open over the holidays.’

She snorts. ‘I’m already metaphorically shitting myself over Gar’s mum coming for the holidays. I don’t need to be literally shitting myself too.’

‘A truly delightful image. Is it that bad? Now I feel bad for leaving.’

The tiredness must show on his face because she adds, ‘I’ll put my big pants on. Just this once, mind, don’t you get cosy with all this leaving business. But I suppose you’ll need to recharge your energy so you can come up with a new seasonal biccie for me.’

‘I could keep doing gingerbread out of season.’

‘Just for me?’

‘Just for you. And hopefully some other customers.’

‘Yeah, but they matter less than me. Are you all ready for your trip?’

‘I think so. Just the last of these to get out the door,’ he says, indicating the Christmas puddings. He passes hers over and sets it just far enough away from her that it won’t get splattered with coffee or gingerbread.

‘Diolch bab. Have you downloaded any films for the train?’

‘If you mean, am I still working through your several-­pages-long list of essential Christmas romcoms, then yes.’

The other thing that Shaz brought into his life was an appreciation for Christmas romcoms. Back in September when he started making the Christmas puddings, she insisted he needed festive inspiration, and sent a list of ­seasonal romcoms to watch.

Determined to nurture their new friendship, he decided to watch one, just to say that he had. Over that week, he’d watched five. One each evening, with two repeats. And he had opinions about them. He was absolutely completely and utterly hooked. He wasn’t sure if it was the guaranteed happy endings or the high ratio of bakers to literally any other profession, but he couldn’t stop watching. The only thing ­Christopher had ever felt that invested in before was baking.

He hadn’t even heard of most of them, but then festive romcoms hadn’t been something he’d sought out. At Christmas, he normally just passively watched whatever was put on. Maybe he should have been paying better attention. Apart from the few queer film titles he vaguely recognised, Shaz’s list skewed to heterosexual romances, and of those, most featured one particular actor, Nash Nadeau – a blond-haired, perfectly stubbled, slightly hench American man on the cusp of thirty who, well, Christopher found rather handsome. There was just something so charismatic and warm about him. Or perhaps his characters. But still.

At first, he kept this new obsession all to himself, but eventually, once he had completed Nash Nadeau’s infamous Christmas at the Clinic series (casually known by fans as the ‘Christmas Vet’ films), it all came tumbling out. The last movie in the series, unless there were more unannounced to come, ended on a cliffhanger – a cliffhanger, for Christ’s sake! Would the veterinarian played by Nash Nadeau ever get back together with the witty and brilliant schoolteacher played by Barbie Glynn? The films had been teasing it all the way through the series. And now, they’d left the final movie on a cliffhanger.

When Shaz walked into the bakery the next day, Christopher had yelled, ‘They can’t just end a film on a cliffhanger!’ With one throaty chuckle from Shaz, their friendship was officially cemented.

‘I’ve rinsed all the new ones for this year already,’ she sighs now, sadly, swirling the coffee in its cup. ‘I’m going to have to rewatch some.’

‘Heaven forbid.’

‘Don’t be cheeky now. You’ll be in my position any moment at your rate.’

She wasn’t wrong. He had watched a lot of Christmas movies in the last four months. It had become a kind of routine: he’d close up the bakery and wind down while watching some glittering, joyful Christmas romance, regardless of the time of year. After all, romance isn’t just for Christmas. There was nothing more comforting than knowing things would be all right in the end, no matter what you were put through. Christopher wished real life had that level of certainty.

‘Yes but I’ll just watch all of Nash Nadeau’s back catalogue again, and be glad of it,’ he says.

‘I would love to see that man’s back catalogue,’ says Shaz.

Me too, Christopher thinks to himself. Nash Nadeau’s various characters had started turning up in his dreams, always to whisk him off to some snow-dipped destination where they would kiss by the fireside and eat delicious food.

It was getting a little ridiculous. The last time he had a crush this intense was after he saw The Mummy Returns playing on ITV as a child, and had suddenly developed a fascination for both Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser.

