I don’t know how long I sit there for, but it takes me a while to wipe away the tears and get back to my feet.
I get up and collect my things, and walk home in the crisp, cold night air, every breath billowing in front of my face as pavement salt crunches under my shoes. I stop to look at the array of Christmas lights I pass. It’s two days until Christmas and I’ve never felt less festive.
Chapter 18
I’m woken up the next morning by a sharp hammering on the door. I bolt upright and stumble over the duvet cover that’s tangled around my legs. It was a restless night’s sleep and I feel like I’ve woken up every twenty minutes thinking about James, which on the positive side, has meant I’ve not spent the night panicking about the Christmas dinner I’ve got to cook tomorrow and instead how he won’t be here for it.
The hammering comes again and I scrub my hand over my face and rush down the stairs.
It’s half past seven. Who the hell …
My eyes are stinging in the brightness as I snap the hallway light on and drop the keys twice before I fumble one into the lock and throw the door open. I only realise I haven’t looked in the mirror when the courier takes a step back in alarm and then starts giggling to himself. ‘Woke you up, love. Sorry.’
I suspect he feels more sorry for himself at being faced with the sight of me first thing in the morning. At least it’s still dark out. A full daylight view would’ve probably turned him to stone, the poor man. At least the festive pyjamas are sure to have brightened his morning. It’s not every day a woman answers the door wearing much-loved, bobbled and faded flannel red-and-green check pyjamas with two giant candy canes on the front forming a heart shape. I’m probably one of those stories he’ll go back to the office and tell his colleagues about.
He hands me his machine and I scribble something that doesn’t even vaguely resemble my signature, and then he holds out a cardboard document envelope, takes his machine back, and wishes me a merry Christmas on his way down the path to his van.
I close the door behind him and accidentally catch a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror. Wild Animal Control will probably be along any minute. I smooth my fringe down and shake my hair back so it only goes in four directions as opposed to the seventeen it’s currently sticking out in as I tear the strip off the document envelope, wondering who on earth is sending me documents on Christmas Eve.
And why they look so official.
My eyes scan over the sheet of paper I pull out, although it may as well be written in gobbledegook and I have to put it down and go to the kitchen to splash water on my face in an attempt to make my stinging eyes work again and to double-check I’m not dreaming.
I pick up the letter again and blink a few times because underneath the embossed official header and addresses, it can’t possibly say what I think it says.
Dear Miss Maddison,
We act for Nutcracker Enterprises Incorporated, trading as Nutcracker Lane. We are writing to inform you that you have been named as a co-proprietor of Nutcracker Lane Christmas Village. Please make contact with our office when we reopen on January 4th and arrange a meeting to officially sign over a third of Nutcracker Lane into your name.
Please ensure you bring proof of identification with you.
If you have any enquiries, we will be happy to assist.
Yours sincerely,
B.G.D. Solicitors
Well, that’s one way to wake up. The equivalent of a bucket of ice water to the face. I read the letter again and again, but it still doesn’t make sense.
I scan the document for any mention of James’s name, because surely this has to be something to do with him – his final idea of a joke, but it doesn’t look like a joke. I know you can mock up official letters online, but this is printed on ridiculously high quality watermarked paper with embossed gold logos and proper-looking headers and footers.
My phone is still upstairs on the bedside table and I go back up to get it. My fingers have automatically scrolled to the photo of James with the nutcracker in the outlet shop and dialled his number before I’ve considered what I’m doing.
He doesn’t answer. Which is fair enough considering it’s not even daylight yet on Christmas Eve. And probably for the best considering we didn’t exactly part on good terms. Or on any terms at all, really.
I dial the solicitor’s number from the contact details at the top of the letter, but unsurprisingly on the day before Christmas, they don’t answer either, so I dial my most-dialled number instead.
‘Nia?’ Stacey sounds bleary. ‘It’s not even 8 a.m. on Christmas Eve. Even Lily’s not up yet and nothing keeps her in bed when there’s advent calendar chocolate to be had. This had better be good.’
‘I think I own Nutcracker Lane,’ I blurt out.
‘Very funny. You haven’t started on the mulled wine already, have you? We still have to work today.’
‘Not all of it. Part of it.’
