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  When Christmas Lights Are Blue

  Copyright © December 2016 by Harper Fox

  Cover art by Harper Fox

  Cover photo licensed through Shutterstock

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from FoxTales.

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  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  When Christmas Lights Are Blue

  Harper Fox

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter One

  An hour after dark on the longest night, Karanji turned to me and said, “I can’t do this anymore, Rob. I don’t even know how.”

  And this was why Control seldom let couples out together on a shift. Tonight was a short-staffed emergency. I pressed my hands against the dashboard. “Karan, no. Don’t do this to me now.”

  “We’ve been doing it to each other. We’ve got to stop.”

  The minute hand of my watch jerked past the twelve. Karan and I were now technically free to have the miserable fight we’d been putting aside all day. Not a moment before: ambulance paramedics might horse around, make awful jokes and yell at backed-up traffic, but we never dropped the ball. Never let our personal crap get in the way of a callout. Everyone who needed us—from road-crash victims to old ladies mistaking indigestion for a heart attack—deserved better of us than that.

  We were off-duty now. One minute past six. My watch had been a Christmas present from Karan the year before. I loved it because he’d ignored all the cheap alternatives I’d suggested and gone right to the jeweller’s for the one I liked best, and it was elegant without being fussy, and so far resistant to hard knocks, vomit and blood. He was wearing the handsome engagement ring I’d bought him, and I was wearing his. He was my Karan, good as gold. I’d found out during the first Diwali celebration I’d shared with his family that his brother called him Karanji, because he was as sweet as the cardamom and poppy pastries piled high on the table, and no-one could get enough of him. For once we’d managed to swing Christmas leave together, a whole blessed week. “Oh, God. Can’t we just go home?”

  “You can. I’ve told Mackie I’ll work.”

  I finished shutting the satnav down. The ambulance was parked by the dangerous roundabout where the main street of Hollyford met the bypass, a good strategic point for callouts to pub brawls after office parties. Drunken pile-ups, too, and we’d already dealt with two of those today. Karan had been keeping the windscreen clear with an occasional sweep of the blades. The street was deserted now, only the snowflakes disturbing the stillness, wind-blown wraiths. “All right,” I said bleakly—hopelessly, because he never said anything he didn’t mean. I unhooked the radio mic. “I’ll report us off-shift. I’ll get a cab home from the station.”

  “No, I’ll drop you. It’s only a short detour. Mackie won’t mind.”

  The mic beeped in my hand. I thumbed the button. “Eight-two.”

  “Eight-two, three-four. My board shows you two lads still in Hollyford. Is that right?”

  The staff shortage must have reached critical for Mackie to be handling dispatch himself. “Yep,” I said, squeezing a passably normal voice through the hot pain in my throat. “Just signing off. Gonna bring Karan back in.”

  “Hold your horses. Got a 999 from up in Kielder.”

  “Kielder Forest? That’s half an hour away from us, Mac.”

  “I know, and it’s a wilderness, and it’s snowing. But all the local vans are working crashes on the A68, and you’re my last hope. It’s a bit of a weird one, too.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Elderly lady, very distressed. Says something’s fallen on her house, and people are hurt.”

  “Something’s fallen on... What, a meteorite or something? Doesn’t she need the fire brigade?”

  “All out on the 68 with tin-openers, I’m afraid. It’s a house on its own, three miles northwest of Greystead. Come on, Robbie—I know you lovebirds need the money. Weddings don’t come cheap.”

  “Yes, Mackie. We know.” I reached to flip an overhead switch, and the ambulance, newly kitted out with an on-board computer whose pronouncements and instructions I would never get used to, said 999 mode engaged. “Responding. Eight-two out.”

  Karan had switched the satnav back on. “Three miles northwest of Greystead?” he echoed, panning back and forth across the undifferentiated green on the map. “There’s nothing there but pine trees.”

  “Pine trees, and a mad old lady who’s been struck by a meteorite. Let’s swap drivers. You’d better grab a nap, if you’re pulling another shift.”

  He gave me an odd look, as if he hadn’t expected kindness. What—do you think I’d stop caring , watching out for you, because we’re having a fight? Because we’re breaking up? But words would do more harm than good now. I’d crack into tears if I said them. We’d been set to get married in June.

  I pushed my door wide and got out. Caution! Door is open, the computer said, as if I didn’t know. Karan scrambled out on the far side, and we crossed like ships in the night, the beginnings of a blizzard whipping through the headlights’ glare.

  ***

  The road was long and empty. We’d left the northbound A68 to avoid the pileups, tracking across country on a route at least as old as the Roman Wall whose remains cut a haunting line between two ancient realms. Greystead had been closed up for the night, only a glimmer of coloured lights around the edge of tight-shut curtains. One little kid had peered from a bedroom window as we’d passed, maybe wondering if Santa had come early this year, and in a strange vehicle. Or perhaps he’d just wanted to see the ambulance go by, as I always had, because he wanted to be a paramedic.

