12 Days 'til Christmas ✓

chapter six

I'm well aware that I don't have the best singing voice, but I can't help belting along to the tunes that come on. This list is a compilation of all my favourites, so it's hit after hit that I'm warbling along to, from Wham! to Wizzard; Bing Crosby to Brenda Lee, and I'm right in the middle of a major Leona Lewis singalong when I catch sight of Casper out of the corner of my eye. He's halfway down the stairs, staring at me with a look of abject horror etched into his face.

My singing dies down. I reach for my phone, one hand holding down paper that I've yet to tape, and I pause the music. "Hey. Sorry, am I too loud?"

"It's your house, Beth."

"I know, but still ... anyway, what's up?"

"Just came down to check you weren't murdering cats," he says. His lips twitch as he descends the last few steps.

"Ha. Ha. You wound me."

He awkwardly crosses the room, as though he doesn't know what to do with himself. For a moment he seems like a video game character without direction, hovering on the edge of the room, until I nod at the sofa and he drops onto it.

"You actually have a really nice voice," he says, resting his elbows on his knees. "Terrible taste in music, though."

My cheeks go warm and pink at the first part. I ignore the second part. "Cheers. So, what's the verdict? Was your case filled with shit and rocks?"

"Funnily enough, it wasn't." He sounds genuinely surprised. "Just my clothes and books. And, you know, my toothbrush and my Benadryl, all the really important stuff."

I can't imagine having so few books that they would all fit in a suitcase along with everything else. One of the first things I did when I moved here was to trawl the local charity shops for bookshelves, and I got lucky when someone donated an entire collection of IKEA shelves; I took home all four for twenty quid and it didn't take long to fill them. Every November, one of my sisters will come over, ostensibly for tea and a catch up, and will end up not-so-sneakily inspecting my shelves to report back to my family, to make sure none of them buy me a book I already have.

"Feel free to make yourself at home up there. Everyone I know lives too close to warrant using the spare room, so it's all yours for however long you need it." I tear off a long strip of tape, too long for the present, and it curls into itself as I'm pressing it down. Now there's a lump of tape all stuck to itself and the paper, and nothing I can do except tape over it.

"Hey, Beth, can I ask you something?"

"Of course." I look up at him, but his eyes are on the box I'm wrapping.

"Do you have any clue how to wrap a present?"

"Let's just say practise does not make perfect."

"Fucking hell." He slides off the sofa and thumps onto the carpet on the other side of the table. "Stop. Seriously, stop. Stop." Batting my hands away, he takes the half-wrapped box and carefully unpeels the tape, managing to get it off without tearing the paper. "This is how you wrap? The queen of Christmas can't wrap?"

"Hey. Don't come in here criticising my wrapping and undoing my hard work, Ghost boy. What're you doing?"

"Fixing this." He undoes all of my work on the box – the chutneys for my dad – until it's sitting on top of a slightly creased piece of paper, which he trims down when he digs my scissors out from under a pile of tags and cards. I don't want to jinx the moment, so I sit in silence, watching as he works so carefully: he tears off short strips of tape that he sticks to the edge of the table, ready and waiting for when he needs them as he folds crisp, perfect corners.