White Christmas (2 page)

Hal grinned. Pete was dry, cynical and straight-talking –
they were going to get on like a house on fire.

‘Is it your in-laws you’re not keen on? Or Christmas?

‘Cor blimey, mate,’ said Pete. ‘You don’t half ask a lot of
questions. But actually, it’s both. I can’t stand the in-laws – and I hate
Christmas. All that enforced jollity. Everyone eats too much, drinks too much
and falls out with their nearest and dearest. In our house the kids are hyper,
the missus gets her knickers in a twist about the turkey and the in-laws move
in on Christmas Eve and don’t go home till New Year. Now do you get the
picture?’

‘Completely,’ laughed Hal. After Pete’s diatribe, he decided
that now probably wasn’t the time to spoil their new friendship by telling him
that Christmas was his favourite time of the year. It always had been, right
from when he was little. He adored everything about it – from choosing the tree
at the local garden centre to hanging up his stocking on Christmas Eve. Pete
would drop him like a hot coal if he admitted that thanks to his sister he
still had a Christmas stocking at the age of twenty-nine.’

‘I’ll see you on the early shift tomorrow then.’

‘Yep,’ said Hal. ‘But can I just ask you something?’

‘Fire away.’

‘I just wondered why they’ve hired me for a month. I mean, a
month’s fine. But where’s the other bloke gone? Is he coming back in January?’

Pete Burton stopped adjusting his camera lens and stared at
Hal.

‘They’re keeping it dead secret but everyone knows. Micky
Lennon, that’s our usual geezer, has got a drink problem. The women viewers
love him and Tim Browne knows it’s more than his job’s worth to let him go. So
Tim’s given him a verbal warning and sent him off to a drying-out clinic in the
sticks. If it was anyone else, I reckon they’d have fired him. I get on fine
with Micky, mind you. He’s a good bloke when he’s not on the sauce. I hope it
works out for him, really I do. But that’s why they’ve brought you in. Have you
done this before, by the way?’

Hal hesitated, uncertain whether to come clean with Pete or
not.

‘A bit,’ he said vaguely. ‘In between other stuff…’

‘Want some advice then?’

‘Great,’ said Hal. He wasn’t stupid enough or arrogant
enough to refuse it.

‘Keep it simple,’ said Pete. ‘The trouble with all the other
TV stations – and there are too damned many of them – is that they make the
weather way too complicated. They’re so bloody desperate to show how clever
they are that they forget why people at home are watching…’

Pete stopped theatrically for a second.

‘So do you know why they are? Watching, I mean?’

‘Er, no,’ said Hal sheepishly. ‘Actually I don’t.’

‘All they want to know is whether they need a raincoat and a
brolly when they set off for work or nip out to do the shopping. Just remember,
pal, weather presenting ain’t rocket science. Got it?’

‘Got it,’ said Hal.

THREE

Lizzie drew back the heavy cream curtains and peered out of
the window. Even at this unearthly hour, her spirits lifted at the view across
the park. The thick fog of the previous morning had lifted and the sky was a
delicate shade of duck egg blue with a streak of pink shot through it. She
could just make out a couple of dog walkers and a man in a tracksuit whizzing
along on roller blades. Apart from them, Battersea Park was deserted.

She’d bought her tiny flat eighteen months ago and even
though the mortgage was a stretch she hadn’t regretted it for a second. It was
on the fifth floor of a redbrick mansion block and despite the fact that it was
only a studio and there was no lift, it felt like home. She’d furnished it very
simply, buying two navy Chesterfield sofas, a fold-out bed, a battered old
wooden desk to work at and a massive coffee table that was always covered with
meteorology textbooks. For a while she hadn’t even bothered with a TV but when
her boss got wind of it he’d been so furious that she’d rushed straight out to
the supermarket and bought the cheapest telly she could find. ‘And from now on,
make sure you watch all the opposition,’ he’d yelled at her.

Remembering his angry words, she dragged herself away from
the window and switched on the TV. Her first instincts in the morning were to
take a look at the sky and make a strong coffee, but she was trying to train
herself to watch all the TV breakfast shows.