‘The mulled wine?’ She sounds confused and I hear her mouthing my name to Simon, who I’ve undoubtedly also woken up on one of his very few days off.
‘No. Nutcracker Lane. A courier just came with a letter from a solicitor saying I’ve been made co-proprietor and I need to make an appointment with his office when they reopen in the new year to sign the paperwork.’
‘Sounds like a scam. Like those phone calls you get saying your internet’s about to be cut off or you’ve been charged a membership to something you’ve never heard of and they’ll reverse it if you phone back and give them all your bank details.’
I run my fingers over the indented logo. ‘It’s very elaborate for a scam. And a scam would’ve come in the normal post. This was same-day courier …’
She grumbles something unintelligible.
‘I’m going to walk up there …’
‘The courier?’
I think I scared the courier more than enough for one morning without adding stalking to the mix. ‘No, to the lane. Just to see if there’s anyone around who can explain this.’
She sighs and I hear the throw of a duvet cover and the groan as she gets out of bed. ‘I’m coming with you.’
I know everyone thinks their best friend is wonderful but mine is more wonderful than most.
I pull on sweatpants and a Christmas jumper, brush my teeth and hair, and yank on a coat as I go out the door, papers in hand to show Stacey.
When I get to the corner where we usually meet, she’s trudging up the hill towards me, a coat on over her nightwear, as baggy blue pyjama bottoms with arctic foxes all over them flap in the breeze.
‘The solicitor exists,’ I say before she’s reached me. ‘I googled him. It genuinely looks legit.’ I can’t hide the flutter in my voice as I think about the possibility of this being real.
She gives me a pre-coffee grunt and takes the envelope out of my hands, scanning over the pages while we walk up the rest of the hill towards Nutcracker Lane as the sky turns from charcoal to light grey in the space of a few minutes. It’s too early for most people’s Christmas lights to be on, so the houses are dull and the pavement is damp with early morning mist.
‘His car’s in.’ After weeks in the habit of looking for his car, it’s the first thing I notice when we reach the top.
Stacey doesn’t even need to look up to know who I’m talking about.
My heart feels like it’s in my throat and simultaneously like it’s pounding out of my chest. And I still feel the familiar flutter of butterflies in my stomach at the prospect of seeing him.
Stacey slots her arm through mine in solidarity and hands the envelope back to me.
‘It looks legit, right?’ My voice is hoarse and shakes on the last word, because I don’t understand it but I can’t ignore the shot of excitement about what I don’t understand.
Apart from James’s car, the car park is completely deserted, and Stace and I go in by the tree lot, which is now bare except for a few spindly stragglers and decorated trees in pots, which probably haven’t g
ot much hope of finding a home on Christmas Eve. We’re nearer our shop from this end, but the lane is dark and silent as we walk up towards Starlight Rainbows.
As we approach the wood cabins, I wonder what I expected to find, because this part of the lane is no less dark and silent than the rest of it.
‘There’s no one here,’ Stacey whispers, tugging my arm a bit closer.
Except there is. I come to such a sharp halt as we approach the two shops opposite each other that I nearly trip over my own feet and Stacey bangs into my side.
‘What the …’ She follows my gaze to the window of Twinkles and Trinkets.
The shop is now completely empty except for one thing – standing alone in the darkened window of James’s shop is the six-foot-tall nutcracker I knocked over on day one. The handsome one with flushed red cheeks matching the blush on his wedge-shaped nose, wearing his green-trimmed red outfit, with his black boots and gold crown. His broken arm is mended and instead of the jagged line joining the wood together, the break is wrapped with a string of tinsel, and the flashing candle bulb necklace James bought from our shop is around its neck.
‘Is that the …’ Stacey asks.
I nod.
‘He mended it then …’
I look around the lane. It’s so eerily silent that there can’t possibly be anyone else here. ‘He mended it. Or …’
‘Turned back into it?’ she offers.
‘Well, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility, is it?’ I extract my arm from hers and go up to the window for a closer look. I stare up at the life-size nutcracker who is grinning woodenly down at me from his plinth in the otherwise empty display. ‘What if James really was …’
‘A magical nutcracker come to life?’ she finishes for me.