  As I always had. The village was the last outpost of civilisation before the forest. We’d left it more than three miles behind now, I was sure, although the satnav had lost signal and was keeping its own counsel as thoroughly as the white-coated hills I could see through gaps in the trees, pale crests by starlight. I thought Karan had fallen asleep, but he sat up as the wheels struck hard-packed snow on the verge and the ambulance juddered beneath us. “The plough hasn’t been through here,” he said. “No grit, either. Slow up.”

  Anger was easier than pain. “We might’ve saved a whole lot of people on the bypass if I hadn’t slowed up then.”

  “Don’t be daft. That was instant. They never stood a chance.”

  “Why the bloody hell didn’t that coach driver let us pass him sooner?”

  “I don’t think he knew we were there.”

  “Blue lights, headlights, a siren like a banshee and paramedic written backwards in six-inch letters across the bonnet. How can you not see that? I swear to God, Kaz, I’ll never get my head around drivers who get in our way when we’re trying to...”

  We jounced over a sudden crest. Ahead of us, as if conjured by my temper, a tractor was crawling in the single-track lane. His taillights filled my vision with red mist. “Rob,” Karan said warningly, and laid a hand on my wrist. “Slow the fuck down.”

  I couldn’t. Half a hundred demons caught up with me at once. I didn’t care if the callout was a prank, if the old lady in the forest was a lunatic: I was going to get there in time, and in the process outrun my conviction that my beautiful
boyfriend, the love of my life for the last six years, was about to break us up.

  The tractor driver pulled over as far as he could. I squeezed the ambulance past, slewed back into the centre—swags and swathes of snow from the pine trees hitting the windscreen like a weird blessing—and laid my foot down.

  The road ended. Nothing ahead but trees, a spectral barricade of them, rushing at the windshield out of nowhere. I trod on the brakes. Might as well have stamped the gas for all the effect I had: the tarmac was slick with ice beneath the fresh fall of snow. I threw out one arm across Karan’s chest. The van left the ground at sixty miles an hour and sailed high and wide into the dark.

  Chapter Two

  Attention. Door is open. Attention. Door is open.

  I could see that the door was open. I was looking through it at stars. A beautiful view of Orion, framed in pines... The hunter-god vanished, eclipsed by a lovelier sight still: Karanji, reaching down for me from heaven. “You, mate,” he said, through a flurry of dislodged snowflakes, “are a five-star fucking nutcase.”

  But he was laughing. We must have soft-landed. The van was on its side in a snowdrift. I was lying on the driver’s window, my whole world pitched painlessly through ninety degrees. I wriggled out from under the wheel and lifted my arms. Karan grabbed me by the shirt and the armpits and hauled me up. I hadn’t heard him laugh like that in months, but I supposed I really had gone and done it this time. “Christ, Kaz,” I gasped as he pulled me out into the frosty air. “How much do these things cost?”

  “What—the vans? Oh, only about three hundred grand or so. I wouldn’t worry.”

  We scrambled together down the slope I’d used as a crash-pad. The night was absolutely silent. “Shit,” I said, looking round. “Are you all right? Did you call for help?”

  “Radio’s out, and I don’t have a peep on my mobile. Do you?”

  I clawed my phone out of my pocket. The screen was blank, with a weird finality, as if no such thing as mobiles and networks had ever been invented. “No. I’m stone dead.” My own words gave me a marrow-deep shudder. “Fuck me, that was close. Look, I’ll nip back up the hill, see if that tractor’s still anywhere around.”

  “Right, because he’ll really want to help a guy who nearly ran him off the road.”

  “I know.” I knocked snow out of my hair and stood frowning. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  I really didn’t. I was ethically sworn to aid and protect the public in general, not just the object of the call. That had used to mean the world to me. When had it stopped? For months now I’d been rigid with anger, bitter and setting like stone. I turned to Karan and took him by the shoulders. “I could’ve killed you. Are you really okay?”

  “Fine. No thanks to you, you copper-bottomed, gold-plated twat.”

  He was still smiling. I’d fallen in love with that smile before anything else. Or had it been those eyes? I didn’t think I’d ever seen him by this combination of starlight and snow-light before. His skin was such a perfect contrast to my pasty English hide. I said, helplessly, as if the words had been belatedly knocked out of me by the crash, “You’re so beautiful.”

  His smile twisted oddly. “And you’re in shock. Stay with the van and I’ll go up to the road.”

  “No, wait. Look over there. There’s a house.”

  Easy to see why we’d missed it until now. The snow must have blown in from the Atlantic. The pine cover opened up here to a kind of clearing where skinny ash and birch had taken hold. Their southerly flanks were daubed white, and beyond them was an inverted V, just recognisable as a gable end, also picked out in snow. Living light flickered in a window at ground level, amber and russet and gold. “Oh, well,” Karan said philosophically, hefting his kit bag and reaching back into the ambulance to hand me mine. “That’s got to be our customer, right? And here we are.”

  He set off, his strong, broad-shouldered figure reassuring as always, a warm reality in the alien landscape. He stepped between two of the birches, and I was suddenly terrified that if I let him go, I’d never see him again. My limbs felt heavy and awkward, as if they didn’t quite belong to me. I grabbed my bag and ran after him.

  ***

  “Hello? Hello, madam? If you’re the lady who made the 999 call, my name’s Karan, and I’m a paramedic. I’m coming into your house, all right?”

