Chapter 3
VIC
Vic had never in her life felt so seen and so judged by a piece of paper.
“Hyzenthlay,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose, “we do not draw moustaches on the Christmas Schedule.”
Hyzenthlay, who was lying on her stomach on the tartan rug in front of the fire, swung her feet idly in the air and looked up with the guileless expression of someone who absolutely had just done that.
“I didn’t,” she said.
Vic lifted the top page of the stack in her hands. A neat, colour-coded table stared back at her. In the margin beside 23rd December, 16:00—Formal Tree Decorating, someone had sketched an impressive handlebar moustache on the smiling stick figure that was clearly meant to be the Queen.
The Queen, in this instance, being Alexandra. Vic had even drawn the tiny crown.
“You literally did,” Vic said. “This is still warm from your pen.”
Hyzenthlay considered that, then shrugged. “She’d look good with a moustache.”
Vic opened her mouth to argue, then paused.
To be fair, Alex would look good with anything. She’d survived the short-haircut scandal of year two of her reign and the “tattoo That Definitely Wasn’t a Tattoo” rumour and come out stronger. A pencilled-on moustache was hardly the wildest thing anyone had tried to put on the Queen.
“Agreed,” Vic said. “But we don’t deface the Christmas Schedule. The Christmas Schedule is sacred. The Christmas Schedule is the only thing standing between us and total chaos.”
Hyzenthlay rolled onto her back and squinted up at the ceiling beams. “I thought Christmas was about love and togetherness and stuff.”
“It is,” Vic said, clutching the sheaf of papers to her chest. “And also, colour-coded timetables.”
“Mama says your relationship with spreadsheets is ‘deeply concerning,’” Hyzenthlay reported.
“Mama,” Vic muttered, “says a lot of things.”
She glanced automatically toward the door, as though her lovely wife Julia-Swoolia Grey-Hughes-Wilding (The Queen’s most trusted advisor) might be summoned by the mere mention of her name.
The door was closed, and beyond it came the faint, comforting murmur of voices and clatter from the rest of Balmoral.
Somewhere downstairs, Mrs. MacLeod was terrorising the kitchen.
Somewhere else, a security briefing was happening that she had not been invited to because apparently, “Vic, you’ll start reorganising the guard rotations for fun. ”
She did that once.
Fine. Twice.
On the low table beside the armchair, her laptop screen showed a dizzying array of tabs and documents: Christmas Gift Registry (Cross-Reference: Allergies no crown jewels).”
It was, without exaggeration, the most organised she had ever been about anything in her life.
Well. Almost anything.
Her marriage with Julia had involved a surprising number of spreadsheets too. Mainly about childcare and work schedules and whose turn it was to do bedtime stories, and once—just once—a colour-coded intimacy chart that had made Julia laugh so hard she’d had to sit down.
Vic’s cheeks warmed at the memory. She pushed it aside. There would be time to enjoy the fact of being in Balmoral with her love later. Right now, she had a Christmas to stage-manage.
“Right,” she said, tucking the moustachioed schedule page into the stack to deal with later. “Recap. Why are we here?”
“Because this is where Auntie Alex wanted Christmas,” Hyzenthlay said promptly.
“Yes,” Vic said. “But why are we here early?”
Hyzenthlay rolled back onto her front, propping her chin in her hands.
She’d inherited Julia’s unnervingly direct gaze and intelligence and Vic’s tendency to treat any question as an opportunity for storytelling.
“Because you said we needed to ‘secure the objective before the enemy arrives,’” she recited.
“And Mama J. said the enemy is Christmas.”
Vic winced. “I maybe got carried away with the metaphors.”
“You always get carried away,” Hyzenthlay said cheerfully. “That’s why we love you.”
Vic’s heart did a ridiculous little dip. She reached down and ruffled her daughter’s hair, earning a squawk of protest. Hyzenthlay liked her hair neatly done at all times in a very opposite way to Vic herself. Sometimes, she could barely understand they were related, they were so different.
“You’re very soppy,” Hyzenthlay complained, batting her hand away.
“Comes with being a mum,” Vic said. “It’s either that or yell at you to tidy your room all the time, and I’m saving that for your teenage years.”
Hyzenthlay made a face. “What’s an objective?”
