Chapter 1: Pre-Christmas Prep

“Hi, Sati, it’s me, Jen.” I said to my best friend over the phone. Yes, mobile phones do work at the North Pole, in fact they are crystal clear. Don’t ask me how they work from a different dimension where Santa and his helpers live, trust me, they just do. Junior probably knows, the sweetheart knows everything, I’m just not that technically minded, but at least he still finds me cute (thank you, St Nick!)

“I know it’s you,” replied my best friend Sati at the other end of the line, “you come up as ‘Jen’ on my phone screen, having recently changed it from ‘Jenna’”.

This is embarrassing. All the while I lived in London I thought my given name was lame and boring so I got everyone new I met to call me “Jenna”. My full name is Jennifer, and it was always Jenny at school or contracted down to plain Jen at home and I hated my name. I felt it was so common and boring. OK. That’s what I thought in my late teens when, full of adventure and self-confidence, I left home to make my fortune in London and told everyone that my name was Jenna. As a name it was different, a little more uncommon and more important it was my choice what people called me, no-one else’s.

I was going to make my fortune in London, but then I met my abusive boyfriend Scott, who systematically destroyed any self-confidence I started out with. I sank through a quicksand series of boring dead-end jobs and ended up in telesales, single, lonely, boyfriendless, lacking in confidence and barely able to afford my high rent studio flat while doing a job that I hated.

I even lied to Mum about my loneliness, not admitting that I had dumped serial womaniser Scott because I had found irrefutable proof of his infidelity. I was ashamed that I couldn’t hold onto my boyfriend after an 8-year relationship with never a hint of marriage, so I lied to my mother and invented a fictitious boyfriend. My life was such a mess.

All through my London experience, Sati was my lifesaver, she was the only light in my existence in Scott’s overbearing shadow. She’s older than me, early forties I should think, married to a general practitioner doctor, Sanjay, who’s a really lovely bloke, full of sweet innocent self-deprecating charm. As for their kids, ranging from 15 to19, they just make me dizzy with their driven energy and focus, the way they take on life as a challenge that they can meet as equals at least: the eldest is starting college, medical school, because he wants to follow his dad as a doctor, the middle girl is determined to be a vet and really into biodiversity, while the youngest is a mathematical genius and will probably be an Oxbridge professor in his twenties and a Nobel winner eventually.

Sati (my mangled shortening of her Indian name, which she cheerfully answers to) has a business degree and could easily get a decent paying career job, but she is all about family and telesales was something she could do standing on her head, while flexibly managing her working hours, to maximise her family time, which she valued way above money and personal prestige.

She’s bright, funny, wise beyond her years and was more than a second Mum to me, she’s my very best friend. I tell her everything, even how I lied to my Mum, and she told me for years to leave Scott, he was bad for me, but I simply can’t tell her anything important about Junior.

I’ve tried to, almost as soon as I fell in love with Junior, but the Magic of Christmas must be observed and the words just wouldn’t come out. I tried writing a letter, voice mail, email, Facebook Messenger and nothing worked, and will never work. Nobody will know the Secrets of Christmas, otherwise the Magic of Christmas will die and the Saturnalians will get their selfish indulgent festival back. That is not happening on Junior and my watch! You are only reading this book because it was completely written by me in our log cabin at the North Pole and will never leave the North Pole Library (without a proper North Pole Library Card anyway).

“I want to invite my family to an early Christmas celebration,” I told Sati, “a month before Christmas for two or three days of a weekend, because Junior and I will be away for a whole month over the Christmas period with Junior’s parents, learning how to run their business.”

“Is that a sort of insurance, in case something like an emergency happens to your in-laws?” Sati replied.

“Something like that. I mean, eventually, and we hope that won’t be for many more years, as their only son Junior will be taking over his parents’ business one day. It is something I have to expect to take on. However, I’ve never missed a family Christmas before, so I want to invite you, your family, and all of my family to this long weekend. My folk have all been to my in-laws before but you never have. So, in preparation for this celebratory weekend, to ensure that you don’t feel out of it, if you do agree to join us for the Christmas celebration, I would like just you and your family to come stay with us for a more relaxed weekend two weeks beforehand. Please say you’ll come?” I pleaded to Sati, “Please?”

“Your whole family coming? You sure your in-laws will have room for the five of us as well?”

“Well, it’s not at their residence as such, but we’ve just spent the weekend cleaning up a group of cottages on Junior’s parents’ place.”

“Does this mean that we’ll finally meet your fabulously wealthy and highly secretive in-laws at last, Jen?”

“They are not fabulously wealthy, Sati.”

“They own planes and fabulous executive jets and now they happen to have a few spare cottages dotted about their country estate, already in a vacant state for passing guests of the daughter-in-law that you told me they don’t particularly like. So will we be able to meet them on this trip?”

“Well, probably, yes I’m sure that they will be around, although not staying with us as we will be on the very edge of their property,” I said, “The rest of the family have met them before, of course, last Christmas, but if you come we’ll introduce you to them, or they may even grant you an audience of sorts, they are very formal. Anyway, they are not really fabulously wealthy, it’s just that need all that expensive stuff for their logistics business. We use trucks for our customers’ deliveries, they fly literally everywhere in executive jets for theirs. They have a much bigger operation and many more workers than we could possibly find work for. That’s all I can say on the subject.”