Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Jumper. Debbie Johnson

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       Chapter 1

      The third time she encountered the man she now knew as Marco Cavelli, Maggie gave him a Christmas present to remember. A broken leg and two fractured ribs. Gift wrapped with a few facial abrasions and a very festive black eye.

      Of course, it was all his fault. He was cycling on the wrong side of the road, in heavy snow, listening to loud music that drowned out her warning cries as the two of them veered towards each other. Two unstoppable forces, both covered in fluffy white stuff, both bundled up in hats, gloves and scarves. Only one of them looking where they were going.

      Sadly, he took the ear buds out just in time to hear her cries of ‘you complete arsehole’, ‘what the hell do you think you were doing?’ and ‘oh shit…hold on, I’m just calling an ambulance.’ Ever the lady, she thought, adding a few even worse words in her own mind.

      As she crawled across the ice to reach him, her jean-clad knees soaked through with icy snow, teeth chattering and fingers trembling as she dug her phone from her pocket, she decided that Sod’s Law had well and truly shafted them.

      It was her first day off in over a month. The first day she’d had entirely free from sequins and bows and velveteen loops and concealed zips and hooks and eyes and taffeta and lace. The first entire day free of pin-pricked fingers and nervous brides and half-cut mother-in-laws and last minute nervous breakdowns.

      And what a day it had promised to be. Gloriously cold and frosty, the sky stretching overhead, a clear shining plain of dazzling blue; virgin snow turning the garden and the streets around her house into a joyful white confection.

      Oxford in the snow. It was stunning, and never failed to knock her socks off. Though not literally, as she was wearing two pairs. She cycled carefully into town to do her shopping, excited beyond belief about what was waiting for her at the antiquarian book shop off the Broad. She’d been paying for it for months, and now, finally, it was hers. Briefly. Then, within a matter of weeks, it would be Ellen’s. She couldn’t wait, and realised as she pedalled up towards St Giles that there’d been a sneaky role reversal in her house: Ellen was too cool for Christmas now. It was Maggie who was the little girl.

      Aah, who gives a stuff, she thought, as she navigated the slippery roads, keeping a careful look out for the bumbling backpacked tourists who wandered in front of her like blind sheep, and the few students who were still around.

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