12 Days 'til Christmas ✓

chapter thirteen

t h i r t e e n

*

Two days later, I still haven't succeeded in getting Casper to watch any Christmas film other than Die Hard, and I belong firmly in the camp of people who don't recognise that as a Christmas movie. It's an action film that just happens to take place at the end of December, and not even a good one at that. But I know I can change that. I'm working on Casper, who does seem to have loosened up a little since we spent hours at Abernathy's on Monday. When he got back from work yesterday, he didn't grimace at the Christmas tree, and he didn't say a word about my Christmas music until I paused it to talk to him.

Today's the day, I've decided, that we watch Elf. It's one of my all-time favourite films, due in part to it being India's favourite when we were little, so I grew up on it with several viewings every December from the age of two. Hopefully he'll be tired from working a long closing shift, so when I pick him up and deposit him on the sofa after hours on his feet, he'll be powerless to resist a warm glass of mulled wine and a cosy, feel-good film.

It's a week before Christmas, after all, and I'm running out of time to get him to embrace my festive ways. He's heading towards tolerance, yes, but I need more than him just putting up with it. I want him to enjoy it: I want him to smile at this holiday and everything it means; I want him to laugh when we pull a cracker together; I want to cook Christmas lunch with him before my parents arrive. Living with me, he can't avoid a full King Christmas – he'll be here when my parents and my sisters and my brother-in-law rock up on the twenty-fifth, and the only way to make it out alive will be for him to embrace the season.

But I have two hours before it's time to collect him from Java Tea and rather than take a book and hole up in one of the comfy chairs in the corner, I'm meeting my little sister at a cafe closer to her school. Paisley and I used to be inseparable, but time and distance have started to push a wedge between us: with an eight-year age gap, it's hard to be as close as we were when she was a toddler and I was a doting ten-year-old who loved to play Mum.

I've been sitting in the bluntly-named Cath's Cafe for ten minutes when Paisley swings in through the door with a whirl of snow and a trail of slush, almost knocking over a waitress with her bag.

"Hey, Lehem," she says, swooping over to my table and sprawling in the chair opposite me. We're polar opposites: she's short and skinny, all knees and elbows, with dirty blonde hair in a messy topknot and 20/20 vision. India's the same; Juneau and I take after our dad more: taller, rounder, darker, and cursed with poor eyesight.

"Hey, Peabrain."

Paisley snorts, inelegantly lunging forward to take a sip of my drink. She wrinkles her nose when she realises it's an orange latte. "I don't know who you're calling Peabrain, Beaverbutt," she says. "I just smashed my history test. You're looking at the top of the class leaderboard." She sits straight and holds out her arms like she's welcoming applause.

"Nice one, Pea. Clever little monkey," I say as I pull out my purse and find a tenner.

"Ooh, is this a reward system? Ten quid for every test I ace?"

I roll my eyes at her. "No, it's ten quid for you to go and get yourself something to eat, if you want. I told Mum I'd feed you but I'm not going home until seven, by which point I imagine you'll have gone home."

"I'm staying with you tonight," she says.

"What? No you're not."

She stares at me. "Yes I am..."

"How come?"

"Dad's away at a conference in London until tomorrow and Mum had to go and see Granny so if she comes home tonight, it won't be until, like, two in the morning. I told her I'd stay with you. Figured you'd love a bit of sister-bonding, eh?" She grins and steals a corner of my croissant.