‘Well, Brandon, tell me, what can your favourite estate agent do for you today?’
Rach was already at her desk when Keeley arrived at the estate agency only a fifteen-minute stroll from her family home. Feet up on her desk, taking advantage of every tilt the chair had to offer, a Santa hat complete with bell over her wavy blonde hair and a green dress that looked straight out of Father Christmas’s workshop, Rach nestled the phone under her face and held up her coffee mug mouthing the words ‘it’s a two-sugar morning’. Then the mug dropped a little.
‘I beg your pardon!’ Rach exclaimed. Her expression was belying the tone and there was a definite spark in her eyes. ‘I was expecting you to ask me about the three-bedroom mews house, not say something that would put you straight to the top of Santa’s naughty list.’ She gave a smutty giggle as Keeley took the mug from her hands and headed through the office towards the kitchen at the rear.
Rach was an estate agent. Keeley wasn’t. Keeley wasn’t anything really. Since the night the taxi had crashed, everything had fallen away, in slow motion, like a snowy nightmare sequence in a film. One moment she was set to start a new life – leaving her job as an assistant to an interior designer and starting her very own business – the next she was in an operating theatre fighting for her life while her sister tragically lost hers. Everything had changed that night. Bea gone. Her career finished before it had even begun. And now, here she was, living back at home and working as a ‘house doctor’ for House 2 Home. It wasn’t exactly how she thought she would be using her artistic eye. She had envisaged her working day to involve the careful designing of a bespoke wallpaper as opposed to deciding what cactus looked best on what Ikea sideboard. But it was a job and it paid OK and there was that short commute. Plus, to ease her mum’s anxiety further, the business belonged to a friend of the family, Roland Krantz, so you could guarantee if she ran a temperature, had a headache or was in any way not one hundred per cent feeling top notch, Lizzie would know about it by lunchtime…
Keeley put the kettle on and leaned back against the worktop, studying the advent calendar Rach had stuck up at least two weeks ago. Only November and doors open already. Surely that was bad luck. She sighed. What was it with the word ‘luck’ today?
Rach marched into the kitchen. ‘Bloody Randy Brandon is up for it already and it’s not even eight-thirty.’ She looked at her watch as if to clarify her statement. ‘It’s not even eight-thirty. What are you doing here already?’
‘My mum accused me of dicing with death by trying to get a giant crumpet out of the toaster with a fork,’ Keeley answered. ‘And then I ate the crumpet… with some blueberry jam none of us were supposed to be eating and, before I left, she hit my dad over the head with an artisan multigrain baguette because some cranberries got burned.’
‘Shit,’ Rach replied. ‘And here I was complaining about being offered a shag before my second coffee.’
‘Yes, well, I definitely have the best excuse for having two sugars in my coffee,’ Keeley said with a smile.
‘Yeah and hold that thought,’ Rach said. ‘Because you might want to make it three sugars when I tell you what Roland has in store for you today.’ She pulled at the hem of her very short costume.
‘Oh God,’ Keeley said, closing her eyes, taking a deep breath and then opening them again, watching as Rach ripped at another door on the advent calendar. ‘It’s nothing to do with the radio station, is it?’
Last year Roland had sent her down there to record a jingle for the new festive advertising he had planned for House 2 Home. It was the last time she had ever joined in with singing in the office. One chorus of ‘It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas’ and Roland had turned all Louis Walsh and said she was ‘through to the next round’ – of which there was one round, the final, having to sing words that were Christmassy and all rhymed with ‘en suite’. She had felt the furthest from festive last year and had only joined the team a week prior to that appointment with Kensington FM and, back then, even a heavy laugh pained both sides of her abdomen. But Roland always took the angle that what didn’t kill you made you successful. Rach said he had once had that phrase printed on compliments slips and a tote bag…
‘No,’ Rach said, laughing as she stuffed a chocolate in her mouth and opened a second advent door.
‘The school? Because, last time I went there, one girl attacked me with an ancient, heavy Bible and three glue sticks.’
‘Shall I put you out of your misery?’
‘Please. I won’t tell my mother it was you.’ Keeley held her breath.
‘Mr Peterson’s put his house on the market again. Roland wants you to get back in there and do your re-styling stuff.’
Keeley carried on holding her breath. She could feel just about everything getting tighter. The waistband of her skirt. Her long socks inside her boots that had definitely shrunk in the tumble drier. Her heart…
‘No,’ Keeley finally said through shaky lips. ‘No, you’re winding me up. Roland said, six months ago, that even if Mr Peterson bought him all the scotch in Scotland he would never ever take him on as a client again.’
‘We-e-e-ell,’ Rach said, drawing the word out, her eyebrows going up under the rim of her Santa hat. ‘Let’s just say it could be a very dry Christmas in the Highlands.’