‘Now, are you definitely sure you don’t want to stay here for your first Welsh Christmas? I’m sure we could squeeze you in on the kids’ table. I mean, you’d be wedged firmly into someone else’s armpit, but you’d be welcome.’

‘Thank you, but I’m sure. I wouldn’t want to impose ­anyway.’

‘It’s not imposing if I’ve offered. Plus, you’re on your way to being a local here – hardly anyone calls you “that one from London” or “English” any more. Sure, they don’t know your name yet, but at least they know you’re the baker guy.’

‘I’m practically born and bred.’

‘Don’t get any notions,’ she laughs. ‘Unless you were making a bread pun. Born and bread, get it?’

‘I wasn’t, but I wish I had.’

‘You’re staying with your sister and your ex-girlfriend-now-friend-slash-her-real-girlfriend, right?’

Christopher sighs, regretting that he had ever explained the intricacies of his family drama from last year to Shaz. ‘Haf and I weren’t ever technically dating.’

‘Oh yeah, fake-dating or whatever you kids call it,’ she says, as though this is something people regularly do, or as though she’s much older than him – Christopher is fairly sure there’s only a decade between them.

‘My parents are stopping by on the way to my grand­parents’ up in Scotland. And I think our friends, Ambrose and Laurel, will come up the day after Boxing Day.’

‘Ah yes, Laurel. Your real ex-girlfriend.’

‘Correct.’

‘That sounds like a nice big reunion. Send me some ­photos so I can remember what grown-up Christmases look like while I’m being screamed at about Lego and Frozen and whether someone can have another snack.’ She already looks tired. ‘Before I forget, you’re leaving the bakery keys with the house guest, yeah?’

‘Oh. I was going to take them with me?’

Shaz fixes him with a look that says, You’re an absolute dingbat, though she’d probably say something much ruder than that.

‘Pop them through mine on your way, or if you run out of time, I’ll pick them up from your guest. I’d tell you to bring them over tonight, but the piranhas will be in the middle of their feeding frenzy, and trust me, you don’t need to see that. Plus, I figure you’ll want to check you’ve turned everything off a good few times before you go.’

It’s a little scary how well she knows him already.

‘Thanks, Shaz. That’s really kind of you.’

‘I know, I’m a saint.’

‘But if anything goes wrong—’

‘It won’t. And if I’m not sure of anything, I’ll get Tegan to come have a look. And if I’m really not sure, I’ll call you, all right?’

That seemed like a pretty decent plan, he had to admit.

‘What’s their name anyway?’

Christopher pulls up the booking confirmation on his phone. ‘Tessa Nichols?’

‘Hmm. Never heard of her. Must be a hermit.’

‘She’s not a hermit . . . I presume. She’s probably just ­visiting family.’

‘Nah, I’d recognise the name. Not like there’re many Nicholses around. Anyway, I’ll know her what with her being inside your house and all. I’ll make sure she doesn’t nick anything.’ She’s joking, what with her wink and raised bicep, but Shaz is truly quite terrifying in that mums know what is happening at all times kind of way.

She downs the last of her coffee and hops to her feet, keys jingling in her hand. She rushes round the counter, where she knows she’s not allowed to be, and pulls him into a big hug. ‘All right, I’ve got to go find out where I left my kids. Text me when you go tomorrow, yeah? And wrap up warm. The weather says it’s going to get somehow even worse.’

‘Will do.’

She peers over the counter. ‘Who is left to pick up their puds?’

He checks the labels. ‘Oh, these are all for the Yangs.’

‘Give them here. Tammy lives on my street. Then you can close up.’

‘It’s too early. What if someone else comes?’

She looks around. ‘My sweet friend, it is deader than a graveyard in here. Plus, did I mention it’s witches’ tits out there. Everyone will be heading home if they have sense. Come on, lock the door behind me and finish for the day. What’s the worst that could happen?’

‘That’s not a thing to ask me.’ He laughs awkwardly.

‘I’m telling you, it’ll be fine. You need a bath and an early night.’

