Christmas at the Edge of the World

“The key’s under the flower pot,” she told Zac. “We’ll be inside in just a second…”

Except, when she found the cracked, empty flowerpot by the front door, there was no key under it. And there were no other flower pots outside the cottage.

“It’s got to be here somewhere…” she said, knowing she was starting to sound desperate. She’d been feeling it about fifteen minutes ago, and soon it was going to turn into full-blown panic. Why was nothing going the way she wanted and needed it to? The way it did in the movies, the way she kept hoping it would turn out?

Zac folded his arms, hunching his shoulders against the rain, wind, and cold. He muttered something under his breath, but Laurel didn’t try to make out what it was.

It was all going to be fine. They just needed to get in to the place. Then she’d get a fire going, and heat up the stew she’d made last night, chucking every vegetable she could think of into a pot with some barley and broth. And they’d play Ludo…well, perhaps that was stretching credibility a bit. They’d do something.

“Maybe it’s by the back door,” she said, and walked around the cottage in pitch darkness, stumbling over frozen tufts of grass, before she heaved herself over the low stone wall and landed knee-deep in an icy mud puddle. She suppressed a swear word as freezing, dirty water seeped into her boots and onto her jeans, making her feel even colder than she’d already been.

Stumbling through more tufty grass, she made it to the back door, and peered through the smeared and dusty glass to see the darkened shapes of the kitchen she remembered—a small round table up against the window, the two-door Rayburn fit snugly into the old fireplace, the deep farmhouse sink under the other window.

Knowing it was futile, Laurel turned the knob, rattling it uselessly. Of course it was locked. But where was the blasted key? Eilidh had said it would be under the flower pot.

There were no flowerpots by the backdoor, nothing but overgrown grass and a nearly threadbare welcome mat. Knowing it was most likely just as futile, Laurel tried the window next to the door. At first it didn’t budge a centimetre, but when she gave it another desperate heave, much to her shock, she was able to push the window up a couple of inches as it gave an almighty protesting screech. It sounded as if it hadn’t been moved in decades.

Laurel took a deep breath, and pushed again, this time managing to get the window up nearly a foot. Big enough to climb through? It would have to be.

Actually, she decided thirty seconds later, when she’d slung one leg over the ledge, it wasn’t big enough to climb through. Her back was jammed painfully against the window, making her wince as she straddled the sill, every part of her body protesting at this activity just as the window had when she’d opened it. This was so not fun. What if she got stuck? She had a mental image of Zac trying to pry her out of the window and she let out a groan.

“Laurel?” Zac called, a disembodied voice in the darkness. “What’s going on?”

“I’m killing myself,” Laurel muttered. Death by window, and one on the ground floor at that. Who would have ever thought? “Just a sec,” she called back, unable, in her current position, to inject the usual cheery note in her voice that she feared made her sound a bit manic. Now she just sounded as if she were being strangled. “Be right there…” With a loud oof Laurel managed to free herself from the confines of the window, letting out a yelp as her leg stuck on the ledge before she tumbled forward into the kitchen, landing on her knees on the hard, tiled floor. Ouch.

At least she was inside. She could unlock the door, she could make a fire…she could…was tha

t a mouse?

As Laurel’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw an alarmingly large rodent scuttle behind the Rayburn. The cottage had a forgotten, musty feel; she supposed it had been too much to hope that Eilidh’s neighbour would have opened the place up, aired it out, left milk and eggs and even a bottle of wine in the fridge…

No, of course not. This wasn’t Airbnb. And it didn’t matter anyway, because Laurel had all those things and more in the boot of the car.

“Laurel…” Zac’s voice sounded far away, and less bored than it had been in a while. He sounded a little bit worried, bless him.

“Coming,” Laurel called as she flicked on the lights, illuminating the small kitchen in a dim and rather sickly glow. She brushed dust and cobwebs from her hair and started towards the front of the cottage. After a bit of fumbling, she managed to unlock the door, letting in a clearly exasperated Zac.

“Seriously?” He gave her a scathingly incredulous look as he looked around the tiny hallway with its faded wallpaper and cracked tile. “This place is a complete dump.”

Laurel took in the little sitting room with the fireplace that had figured so favourably in her memories, the worn and saggy sofa wedged against one wall, the bookshelf between the window and the fireplace crammed with tattered paperbacks.

All right, it was a lot smaller and, yes, shabbier than she remembered, she could admit that. And the air smelled of damp and dust, and she’d already seen one, possibly two, mice.

But…this was Eilidh’s home, and Laurel had always loved it here, just as Abby and her mother had. It had felt…enchanted, somehow. Magical. A place where nothing could go wrong. A place where happiness was a promise.

Perhaps that was why she’d never come back.

Still, once she’d made a fire, and put on some stew, and maybe dusted a little, it would be fine. It would be wonderful, just like it had been before. The magic would work.

“Granted, it’s a bit different than you’re used to,” she told Zac briskly. “But it makes for a nice change.”

He shook his head slowly, still so disbelieving, and Laurel decided to ignore him as she turned on a few more lights before heading out to the car for their stuff.

It was still raining steadily, and it looked as if there wasn’t a light on in the whole world. The air smelled of brine and coal smoke, and brought back a deluge of misty memories that Laurel couldn’t quite hold onto. She missed Eilidh. She missed her mum. She missed Abby, who would have been right here with her, helping her heft boxes, daring her to race to the freezing sea and be the first to dip her toes in.

All of it made Laurel ache, and she blinked rapidly, banishing the memories because they hurt too much, far more than she’d expected them to. That was why she never let herself think of them. She’d locked them all in a box in the back of her mind and she wasn’t ready to take them out now.

What would Abby feel about her taking Zac here? Laurel had left a message at the rehab centre, but as usual she’d received the repressive reply that her sister could not be disturbed. Laurel had wondered at the ethics of taking her nephew so far away, and then had determinedly shrugged it away. In her bones, in her heart, she believed they were in the right place, and at least Abby knew where they were, if she decided to ask.