It’s even colder when I step out of the Land Rover and the light has gone completely. My breath smokes in the air. We had a mild, wet autumn, even up here in the Highlands. Winter has pounced upon the land: scattering frost and snow, tightening the earth in its grip. Petrified dead leaves crack beneath my feet and the ridges of mud left by old tyre tracks have frozen solid.
A painted arch reads: Christmas Trees. A strand of old-fashioned yellow bulbs sways in the breeze. I think this may be the last Christmas tree seller before the wilderness of peat and forest beyond. I’m renting a place a fair lick further on. It’s a cottage – technically the gatehouse to an estate – but it’s still set off the road, so it feels good and private. I’m living on my own again, at 38. Mostly, I like it. I can keep to my own rhythms, work all hours if I want to. Watch what I like on TV.
I’ve stopped on something of a whim. I don’t particularly want a Christmas tree. Up on the estate I’m surrounded by some ten thousand firs. I’ve never really been one for sentiment and that’s all Christmas is, really, isn’t it? Sentiment and greed. But that was the problem, my ex-girlfriend said. She used to call me an unfeeling bastard. Affectionately – and then not so much. But apparently on Zoom clients like seeing some festive touches in the background at this time of year. ‘You don’t want to look like the Grinch,’ Donald (the boss) told me. ‘Or a sociopath.’ He was joking, of course.
Illustrations: Natascha Baumgartner. Bestselling author Lucy Foley shares a Christmas tale with YOU Magazine
If I had my way I’d put my head down and plough on till January until all of this mawkish nonsense blows over. I’ve always liked January, the cleanness of it, the sense of purpose. You can actually get things done in January. There’s no romance of the festive season for me. Point of fact, I think I’m finished with romance full stop. The last few months I got into the dating app scene and I’m already done with it. Women seem to expect men to do all the chasing. The paying of the bill, too. It’s absurd. It’s 2022: we’re ‘striving for equality’, aren’t we? ‘Evening the playing field’? But not when it comes to romance, apparently. Oh no. They want the doors opened, the red carpet rolled out. They want to be pursued. Or maybe that’s the sort of woman I attract. Well, I just don’t have the energy. I’m sick and tired of it. Just for once it would be refreshing to have a woman do the running. But it’s not to be. So I’ve deleted my profiles and I’ve moved up here to the middle of nowhere. I can work remotely on pretty much everything: just a trip down to London every fortnight, which is manageable.
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ShareI walk through the archway into a miniature contained forest of fir. Bobble-hatted children run between the branches, shrieking. One – I can’t even tell if it’s a girl or boy, they’re so muffled up – collides with my legs. Christ’s sake. I turn off down a pathway between the trees: anything to get away from those little louts.
Just need to buy something, anything – so long as it’s not too expensive – and get out of here. I don’t particularly care which size of tree. But I need to find a member of staff and there’s no one in sight. How do they expect to run a business like this? In the background, the endless yowl of that most famous of festive money-spinners from the Tannoy: ‘is yoooooouuuuuu’. Jesus. Everything I hate about Christmas is somehow encapsulated in that song.
I turn a corner. Suddenly I’m alone in an emerald corridor of trees. No one else in sight. I keep walking, hearing the voices as if from a long way away, further than they really are, muffled by a wall of branches. The only sounds close at hand are the crunch of my feet on the snow-scattered path and that of the breeze passing through the branches, rustling like silk. It has begun to snow again, flakes dancing in the light from the overhead bulbs. I shiver. Odd, as I’m plenty warm enough. Thermals under my layers and thick socks in my boots.
‘Hello.’ Quiet, almost a whisper.
She smiles, but I'm not sure it meets her eyes. when I look back she has disappearedI start. I have no idea where the voice came from. In fact, after a few moments I begin to wonder if it was a trick of the wind. But then there’s a more intense rustling, rather like the undergrowth scurryings of some woodland animal, and a face emerges between the branches on my right. A small, pale face beneath a red bobble hat, a pointed chin, a little snub nose pinkening in the cold. A short black bob and eyes so dark that you can’t see the pupil within the iris. Dangling earrings in the shape of two silver stars, catching the light. She looks like an elf, that’s my first thought – and the hat doesn’t exactly mitigate the impression. She smiles. Her canine teeth are a little too pointed, like a cat’s. Now the rest of her appears – a long red puffer coat and improbably tiny feet in black boots – as she pushes her way between the trees and comes to stand opposite me on the path.
‘Can I help?’
‘Er –’ I am determined not to show that her sudden appearance has unnerved me. ‘Yes, I’ve come for a tree.’
She smiles. Flash of those little pointed teeth again. ‘Yes. I had guessed that much.’ A laugh. The sound of tiny bells. That’s the thought that leaps into my head. Ridiculous: I never have thoughts like that. It’s as though someone else put it there. ‘But which tree?’ she asks. ‘That’s the important question.’
‘Any tree that will cost me less than 60 quid and fit on my roof bars. Got to be under six feet.’
That laugh again. The shower of tiny bells. Absurd. ‘Oh, that’s not at all how it works! That’s not how you pick a tree. In fact, you don’t pick the tree at all. It picks you.’
Illustrations: Natascha Baumgartner. She sets a Christmas scene in a miniature contained forest of fir trees. The picturesque story takes a dark turn towards the end leaving us intrigued
Oh, for God’s sake. Careful what you wish for: I wanted to find a member of staff and now I’m stuck with this woo-woo hippie nonsense. ‘Do you know what?’ I say. ‘I think I’m going to be good browsing on my own. Thanks.’ It is the least grateful thanks of all time. I meant it to sound that way.
