Chapter 20: chapter eighteen

e i g h t e e n

*

There have been plenty of times over the last thirty-six hours that I could have spilled my heart to Casper but every time I’ve got close, I’ve ended up chickening out. I could have told him over supper on Thursday after the ice skating; I could have told him later that night when we watched old episodes of Mock the Week, sharing a sofa and the bottle of Pinot. But I didn’t.

Friday brought a ton of opportunities, none of which I took: at breakfast or on the way to Java Tea; when I was the only customer there for the last thirty minutes; when we got an Indian takeaway and watched Notting Hill. Not a Christmas film, no, but I reckon if he can stomach that, then he can handle Love, Actually.

Now it’s been a day and a half and I haven’t mentioned it, not even on any of the three occasions that he’s asked what’s on my mind. Each time, I’ve deflected or started talking festive to stop me from blurting out that he is on my mind, that I’m driving myself crazy liking him.

Soon, it’ll have been two days since I first decided to break the news, because we need to leave in ninety minutes for him to get to work on time. Today’s his final shift of the year, and then we’re going to be spending even more time together, and it will be unbearable if this is all I can think about. I’ve been totally blindsided by this crush. For four years, Casper’s been my friend. My very cute friend. And then, the moment we’re sharing a house, I have to go and make it weird by liking him.

It’s bloody freezing today. That’s true for every winter day in Saint Wendelin, from November to March, but today I feel exceptionally cold when I wake up. My first panicked thought is that I’m coming down with something, the chill a precursor to some kind of bug that will ruin Christmas, until I realise that even in my bedroom, my breath is fogging up. That’s new.

It’s a struggle to get out of bed when it’s so cold in here, but I need to figure out what’s wrong. I’m fairly certain I already know: for it to be so cold inside, the boiler must be kaput and therefore my central heating is out of order, because I usually keep the house at a toasty twenty degrees from seven at night until eight in the morning but right now, I’m not sure it’s even breaking zero.

I’m wrapped in a fluffy blanket over my onesie, thick socks on my feet, when I finally make it downstairs and shuffle over to the utility closet beneath the stairs. But it’s already open; I can already see the dead pilot light and I can hear that it’s doing nothing.

“I think the boiler’s fucked,” Casper says, emerging from the kitchen with a slice of slightly-burnt toast in his hand. He’s wearing two jumpers and a beanie underneath his hood, and he appears to have found a pair of my furry slippers, bright pink boots that clash with dark orange tracksuit bottoms.

“Ugh,” is all I can articulate right now. “I’ll call the company, see if we can get someone out.”

Casper presses his lips into a thin line. “Not sure that’s gonna be possible, Bee.” He steps past me to the sitting room window, hooking the curtain back with his little finger.

All I see is white. There’s no definition, no way to tell the sky from the trees, the shrubs from the road. It’s all just ... white. Coated in a blanket of fresh snow. Several blankets. Blindingly white and crisp, so clean it hurts to look at, and it looks deep.

“Holy shit,” I whisper to myself, joining Casper right in front of the frosty pane. The only hint of colour outside comes from the pair of rotund robins flitting from snowy tree to tree, probably looking for something, anything, to eat.

“There was a snowstorm last night.” Casper crunches his toast. “Apparently most of Saint Wendelin got two to three feet. Total chaos.”

“Whoa. What about work? Are you going? Are we snowed in?” I put my hand against the cold glass, scanning what little I can see. My car is covered, only the wing mirrors poking out, and the snow seems to come almost halfway up the front door. It wouldn’t be impossible to get out of the house, but we wouldn’t get much further. The roads are unploughed.

“Julio called. He and Gloria can’t get it, and town will be dead today anyway, so he’s not opening the cafe.” He bumps his hip against mine. “No escaping me today, I’m afraid. No escaping this house. We’re a wee bit trapped.”

“Fuck,” I mutter. “And it’s so. Fucking. Cold.”

This is a sign from the universe, I decide. Some cosmic intervention is forcing us together, locking us in the house to taunt me for not having spoken to him yet. It feels inevitable. Inescapable. A huge balloon floating above us, waiting for me to pop it and let my feelings rain down on Casper when neither of us can run away and hide. It’s either an awful, horrendous idea, or the only way to do it.

If only I could decide. If only I could see the outcome of either option and know which path to take.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a power cut at some point,” Casper says. “Fancy a coffee, take advantage of electricity while we still can?” He pushes off his hood, his beanie sitting crooked on his head underneath, and finishes the last bite of toast. “Might have to use the kettle to fill the bath if I can’t get warm. Coffee’s the first port of call.”

“Coffee, blankets, and fire. The holy trinity,” I say. “We can get the sitting room up to warmth if we get a fire going, and I have an electric heater in the conservatory.”

He perks up at that and disappears into the conservatory, returning a moment later with a triumphant grin and his arms wrapped around the heater, and he wastes no time in plugging it in. There’s an immediate blast of heat and he stands in front of it, arms spread.