Vic opened her mouth, then hesitated. “In this context,” she said slowly, “it’s… the thing we’re trying to achieve. The goal. The dream.”
“You mean Christmas?”
“I mean,” Vic said reverently, turning toward the window where soft grey light was smearing itself across the landscape, “the perfect Royal Christmas.”
Outside, the grounds of Balmoral were a study in grey and white.
They’d arrived two days ago, before the snow had deepened, while the hills were still more brown than anything.
Since then it had hardly stopped. It settled in damp clumps on the branches, piled on the balustrades, blurred the edges of the lawns.
The sky looked like thick wool, low and heavy.
Pretty, yes. Festive, sure.
Also: a logistical nightmare.
Vic’s phone buzzed on the table. She snatched it up before Hyzenthlay could grab it first—her daughter had learned to navigate to the Netflix app before she could walk.
The screen lit up with a message from Julia.
Julia-Swoolia, love of my life.
Everything okay up there?
Vic smiled despite herself, thumbs moving automatically.
Everything under control, she typed. Schedule is flawless. Child has defaced the Queen, but we move.
She added a little snowflake emoji for emphasis. A second later, Julia’s reply came through.
I told you not to leave them alone together. x
Vic snorted. You’re jealous because I love the schedule more than you.
Julia: I would be jealous, but I know you can’t cuddle a PDF.
Vic: Don’t challenge me.
She could picture Julia perfectly even without seeing her—probably at her desk in one of the smaller studies they’d claimed for work, papers laid out in neat piles, pen poised.
Glossy dark hair pinned up, the strands of grey beginning to appear more with every passing year.
Glasses on. The faint little crease between her brows that appeared when she was deep in thought and made Vic want to smooth it out with her thumb.
Warmth flooded her chest. God, she was soppy.
You’re procrastinating, she told herself firmly. Bird’s-eye view, Hughes. Two days till the Queen arrives. Focus.
She set the phone down and picked up the schedule again, flipping through the crisp pages. It calmed her just to see it all laid out.
Since they’d started dating properly—no more “oh, this is just a fling to distract us from our mutual pain,” but actual “we live together and co-parent and share a Netflix account” dating— which had even lead to marriage, Vic had discovered some unexpected truths about herself.
One of them was that she was, horrifyingly, capable of being organised. For love.
Operation: Perfect Royal Christmas had started as a joke. Someone—Alex, probably—had mentioned doing “something special” this year. Their first real winter at Balmoral as a solid family unit, not navigating bio-security bubbles or grieving or general constitutional crises.
Vic had declared herself Christmas Commander-In-Chief.
Alex had laughed, which was, frankly, tantamount to royal assent.
Then Vic had gone home and stared at her laptop and thought about all the Christmases that had sucked.
The ones after her parents split. The ones she’d spent alone in the stables with the horses, eating cold pizza because all the shops were shut. The one after Hyzenthlay’s birth, when she’d been so consumed by fear and guilt and love she could barely breathe, let alone hang tinsel.
The idea of making something different for this strange little extended royal family of theirs—something cosy and fun and stupidly wholesome—had lodged itself in her chest and refused to budge.
So she’d planned.
And planned.
And planned.
Hence: forty-three pages.
“Is that the page where we sing?” Hyzenthlay asked, craning her neck to see.
“Multiple pages, technically,” Vic said. “We have carols by candlelight on the twenty-third, the triplets’ performance on Christmas Eve, optional hymn massacre at church on the day, and drunken karaoke on Boxing Day if I get my way.”
“You won’t,” Hyzenthlay said. “Mama J. says you’re not allowed to make the Queen do karaoke.”
“Julia underestimates my persuasive powers,” Vic said. “Also, your mother has never seen Alex after three glasses of mulled wine. The woman can belt power ballads. I have recordings.”
“You’re not allowed to blackmail the Queen,” Hyzenthlay said dutifully.
“Why are all my best ideas illegal?” Vic sighed.
Her phone buzzed again, with horrible timing.
This time it wasn’t Julia.
It was the head of household logistics, Mr. Patel, whose legendary calm had withstood three royal weddings, two funerals, and one unfortunate incident with a streaker and the Christmas choir.
Weather looking heavy. I’m monitoring the forecast. We may need to adjust delivery schedule.
Vic stared at the message as if glaring at it hard enough would change the words.
Adjust delivery schedule.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered.