A Winter Flame (3 page)

Young Phoebe May Tinker was seven going on forty-five. She was an intense child with the big, wide inquisitive eyes of an old wise owl and nothing got past her. She was a mini-me of her
ridiculously intelligent father, Rupert, whom Alison had met at Oxford University when she was studying classics and Rupert was studying something scientificky and genius-sounding like
‘advanced nuclear physics and chemical extra science’. Alison was now expecting a boy and Eve had no doubt that he would emerge into the world as flame-haired as his parents and
correcting Einstein’s theories.

But Phoebe, funny little dot that she was, was also a darling of the highest order, and she was one of the very few people that always managed to make Eve smile. Eve loved the feel of her little
hand seeking out her larger one and finding security there. She had always wanted children one day. Phoebe, along with Alison’s unborn son, were going to be the closest she ever got to that
ambition being fulfilled.

Not many of the parents were smiling much, having paid out forty pounds per head for the ‘Lapland Experience’. Well, if this was anything like Lapland, no wonder Santa disappeared
for 364 days of the year; he was probably in therapy. Eve was now panicking that she might have scarred Phoebe for life with this day out.

The ticket man at the front door couldn’t have smiled less if he’d tried. His ‘Welcome to White Christmas’ was delivered with as much cheer as a funeral director
commiserating with relatives of the deceased. He would have been superb had this been ‘Halloween World’ with his gaunt, pale, Hammer Horror face.

The ‘snow-covered paths’ were grey-white painted concrete. A very noisy snow machine was spitting out snowflakes from behind the tallest tree in a copse of plastic fir trees. At
least they were supposed to be snowflakes – but in actual fact were a 50/50 split between ice shrapnel and splashes of water. An engineer in a bright orange suit could clearly be seen trying
to adjust it, and had been heard issuing profanities until one of the elves – a six-foot youth whose green trouser hems had long divorced from his ankles – disappeared behind the tree
and was heard telling old Tango-suit to watch his fucking language.

‘Rudolf’s pen’ housed a reindeer with a red flashing nose who was turning his head mechanically from side to side as if in disbelief. Even he was embarrassed to be there and
was going to have serious talks with his agent – and he was plastic.

Eve and Phoebe pootled off for an early lunch. The ‘Elf Café’ made the refectory from Oliver Twist look like The Ivy. The look aimed for was ‘rustic’, the look
achieved was ‘workhouse’. The menu was ‘alternative-delicious’, Eve thought with a delighted smirk: chicken nuggets, chips, hotdogs, cheap-quality beef burgers with or
without cheese . . . Rubbish. There wasn’t a bit of thought or imagination which had been put into it – and yet it was heaving at the gills – even after the slating it had
received in the nationals. Eve’s palms started itching with the anticipation of heavy amounts of profit touching them.

Phoebe bit down on a chicken nugget and chewed it delicately.

‘What do you think?’ asked Eve, giving her a nudge.

‘Do elves really eat chicken nuggets?’ asked Phoebe, her forehead creased with thought. ‘I’d like to think that they do.’

‘I think some of them eat rather a lot of chicken nuggets,’ thought Eve, looking at the gigantically fat elf operating the till. He had fingers like thick pork sausages and a
selection of chins on display.

‘What would you imagine elves eat, Phoebe?’ asked Eve, biting down on a chip.

Phoebe considered the question and Eve could almost hear the cogs turning in the big brain inhabiting that little head.

‘I think lots of soup and nice bread,’ said Phoebe eventually. ‘And Polar Bear pie.’

Eve coughed and nearly choked.

‘Not sure I’d like to eat a nice fluffy polar bear,’ said Eve, hoping to implant some environmental friendliness into the small girl.

‘It wouldn’t be made of polar bears, silly,’ tutted Phoebe. ‘It would be called Polar Bear Pie because it was their favourite.’

‘Ah,’ said Eve. And phew.

‘And lots of ice cream,’ added Phoebe, after some more thought. ‘I think elves would like lots of different flavours of ice cream.’

‘Oh yes, they would, wouldn’t they?’ nodded Eve, thinking,
Bless you Phoebe, you’re saying all the right things.
Who needed to pay marketing consultants when you
had Phoebe May Tinker in your corner? Seeing a theme park through the eyes of a child was the best way forward.

‘And they’d drink snowberry juice,’ said Phoebe, reaching for the tomato ketchup in the sauce-covered plastic bottle.