“This is what I’m talking about.”

Once the kettle has boiled, we both have coffee and the kitchen door is firmly shut to keep the warmth in the sitting room. It looks like we’re going to be quarantined in here today, maybe tomorrow too if the roads can’t be cleared – my little street is hardly a priority, a country road that leads towards the hills that surround us. No better time to finally finish the last of my Christmas card considering Christmas is now only four days away.

Most of them are done and sent already, a job I made sure to get done yesterday; the only ones left are the ones I plan to hand deliver, if I can ever get out of the house.

“Could you pass me that list?” I ask Casper, who’s sitting in front of the fire I’ve built, stoking it with a poker and throwing scraps of paper and wood to the flames.

“This your Christmas hit list?” he asks, glancing down the list of names. “The Cohens; the Levis; the Abdellas; the Muhammads ... Beth, do we need to have a talk? Just because they probably don’t celebrate Christmas doesn’t mean you need to stick them on a list.”

“It’s my Christmas card list, you dickhead,” I say with a laugh.

“Why aren’t the Boutayebs on your list?” He pouts and passes it over.

“Because you’re the only Boutayeb I know, and you’re the polar opposite of the embodiment of Christmas.” Flipping to a new page, I list each family I haven’t done cards for yet, and test my memory with every family member beneath it. The Cohens are Eli and Rebecca and their children, Rachel and Hannah. The Levis are Sarah, Abby, Gabriel, and their mum, Emily. The Abdellas are Khalil and Hania; the Muhammads are Hafsah and Amir, and their children, Hassan, Nur, Maryam and Ali. Also on the list are the four Campbells – Emmy, Ally, Perry and Pip – and their parents, and three school friends who, like, me, haven’t left Saint Wendelin: Imogen Carter; Richard Jakes, and Isobel Deacon.

I have a lot of cards left to write. When I was younger – and to this day, really – I got so excited any time there was post for me, especially around Christmas, and I hated that every Christmas card was addressed to the Kings. Or to Debbie and Dustin and the kids. The Levis, the Abdellas and the Muhammads all have young children, and I have cards for all of them, even if none of them celebrate the holidays.

I’m cutting it a bit fine with the Cohens and the Levis. Hanukkah starts tomorrow. Shit. Having Casper around has thrown me off my usual organisational mojo: ordinarily, I have everything done by the eighteenth at the latest, or earlier if Hanukkah requires it. Last year it started on the second of December, so I made sure I had my cards in first class post on the twenty-ninth of November. This year I’ve been scatty.

“Need a hand?” Casper asks when he sees all the names I’ve written down. “I have neat writing, if you want me to do some for you?”

I give him a wary look. “Can I trust you to do something Christmassy and not sabotage it?”

“Honestly offended you’d even think that.” He pushes out his bottom lip.

“Come on, Cas. Do you blame me? Grinches gotta grinch, right?”

He laughs at that. “I can show you a little trick, if you really wanna impress the Abdellas and the Muhammads. Hania’s my mum’s best friend and Amir works with my dad.”

“What’s your trick?”

“I know that they’re both Arabic-speaking families,” he says, and he places a hand over his heart when he adds, “I just so happen to speak Arabic too.” He picks up a pen and twirls it around his fingers. “I can show you how to write happy holidays, if you want.”

This is really not helping my crush. It’s getting bigger and bigger. “I had no idea you spoke Arabic!”

“Allughat alearabiat hi lighti alththania,” he says, holding my gaze. “It’s my second language.” He grins at my expression, a mixture of surprise and – I hope he can’t see – intense attraction. “I’m full of surprises. I’m like a ... what are they called? Oh! A matryoshka doll! I’m a matryoshka doll. Open me up and you’ll see there are many more Caspers inside me.”

“Show me.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “What? You want me to ... show you inside of me?”

“Oh my god! No!” I splutter and shake my head, an itchy red blush spreading down my chest. “I meant show me how to write happy holidays in Arabic.”

“Oh.” His face clears when he laughs. “That’s a lot easier.”

He comes to sit next to me on the sofa, his fire-warmed thigh against mine, and leans forward to write slowly and carefully on a fresh page of my notebook. “’Iijazat saeida,” he murmurs as he uses my biro like a paintbrush in an elegant hand.

اجازة سعيدة

It looks beautiful, and I have no idea if I’ll be able to replicate it. I’m staring at the flowing script that, to my eyes, looks more like art than language, and when I look up, Casper’s eyes are fixed on me.

“Simple,” he says with a smile.

“Not so simple.”

He chuckles. “Want me to write that in all the cards for the Abdellas and the Muhammads?”

“I think that might be for the best,” I say, my gaze drawn back to the Arabic words. “Are you fluent?”

“Mmhmm. My parents really wanted my sister and me to be bilingual,” he says. “Dad moved to London from Morocco when he was ten and Mum was born in London, but her parents had just moved from Morocco and they didn’t speak a word of English, so she didn’t learn it until she started school.” He opens the first card in a stack I push his way and copies out the script. “I speak it better than I write it.”