Instantly the screen was filled with a large graphic
emblazoned with the words Last Ditch Weather in fluorescent yellow writing.
Then the camera switched to a presenter with curly brown hair and a shy smile
she’d never seen before. Unlike most male weather forecasters, in their boring
grey suits and crisp white shirts, this man looked like he was off on a country
stroll. He wore a scarlet shirt, black jeans and socks tucked into walking
boots. His forecast was even more startling than his attire. Instead of
focusing on weather patterns and cloud formation, this man was wittering on
about ‘spits and spots’ of rain and ‘brolly weather’ and advising viewers that
it was ‘time to turn up the central heating.’ He had a lovely voice, deep and
sonorous, but as far as she was concerned, his weather forecast was the most
basic she’d ever heard. A five-year-old could have made a better job of it.

Lizzie grimaced as she watched him. Presenters like this did
her profession no favours at all. She’d spent her entire career trying to
convince people that being a weather forecaster was a serious business. She’d
studied physics at Cambridge, and then trained at the Met Office. Forecasting
the weather was supposed to be about science, not showbiz.

She was so irritated that she decided to watch the bulletin
right till the end, keen to check who on earth this new weatherman was. But
before she could find out, the phone rang in the kitchen and she dashed to
answer it. As always, she half-hoped it might be Rob, ringing to say that their
break-up had been a horrendous mistake and begging her to give it another go.

But it wasn’t Rob. It was her mother.

‘Darling, I hate to ring this early but it’s the only time I
can be sure of catching you,’ said Diana Foster. ‘You work too hard, you know.
I wish you could get out and about more, have a bit more fun.’

Lizzie groaned out loud. She was convinced her mother came
out with stuff like this just to provoke a reaction. But for once in her life
she decided to rise above it and change the subject completely.

‘How are you, Mum? Is everything OK at home?’

It was funny, reflected Lizzie, how even though she was
twenty-seven, with a decent job and a place of her own, she still called the
house in Dorset where she’d grown up ‘home.’ It wasn’t as though there was
anything of hers there any more. Her parents had had a massive tidy-up a couple
of years back and made Lizzie sort out her belongings. Lizzie hadn’t really
minded. In fact she’d had a brilliant weekend clearing a lifetime of junk from
the attic. She’d found her old Brownie badges, her first watch, some Biff and
Chip reading books and even her university thesis, grandly titled Flows,
Fluctuations and Complexity.

‘Busy, busy, busy, darling. And Dad sends his love too.’

Lizzie smiled to herself. Her mother was definitely the
dynamic one in her parents’ relationship. Her dad had been a physics professor
– a typically vague academic – but now that he was retired he spent most of his
time at the local gliding club. He was obsessed with the weather – so she’d
clearly followed in his footsteps there.

‘Now darling, the reason I’m calling is that I need to talk
to you about something very important. Christmas.’

‘What about it?’

‘Have you made up your mind what you’re doing? I’m desperate
for you to come home. And so’s your father. I know it won’t be the same now you
and Robert have… er, gone your separate ways, but you will come, won’t you?’

Lizzie wondered why Christmas had turned into such a
delicate issue this year. For the last two years she’d spent Christmas with Rob
so her mother hadn’t put her on the spot like this. But they’d only split up
three months ago and she wasn’t sure she was ready for a jolly family Christmas
quite yet.

‘The thing is, Mum,’ she began, her voice tentative.

‘Come on, darling, spit it out.’ Diana had been the deputy
head of a girls’ school in Bournemouth for nearly twenty years and she had a
tendency to treat her only daughter like an errant sixth-former.

‘It’s really annoying, but I might have to work. Most of the
other presenters have young children and it doesn’t seem fair to ask for
Christmas off when I’m on my own…’

‘You’re not on your own,’ boomed Diana down the phone.
‘You’ve got us – and we want to see you.’

‘I know. And I’m desperate to see you. But I’ll get lots of
time off in the New Year. I’ll be down like a shot then.’

Lizzie’s face flushed. She was the world’s worst liar. She
just hoped her mother didn’t suspect she was being economical with the truth.
The weather presenters’ Christmas rota hadn’t been finalised yet, but Lizzie
had offered to work and was keeping her fingers crossed that her boss would
take her up on it.

