‘The seasonal workers will be needed in the fields to advise customers and cut and carry their trees for them. I think you’re going to be a lot busier than you think you are. You saw the pumpkin patch at Halloween.’

I did. I watched the pumpkin patch throughout the last two weeks of October, and Noel was busy. Cars coming and going all day and children running around enjoying themselves, even the shouts of joy from his corn maze filtered across to me as I weeded the driveway and dug over the edges of the lane for display trees, but he sells his pumpkins at fifty pence each. Christmas trees are much more expensive, and much bigger and more difficult to transport and recycle afterwards. But on the other hand, almost all of my postcards and flyers have gone and the stallholders at the market have requested more, so I just hope she’s right.

It feels like it’s all starting to come together, but none of it will matter if customers don’t come. It needs to be a good season. Because I don’t know what I’m going to do if it’s not.

Chapter 12

‘Not like that, like this.’

‘Are those your favourite words or what?’ I snap, standing upright to wipe the sweat dripping off my forehead again. It’s three weeks into November now, it’s far too cold to be sweating this much.

Noel grins, his forehead not glistening even slightly, the fit bugger. Another Norway spruce falls effortlessly into his hand and he lays it down gently.

I crouch down and wriggle around the saw that I’ve got stuck in the trunk. Again. My hands stick to the handle because I’m covered in sap. Again.

He stomps over, picks up my gloves from the ground and hands them to me, then he kneels and removes my saw with ease and pats the earth beside him.

It’s drizzling again and the earth is damp, but I reluctantly kneel down and silently apologise to yet another pair of jeans for ruining them. He hands the saw back to me and taps the trunk above the awful hacking half-cut I’ve just made. ‘Try again here, above the damaged bit so you cut it off.’