“Well, as long as that definitely says happy holidays and not, like, fuck you and your family.”

He barks a laugh. “I’m not that much of a dick. I would never,” he says, effortlessly writing from right to left without smudging the ink. While he’s concentrating, I connect my phone to the Bluetooth speaker and load up my Christmas playlist, and he must be in the zone because he doesn’t even flinch when Santa Baby starts playing.

I didn’t choose that song. I hit shuffle. But Kylie’s breathy, sexy voice only adds to the atmosphere, and to the message from the universe telling me to just tell Casper already, damn it.

I take the cards Casper’s finished with and fill in the rest. It’s easy, companionable work, passing cards between us until there are none left for him to write in. The song changes to White Christmas, and it’s halfway through before I realise that – holy fuck – Casper is humming along.

I stop writing cards and I stare at him. A few seconds drift by before he feels my eyes on him and he looks up, and he turns his hum into a cough.

“Um, want me to draw a kick-ass menorah in the Hanukkah cards? I can try my hand at a dreidel, too, if you want?”

“You were humming along.”

“That isn’t an indicator of appreciation. Just catchiness,” he says.

“Sure.” I look away, shaking my head at him as I write out a card for Rachel Cohen. I have a few more than I need, so I pass him a blank one. “Okay, go on then. Show me your best dreidel.”

“Can I use a reference image?”

“Nope.”

“Then this is going to be bad,” he says, laughing as he puts pen to paper.

While he’s trying to figure out what a dreidel looks like, I say, “Say something in Arabic.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Um ... tell me your name.”

With a grin, Casper says, “’Ana rajul hakim.”

“None of that sounded remotely like Casper.” I narrow my eyes at him. “What did you just say? I bet it was rude.”

His grin widens. “I said that I’m a wise man. Seeing as, you know, you call me that more than you call me Casper these days. Actually, you call me grinch more than anything, but I don’t know the Arabic for that.”

“Say something else.”

“This turning you on?” He wiggles his eyebrows at me.

Yes, actually, I think. “It just sounds really cool. I’m in awe of you, speaking two languages.”

“I could say anything and tell you it means anything and you’ll have no fucking clue.”

“You’re not wrong there.”

Tittering to himself, he gives up on the dreidel for now and he purses his lips, and he gives me his full attention when he says, “’Ant tajealni mithl eid almilad.”

“What does that mean?”

He taps his nose.

“Tell me!”

“Nope. That wasn’t part of the deal. You told me to say something in Arabic. You didn’t tell me to tell you something that I’ll then translate.”

“Cas. What’d you say?”

He stands up and collects our empty mugs, looping both handles onto one finger, and he puts his hand on my shoulder. “That’s for me to know, Jerusalem, and you to probably never find out.”

“Oh my god. Fuck you,” I say, but I’m laughing. I should’ve recorded it. I sneak my phone into my hand and say, “Say it again.”

Casper gives me a withering look. “So you can do a speech to text translation? I don’t think so.” He backs into the kitchen with a wicked smile on his lips. “I’ll tell you when you learn Arabic. In the meantime, teshrab qahwah?”

At my despondency, he laughs and shakes the mugs at me. “Want a coffee?”

“Oh. Yes. That’d be great, thanks.”

He’s gone a couple of minutes, enough time for me to slot cards into the envelopes with matching names on the front. Hand delivery means I don’t need to write out everyone’s address, so it doesn’t take long to end up with a few piles. I’m not done with the Levis yet, and I haven’t started on the Campbells. They get the most ridiculously Christmassy cards I could find, and Emmy and Ally get a slightly more personal message – they are a couple of actual friends, as rare as that may seem, and in both of their cards, I tell them we must go for a drink soon and catch up.

Casper returns with two mugs and a packet of biscuits. “I don’t think we’re going to be going anywhere soon. Thank fuck we did that shop yesterday – the cupboards were getting a bit boracic. We’d have ended up eating each other after a day.”

I’m not sure he realises what that sounded like. It throws a whole host of images into my head that I’d rather not deal with right now.

“’Ana ‘ahbik,” he says when he hands me my coffee and sits down next to me, the dip in the sofa easing us together.

“Let me guess. That means I’ve pissed in your coffee.”

He laughs. “Something like that. Drink up.”

I take a sip. It's delicious. I'm fairly certain he hasn't pissed in it.

Next to me, Casper flexes his hands and looks around the room, his eyes glossing over my tree and my decorations and my lights, and right when I think he's about to say something rude, he says, "D'you fancy a game of Monopoly?"

"Monopoly? That takes hours!"

He shrugs. "We've got nowhere to be and a whole day to fill. Do you have Monopoly?"

"I do, as it happens." I think for a moment, remembering the last time I played that game with my family and my sister nearly lost an eye. "Okay. As soon as these cards are done, you're on."

*

How'd you like that one? I imagine there are some keen Google translaters out there . . .