My knees definitely feel weaker than they should. ‘You pretend to be all sweet and charming but you know exactly what you’re doing, don’t you?’

He pulls back and grins at me. ‘If you look over at the biscuit stall now, Fergus is desperate to tell Fiona about this. He’s fizzing so much that it looks like he’s just eaten a bathbomb. If I did what I want to do right now, we’d be calling an ambulance for the pair of them.’

Thankfully someone else comes over to ask if we’ve got any smaller versions of the tree in the entrance, and Noel slips smoothly into his well-practised chatter about Peppermint firs and the benefits of them, showing off our three-foot and four-foot tall specimens, but the man doesn’t need any persuasion as he hands over the money and walks away with a three-footer.

***

By the time of the judging, the supply of trees is seriously diminished and so is my pile of business cards because I’ve been handing them out all morning due to the amount of enquiries we’ve had about when we open. Noel’s been in and out all morning, carrying the purchased trees to cars, taking addresses for delivery later, and generally being charming and so knowledgeable when talking about Christmas trees that customers start to glaze over and agree to buy anything he suggests. Every inch of me wants to throw my arms around him and smother his gorgeous face in kisses because he makes every aspect of my life seem brighter. I still can’t believe how many Christmas trees we’ve sold. Noel suggested bringing more and I said no, envisioning piles of unwanted trees dying where they stand because it’s barely the last week of November and I thought it might still be too early, and now I’m wishing I’d taken his advice. The Peppermint firs have already sold out, there’s one lonely-looking Blue spruce and a couple of Nordmann firs left, and that’s it. The mistletoe bunches are long gone and the wreaths sold out within the first hour. People have even asked if they can buy the decorated display trees as they are, to which Noel has smoothly responded by handing them a business card and telling them we might have some leftover peppermint-themed tinsel at the farm and to pop by when it opens next weekend.

It’s lunchtime when a majority of the schoolchildren in Aberdeenshire are herded into some form of order by their teachers at the front of the market, ballot papers and pencils clutched in little hands as every child marks their favourite tree and posts their paper into a red postbox usually reserved for letters to Santa. Their laughter and chatter reaches every corner of the market, and the exhilaration is clear to see on their faces.