Make A Christmas Wish: A heartwarming, witty and magical festive treat

‘Nah, it’s all right,’ I say. ‘Everyone at work’s been really great to me this year, but to be honest, I’m fed up of people talking about me behind my back. You’re the one good thing to happen to me in the last few years. I don’t care what anyone else thinks. At least the truth’s out in the open now. Come on, let’s get dinner.’

‘I promise to drink water,’ says Emily, and we wander down the high street looking for somewhere to eat. As we approach an Italian we like, which doesn’t look too busy, I see a black cat walk across our path.

‘Ooh, hope that’s lucky,’ says Emily, squeezing me close.

‘Yeah, me too,’ I say vaguely.

‘Are you sure you’re not angry with me?’ Emily is so contrite, I can’t possibly be cross any more. I just look at her and know that whatever happened in the past I want her in my future.

‘I’m really not,’ I say and give her a hug. Christmas is coming. Life is very different, but I’ve got Emily beside me, and at the moment, I feel as if I can take over the world.

Livvy

I am in shock. My memories of the day I died have become mired in fog thanks to all that time spent in the car park. I knew I was texting Adam angrily about something, but – maybe I didn’t want to remember? – the exact words of my text had been banished to the back of my mind. Now I realize I must have known from the minute Emily was in the house that she was the Other Woman, but I didn’t want to admit that Adam could possibly have carried it on after I’d gone. I felt his anguish when I died. I know he still has feelings for me. I just know it. It makes me more determined than ever to win him back. Malachi’s right: we have unfinished business. I need to show Adam what he’s missing. I lost him to Emily once; I’m not going to let it happen again. Especially where my son is involved.

I hadn’t really had a plan when I went to the party. But hearing Marigold and her mates gossiping, it seemed a good idea to see if I could nudge them in the right direction. I remember vaguely that Marigold has always been keen on psychics, so she’s very susceptible, which meant it was quite easy for me to get into her thoughts. Sadly, Adam and Emily seem to be far too sceptical, which is making it much harder to get them to listen to me. But with Marigold it was easy. All I had to do was sit down beside her, and drop the idea that Emily and Adam hadn’t wasted much time and hear her repeat it to her neighbour.

‘You’d think he might have waited a bit longer, don’t you?’ said one of the girls from the sales team.

‘It’s indecent,’ snorted another.

‘If you ask me, it’s been going on longer than any of us think,’ was Marigold’s contribution to a collective gasp from the rest of the table, including one from me. It didn’t take long for the rumours to fly. Marigold can always be relied on to pass on a bit of gossip. I think she’s probably half in love with Adam. Maybe she thought he’d find comfort in her arms. Emily must have come as a hell of a shock. I could feel the hatred positively bristling off her. I wasn’t really expecting Emily to confess to a full-blown affair, though. How could Adam have done that to me? What had I done to deserve it? I am reeling from the shock. I am going to split them up, and she will keep her claws off Adam. He’s mine.

Not that I appear to have succeeded in that endeavour. Having thought that Adam would be angry with Emily, he seems to have got over it annoyingly quickly. If I had the tiniest drink at an office party, Adam was always tediously on my case about it. I remember one spectacular row when he accused me of showing him up because I’d danced on a table with the managing director.

‘I was only having a laugh,’ I’d protested. ‘You have no sense of fun any more.’

He’d looked at me in incomprehension, then said, ‘Maybe my idea of fun is different from yours.’

We’d gone to bed that night in separate rooms, and he never referred to it again. But now, look at him, forgiving Emily so easily, when she’d embarrassed him far more than I ever had. It doesn’t seem fair.

I follow them as far as an Italian restaurant and watch them go inside. They’re sitting at a table looking totally loved up, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach just to watch them. This won’t do at all.

‘And what did you think you were going to achieve with that stunt?’ Malachi appears on the street, looking very pissed off.

‘I had hoped that it would make Adam see the error of his ways and remember it’s me that he loves, not Emily.’

‘In case you’d forgotten, there’s a bit of a flaw in your plan.’

