I’m tangled in my sheets, eyes red and stinging and barely open, as my phone rings. I ignore it, but it’s enough to wake me up – or at least drag me even more into consciousness.
I’ve not exactly been asleep. Not properly. I’ve just drifted in and out of a restless and traumatised state, and now I feel disjointed and bewildered. I blink my eyes open and shut a few times, and look at my watch. It should be four in the morning, but I see it’s only just after eleven.
I can still hear my mum and dad hard at it – they obviously have a lot to sort out. I sit up, and slap myself in the face. I need to wake up properly, go and check on Saul.
Before I can mobilise – my body really doesn’t want to cooperate – my phone rings again. I snatch it up from the pillow, where it had been playing carols to me, and look at the display. Van.
I want to ignore it again – I feel too compromised to add my feelings about Van into the mix tonight – but something tells me he’ll just keep calling. And anyway, it could be something urgent.
I answer it, and say nervously: ‘Hi? Is everything all right? Is your mum okay?’
‘Everything’s fine. She’s at home with Willow and Auburn and the dog.’
‘Oh. So, where are you then?’
‘Look out your window,’ he says, sounding amused.
I stand up, and walk my wobbling legs over to the window. I tug the curtain aside and see him there, in the street, holding his phone in one hand, waving at me with the other.
He’s standing beside what I assume is Tom’s camper van, and the camper van is decorated as brightly and colourfully as the Father Christmas sleigh that the Rotary Club used to ride around our estate every December.
The VW is draped in strings of fairy lights, in pink and yellow and blue, twinkling on and off in a frenetic spasm up and down the body of the van. Their brilliant blinks are swallowed up in the snow, shining through the flakes and making them multi-coloured.
Against the odds, it makes me smile – the first smile I’ve managed for some time now.
‘I’ve come to rescue you,’ he says simply, looking up at me from the street. It’s weird, watching his lips move in real time out there, and hearing his voice in my ear. ‘I was outside earlier, and I heard your parents. To be honest I think people in Applechurch heard your parents. I … well, you’d told me about it, what they were like, but I don’t think anything could have prepared me for those kinds of sound levels. Jesus. Is Saul managing to sleep through it?’
‘He is, thank God,’ I reply, still groggy and still confused by what he’s doing here.
‘Well, get your stuff together. Get his presents. Get him. And come to me. We’re going to run away together, just for the night. I’m going to hang up now, so you can’t say no. If you don’t come out, I’ll just stay here, and sleep in the van all night.’
He promptly does exactly what he said he would, and hangs up. I stare at the phone. I stare at him. I stare at the decked-out camper van taking up most of the road.
Then, I do exactly as he says. I do it quickly, because I know that if I pause – if I let myself think about it – I’ll talk my way out of it. I’ll persuade myself that this is a terrible idea. I’ll come up with a million and one reasons why this is wrong.
First, I make two journeys up and down the stairs with the Santa sacks and my bag. Then I put on my trainers and a coat and a hat, ready to go out into what I know will be a freezing cold night.
I make my way into Saul’s room, and wake him up. Kind of. He’s still asleep, really, clinging on to me as I plunge his head into the neck of a chunky sweater and encase his feet in thick socks. He clings onto my neck as we creep downstairs, whispering into my ear as we go past the living room door.
I pause for a moment, and hear my mum’s high-pitched voice telling my dad he’s ‘a useless lying piece of shit’, and him replying gruffly that he wouldn’t need to lie, if she wasn’t an evil bitch with no soul.
If ever I needed any further prodding, that was it.
Tinkerbell has padded down the stairs after me, and is sitting on the bottom step, his green eyes glittering as he watches us sneak away. I hold the door open for a few seconds, as if inviting him to join us, but he starts licking his front paws instead. I take it that he’s decided to stay where the radiators are, and I leave him to it. He’s a cat. He’ll be fine.
Van’s waiting outside for us, rubbing his hands together in the cold. His face breaks out into a huge smile when he sees us, and I gesture to the bags in the hallway.
I carry Saul up into the van, and he follows, hefting all three bags at once, like a super-human Santa.
Inside, the van is even more Christmassy. There’s a small fake tree set up on the fold-down table, decorated with tartan bows and glittering angels, and all the windows have tinsel tacked up around them.
There’s a double bed, which again I assume can possibly be folded up, and I gently lay Saul down on top of it. The heaters have obviously been working overtime, and it’s warm and cosy in here – warm and cosy and quiet.
Saul stirs as I tuck him in, looking up at me with big blue eyes.
‘Is he here?’ he murmurs, grabbing hold of my hand. ‘Is Santa here?’
‘Not yet, sweetie,’ I reply, smoothing down his hair and soothing him. ‘But we saw on the Santa tracker that he’s very near … and … Van came round, to see if we’d like to go and find him. How does that sound?’
‘Nice. Wake me up when we find him …’
Van’s in the driver’s seat, and all the doors are closed. He glances back at me, tugs off his beanie hat, and grins.
‘Ready to go Santa hunting?’ he asks.
I nod, and grin back. This is crazy. This is insane. This is probably completely wrong.
‘I really, really am,’ I say.