Portia MacIntosh - Love and Lies at The Village Christmas Shop - A laugh out loud romantic comedy perfect for Christmas 2018

Pete furrows his brow for a second, visibly racking his brain until he has a thought. The second it hits him his face relaxes again.

‘Oh, some gossip for you,’ he starts, setting his bag down on the floor and taking his phone from his pocket. ‘I saw a man in town today.’

‘A man?’ I gasp, faking shock.

Pete laughs. ‘No, like…a mysterious man. He isn’t a local, and he doesn’t look like a tourist. He’s walking around, wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase. Seems like he’s scoping the place out.’

‘Hmm. For what, I wonder.’

‘Indeed,’ Pete replies. ‘I snapped a photo of him, put it in the Facebook group. Just in case he’s one of those white-collar criminals – you know, in case he steals something or what have you.’

‘I don’t think a white-collar criminal is just a criminal in a suit,’ I point out with a laugh.

‘See,’ Pete says, holding up his phone to show me a photo of a man in a suit, eyeing up a building on Main Street. ‘He’s weird.’

He’s gorgeous – but I don’t say this out loud. I study the photo for a moment, as my head fills with fiction-worthy reasons why this mysterious man might be hanging around town. The eligible bachelors in this town are few and far between. All the good ones are taken. This guy is definitely not from round here – take it from a single girl who knows.

‘Weird,’ I say in agreement, pushing all fantasies of handsome, mysterious strangers from my mind. ‘Well, I’d better get on with opening up the shop.’

‘Yes, I suppose the post won’t deliver itself,’ he says. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

I don’t have the heart to point out that emails are pretty much that.

‘Same time tomorrow,’ he says as he walks off down the path.

‘Yeah, if I don’t sleep in,’ I joke. ‘Have a good day.’

I watch Pete head for his van before he drives off. My lonely little shop is his only stop here. The shop sits alone, on a quiet country road, outside the town. It’s an old, stone cottage, which used to be a big house, sitting smack bang in the middle of a massive, beautiful garden. Just like a house, it has a little gate at the bottom of the garden, and a cute little pathway that leads up to the shop doorway.

When my mum took on the place, she converted the downstairs of the cottage into the shop, with a kitchen at the back, and the upstairs became our living space. It was strange, growing up above a shop when all my friends lived in big houses, but come summer time, when I had this massive garden to play in, I didn’t think twice about how cramped things were indoors.

I notice a bill, hiding under my package. I shove it in my dressing gown pocket, to be worried about at a later date – probably tonight, when I should be sleeping.

I unlock the fire exit at the back of the shop before flicking the switch that turns on every fairy light, every musical statue and snow machine. The things that make the shop seem alive, even when there’s no real people in it.

I check the shop floor to see if anything is out of place, or if any rubbish is lying around, before turning the sign around on the door to say that we’re open…for all the good it will do. I don’t tend to see any customers until the afternoon mid-week – usually tourists in the middle of a hike, or, at this time of year, the occasional local in need of some new decorations or wrapping paper.

I was only standing in the doorway chatting for ten minutes and I’m positively freezing. I’m almost always freezing, sometimes even in the heat of summer. I don’t know how long it has been since my last summer holiday, but I’m pretty sure it’s a double-digit number of years now. I don’t like to think about it; it makes me feel old.

What I need right now is a steaming-hot cinnamon latte, with a generous dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkling of tiny golden white chocolate stars, to make it extra festive. I’ll make myself a drink, warm up a little and then head upstairs to throw some clothes on before the lunchtime rush which, yesterday, was a whopping four people.

I plonk myself down on the stool behind the counter and fire up the usual Christmas playlist. The dulcet tones of Mud drift from the speakers, with ‘Lonely This Christmas’ – not exactly the vibe I need this morning.

I take my phone from my dressing gown pocket and load up the Marram Bay residents’ group on Facebook. It’s a private group, strictly for locals and businesses in Marram Bay and over on Hope Island, mostly used for selling things, announcements and a good old gossip. People in small towns just love to talk – mostly about each other.

Today’s gossip du jour is the ‘mysterious man’ Pete was telling me about. I see Pete’s paparazzi-style photo of a man wearing a suit, and carrying a briefcase, and otherwise not doing anything at all unusual other than being uncharacte‌ristically good-looking. A glance at the comments tells me more about the man. He’s been spotted all over town this morning, driving around in his convertible Porsche – some reckon he’s a professional athlete buying one of the mansions that sits just outside town, someone else swore blind it was Henry Cavill, while someone else has corrected them that, no, it was in fact Jamie Dornan.

It’s only now that I’m thinking about it that I realise Henry and Jamie do actually look quite similar and the thought of this man being a hybrid of the two is, coincidentally, exactly what I asked Santa for this year – well, it would be, if I were remotely interested in having a man in my life.

Hmm, no, he’s definitely not a famous actor. I suppose he could be a sportsman. He’s got the build for it, but I don’t know nearly enough about sports to recognise anyone other than David Beckham.

Perhaps he’s a prince, visiting from a sexy European country, looking for a woman to be his queen, or maybe he’s a spy, deep under cover in Marram Bay for some Secret Service operation… Perhaps I’ve just read too many books.

Speaking of which, I unwrap my latest Amazon package to find a copy of Little White Lies , the latest Mia Valentina romcom. I do feel guilty, buying books when money isn’t exactly great, but the day I begrudge myself a £3.99 book (when reading is my favourite thing to do) is the day I really need to think about selling a kidney.

You can’t beat a good book, can you? The way it just drags you in, taking you into someone else’s life, into their home, their relationship – into their everything. It’s a sneak peek into something you don’t usually get to see, and I think that’s why I love it so much. Whether I’m walking through the streets in King’s Landing in A Game of Thrones or being a fly on the wall in Nick and Amy’s house in Gone Girl , people are living a million lives far more interesting than mine, and with books, I get to live them too.

I have my coffee, I have my book, I’m all snuggly and warm in my dressing gown. I know that I won’t have any customers until after lunch at least, because I never do, so there’s no harm in starting my book and enjoying my drink before I head back upstairs to get ready. One chapter turns into two, and before I know it my cup is empty and I’m almost four chapters deep. I’ll finish this one and then I’ll get back to reality.

‘Hello,’ I hear a man’s voice say in an attempt to get my attention.

I glance up from my book to see him standing in front of me – the mystery man, the athlete, the Henry Cavill-Jamie Dornan hybrid, (almost) all I want for Christmas.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘Have you been here long? I used to do the exact same thing when I was younger, just sit here behind the counter, lost in a book while my mum did all the hard work.’