Christmas at the Edge of the World

“Yes…”

“Aunt Laurel? I brought you a coffee.”

What? Had Zac had a personality transplant? Or was this the sweet kid she’d always hoped lurked beneath the sullen façade?

“Thanks, Zac. Come in.”

He came in hesitantly, almost shyly, thrusting the cup of coffee at her which Laurel took with grateful hands. All right, he’d definitely not used enough milk, and there were grounds swimming in it, but still. It felt like the best cup of coffee she’d ever had.

“Thank you, Zac. That was really kind of you.”

He hunched one shoulder. “’S nothing.”

It wasn’t, but Laurel knew better than to make a big deal of it and embarrass him. “Thanks,” she said again, and took a sip, trying not to wince at the taste of it. Way too weak, and also way too much sugar.

“Are you okay?” Zac asked, and Laurel thought she heard a hint of vulnerability in his voice that made her ache. It occurred to her how uncertain Zac’s world was—his mother in rehab, excluded from school, his only guardian seeming as if she were having a major wobbly.

“Zac, I’m fine,” Laurel said firmly. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

He gave her a look bordering on disgust. “I’m not worried.”

“Of course you’re not,” Laurel answered as she hid a smile behind her cup, risking another sip of coffee. “Sorry.”

“It’s just, you haven’t, like, fallen out with Archie, have you?”

Her fingers tightened on the cup. “No. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. He left kind of quickly last night, and then you seemed a bit, well, off.”

Yes, she’d definitely been off. “We haven’t fallen out.” She hoped.

“He’s a nice guy, you know, if…” Zac shrugged, his gaze sliding away.

“Yes, he’s very nice,” Laurel said, meaning for it to be the end of the conversation. She wasn’t about to take dating advice from a fourteen-year-old.

Zac gave her a slightly pitying look. “You could do worse, you know,” he said, and sloped off, back to his bedroom.

She could do worse. How damning for both her and Archie, who probably seemed like two old geezers to Zac. They sort of were.

Laurel put all thoughts of Archie firmly to the back of her mind as she rose from the bed, made herself a proper cup of coffee, drinking it in secret in case she hurt Zac’s feelings, and then showered and got dressed. It was Christmas Eve, and she had a lot to do.

She blasted bagpipe carols as she finished wrapping her presents, and Zac rather nonchalantly told her he was going to walk into Stromness and have a look around. Laurel suspected he was going to buy her a present, and it made her smile as she just as nonchalantly agreed that he could.

She prepped as much of tomorrow’s roast dinner as she was able, and debated walking over to Archie’s to check that he was okay to come round tomorrow. It would be better, she decided, to clear the air before they saw each other on Christmas Day, and so she left a note for Zac and headed once more across the paddock.

When she arrived at the farmhouse, however, it was clearly empty. Archie’s mud-splattered Rover wasn’t in the farm yard, and everything was dark and closed up, which made her feel inexplicably sad. Even the dogs were gone, or at least they didn’t set up a chorus of barking the way they normally did.

Laurel stood there for a moment, feeling the emptiness all around her, and then she scribbled a note, reiterating her invitation for tomorrow, and pushed it under Archie’s door, hoping he’d catch sight of it as he came in.

Knowing there was nothing more she could do, she turned from the empty farmhouse and walked back across the frost-tipped fields, under a leaden sky.

That evening she and Zac walked into Stromness for a Christmas Eve service at the parish kirk, which had been billed as mince pies, mulled wine, and Christmas carols from half past ten in the evening to midnight, something Laurel was looking forward to despite her lingering sadness over things with Archie.

“Did you ever go to a Christmas service with your mum?” she asked as they walked through the quiet streets, the Christmas lights casting a colourful glow on the rain-slicked pavements.

“Nope.”

“This is your first one?”