The voice in his head that sounds worryingly like his mother tuts, but Shaz is right. If anyone does come, he’d hear them knocking on the bakery door anyway.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Christopher, give me the puds.’

He hands them over, and she runs off to the front door with all her bags before he can change his mind. ‘See you next year!’ she shouts as she rushes out, only pausing outside the big window to mime opening champagne, filling glasses and doing shots. Christopher takes this to be some kind of promise or perhaps a threat of a future celebration.

And once again, it’s just Christopher and his bakery. But this time, he can lock the door.

Thanks to Shaz, his break has officially begun.



Chapter Two

Christopher

The next morning starts in the same way pretty much any holiday does for Christopher. He gets up nice and early to shower, and once he uses something, he packs it in his travel bag, so everything is present and accounted for.

The only difference is, today he goes into host mode, ­setting out fresh sheets and towels, and fresh, fancy ­miniatures to replace his hidden-away half-used bottles. It looks nice in the end. Rustic.

Seeing as his mother would be proud, he takes a picture of his handiwork for her. For some reason, it won’t send, though that’s not unusual. The phone and Wi-Fi signal is always all over the place here, fluctuating even when you’re standing still; hopefully it’ll send when he’s downstairs.

The very last thing he does is open the curtains.

Outside, there is snow.

A lot of snow.

So much snow in fact that the broken-down bakery van, which he also got from the bakery’s previous owners, is completely submerged.

When he first moved here, he had somewhat falsely presumed winters would be snowy. But something about being so close to the sea meant it was too warm for snow, and instead the coast got whipping icy winds and sleet. And yet . . .

This is fine, he tells himself. Absolutely fine. No need to panic yet.

Admittedly, it is a bit startling to discover a lot of snow when you’re not expecting it, but still. He carries his cases downstairs and decides to make a coffee. It is a little expensive to run the huge bakery coffee machine just for him, but it is delicious and will give him something to do to ­settle his nerves. Not that drinking coffee has ever made him feel ­particularly chilled out. But going through the motions of grinding the beans, tamping down the softly powdered ­coffee, and running the steaming hot water through it slows his brain down. He breathes deeply, purposefully, as he watches the crema layer over the top.

Coffee in hand, he leans against the counter, connects his phone to the café’s Wi-Fi, and navigates to the Met Office website.

He’s greeted by an alarming amount of red.

There are, somehow, multiple severe weather warnings – for snow, clearly, but also for ice, for wind, for general inclement weather. In the north and south of the UK, there are flood warnings. It’s somewhat apocalyptic.

And worst of all, warning banners across the page announce that no one should travel unless there is a medical emergency. Christopher is fairly sure being a little burned out does not count.

From the big bakery windows, he looks out across the ­village. Everything is less snow-dusted and more snow-­buried. Piles of snow seem to climb up against the buildings where it’s been blown around.

And somehow, it’s still coming down. Sideways.

Normally, he is happy to see snow. A sprinkling feels ­magical, like the icing sugar dusted over gingerbread houses. This is . . . possibly cursed.

He unlocks the front door and steps out, almost losing a slipper in the process. It’s really, really cold outside. Once back inside, he has to shake a flurry off his clothes.

His phone pings with a notification from his group chat with Kit and Haf.

Kit: Bud are you ok? I just saw there’s snow on your end.

Christopher: Yeah, there’s a lot.

Haf: We never got snow growing up!! I’m so jel.

Haf: This is probably not helpful is it

Kit: No babe. xxx

Kit: It’s bad here too. The snow volunteers are already out shovelling and salting.

Haf: I’m still mad you wouldn’t let me join them

Kit: We are not spending Christmas in A&E.

Christopher: Are you two just sitting next to each other ­texting me?

Kit: No

Haf: Obvs

He sends them a few pictures of the view outside.

Kit: Shit.

Haf: There’s no way the trains are running. They barely run at the best of times so

Haf: I’m doing it again aren’t I

K: Yes

His train ticket app shows a similarly red vibe. When he checks his route, all the trains have a totally-not-alarming question mark next to them. They must be running later on.