Christmas Shopping is a mandatory activity that earns me blisters and numb fingers and the urge to pick up the crazy blonde woman marching me from shop door to shop door and carry her back to our hotel. The bags only get heavier, though I am not entirely sure who she is buying these gifts for, and my opinions only become less appreciated as time ticks on. She claims it is not valid to say that every item would look more desirable tomorrow. I have never seen this side of Leah before, and I do not know if it is because she is grief-stricken and experimenting with ways to cope, or because she has simply forgotten to buy every single person in her life a Christmas present (foreign concept).

Eventually, we trudge through the snow with four, very-full shopping bags and red noses that burn the minute we step into the hotel's warmth. Leah sniffs, and I set the bags down to ensure that she does not cry while standing alone. If she is going to be upset, I am going to be there beside her. That is the whole reason I have brought her here. This place, though I will not be telling Leah, is important to my family in a way that can only be described as a hotel that has some of our most special memories engraved in its wooden beams. It is sacred. We bring those who we love; we do not dare to bring significant others who will be strangers in two months. I have decided that I love her, unequivocally. Whether I delay the inevitable or not is a different matter, and one that should be separated from the current situation at hand.

We return to our room with a pleasant ache in our muscles; an indicator of a productive shopping trip. She toes off her snowboots in an endearingly clumsy way, wobbling so much that her phone slips out of her coat pocket and slams onto the wooden floor with a bang. I jump, knocking over the bedside lamp. The thin walls Ida so subtly reminded me about will be an issue for our neighbours, but solely because neither Leah nor I seem to be spatially-aware enough to keep the room in tact.

Leah is quick to shed her layers of clothing, relishing in the warm bed sheets as she ruins the neat display of the deep red and earthy brown cushions. She rolls onto her back, moaning about how I am just standing there, watching. I hum in response, but remain in my position. The view is perfect.

I can see the snowy rooftops of the houses of the village, and the dots of people walking back from a day on the slopes. The window shows me beautiful things, but my favourite is in the bed below me. Her eyes, though the tears have not dried, sparkle with a glimmer of hope; stormy grey relaxing into something calmer, softer. And she smiles at me. It is the most glorious sight of all. Glorious, because I see the love that I have for her mirrored right back at me. It is as if she is every 'I love you too' to my 'I love you'. I wonder whether it could have always been like this.

"You are staring," Leah murmurs, though it is no longer a complaint. Most would grow bashful, but Leah seems to bask in the attention. "I'm not an exhibit, you know. C'mere." She beckons for me to join her, to which I pull at my coat and layers with disdain. I am simply stalling; I am in her arms no less than a minute later, extra clothing piled on the floor in a forgotten heap.

"I would put you in an art gallery," I confess once settled, too comfortable for my own good. I have spent the past few days doing the holding and the comforting and the cradling. It is almost alien to feel so safe because of someone else. To feel like the one being cared for. "I would have to stuff your mouth with a sock though, otherwise you would bother the visitors by asking for an update on the football." Leah belongs somewhere more divine than whatever this is.

"And to think you were almost romantic." Her laugh hits my neck, her mouth just shy of brushing the skin exposed there. We savour the moment together, lying quietly as though a sound would dissolve the illusion and bring us back to reality. It is hard to believe that this is my reality.

The question I need to ask has the power to ruin the mood, reminding me of just how fragile this tranquillity truly is. Leah is grieving. She can cover it up by changing the scenery around her or attempting to animate her actions so that they do not have the tang of sadness she feels so visibly, but I am not an idiot. I raised Fleur in a way that our mother failed to do, through no fault of her own, and I am acquainted with the knowledge that things do not last forever. I accepted it a long time ago.

I dive head-first into potentially icy water. "Would you like to have dinner?" She takes in a deep breath, and exhales it as though it clears her mind of any possible biting remark she could have made. I can see that she is making an effort to not use her favourite two letters of late. "There is a restaurant here."

Expecting her to frost, I brace myself for the impending 'no' anyway, but it does not come. Instead, I am faced with a pensive silence. It is a big question for her, and asks more about how she is currently feeling than whether her stomach is empty.

Finally, her answers comes. "The restaurant did look nice." It is a small win, but a win nonetheless.

Leah could have easily done what she did in her living room in St. Albans in our hotel room in Gerlos; sat, stewed, mourned. I cannot find it in me to blame her because I would not cope well with a loss so painful. She is at no fault for missing her best friend, for feeling like her world must stop turning, but the world does not wait for those we leave behind. We go again.

She kisses my neck, lips eager as though she has been thinking about it since I got comfortable. It is neither long nor passionate, but she seems content with peppering the exposed skin with short pecks as I think through what we can do this evening. Dinner, of course. There is a games room, so maybe we can go there afterwards. I need to complete my off-season workout, having completely forgotten about it, swept up in the action of the day.