‘What’s that?’ asked Eve.

‘It’s very cold and white,’ whispered Phoebe, as if imparting a great secret.

Snowberry juice.
Eve liked the sound of snowberry juice. She envisaged something sweet and slushy and – as Phoebe had said – icy cold.

The only ice creams available in the Elf Café were Magnums and Cornettos. Eve thought of her cousin Violet who owned a beautiful little ice-cream parlour in Maltstone. Violet, whom she
hadn’t seen half as much as she should have liked and was going to make up for that. ‘White Christmas’ might have been a disaster, although it pulled in visitors because it had a
certain novelty value, but it really wouldn’t take much to trump it.

Eve’s head was churning with ideas. The theme park didn’t have to be all about Christmas – there was so much more to winter than Santa and elves. And thank goodness for that,
too, because Eve’s brain wouldn’t have been whirring that much over a park full of all that sort of twinkly tat.

The husky ride was closed until further notice, much to Phoebe’s disappointment. They did, however, go into the doggy stables to look at the huskies, two of which were snarling German
Shepherds and vicious enough to have Santa’s leg off as soon as look at him.

‘Let’s go and try Santa again,’ said Eve, hoping to cheer Phoebe up. She had been so looking forward to having a husky ride.

The
Prisoner: Cell Block H
elf was still on sentry duty outside Santa’s grotto – or rather his B&Q shed with some cotton wool balanced precariously on top of it. The queue
was long, but Eve noticed that it was going down quite quickly. As she neared the front, she saw that the shed was divided into two –
two
Santas. How the heck was she going to explain
that one away? Luckily this was Phoebe.

‘I don’t think either of these are the real Santa,’ whispered the little girl, as one of the Santa’s heads popped out of the front door to see how long the queue was.
Underneath the very bad beard and wig ensemble, his dark-brown hair could clearly be seen, and his youthful unlined face.

Blimey, chuckled Eve to herself. I must be getting old if Santa looks young.

The convict-elf eventually directed Phoebe and Eve into the right-hand side of the shed with a flick of her head. Their Santa had a big red nose and make-up on his hands, which didn’t
quite cover up the LOVE and HATE tattoos.

‘Ho ho ho,’ he said, doing the fakest laugh in the world. ‘And what’s your name, little girl?’

Phoebe’s eyes were glued to his nose.

‘My name is Phoebe May Tinker,’ she said. ‘Is your nose real? Do you have high blood pressure?’

Santa spluttered and moved swiftly on. ‘And what am I going to bring you on Christmas Eve?’

Still staring at his veined conk, Phoebe replied, ‘Well, you won’t be bringing me anything, because you’re not Santa, are you? The real one will be bringing me a bike with a
basket and a Snow White princess costume.’

Santa looked mightily relieved to be rescued by another elf making an entrance through the door at the back of his half of the shed holding a camera. This poor elf was plagued with acne and Eve
just hoped that Phoebe didn’t draw attention to it.

‘Your ear’s just fallen off,’ said Phoebe, reaching down to pick up a plastic pointed ear.

‘Cheers,’ said the spotty elf with a heavy sigh. ‘Elves’ ears are always doing that.’

‘Your ear can’t fall off if it’s real. And this one is quite obviously plastic,’ humphed Phoebe, and her unimpressed face showed as she posed for a snap with Santa. The
elf disappeared again to process the photo whilst Santa delved into his sack and pulled out a pink package with ‘Girl – under 10’ written on it. It didn’t take an idiot to
see it was a book, but that was okay because Phoebe loved books. She had ripped off the paper before Santa had even started to say, ‘Put it under your tree at home.’ Her lip curled over
to see that the book was
Thirty Facts You Always Wanted To Know About Aircraft.

‘Oh dear,’ said Santa, baring his teeth. He reached into his sack again and pulled out another book labelled ‘Girl – under 10’. This time he made sure he asked her
to put it under her tree before she opened it. Santa’s cheeks were growing as purple as his nose. There was a vein in his neck throbbing so much that Eve thought they ought to get out before
it exploded.

Eve took Phoebe’s hand and led her out of the back of the shed where the spotty elf with the dodgy ear was waiting for them, holding a photograph of a very unsmiling Phoebe and the
tattooed Santa.

‘That will be five pounds please,’ he said, holding his palm out.

‘Do you eat a lot of chocolate?’ Phoebe asked, staring up at his face.