She smiles again. But I’m not sure it meets her eyes: difficult to read the expression in them, somehow: I think it’s the lack of pupil. Then she nods, solemnly.
‘That’s the best way,’ she says. ‘Just you and the trees.’ She looks beyond me. I turn and follow her gaze to the dark avenue of pines. When I look back she has disappeared, without even a quiver of branches to show where she went. A snowflake finds its way down the back of my jacket and places a freezing wet kiss on the back of my neck. I shiver again. I want to get out of this place now. Find any old bloody tree and get back to the cottage where I don’t have to converse with anyone, least of all crazy-pixie-dream-girl types in red bobble hats. I stride along the path. Too big to fit on the car, too small to fit in my Zoom background. Ridiculous organisation here. Someone should have grouped the trees by height, and certainly by type: needle-droppers stand side by side with their superior fellows. And then there’s a groaning, creaking sound to my right. Some animal instinct tells me to leap backwards just seconds before a tree plummets into the space where I had been standing, crashing on to the path in a shower of snow.
I swear under my breath. That was close. Could have done some damage. What is this place, that they can’t even fix their trees in place properly? I look around for someone to complain to. It occurs to me that they might offer a discount. It seems only fair, after all. If I can just locate a member of staff…
‘Oh look!’ Oh God. Anyone but this idiot. Where on earth did she just come from? ‘Oh look, it found you.’ She seems genuinely delighted. ‘I told you your tree would choose you.’
‘It damn near killed me is what it did. Do you have absolutely no health and safety measures in place here?’
She waves this away with one little black-gloved hand and then gestures to the fallen tree. ‘Look, isn’t it just perfect? Not too big, not too small. This will fit on your Land Rover.’
I didn’t tell her I came in a Land Rover, did I? But it’s possible she saw me, I suppose, parking up. And it’s a fairly good guess seeing as that’s what most drive around here.
‘And it will look good on those business calls…’
I stare at her.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘I think we’re done here.’
She smiles. Those sharp teeth again. No, not quite like a cat. Something wilder, anyway. A stoat, a fox… a little white mink.
‘Want me to get you a cart?’
‘No thanks.’ I hoist the tree up and stagger slightly under its weight. Nothing I can’t handle, though, especially if it means getting away from this weirdo. I drag it away back down the path, suddenly eager for the bustle and chaos, even for those bloody children.
The woman at the till rings me up. ‘Found what you were looking for?’
I can’t be bothered to explain everything now, possible discount or not. ‘Yes,’ I say. And then I can’t resist. ‘No thanks to your colleague. A little bit too persistent with the old sales technique.’
‘Oh?’ She frowns. ‘Which one was that?’
‘The one in the red bobble hat.’
She looks blank.
‘Red coat? Black boots? This high? Er, earrings like silver stars?’
She shakes her head, laughs. A normal human chuckle, no tiny bells. ‘’Fraid no one of that description works here. Sounds more like a Christmas ornament than a human being!’ She gestures beyond to a machine out front. ‘Bobby will get your tree netted up for you.’
I drive back a little faster than I should, especially considering it’s snowing more heavily now, almost too much for the windscreen wipers to cope with. I sit hunched over the wheel with the heaters wheezing on full, peering through the small window that briefly emerges beneath the wipers’ blades before more flakes rush in to fill it. I never really thought the word snowstorm appropriate before for something so soft and silent but it fits this weather, the fury and intensity of it.
The road thins and becomes more serpentine, passing between shadowy peaks on either side and then beginning to climb. I can feel the tree above me, yawing to the sides, as I take each bend a little too fast. I don’t know quite what’s got into me but I’m driving as though being pursued and it’s almost as though my foot on the accelerator is acting of its own accord.
Finally I’m pulling up to the cottage and as I step from the car the snow has stopped, almost as though it never fell, save for the thick white carpet on the ground. The clouds above have parted to reveal a cold, clear sky full of stars. I drag the tree from the roof and cut the netting from the branches. I leave it propped against the outside wall to dry out overnight. Relieved, somehow, that I don’t have to bring it inside yet.
I am bone-weary as I stamp off my boots, as though I’ve been through some ordeal or am coming down with some sickness. When I shrug out of my jacket something falls from the pocket and clatters to the floor. I pick it up. It’s one of those AirTags: I have several for keeping track of my luggage when I travel, etcetera. One of my Hinge dates told me she didn’t trust any man who owned them, because of the way they can be used. You’ve probably read the news. But then I think both of us knew we weren’t going on a second date by then anyway, so it was no skin off my nose. I glance at the thing. Hadn’t realised I was carrying one around in my pocket. I chuck it on to the desk.
Despite my fatigue I sleep poorly, fitfully, my mind full of weird images: a dark forest, full of strange creatures. Normally I dream of work. These are like the nightmares of childhood.
In the light of day, my dreams seem a little foolish – so does that odd superstition I had last night about the tree, about bringing it inside. After a restorative breakfast of toast and fried eggs I go to check whether it has dried out enough.
The first thing I notice is that there is a second set of footprints leading up to the tree. Tiny footsteps, half the size of mine, but trailing snugly alongside my own as though I had had some invisible company last night. And then I look to the tree. There’s something attached to it. A little red bauble. Stepping closer, breath suddenly tight in my throat, I read the words marked in a childish hand, scratched into the red foil as though with a fingernail. Or a knife. ‘all i want for christmas is you’
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