‘You’d better be,’ said Diana. ‘In fact if you don’t come to
Dorset soon I’ll come and stay with you.’

‘I will, Mum. I promise. And then we can celebrate Christmas
all over again. We can walk along the beach and toast crumpets on the fire –
all the things we used to do.’

When she’d finished talking to her mother, Lizzie wandered
back into the main room and slumped on the sofa. The Last Ditch weatherman had
finished and the two news presenters, a glamorous young blonde and a
middle-aged man with silver hair, were discussing the favourites to win this
year’s X Factor. Lizzie’s favourite had been sent home weeks earlier so she
switched over to another channel. This was going to be the loneliest, most
miserable Christmas ever.

FOUR

‘And after that fascinating talk on climate change, we are
now very privileged to welcome our last speaker - Lizzie Foster from the UK’s
top satellite news channel. Not only is she the weather star of Ace TV, she has
a physics degree from Cambridge and is an expert on cloud formation.’

Hal took a slurp of his tea and yawned. Talk about feeling
like a fish out of water. A few weeks ago he was auditioning (unsuccessfully,
as it turned out) for panto parts and now he was sitting in a boring science
lecture. After all that advice from Pete Burton about ‘keeping it simple’ the
news directors at Last Ditch News had decided that it would perhaps be a good
idea if he knew what cold fronts and warm fronts actually were. So they’d
dispatched him to Oxford for a one-day workshop entitled Making Sense of the
Weather. Hal had assumed they were joking and laughed uproariously for half a
minute before he looked at their startled faces and realised that they were
deadly serious.

After his frenetic first week at the TV station, Hal had
been tempted to give the course a miss and call in sick. But his innate honesty
got the better of him and he’d caught the early train to Oxford as planned. So
here he was, sitting in a lecture hall on an old cobbled street, listening to a
bunch of academics explaining how the weather worked.

Lizzie Foster’s talk was the final lecture of the day - and
by far the most inspiring. She really brought the subject alive, thought Hal,
feeling like a fraud. While he simply stood in front of the camera at Last
Ditch News and read his script, adding in the odd joke here and there, she
actually studied weather data and charts. After listening to her for forty-five
minutes he finally understood the difference between cyclones and
anti-cyclones, both of which had been an unfathomable mystery to him before. She
was also a lot prettier than the earlier speakers, who’d mostly been elderly
men in dusty jackets with leather patches on the elbows. Dark-haired, with
lively green eyes and a wide smile, she was clearly passionate about her
subject and determined to help the viewers make sense of it.

‘I think we’ve just got time for a couple of questions,’ she
said, quickly consulting the clock at the back of the lecture hall. ‘If you’d
like to stand up and introduce yourself, then ask your question, I’ll do my
very best to answer it.’

No one spoke for a few seconds, so in a bid to fill the
silence, Hal got to his feet.

Lizzie stared at him in astonishment. She’d been so busy
concentrating on her dreaded PowerPoint presentation that she hadn’t spotted
him at the back before.

‘And you are?’ she asked coolly, even though she knew
perfectly well.

‘Hal. Hal Benson. From Last Ditch News.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Lizzie, her voice silky-smooth. ‘And your
question?’

Hal wracked his brains frantically. He was half tempted to
ask if she’d have a drink with him, but was pretty sure that would go down like
a lead balloon.

‘Er, I was wondering about something. Are we going to have a
White Christmas this year?’ he said finally.

A few of the academics at the front tutted with annoyance at
his low-brow question. Lizzie herself wasn’t sure whether he was joking, but
decided to treat it seriously.

‘You’re a weather presenter, aren’t you, Mr Benson? I’m sure
you have an opinion on this. What do you think?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ grinned Hal. ‘I just thought I
might have a bet on it.’

A couple of people in the audience laughed. Lizzie rolled
her eyes in exasperation and ignored his quip.

‘We won’t know for sure till about five days before
Christmas Day,’ she said. ‘Records show that snowflakes have fallen on December
25 around 38 times in the UK over the last half century, but a widespread
covering of snow isn’t very common at all. Wintry weather is far more usual
between January and March. So if you’re putting me on the spot, I’d say it’s
pretty unlikely we’ll have a White Christmas.’