Ah, he says. What he wants now is a polite way to leave the shop as quickly as possible. Goodness only knows what Jules has said about him, for his name to stick so in this stranger’s mind.

Oh, I know exactly what you should get for Jules, says the woman. This one. She leads Logan over to a landscape in the corner. She dropped in to see me last week, couldn’t keep her eyes off it.

The landscape – a peaceful enough depiction of a forest glade in acrylics – is dominated by a foreground of real barbed wire. He should feel grateful, he thinks, as he watches the woman swaddle the picture in several layers of bubble wrap. But he feels nothing.

On Christmas Eve a storm rattles in out of Russia; a bitter wind in the mood for breaking things. Logan is sleeping well now, thanks to his prescription, but the gale’s howl keeps his wife wide-eyed and worrying that tiles will blow off the roof or worse, that some trick of the wind down the flue will snuff out the Rayburn. In the morning, she finds it cold. An oil-filed monstrosity that she insisted upon, it cannot be relit except by an expert; an expert who cannot be called out on Christmas Day. Jules is standing at the fridge in tears, staring at the clammy, featherless breast of the Gressingham duck she had planned to roast with thyme and cranberries. A comforting touch on the shoulder only makes her shake him off angrily. Christmas is ruined. Later, calmer, she is ringing around her village friends trying to borrow a microwave. No chance, Tom says, overhearing. Cancer scare, remember? When she finally embraces defeat, Logan breaks out the alcohol. This is how they will jolly themselves along and make the best of it.

At least you won’t have to cook, he says, filling her glass.

I wanted to cook, she says.

Their gift-giving is haunted by the spirit of an uncookable dinner. Tom opens his envelope and nods. Nom, he says. When Jules unwraps her final present she stares at it for a long time.

She said you couldn’t keep your eyes off it, Logan explains.

Marjory?

Yes. I guess. If that’s the woman’s name.

She is certainly staring and staring at it.

What’s that? Tom asks her.

A picture, she says.

Of?

She hands it over, like she doesn’t have words for it.

Barbed wire, says Tom. Nom.

‌Things

There are things to be done. Words to be dispatched to the battlefronts.