One Perfect Christmas by Paige Toon

One Perfect Christmas
    I have a spring in my step as my boots crunch through the freshly fallen snow. It’s eight o’clock in the morning and I’m almost too excited to breathe. The
anticipation of the last few weeks – no,
months
– has been killing me. How I will sleep tonight… Who am I kidding? I
won’t
sleep.
    But first I have to get through today. The smile grows wider on my face and I actually giggle. Out loud. Like a proper nutcase.
    ‘Morning!’ I chirp to a lone passer-by.
    ‘Morning,’ he replies with a slightly wary look in his eye.
    The streets are almost deserted at this hour on a freezing Saturday morning in the middle of December.
    I practically skip over Magdalene Bridge, glancing fondly at the punts moored down to my right. There’s a thin layer of ice on the river and the buildings and streets are coated with
fluffy white icing, all shimmering under a perfect blue winter sky. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cambridge look this beautiful.
    Today is the day that two of my favourite people in the whole world – Jessie and Emily – get married to each other. I met Jessie when I was a student at Anglia Ruskin University,
here in Cambridge. He worked as a punter on the River Cam – he taught
me
how to punt – but that wasn’t the only way he brought joy back into my life. When I met him I was
a mess. But enough of that.
    Emily was our housemate in my second year. She was as meek as a mouse when we first met, and Jessie and I hardly ever saw her. But eventually she came out of her shell and we became good
friends. Then she and Jessie became much more than that. They’ve been together for nine years, and now, today, they’re finally tying the knot.
    When Jessie told me he had proposed to Emily I thought they’d get married in Scotland, where she’s from. But they delighted me by deciding on Cambridge. After all, this is where they
met, and I’m about to reach the house where Jessie grew up.
    Jessie’s parents, Judy and Andrew, live in one of the gothic terraces on Mount Pleasant, at the top of the hill. They spent some time in America when I was at university, permitting Jessie
to rent out the two spare rooms to students – namely, Emily and me.
    I open the gate, walk up to the heavy, intricately-carved wooden front door and knock. The door swings open almost immediately, and then I’m beaming up at Jessie. His red hair looks wilder
than usual, and his face a little paler. I realise with building hysteria that he has a slightly manic look about him.
    I burst out laughing. ‘You’re freaking out!’ I exclaim, unable to offer him the calm, sympathetic shoulder that I probably should, given the circumstances.
    ‘Yeah, yeah, alright,’ he snaps good-naturedly, pulling me into the house and closing the door.
    Then I throw my arms around him and he lifts me off my feet, squeezing the air out of me before starting to laugh, too. He puts me down and I look up at him.
    ‘Today’s the day, Weasley,’ I say gently, using the nickname that I came up for him when we first met a decade ago, because he reminded me of Rupert Grint – AKA Ron
Weasley from
Harry Potter
.
    ‘Sure is, China,’ he replies with a grin.
    My name is Alice, but he calls me China because my grandmother was Chinese. I have her long, dead-straight black hair and a hint of her Oriental eyes, although mine are green, like my
mother’s.
    We only started using our nicknames again about eight months ago. We hadn’t used them for years. We grew apart when… No. I’m trying not to think too much today.
    ‘Am I glad to see you,’ Jessie brings me back to the present. ‘How’s Emily?’
    ‘Cool as a cucumber,’ I reply. I left her in her hotel room on the other side of Cambridge. It’s only a small city, so it didn’t take long to walk.
    I’m one of her three bridesmaids, and I arrived at her hotel this morning to find her calmly checking through the contents of her small suitcase before realising that she