A Winter Flame by Milly Johnson

there, drinking coffee, surrounded by open boxes of papers,
his enormous feet up on the desk. ‘You went for an early start too. Couldn’t sleep. Far too excited.’ He grinned, then offered: ‘Can I make you a coffee?’ He pointed
to an old-fashioned percolator, on the top of a nearby table, which was spitting and hissing like something that needed the services of an exorcist.
    ‘Thanks, I’ll get my own,’ said Eve, stripping off her gloves. It might have been frosty outside, but at least the Portakabin was toasty-warm.
    ‘Milk’s in the fridge.’ Jacques pointed to a tiny box at the other side of the table. ‘Sugar’s . . . Ah, don’t expect you take sugar.’
    ‘Actually, I do,’ said Eve.
    ‘That surprises me,’ laughed Jacques.
    ‘Why? Why should it surprise you?’ snapped Eve. The man knew nothing about her and was pretending he did.
    ‘Because . . .’ He drew the shape of a woman in the air with his hands: a woman with a small waist. Eve didn’t like that the drawn-in-the-air woman had quite big boobs and hips
though. Dear God, she’d only been in the room for five minutes and he had wound her up already.
    ‘Sugar’s in the top filing cabinet with the crockery,’ said Jacques, an amused smile playing on his lips. Then Eve was sure he muttered something like, ‘Alas we’re
out of Evening Primrose Oil.’ She didn’t give him the satisfaction of asking him to repeat it though.
    ‘I’ve found loads more files,’ said Jacques. ‘I’ve left them out on your desk for you to look at.’
    Eve bristled again. There were two desks in the Portakabin and already Jacques had decided which was hers and which his. Admittedly, the one he pointed to was by the window in the nicer position
but still, he had chosen and that’s what rankled.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said, managing to sound not in the slightest grateful.
    Eve poured herself a coffee, splashed in some milk and added half a teaspoon of sugar. Then she went back to the desk which Jacques had
so kindly
selected for her and lifted up one of the
files. It bore the label: ‘Reindeer’.
    ‘Well, we’re not having those,’ said Eve in a low breath, and put the file back down.
    ‘You can’t have a Winterworld without reindeer,’ said Jacques.
    ‘Of course, you can,’ said Eve, picking up the next file: ‘Elves’. ‘Dear God,’ she said. ‘We are most certainly not having elves.’
    ‘Too late. Evelyn employed loads of them and they’ve all got contracts.’
    Eve laughed mirthlessly. ‘How can you employ elves? They don’t exist.’
    ‘People willing to dress up as elves do. You’ll be saying next you aren’t having any snowmen.’
    ‘Snowmen are allowed,’ conceded Eve.
    ‘Goodness. We agree on something,’ chuckled Jacques, chalking a point up in the air with a licked finger. ‘Gets the blood going, doesn’t it? A bit of verbal fencing in
the morning.’
    Oh, here we go again, thought Eve. Well, she would ignore his silly, childish flirtations. He would get tired of it eventually. They were going to be far too busy for such silliness.
    As if able to read her thoughts, Jacques said, ‘We’ve got a meeting at eleven with the site manager. Nothing to worry about, just touching base. I’ve already had a word with
him about drafting extra men.’
    ‘Oh, have you?’ He was showing off, she decided. Trying to make out that he was super-efficient. Incompetent people usually tried that tactic but they soon became unstuck.
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘What did you know about Winterworld before the will reading?’ Eve asked, chewing the end of her pen. ‘Didn’t Aunt Evelyn ever say anything to you about it, during your
“many, many hours of conversation”?’
    ‘She talked about it non-stop,’ said Jacques, ‘but not as something she was actually doing, but rather as something she always wished she could have done. In our “many,
many hours of conversation” she spoke about it as someone else would talk about wishing