Page 6 of The Christmas Competition

Kerr

I SETTLED DOWN at my round kitchen table, staring at my reflection in the patio doors, superimposed over the hints of the shadowy shapes of bushes in my back garden, shifting uncomfortably in my chair as I thought about my new veterinary nurse having some sort of crush on me. Hopefully she’d grow out of it quickly.

I’d never been that great at reading people. And even when I tried, I’d often end up saying the wrong thing. All I was trying to do was be honest, but it would end up sounding blunt. So I’d learned that it was better to keep quiet than put my foot in it.

But then keeping quiet hadn’t done me much good in the end, had it? My ex had often complained I was too quiet and introspective. Apparently showing her how I felt in a subtle manner wasn’t good enough; she wanted big declarations. Particularly in public places—​the mere idea of which gave me palpitations. And my not being able to meet those expectations had characterized me as having “warped emotions” in her eyes.

With a sigh I finished up my dinner, then leaned back and opened my phone for a bit of doomscrolling.

The house felt so quiet these days. But perhaps the scariest thing of all was that I actually missed Dave the dog more than I did my ex. What did that say about me and my warped emotions?

As if by fate, at that exact moment, a photo of my ex and her new boyfriend appeared on my feed. I paused for a moment to look at their smiling faces against the backdrop of a beach—​Loch Morlich, if I wasn’t mistaken. And there in the background, behind Aileen and Drew, was Dave the dog—​happy as a pig in mud—​mid dash along the sand.

It didn’t help matters that Aileen and Drew still lived in Inverglen, and sometimes I’d see them out walking Dave. The dog would always come bounding up to me as if only just remembering that we’d once been best friends.

To be fair, Aileen had offered for me to have Dave every other weekend, but I’d declined. Dave had been Aileen’s dog, though she’d only just gotten him from the shelter when we’d met and made the decision not to change his name from that bestowed upon him by the previous owner. I hadn’t wanted to confuse the poor thing even more by having him at my place part-​time.

In any case, it had seemed kind of fitting that Dave would leave me too.

After all, everyone always leaves in the end.

I scrolled past the photo and conflicting emotions associated with it, and the next thing that caught my eye was a photo of bright Christmas lights on the Inverglen social media page. I started to read the post. “The Inaugural Inverglen Christmas Lights Competition! Do you think your property is the most festive in the land?” I read on to the rest of the details.

I did love Christmas lights. My mum had put them up all around the house every Christmas when I was growing up, and now festive lights reminded me of her. Bright and warm. I smiled as nostalgia flowed in a bittersweet stream through my veins. Christmas after she was gone had been a much darker affair. Dad had never approved of decorations beyond a small, conservatively dressed tree.

Aileen, while happy for some interior decoration, had never wanted to decorate the house exterior. She worried about what people would think if it looked too tacky. But now that she’d left, I could do whatever I wanted, couldn’t I? It’s not like there was anyone who’d mind.

Except maybe Nisa.

I almost groaned out loud at the thought of my overbearing neighbor across the road. I’d inadvertently gotten on the wrong side of Nisa when Aileen and I had moved in a couple of years back, and things had deteriorated quickly after she accused me of something I hadn’t done. Never mind that I’d told her time and time again it wasn’t me—​she was having none of it. Once Nisa Ansari got an idea in her head there was no getting it out, and so in the end, I’d opted to avoid her altogether. We hardly saw each other nowadays.

Nisa and Drew had never decorated their house for Christmas either, likely something stick-up-the-​arse Nisa didn’t approve of. If I decorated mine—​right in her eyeline—​she would no doubt lose it and come marching across to bang on my door and claim some crime against her eyeballs had been committed. That was her MO after all, accusing me of criminal activity. That was why I’d secretly nicknamed her the NCA—​National Crime Agency (it also stood for her full name, which I knew was Nisa Caitlyn Ansari, though she’d still been Arbuthnot at the time; convenient for me that her maiden name also fit my acronym).

One might have thought that our exes getting together could have been a catalyst for us to build bridges, but Nisa had only seemed to double down on the filthy looks she gave me whenever our paths infrequently crossed. No doubt the situation with our exes was probably something else she felt was inexplicably my fault.

The idea of Nisa hammering at my door, her cocoa-​brown eyes flashing as she angrily tossed her wavy chestnut hair over her shoulder, stirred something deep inside me. Something illicit and thrilling.

That was it—​the perfect way to kick-​start my Christmas spirit and provide me with a distraction from all this melancholy. Tomorrow, after my volunteer vet shift at the animal shelter, I was going to stock up on the tackiest and brightest Christmas lights I could find and enter the house-​decorating competition. And the NCA could suck it.

5

Nisa

THE LOCAL GARDEN center was packed full of families, the adults yelling at their small children whenever the wee ones put their sticky fingers on the brightly colored packages sitting on the shelves. Plus a few older couples, shuffling around the wares, either whistling a tuneless ditty or arguing over the whereabouts of the item they wanted.

Chaos. Very festive.

I pushed my trolley into the aisle containing the Christmas decorations and scanned the shelves. The theme I was going for was “the gaudier, the better.” These decorations needed to burn Kerr’s retinas out. They must have headache-​inducing levels of flashing lights. Grumpy Kerr Mur-​der wasn’t going to know what had hit him.

A text from my mum flashed up on my smartwatch.

They’re still emailing about this Felix person! When are you coming round to look at it for me?

Crap. I’d forgotten about that.

I carried on perusing the aisle, making a mental note to reply later. As I picked up a giant inflatable Santa, I pondered whether some of my added vitriol toward Kerr could possibly be down to the fact that his ex, Aileen, was now Drew’s new girlfriend.

In fact, there was no “possible” about it. I had added it to my list of resentments against my neighbor across the street. Because, after all, if he hadn’t been such a grump to live with (which he no doubt was), Aileen wouldn’t have left him and then wouldn’t have taken up with Drew, and then Drew might have come back to me by now.