We go to the restaurant in sliders and almost-pyjamas, finding it less busy than the bar, but still alive. This hotel is a place for regulars, somewhere that families stay once and vow to remain loyal to. The people here are mostly, if not exclusively, Dutch, but they are not the kind who have not seen Fleur and I before. As I said, they are regular customers and so are we.

Still, I drop Leah's hand as we enter the restaurant. We are not together and we are not going to discuss it now, so the public prying will only serve to complicate things. I have no problem sharing parts of my private life, but I need to be aware of what is happening to share it in a way that is not invasive. Leah has her own public image to uphold, too.

"Merry Christmas Eve," is the first thing Leah says as we sit down at our table (rustic and brown with a white tablecloth, situated in the corner away from the hubbub that surrounds the bar on the other side of the restaurant). She peers at the menu I have nervously handed her, face unreadable. "It's in Dutch." I open mine. I swap them. "This is all food that I don't know if I like."

"You have Austrian girls on your team," I remind her, wondering if she politely tries other people's food even if it looks like something out of her nightmares. "Be brave. You can be brave."

She frowns, kicking my foot under the table. It is feeble and does not hurt, but she didn't mean for it to. "I'm not four."

"I will order for us, and we can get fries if you hate everything," I compromise, not needing to read the menu. She nods tentatively, enticed by the possibility of fries, no doubt, and closes her menu. I put them aside. "Tell me about your Christmas Eves in England." I have missed hearing her voice. I have missed how good it makes me feel.

"Well, for starters, it's never really snowing – although it has a few times. They're cold and we're cold, and so the heating is always blasting. This year, the prices rose, so Mum's been buying tons of blankets instead, so I suppose we'd be wrapped in those." English people always talk about the weather. It is an earned stereotype. "Mum and Dad sometimes have people round for a little party, but most years are just us four. Jacob was impatient about presents when he was little, so Mum would get us an early one that we could open in the evening. It used to be stuff like toys, but it evolved into pyjamas quickly. That way, we could wake up already in the Christmas spirit."

"Fleur was like that. She used to open her presents the night before. My parents would get so angry." We had a Christmas tree, though the presents sent from Australia were kept in my parents' room. I realised why when I saw Fleur with a pile of toys on Christmas Eve and then a puddle of tears on Christmas Day because she had been greedy. I think it taught her a valuable lesson about patience in the end.

"You speak about Fleur as though she isn't one of the best players of all time," Leah observes. "I know that she's your little sister, and I get it, but it's so strange. Everybody I know says her name like a prayer, you know. If only she didn't play for the enemy."

Glazing over words that have been uttered by Scarlett and various other footballers, I realise that Leah does not know about Fleur's transfer. Nobody does.

I received a message from Papa yesterday. Emma Hayes has let my sister go. They cannot keep her without forcing her to stay, and they are in no place to do that. There is an investigation going on, as expected, to determine exactly why Scarlett died. It is an outrageous death. Near impossible. I have been off social media this week, but I assume there is a lot of anger from the fans. "Fleur is moving to Barcelona." In fact, I have been totally unavailable. My phone has not ringed or beeped or buzzed because I have not yet connected to the wifi and have kept my data off. "They have been negotiating for a while, but Chelsea refused to terminate her contract. Until now."

Leah must understand, I'm sure. We have talked about Jordan, about (her) other past relationships. Footballers grow close and then closer, pulled in by the endless hours spent together, the shared highs and lows. It makes sense to date a teammate, complex dynamics aside. Most female footballers will know of the specific relationship, and so they will feel immensely sorry for my sister. "I would leave the team, too. I wouldn't be able to cope."

"I doubt she will cope." Fleur's grief is something I will have to monitor for a while. The first few weeks are perfect for Mumma and Papa to handle, because it does not require them to dig deeper. Nobody knows her like I do. Like Scarlett did. She hates being seen. "You are also not fooling me."

"I've wanted to cry every minute of every day." I wave off the waitress for a moment. Leah's voice is shameful, as if it embarrasses her to admit it. Maybe she hates that I can see right through her, too. It is a skill I have worked hard to perfect.

"So why haven't you?" I ask, leaning forward slightly.

"Can't cry if you're here. Fucks up your holiday a bit, doesn't it?" Her laugh is self-deprecating. "And it sucks. Makes my eyes sting and go puffy. My throat hurts." The waitress politely interrupts, her teenage smile out of place at our table. I order our drinks quickly; a Glühwein for me, raspberry Punsch for Leah. My German is better when the topic is alcohol.

The waitress has left, though the air feels disturbed. I clear my throat. It partly replenishes the air by forcing her eyes to meet mine. Her smile has cracks in it. "I don't think you could ruin my holiday. It has been very nice so far."

"We've been here all of five hours." She hums in amusement, but grows quiet. Grief comes in waves, lapping at the front of her mind every so often. I am not an idiot; I know that that is how it works. It is just horrible to actually see.