  Nobody did unauthorised entries better than Karan. No matter who he was working with, he always got sent in first when the caller was too sick or scared to respond. He was just the kind of guy you’d want invading your home, unfazed and friendly, a promise of better times ahead. “I don’t think there’s anyone in here,” I said, looking around the hallway. It was clean and neat, rich red carpet underfoot and ivory walls, but I must have imagined the firelight. All the rooms beyond it were dark. “I’d better go check the outbuildings, with the front door left open like that.”

  “Did you see any outbuildings?”

  “No. Come to that, I didn’t see any footprints but ours in the snow.”

  “I’ll look upstairs. Madam? My name’s Karan Batra, from the ambulance service. This big lug’s my mate Rob. He looks scary, but he’s a softie really. Coming upstairs now, okay? If you can hear me, give me a shout, or bang on the floor or the wall.”

  Right on cue, a huge thump rocked the house. A door I hadn’t noticed flew open, and an elderly woman shot out of it. She was tiny and frail, and looked as though she’d last gone clothes-shopping sometime in the late eighties, huge shoulder pads swelling her glittery Christmas jumper to linebacker proportions. “Catherine?” she gasped, skidding to a halt in front of me. “Catherine and Ron?”

  I hated to disappoint her. Catherine and Ron were the daughter and son-in-law, or the son and his wife, no doubt, and I sincerely hoped they were real, and on their way to see her. “Karan and Rob,” I said, reaching cautiously to steady her. “I know, it’s a funny name for a bloke. He just likes to be different.”

  She swung her head to look at him. “Oh, he is.”

  “Did you make a 999 call, ma’am?”

  “Yes, I did. Of course I did. Didn’t you hear it? Something’s fallen on my house. I’m going to see Catherine and Ron tonight, and I can’t have everything messed up like this. I’ve got their photograph album.”

  I met Karan’s eyes over her head. We saw so much of this these days, in a world where bodies outlived brains, and nursing and residential homes overflowed. “All right. Don’t you worry about it, okay? Can Karan go and put your kettle on?”

  “Yes, yes, dear. Of course she can.”

  Karan grinned and shrugged. “I’ll do that. Look, that room she came out of must be the one we saw from the outside—she’s got a good fire going. Take her through, and we’ll check her over, although goodness knows what we’re gonna do if it’s anything serious. Robbie here trashed your transport, ma’am.”

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Do you have a phone we could borrow?”

  “Yes, yes. But it’s dead. Everything went dead, you know. Everything came down.”

  I led her into the warm living room. She’d certainly been expecting company. Lurid strings of tinsel were festooned from wall to wall, swaying in the updrafts from the fire. Every picture frame had its bough of holly. Two chairs and a sofa had been drawn up close to the hearth, and a bottle of sherry and three glasses were glimmering on a little table between them. I settled her into the chair nearest the fire, and laid my kit bag on the rug. “Now,” I said, pulling up a footstool so I could sit in front of her, “how are you feeling? What made you want to call out the ambulance today?”

  She stuck her head on one side like an odd little bird. Her perm was from a few decades back, too, and reminded me poignantly of my gran’s. “Don’t you want to know my name first? Seeing as I know both of yours.”

  Another good reason for sending Karan in first. He’d never have forgotten such a vital part of our opening gambit. You could wake someone up with a
name, pull them back from the brink. At the very least, a name picked a stranger out of the herd and made them real for you, just as you became real for them. I’d used to know all this so well. “Sorry,” I said gruffly. “Yes, please—I’d like to know your name.”

  “And I’d tell you, if I could bloody well remember what it was. What do you think’s wrong with me?”

  “Well, if you’re a bit confused, it could be any number of things.” I started timing off her pulse against my beautiful Christmas wristwatch. “Have you had anything to eat today?”

  “No, but you remind me of my manners. Will Catherine bring some biscuits with the tea?”

  “I’m sure she will.” I sat back on my heels so I could see into the hall, and the kitchen beyond it. “Hoi, Cathy! Don’t forget the biccies.”

  “Of course not, darling,” Karan sang back in a ridiculous falsetto, and I shook my head and took out a blood-pressure cuff from the bag. “Can I roll the sleeve up on your nice sweater? You should try and eat regularly, you know. Does anyone come to help look after you out here?”

  Her brow creased. If she couldn’t remember her name, I doubted she’d be able to give me the details of her care package, but she suddenly lit up as if with inspiration. “Queenie!” she declared, dealing me a none-too-gentle slap on the cheek. “Queenie, of course!”

  I rubbed my stinging face. My gran had been called Queenie, as it happened, and I’d thought her the last of her kind. “That’s your name? Queenie?”

  “If you like. Where’s that girl with my tea?”

  “On my way, on my way.” Karan reappeared in the doorway, a mug in one hand, a plate in the other. He knelt on the hearthrug beside me. Greedily Queenie took the mug from him and began to drink like a thirsty horse. “That’s right,” he said, offering her a biscuit. “Get a couple of those dunked in it as well. Low blood sugar can make you feel like shit on a shovel, as Rob would say.”