From her hospital bed, Olive must have nearly broken Messenger with the amount of instructions she was sending out in the run-up to Christmas Eve. She hadn’t spent so long looking forward to something for it all to go tits-up because she’d knocked herself out.
So, as they were a crew, she made sure teamwork was put into action. It really didn’t require that much in terms of what everyone had to do. Mostly they had to say yes and go and collect their items from Richard.
The main person who had to do her bidding was Richard. He had to go to Oakley West and transport everything she’d been preparing. Then he had to allocate everyone their outfits, all the while trying to keep it from Skylar and Lucas.
The only person Olive wasn’t contacting as much was her daughter-in-law. Okay, she was getting a bit ahead of herself, but, gosh, if a girl couldn’t dream at her age then what else was there to do? She’d been sending messages of support, of course, and Skylar had been to visit with Lucas, but there had been no communication about the secret mission, seeing as they were the people they were all out to surprise.
When Olive was discharged on Christmas Eve Eve, she almost did the first side kick of her life. She would have done if the risk of her getting herself readmitted wasn’t so high. However wonderful the NHS staff had been, she didn’t want to spend Christmas with them when she had a much better offer.
The following day, half an hour before they would normally all meet up, Richard met her at Oakley West. She didn’t feel up to trying out her Segway just yet. Even though she was fine, she didn’t want to give herself another knock this side of Christmas.
When she met Richard in the middle of the foyer, the pair of them got a round of applause from the Oakley West residents waiting there. It must have been the first time Mr and Mrs Claus had been seen in daylight hours. When the two reindeers joined them, who rather ridiculously had both made up their Segways to look like sleighs, the surprise made Olive laugh. If there was one thing she always encouraged – and it seemed all her friends had embraced the motto – it was in for a penny, in for a pound. She just hoped they went carefully.
So with Randy as Rudolph, and Veronica as Rudolph’s wife, they waltzed all the way to the beach huts like they were running their very own carnival. And when they arrived everyone else was there dressed in all their finery.
The elves, the snowmen, the reindeer. They were no longer just the statues lined up outside the gin grottos, but real-life animations of what had been on their porches for the last few weeks.
As asked, Richard had stashed all the presents in Olive’s beach hut and set it up like a full-on Santa’s grotto.
‘Places everyone. They’re on their way,’ Richard said to everyone.
At the top of the slope were three people. Skylar and Lucas, both with blindfolds on, and Helen in between them, linking their arms, leading them carefully down towards the gin grottos. Although today they were no longer dishing out gin, but instead were proper Santa grottos for a mum and her boy who deserved to know there was good in the world. And even on the days the world wasn’t playing fair, they’d always find safe harbour in Westbrook Bay. They’d had more than their fair share of upset with the foul play that had taken place, but they would all make sure nothing like that happened again.
‘Take your place then, Richard.’ There was a tinsel-blinged-up deckchair waiting for Santa to come and do his job.
‘No way,’ Richard said. ‘You haven’t done all this hard work for me to take the glory. Besides, you know who all the presents are for.’
‘I put labels on all of them. It doesn’t take me to read them.’
‘Yes, but you brought them. And it’s a PC world. It’s only fitting that at some point the job of Santa Claus should go to a woman.’
Olive was going to have a pretty tough time growing a beard, but she agreed with the sentiment. The concept of Santa was about giving after all.
‘Now sit down. They’re nearly here.’
With that, Olive took up residence in the special festive chair and got ready to dish out presents.
When their blindfolds were lifted, there were lots of exclamations of awesome from Lucas.
‘Richard, you didn’t have to do this.’ Skylar hugged Richard and wiped a tear from her eye by the looks of things.
‘This wasn’t me. Mrs Claus has been planning this for weeks. I only had to get involved because she managed to knock herself out.
‘Ho ho ho.’ Olive had always wanted to do that, but only realised it as she did her best fake belly wobble. ‘Now I need all the good girls and boys to line up in an orderly queue.’
Lucas was first over. ‘You are the best, Grandma Olive,’ he said, as she passed him his present and was quickly involved with getting it open.
Grandma Olive had such a good ring to it. Hearing it filled her with a level of joy that was enough to make her chest swell. ‘You next.’ Olive waved Skylar over.
Everyone looked on and took pictures as Olive dished out the first of the presents.
‘Who’s next?’
‘There aren’t any other children here, Olive, unless you mean the boys,’ Esme said from behind her camera.
‘She means all of you. Mrs Claus hasn’t left any of her children out.’ Richard waved everyone over.
Olive drew the line at Tony offering to sit on her knee. And it really was a joy to dish out a gift to each of her friends. They normally just exchanged cards up at the beach huts, but this year had changed so much for them. And Olive had wanted to say thank you. Thank you for their friendship. For their support. For bringing together her worlds in ways she never thought possible.
And their picnic that day was a little bit special with ALL the Christmassy foods displayed on their usual mishmash of tables. Only there was one difference today. Well, two if the Christmas crackers were included. In the middle of the table was a very special trophy. Because they weren’t just the Gin Shack crew, they were the award-winning Gin Shack crew.
‘There’s one more present,’ Richard said, before Olive was able to head over and join the others and gather her buffet goods.
‘Here you go,’ Skylar said, passing Olive a long, thin box.
It looked like it should contain jewellery. A necklace or something equally lovely. ‘You two really shouldn’t have. I did this for all of you, I wasn’t expecting anything in return.’
‘Open it,’ Richard said.
Olive did. She ripped it open in that way young kids do when they can’t possibly wait for their treat.
‘It’s not. You’re not?’
‘We were going to tell you tomorrow. There was something else I was going to do tomorrow as well, but as my mum keeps reminding me, there are some things in life you shouldn’t wait for. You should go ahead and grab a hold of those dreams as soon as you get the opportunity.’
Skylar waggled her ring finger in Olive’s direction. ‘He asked this morning. And I’d like to pretend the whole Santa idea has come as a complete surprise, but he was wearing that outfit at the time.’
‘Oh, Richard.’ There were many things a mother liked to verse her son on in life. How to suitably propose wasn’t something Olive had covered. Still, it was too late now, and she was sure it wasn’t every man who went about it in fancy dress.
‘Obviously we’re not telling anyone about your present yet. It’s early days, and… you know.’
Olive did. Olive knew that life was precious. And she had everything she needed right here. This very new news was the icing on the cake, or rather the custard on the mince pie, and she was going to blame it on the head injury, but for the first time in her entire life, she shed a tear of joy. She hadn’t had enough of them in her life. And as she’d been busy teaching her son life lessons, she was also old enough and wise enough to know it was never too late to start learning a few of her own.
She just hoped relearning how to change nappies didn’t end up being one of them.