If I discounted the Christmas jumper, Celia could pass for attractive—bright blue eyes, long blond hair in a weirdly shaped plait down her back, and slim, dexterous fingers that worked at light speed on the Manor’s tree. But her enthusiasm for all things Christmas meant she bordered on irritating.
“Oh yes, Sebastian. That looks fantastic,” she said. I’d only swapped the large white bauble with the medium red one as she’d asked me. “You’re so tall you don’t even need a ladder to reach.” She paused as if deep in thought. “You think we need a bigger tree?” She took a few steps back, glancing back to the door and then past the tree to the stairs, perhaps trying to assess the perfect size for a tree in the space.
“No,” I said.
She laughed. “If it was up to you, we wouldn’t have a tree at all, so you don’t get a say.”
Peter, the avuncular owner of the White Rabbit who hadn’t changed one iota in the ten years since I’d last seen him, rushed in through the front door and made a beeline for Celia. His comb-over stood on end, waving like a flag in the wind, and his cheeks were ruddy from either exertion or being out in the cold. “Celia!” he shouted, his hand in the air as if bellowing her name wouldn’t catch her attention. “Celia, we have an emergency.”
Celia smiled what I guessed was a permanent smile. I couldn’t tell if it was an act or if she was just happy all the time. “How can I help, Peter?”
He was shaking his head. “It’s Snowsville. They’re coming for us.” He thrust his mobile phone into her hand and I couldn’t help but be intrigued. Was war about to break out? Snowsville was the village about three miles west of Snowsly. It was home to the Black Swan pub and a particularly pretty little pond at the bottom of the village, from what I remembered.
“What are you showing me, Peter?” Celia asked, her smile still firmly in place.
“That’s our website. Christmas in the Cotswolds dot com.”
“Yes.” She started to scroll up Peter’s screen. “Wait, this isn’t our content.” Celia’s smile faltered.
“Snowsville have taken it.”
At that moment, Barbara burst through the door. I’d known Barbara, or I should say, Barbara had known me, since I was born. My birthday always fell in the Easter holidays and Barbara always made my cake. “They bought the website,” Barbara said. “That’s what Mr. Taylor at the Black Swan said. We didn’t pay the renewal fee and they bought it.”
I glanced at Celia, who was clutching the reception desk like she’d just missed the last lifeboat on the Titanic. “This is going to be okay.” She forced a grin. “I’m sure it’s nothing serious and it can be put right. Ivy always insists on doing the website. She’ll know what’s happened.”
The four of us filtered back into the sitting room, where Granny was reading a magazine.
“I’m not great on the website stuff,” Granny said as we stood before her. “But Ethan set it up for me.” I had no idea who Ethan was. “He said it was all paid up and would renew every year. Have they hacked us?”
I wasn’t sure anyone was hacking anyone else in the Cotswolds, though maybe winning seasonal custom had become more cutthroat than I realized. No one even locked their doors around here. It was the kind of place that if someone dropped a pound coin, homemade signs would go up asking for the owner to come forward. “Granny, is it possible that you’ve changed the credit or debit card you used to pay for the domain name with?”
“Domain who?” she asked.
“The name of the website,” I said. “It would renew every year on a specific card.”
Granny narrowed her eyes. “I got new cards a few months back. But still from the same bank—the numbers didn’t change.”
Peter groaned. “That’s what’s happened. Snowsville have bought it right from under our noses. The scoundrels. They’ve been jealous of us since 1981, when we got that huge tree put up on the village green and got more people at our carol concert. This is dirty tricks. They have to be stopped and—”
“Can I ask what the big deal is?” I interrupted. “Okay, so you’ve lost the website. But surely, most people come because they’ve come before and—”
“It says, ‘The heart of Christmas in the Cotswolds is the beautiful village of Snowsville’,” Celia said, her voice wobbling, the sound circling my chest as she scrolled up and down the phone screen. “Word will get out that Christmas has moved.”
“Christmas hasn’t moved,” Peter said, his voice gruff, his hands fisted. “I’ve got a mind to march over to Snowsville and tell them exactly what I think of their underhand tactics.”
“But Snowsly has the Christmas market,” I said, finding myself trying to be reassuring. The fear and concern in everyone’s eyes wasn’t how I remembered Snowsly—and it wasn’t how I wanted to think of this place now. “That will draw people in.”