‘What is going on?’ Manny asked, arriving just in time for whatever it was we were waiting for.
‘Dad’s up to something,’ I said as I slipped my arm through his, teeth chattering through a conciliatory smile. ‘I’m sorry about earlier.’
‘Don’t, I’m the one who should be apologizing,’ he said. ‘Not the sort of Christmas surprise you were after, I’m sure. May it never ever happen again as long as we both shall live.’
‘Amen to that,’ I agreed, leaning into a brief hug. ‘But out of interest, who was it for?’
‘Um, no one?’ he replied, eyes darting around the garden. ‘Look at the size of Dorothy’s rhododendrons! Do they normally grow that big?’
‘Oh my God, have you got a secret boyfriend?’ I gasped, simultaneously outraged and delighted as his eyes widened with panic and a strangled sound escaped his throat.
‘Evening everyone!’
Before I could press him for more details, we were interrupted by my dad, clapping his hands together at the end of the garden and waving his arms at the assembled masses. Never afraid of being the centre of attention, was Steven Baker. It was my worst nightmare, but Dad was never happier than when he was commanding a crowd.
‘Every year Dorothy hosts this lovely open house for us all to come together,’ he started, pausing for a smattering of applause that Dorothy accepted with a bow, her halo almost falling off her head. ‘But this year, I wanted to make it extra special, give us all something to remember, and so I present to you, a very merry Christmas firework display!’
The whole village cheered as Dad stepped out of the way and with great ceremony, held a black trigger high in the air, pressing down on a bright red button as we all cheered.
And nothing happened.
‘This is supposed to set them all off,’ Dad said, stabbing at the button again and again, and again. ‘Bloody thing isn’t working.’
‘Maybe it’s wet?’ Someone called out from the crowd. ‘They might not work in the snow, Steve.’
‘They’d want to work under the Atlantic Ocean for what I paid,’ Dad muttered. ‘Let me have a look at this. As you were, people! Won’t be a tick.’
‘You’re not supposed to go back to lit fireworks, are you?’ Manny said as Dad padded back to inspect his epic display with a torch, shining a pale white beam across the assembled explosives.
‘Bugger me,’ I breathed. ‘It looks like he’s about to declare war on the village.’
I’d never seen so many fireworks in one place. He had rockets, Roman candles, Catherine wheels and at least ten other kinds of firework I’d never even seen before. Right at the very back was a line of six cylindrical devices all linked together by one long fuse, all of them bearing the name ‘Widow Maker’. Not troubling at all.
‘Aunt Bronwyn, where did Uncle Steve get these fireworks?’ Manny asked with concern.
She shrugged, rubbing her hands together before poking around in her pockets for a pair of mismatched gloves. ‘I don’t know, he told me he got some fireworks, I assumed he bought them from the supermarket after Bonfire Night.’
‘I didn’t know Tesco was a demilitarized zone,’ I replied, pulling on Manny’s arm. ‘Come on, we’ve got to help him before he blows himself up. It can’t be safe to have so many explosives this close to Dorothy’s punch. Everyone here has to be at least ninety per cent proof.’
‘What did I miss?’ Oliver asked as he elbowed his way to the front of the crowd, knocking over two toddlers and a planter full of pansies on the way.
‘Dad’s set up enough fireworks to expose the earth’s core,’ I replied as Cerys and the kids joined him. ‘I was simply suggesting we stop him before he blows himself up and takes the entire village with him.’
‘I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,’ Cerys argued before pushing Arthur and Artemis slightly behind her.‘He used to do firework displays in the garden every year when we were kids.’
I turned around to see Dad shine his torch on one enormous rocket labelled ‘Apocalypse Now’.
‘I don’t want to fight with you, Care, but I’m thinking maybe we don’t want Grandad to blow himself to smithereens in front of the kids. That feels like one of those memories that might stick.’
She gave me another of her trademark condescending smiles and it took every ounce of my remaining self-respect not to whack it right off her face. ‘Calm down and leave Dad to it, will you? Contrary to popular belief, you don’t know everything. Also, you stink of booze.’
I knew I shouldn’t rise to it, I knew I’d promised my mum and I knew I was thirty-two years old. But I simply could not help myself.
‘What is wrong with you?’ I snapped. ‘If I said the sky was blue, you’d argue that it wasn’t.’
‘Well, technically it isn’t,’ she replied. ‘The colour of the sky is determined by the scattering of electromagnetic radiation which we perceive as blue light for the majority of the day but at different times of the day, the sunlight comes through at different angles which is why we see red and orange light at sunrise or sunset.’
‘Is it not exhausting being such a self-righteous cow all the time?’