‘Yes, yes, I know I’m dead and I can’t have him back,’ I say impatiently. ‘But it’s as if Adam has forgotten all about me, as if I never even existed. I want him to remember it’s me that he loves. Not this – this Emily person. I want him to mourn me!’

‘Well, good luck with that,’ says Malachi, nodding at the couple in the window, ‘because quite frankly, this is not the reason you’re back. I keep telling you, you need to put things right.’

I am not in the mood to listen. This is my life – well it was – not Malachi’s.

‘Yeah yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘But as it goes I think you’re wrong. And I’m going to prove it.’

‘On your own head be it,’ says Malachi, with a shrug. And with that he vanishes, leaving me with my nose pressed up against the glass, looking in, like a child outside a sweet shop.

Emily

‘This is better,’ said Emily as they squeezed into a table by the window of Carlo’s, a family-owned restaurant she and Adam were rather fond of.

The restaurant was busy and over-adorned with tinsel and gaudy Christmas decorations, according to Carlo’s quirky style. There was a small plastic tree on the bar, its lights flashing on and offintermittently. It even had a drunken-lookingfairy on the top. Emily knew how she felt. The effects of the alcohol, combined with the cold walk, had made her feel decidedly woozy.

‘Water, lots of it,’ she said when the waiter came to their table.

‘Good idea,’ said Adam, though he ordered a beer as well.

Now they were here, Emily was starting to feel a little less out of it. Remorse poured through her as she kept running over the cringe-inducing moment in the bar.

‘I hope I haven’t caused you loads of grief at work,’ she said, reaching over to take Adam’s hand.

‘I doubt it,’ said Adam. ‘We’ll be a one-hit wonder. After tonight, there’s bound to be more juicy gossip for people to mull over. Like I say, you’ve probably done me a favour. Anyway, let’s not talk about that now. It’s done.’

Emily breathed a sigh of relief. One of the nicest things about Adam was that never dwelt on stuff too long. On the whole, Adam was a pretty calm person. He must have been to put up with Livvy so long. His anger when it came was fast, furious and over quickly. Graham would have eked that one out for weeks, whereas Adam’s favourite phrase was ‘never let the sun go down on your anger’. And he never did – at least not with her, which was one of the many reasons Emily had fallen in love with this kind, funny man. He always tried to do the right thing. He always tried to be even-handed about Livvy too, refusing to bad-mouth her.

‘She was sick, Emily,’ he’d say, ‘she wasn’t always like that. Maybe I could have done more …’

He always looked so sad then, Emily felt there was a place – a Livvy place – where she couldn’t reach him. Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if Livvy had lived. Would Adam have still been trying to help her? Emily rather suspected he would.

‘How did I get so lucky to find you?’ Emily said, lacing her fingers through his, still feeling the thrill of his touch.

‘Ditto,’ Adam said, and they stared at each other, soppily happy.

There was a sudden bang on the window, which made them both jump, but then they laughed for jumping, and Emily squeezed Adam’s hand tightly.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Adam said, ‘about what Joe said the other day.’

‘About me being his mum?’ Emily said. ‘I don’t want to replace Livvy.’

‘That’s not what he meant. That’s Joe being very literal. He hasn’t got a mum. You can be his new mum. It makes sense in his head.’

‘I suppose,’ said Emily, ‘but …’

‘It’s daunting, I know,’ said Adam, ‘but we have something here. Something special. I’d forgotten till you came along that I could be happy, and you make me so happy. I know it didn’t come about in the best of circumstances, and we didn’t plan it like this. But what I’ve learned from what happened to Livvy is that life’s too short. We can’t put constraints on how we feel or what we do, just because of what other people think. After what we’ve both been through, we deserve some happiness; that’s if you’re prepared to take Joe on.’

Emily’s heart did a double flip and her mouth went dry.

‘Adam, what are you saying?’ He couldn’t be about to propose, could he?

Adam looked at her. ‘Well, in the short term, will you move in with us?’

‘Oh Adam.’ Emily was awash with conflicting emotions. ‘I’d love to, you must know that. But …’

‘You’re worried it’s too soon?’

‘A little,’ said Emily. ‘And then there’s Joe – I want to do the right thing by him.’