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That just left a couple of his oldest friends that he bought presents for. The Christmas market was busy, despite the cold, with steam rising from carts selling chestnuts and hot chocolate and mulled wine. Joel took a deep breath of all the scents mixing together, and didn’t even care that his nose was so cold it had turned pink.
The market stalls were crammed in close together, little wooden sheds with their fronts decorated with a glittering array of trinkets. Joel liked shopping in places like this far more than sterile, clinical shopping malls. He picked up a wool scarf for Hannah in a rather fetching grey and pink tartan and a pair of drop pearl earrings for Millie, since earrings were her thing. He very much appreciated that the stall holders at this market would wrap things up in shiny paper, meaning one less job for him.
With that chore done, Joel looped back around the market, and found himself pausing in front of a stall selling pet toys. Which was ridiculous, because he didn’t have a pet.
Nick has a pet, a little voice whispered in his ear.
There were all sorts of practical things: food bowls, collars, chew toys for dogs and feathery toys for cats, but Joel was drawn to a small stuffed reindeer with a red bell around its neck. He picked it up and turned over a handwritten tag looped around the reindeer’s middle that notedcatnip.
“Three fifty, love,” the stall owner said, and Joel fumbled in his pocket for the right change, tucking the reindeer toy into one of his other shopping bags.
When all of that was done, and his presents were wrapped and tucked under the tree, Joel spent the first two days of his Christmas break wearing nothing but pyjamas and refusing to leave the cottage—not for his mother, who wanted to do some last minute shopping, or any of the invitations he’d received to go out for a quick drink. All of that could wait until next week.
It had been a long year. He just wanted to sit on the sofa and watchTheMuppet Christmas Carolin peace.
Mid-afternoon on his third day of being—in his mother’s words—alazy toad, there was a knock on the door. Joel was working his way through a large bag of turkey and stuffing flavoured crisps and was very tempted not to answer… if his living room wasn’t lit up with hundreds of twinkling lights, making it very clear he was at home, he might have gotten away with ignoring it.
The knock came again.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he grouched, hauling himself to his feet.
He opened the door to Nick.
“Oh,” he said.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Nick rubbed at his red nose with a gloved hand. “But we need as many people as possible.”
“What happened?” Joel asked, stretching to look over Nick’s shoulder, only vaguely aware that he was wearing pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt showing the main characters from Star Wars carol-singing.
“The reindeer escaped. Or someone stole them, we’re not sure yet.”
“The reindeer?”
He thought of the toy he’d bought on a whim, and his stomachswooshed.
“I have a herd,” Nick said. “Of reindeer. They’ve been living in a field down the road.” He jerked his thumb at a now empty field.
“I remember. I thought they were being used for the events in town.”
“They are. I don’t know what happened yet, but as of lunchtime, someone noticed that they’re all gone.”
“And you’re putting together a search party?”
Nick nodded. “Can you help?”
Joel glanced down at his outfit. “Give me five minutes?”
“Of course.”
He shut the door in Nick’s face, really not wanting Nick to see into the disaster zone of his living room, and jogged upstairs to get changed.
If there was an opportunity for Nick to see him in his pyjamas, Joel had hoped that it would have been in slightly better circumstances. Not when he still had crisp crumbs all down his front.
He yanked a jumper on over the top of his T-shirt, swapped his pyjama bottoms for loose, warm joggers and his slippers for thick socks and his boots. That only took a moment, then he stumbled into the bathroom to pee, wash his face, and lament that he hadn’t bothered to shave and his stubble had come in all patchy.
Oh well.
When he got outside, a small group of people had gathered at the end of the road near the war memorial. They were locals; Joel recognised the a handful of teenagers and small children holding their parents’ hands scattered amongst the older residents bundled up against the cold.
