Christmas Shopaholic(49)

“No, it’s fine,” says Luke. “It’s fine. Nice girl,” he adds thoughtfully, and before I can stop them, my hackles rise again.

Nice girl? Or nice flirting?

But then I chide myself. I mustn’t be suspicious. If I can be friendly with Craig, Luke can be friendly with Nadine, even though her lips look like pillows. Exactly.





       From: [email protected]

    To: Becky Brandon

    Subject: YOUR ORDER 7654




Dear Mrs. Brandon:

    Re: YOUR ORDER 7654

    Unfortunately, the following items are out of stock. Your card has been refunded.

                                   Product SILVER LLAMA DECORATION

                 Quantity 6



    Yours sincerely,

    Customer Services Team





CHRISTMASCOMPARE.COM?


                              SUPPLIER





PRODUCT





PRICE





AVAILABILITY




               Decorationstogo.co.uk

                SILVER LLAMA ORNAMENT

                ￡6.99

                SOLD OUT


This attractive decoration flaunts silver glitter hair and pink “world peace” logo.

               Treesandtoppers.co.uk

                DECORATION

                ￡5.99

                UNAVAILABLE


Make your tree pop with this cute llama!

               ACuratedChristmas.co.uk

                LLAMA “WORLD PEACE” DECORATION

                ￡10.99

                DUE 26 WEEKS


Stylish tree ornament in silver and pink with silver ribbon loop.





CHATS





You created group “CHRISTMAS!”


   Christmas!


Becky

Hi, everyone! I’ve started a WhatsApp group to organize Christmas! Any ideas or requests, let me know! Becky xxx





Janice

Love, I meant to say at brunch, Christmas isn’t Christmas for us without Quality Street.





Martin

I like Matchmakers. The orange ones.





Suze

Tarkie loves the chocolates that look like shells—what are they called again?





Jess

I would like to request fair-trade chocolates only, or perhaps a healthier substitute such as carob.





Suze

Hey, Bex, there are chili-pepper fairy lights in Tesco. You should get those!





Janice

There are banana ones in Sainsbury’s.





Martin

What’s a banana got to do with Christmas????





Mum

Dad says, why not have an avocado theme? It’s very “now.” We’ve just bought avocado fairy lights for our gin-and-cactus social evening!!!!!





Janice

What’s a gin-and-cactus evening?





Mum

You drink gin and show your cactuses. Everyone does it in Shoreditch, love.





Janice

I’m sure they do all kinds of things in Shoreditch.





Jess

Fairy lights are problematic.





OK, so the Christmas WhatsApp group might have been a mistake.

I’ve had 134 notifications and we only began last night. I can’t nearly keep track of all the millions of suggestions everyone’s making. In about half an hour we went from best chocolates to best mince pies to best Christmas films to best version of A Christmas Carol.

(The Muppets, obviously. Dad doesn’t agree—but he can’t get over the fact that it’s Muppets, which he calls “puppets.” That was, like, ten messages right there.)