Last Christmas by Lily Greene Read Free Book Online Page B

dreaming of lover boy?” Lara teased.
    “I…I…don’t be so absurd! I was thinking about what Christmas presents I still needed to buy,” she said, knowing full well her friends would not believe her.
    “Mmmhmm,” Libby challenged.
    “Oh shut up and pass me a fork!” she cried.
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
    Ella and Fergus were sat in the dark, metres apart from each other. The mad hatter was sitting in between them and the Queen of Hearts was cackling wildly in a corner. For their first date, Fergus had taken Ella to Alice’s Adventures Underground, an interactive theatre evening. Far down the rabbit hole now, Ella and Fergus were being asked to choose whether they wanted to shrink or grow, drink or eat, and were on a quest to find Alice, who was missing.
    Ella heard somebody move next to her and then suddenly the lights were flashing neon green and she could see the outline of Fergus’ stubble and in the background a tunnel lined with pages from old books. She felt as if she was sinking into a parallel world, one full of magic and kaleidoscopic rivers of sounds and patterns.
    Fergus’ face was flickering in and out of focus as the strobe lights persisted. This was the most surreal tea party Ella had ever been to, the only tea party she had ever been to, come to think of it.
    Fergus squeezed her hand and through the sporadic lighting, she could see a purple Cheshire cat grin projected onto the wall behind her. Ella had heard all the hype surrounding this night and had been meaning to get tickets. They had sold out too quickly for her to get her hands on any but luckily Fergus’ friend was the manager for the venue and gave him a heads up when some tickets were returned.
    The whole night had been filled with topsy-turvy colours, walls replaced with ceilings and ceilings swapped for floors. At one point, Ella had been taken off into a tiny room lined with a mosaic of mirrors by a gigantic lime-coloured caterpillar and been made to write a poem about her suit of cards, diamonds. It was all incredibly exciting in that half confused sort of way and Ella was having a blast, even if she didn’t understand all the gimmicks of the evening.
    After escaping their tunnel, Ella and Fergus were led into a grand courtroom where the ‘hearts’ were found guilty and where Tweedledum and Tweedledee performed a mesmerizing circus act. The pièce de résistance was a cascading waterfall of teacups and cocktails which all the guests could drink from and dance around as the theatrical experience morphed into a party with a live band that arose from the depths of a backdrop made to look like a pile of rubbish, a wasteland.
    Ella and Fergus were lost in Wonderland and it was perfect.
    As the experience drew to a close, the couple exited the venue that was dug deep down under Waterloo station and walked over the Jubilee bridge to embankment.
    “It’s so nice when the hype is justified,” said Ella. “So often, something like this is bigged up to enormous proportions and then it almost always falls short. It’s so disappointing when that happens. But I thought that was great; tremendously fun and truly imaginative.”
    “I agree, it was so organic, not too overdone or micromanaged. I get the feeling that the experience is different every night because a different crowd comes in and participates and that’s just as it should be. I honestly felt like I was a kid ambling through a magical land for most part of it. The set was magnificent!”
    “It was wonderful, thank you.” Ella smiled thinking about the sensational evening they had spent together.
    “It was. I’ve really had a great time tonight,” Fergus said, taking her hand in his. Holding hands, becoming one unit, the pair could take on the panicked robotic Christmas shoppers with more ease. These shoppers, each on their own sacred mission, scanning the urban landscape for their targets, straining to complete their hunt for the ‘perfect’ present, looked like automated