Oh God, thought Eve. ‘Er, isn’t a photo included in the price?’

‘Ooh no,’ said the elf.

‘It’s okay, I don’t want it, Auntie Eve. He’s not the real Santa,’ said dear Phoebe. But Eve paid up. She wanted this photo very badly. She would put it on her desk
as a reminder of the start of it all – the moment when she realized that Great Aunt Evelyn wasn’t as barmy as she first thought.

As hoped for, Phoebe was totally and utterly unimpressed by Shite Christmas. In the car on the way home, Phoebe was only too happy to give a list of all the things she hated
about it: plastic reindeer rather than real ones, no husky ride, very ugly elves with droppy-off ears. Although she did give the chicken nuggets nine out of ten.

‘Phoebe, if I had a theme park like that, would you help me choose what sort of things I would need?’ asked Eve.

Phoebe’s face lit up as if someone had switched on a 1,000 watt lightbulb behind her eyes. ‘Oh, Aunt Eve, can I? Will you have a reindeer like Comet in the
Santa Claus
films
that pumps?’ And she giggled and made some very impressive farting noises. She was only seven after all.

‘Well, er, not sure about the reindeer,’ Eve brushed over that one quickly. She had seen Aunt Evelyn’s plans for a reindeer enclosure but that wasn’t going to happen.
They would smell and need feeding and cleaning out and all that complicated stuff. Far too high maintenance. And possibly a health and safety hazard too with those antlers. She didn’t want to
get sued because a reindeer had kebabbed a small child.

‘You need ice cream,’ said Phoebe. ‘Lots of ice cream. And chicken nuggets. But you could call them something much more Christmassier, like—’ she mused heavily for
a moment ‘—penguins’ feet.’

‘Great idea,’ Eve encouraged, although she wanted to gag slightly. Maybe they wouldn’t go with that idea either. Phoebe May had a bit of a way to go in marketing yet, but she
was spot on with the ice cream. Eve had made plans to ring her cousin Violet as soon as she got home. Violet was the queen of ice-cream making and it would be a good excuse for a long overdue
catch-up. Once upon a time they had been nigh on inseparable, but since Jonathan had blasted into Eve’s life, turned it upside down and left her so suddenly, Eve had been embarrassingly lax
about seeing her family and her friends. She had been reminded, after visiting Alison, how good it was to talk and have a coffee too – and how little time it took up really. Her business
hadn’t collapsed for taking a few hours off – she could have seen more of Violet and her mother – Auntie Susan – if she had really tried harder.

‘Lots of Christmas trees with sparkly lights and snow,’ continued Phoebe, on a roll now. ‘And nice shops and cakes and elves and a real Santa’s workshop. And mince pies
and rides and white horses.’

‘If I got this right, I could be sitting on an absolute goldmine,’ Eve mused as Phoebe reeled off a list of essentials from polar bears to snowball-fighting arenas. Shite Christmas,
with its smoking elves and Father Christmases not old enough to start shaving was a revoltingly brilliant money-spinner despite being absolute rubbish. So how much revenue would a really good,
top-notch, winter theme park bring in?

Phoebe fell asleep an hour into the journey, exhausted from thinking up all her ideas. Eve’s brain was in overload. Having visited Shite Christmas, she saw first-hand just how much work
was involved in running a theme park, but boy was she excited about getting started.

‘I put it to you, Eve Douglas, that you could do this,’ said that silky, seductive barrister voice in her head. ‘If anyone can, you can.’

And Eve knew that was true. She was a master at organization and covered every base. She had built up a reputation of being a shrewd, resourceful businesswoman who left nothing to chance –
her clients trusted her to do a polished job and she delivered every time.

Eve hadn’t really known what she wanted to do when she left school, so drifted into office jobs and then to a building society where, eight years ago, she took a voluntary secondment into
the Events Coordination department and found her niche in life. When the secondment ended, she knew there was nothing else she wanted to do but more of the same and took a leap of faith by starting
her own events-organizing company. She’d been lucky, as one of her first clients had been let down at the eleventh hour when the organizers of his wife’s fiftieth birthday bash went
bankrupt. Eve found a barge, caterers, comedian and a band, set up a bar and had the boat decorated in pink balloons and bunting all within eighteen hours. That client was delighted – and
very well connected. Bookings began to fill Eve’s diary and recommendation followed recommendation.