‘No!’ Keeley said, putting her hands into her hair and squeezing. ‘No, no, no! I can’t do it! I cannot do it!’
She really couldn’t do it. It had been too short a time to even think about stepping over the threshold of Mr Peterson’s house again. Mr Peterson’s two-bedroomed terrace, albeit on an illustrious street in the heart of Chelsea, was crammed with taxidermy animals that had all been hand-stuffed by Mr Peterson in a very dark, windowless basement room that looked more ‘torture chamber’ than it did the ‘family-room with annexe potential’ that Roland had described it as in the particulars. Six months ago, when Keeley had had to restyle it ready for viewings, she had said all the animals had to go, as did some of his rather dated (and blood-spattered) furniture. The house was professionally cleaned, contemporary furnishings were hired, but on the second viewing – a family with three-year-old twins – two beady-eyed pheasants and a mole had fallen out of the wardrobe in the master bedroom and scared everyone half to death. It seemed Mr Peterson’s commitment to selling his property didn’t stretch to giving up his dead creatures even for a few weeks. And the client was the kind of stubborn Keeley knew couldn’t be changed.
‘I’m not sure it’s up for debate if you want to get your Christmas bonus,’ Rach said, patting her shoulder.
‘I’ll forego the bonus.’ It couldn’t be that much. Roland was more frugal than Martin Lewis.
‘He’s promised no animal surprises,’ Rach added.
‘I don’t believe him.’
‘Keeley, that isn’t like you.’
‘What isn’t like me?’
‘You’re usually peace and goodwill to all men – and women – and non-binary – all year round.’
‘I’m fine,’ Keeley answered. She took her hands out of her hair and picked up the now-boiled kettle, pouring water into the mugs. She wasn’t quite fine. Her mum making such a stance about a crumpet had got to her. And the last thing she wanted over the festive period was Mr Peterson’s stinky abattoir of an abode to fix again…
‘Well, thinking of positives, your hair looks awesome,’ Rach remarked. ‘You haven’t got it wet yet though, have you?’
‘No,’ Keeley said, mixing in the coffee granules. ‘I do listen to you.’
‘So, it’s just your mum and her thinking you’re the poster girl for the Final Destination film franchise?’
Keeley couldn’t help the smile at her friend’s joke. Rach was about the only person who didn’t treat her any differently to how she had before. When she’d got out of hospital everyone else seemed to tiptoe around her as if one wrong word or a too-tight cuddle might alter her sinus rhythm.
‘She’s got more Christmas drinks and nibbles events lined up than Michael Bublé has records played on Kensington FM this time of year,’ Keeley admitted with a sigh. ‘My dad says she’s burying her head in tinsel-wrapped festivities and hobbies so she doesn’t have to think. You know, about Bea and everything. Well, mainly about Bea.’
‘And what do you think?’ Rach asked.
‘I think if I don’t move out of home soon I’m probably going to go mad… or set fire to something… or go mad… or eat something really really bad but really really delicious in front of her… like a Walls Viennetta… with my fingers.’
Keeley stirred a spoon in the coffee mugs and handed Rach’s over to her. ‘Christmas isn’t the right time to think about moving though, is it?’ she breathed. But when would be the right time? Currently, she knew deep down, she was staying at home because her parents needed her to… or Lizzie did, at least. Their whole lives had been turned upside down after Bea’s death and, as well as managing the loss of a child, they had put everything on hold to nurse Keeley back to health. Lizzie had even taken early retirement. Hence the need for all those hobbies…
‘Are there two sugars in here?’ Rach queried, holding her mug aloft.
‘Yes, to go with those chocolates you’ve eaten from the advent calendar.’ Keeley took a sip of her drink. ‘You do know it isn’t even December yet.’
‘You do know it’s not my advent calendar,’ Rach replied, grinning. ‘It’s Oz’s. I told him the cleaner’s daughter is nicking them.’
‘Rach!’
‘Oh God,’ Rach said, leaping forward and putting her coffee down on the worktop. ‘Have we got any kitchen roll?’
‘I… don’t know.’
‘Don’t panic,’ Rach said. ‘It’ll be fine.’ She removed Keeley’s mug from her hands and set that down too. ‘I’m sure it won’t stain.’
‘What?’ Keeley looked down at her hands to discover they were both coated in dark brown. ‘Rach! Is this hair colour?’
‘Well, you went all hair-grabby when I told you about Mr Peterson. You probably had palm-sweat and I said don’t get it moist. Come on, we’ll go to the loo and I’ll sort it out. Just don’t touch anything on the way.’ She took Keeley’s arm.
‘What do you mean you’re sure it won’t stain? It’s stained my hair! It has all the capabilities of staining! Staining is its sole USP!’
‘Take a deep breath,’ Rach ordered. ‘Think of that Viennetta. I might even buy it for you.’