Scarlett is the first person close to me to have died. Of course, relatives have passed away here and there, but it hurts less when you have never met someone. There is no way to miss their smell or the pattern of their freckles on their cheeks. I am going to miss Scarlett. She was like a little sister, though a far more low-maintenance one than my actual ward.

After a pleasant meal in which Leah braved about half of her plate and mine and then persuaded me to get her fries, we trudge our way to the games room. About fifteen Dutch teenagers are egging each other on in games of pool and table football, but the two girls playing table tennis only have to register who has just walked in to drop the bats quickly and occupy themselves with something else. Leah tells me off for being intimidating. I ask her whether she wants to play or not.

The game is easily mine, though the accumulated crowd betrays their national tennis hero to support the underdog. Leah's fight and fire reminds me of a woman who I have watched disappear over the past few days, and I almost lose a point by acknowledging how much I have been grieving the woman who I have fallen in love with. A little piece of her seems to have died with Scarlett, and though this is all happening very quickly, I am proud of Leah for finding that part of herself again, even if it is for the briefest of moments.

Ida makes me jump as she claps when I beat Leah with a merciless serve. Matchpoint. "You are mean, Jaimie." I twirl the bat in my hand. Juan called me the other day to congratulate me once more for finishing the season ranked second in the world. (Iga was first.) He is more than a coach, because he also asked me how Leah was doing, and then how it was affecting me. He said to make sure I keep putting myself first. I am my own top priority, apparently. "Are you finished? Jakob is already sat down."

She talks to me in German, and so I relay the information to Leah in English. "Yeah, we're done," confirms Leah, handing the bat back to one of the teenagers using it before. Thankfully, nobody asks us if they can take a picture. "Why's Jakob sat down? Is there some kind of movie night?"

"Not exactly," I reply, admittedly cryptic. I follow Ida to the lounge in the lobby – if it can be called that, as the lobby is small and the lounge is a few sofas around a fireplace with a piano in the corner. Leah trails behind us.

This year, with it being just me, sitting at the piano in front of faces that are three-hundred and sixty-five days older is a little bit daunting. Usually, Fleur stands to my right, and our cousins line up in front of the piano. What is normally a choir is now a solo act.

A tradition born of hyperactive, attention-seeking children, this is something that has been done annually since my family first started coming here. Every Christmas Eve, we sang for our parents and Jakob and Ida. At first, the songs were childish and made up, mostly consisting of more sounds than words. My eldest cousin, Alex, played the piano before I did, but Papa competed with his brother enough to ensure that I was better than him soon enough. It is a shame that the only pieces engraved into my fingers like the notes and staves have been carved into the bone are Christmas carols.

I begin with the introduction: a well-rehearsed, German speech, whose speaker is rotated each year. It thanks our audience and begs for a break in ski lessons the next day (kept in for sentimental reasons long after we stopped needing an instructor), and I am certain that Leah has understood what is happening by now. She looks amazed that I am confident I will play the right keys.

Playing the piano is simple in my mind. I read a symbol, I press down on either a white or black key. The note rings out and people clap. It is similar to tennis in that way.

The ball is struck. I read where it is going. I swing my racquet and beat my opponent. People clap.

Leah must know the opening notes to 'Stille Nacht'. It is called 'Silent Night' in English, I think. Her lips part as I hit the keys with practised expertise, my foot pressing down on the pedal with more force than necessary to keep the butterflies in my stomach at bay. I fear they might erupt out my throat when I open my mouth to sing.

I get lost in the tune, zoned out of my own voice as I imagine my cousins beside me. I begin to hear Fleur's stupid harmonising and Lize's low notes, or the sound of Noa, Beatrix, and Tess clapping prematurely; a hint to cut the last song and skip to the bows and the kisses and the hugs.

Ida and Jakob relax to the sound of my singing, their heads lulling back against the sofa. They are used to this, and look forward to it every year. I am glad that they are not disappointed with my effort.

I find that I have closed my eyes by the time I finish the last verse, the sound of my sigh as I finish soft against the applause I receive. A few guests have stood at the entrance of the lobby, listening without imposing on what is obviously something to be kept intimate and private. The smile that grows tentatively on my lips soon finds its purpose and bears into a grin, my legs taking me to Ida and Jakob. They praise my singing, impressed with my hidden skill because I am not the loudest of the group.

A hand wraps around my forearm as they speak slowly to me in German. I feel breathless when I look at Leah. I feel breathless when she looks at me like I hung the moon. I see no possibility of me ever breathing again when she kisses me. Even if it seems like she is promising to never stop. 

notes: 

this is way longer than what i usually write on wattpad but i figured that i should give u something more substantial considering how long it has taken 

it's gonna be like this for the next few weeks because i am swamped 

love you loads and can't be bothered to read through this one 

thanks for reading xxx