I don’t reply. The nutcracker has got wood-brown eyes that are darker than James’s, and hair that’s the exact same shade of such a dark brown that it looks black in most lights. It could be him. I mean, obviously it couldn’t because this is reality and nutcrackers don’t come to life outside of nineteenth-century children’s books and Tchaikovsky ballets, and definitely not in little Christmas villages in Wiltshire.
‘You don’t really think …’ Stacey trails off. Neither of us seems able to finish a sentence this morning.
I reach up and touch the window where one of the nutcracker’s wooden ball hands touches the glass from the inside, like if I can get close enough, he’ll blink or give me some hint … ‘Don’t you think it’s weird that this has been missing the whole time, and now James has disappeared, it’s returned?’
‘He was probably mending it and it’s taken him this long because he’s been so busy trying to save Nutcracker Lane. And he’s only got one functional arm – that must slow things down.’
‘You think he was really trying to save it?’
‘I think everything he said to you last night is true,’ Stacey says because I texted her the basics when I got home. ‘I think that when you knocked that nutcracker over, you metaphorically knocked him off his feet. I know a man in love when I see one, and I certainly know you well enough to know you’re snowballs-over-mittens for him too.’
‘And what if he’s …’ I gesture to the nutcracker in the window ‘… that.’
She doesn’t answer, and it hits me how devastated I’m going to be if he is that. If he somehow doesn’t exist … if he somehow wasn’t real. What the hell am I going to do without him in my life? I already miss him like a Christmas tree with half its branches cut off and it’s only been two days. The thought of this being it … of never seeing him again …
My eyes fill up with tears as the thought passes through my head. Never seeing him again is unthinkable. No matter what has happened between us, he can’t just be gone. If he’s turned into a wooden doll, I’m going to be even angrier with him.
I sniff hard, swipe my hands over my eyes, and square my shoulders. There is no way he wasn’t real. Wooden men don’t make you feel alive like he did. ‘Okay, sensible, non-magic-believing head on. He cannot be that nutcracker. It’s not possible. And what about this?’ I slap at the envelope in my hand. ‘What the hell is this?’
‘I don’t know. What exactly did he say to you last night?’
I repeat the shortened version of everything I told her in the message I sent when I got home.
‘So, what, you think he’s trying to prove you can trust him by giving you a third of the lane?’ Her face screws up in confusion. ‘But it’s not his to give away. He’s just the accountant, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t flipping know, Stace. I don’t know what he is. He told me he worked for a Christmas cracker company.’
‘Okay, let’s work backwards, retrace your steps. What happened before yesterday? When did you last see him?’
‘Before the accident in the factory. The night before. I told you about the outlet shop and the decorations and then there was kissing and we made a wish on the magical nutcracker.’
‘What did you wish for?’
‘Nutcracker Lane.’
‘What?’
I look up the lane towards the magical nutcracker, obscured from view by the curve in the street. ‘I wished for Nutcracker Lane …’
We share a glance and both turn towards the upper end of the lane. My hand is frozen in mid-gesture towards its general direction.
‘Well, they say wishes come true here …’ Stacey says slowly.
‘Yeah, but it’s a wooden statue. It’s a lovely story, but it doesn’t actually grant wishes. James was the only person who heard—’ I cut the sentence off as realisation finally hits and all the pieces I haven’t understood slot instantly together. ‘James was the only person who heard. Stace, that’s it! That’s what this has been about this whole time.’
‘You’ve lost me.’ She’s shaking her head.
‘He’s not just the accountant. He’s the new owner. This is the family business he has to take over in January. He doesn’t work for a Christmas cracker company at all. That was something he made up because he couldn’t tell us where he really worked. This is what he’s so scared of destroying. This is why he’s here. He wanted to find the festive spirit he needs to save his parents’ Christmas business, and this is it. It’s Nutcracker Lane.’
She tries and fails to stifle a yawn, clearly not following my epiphany.
‘He said he resented Nutcracker Lane. Why would you resent something you’ve only visited a couple of times as a kid? He resented the business that took his parents away at Christmas. He told me that. He specifically said his parents sold the illusion of a perfect Christmas.’
I throw my arms out to the sides and spin around to indicate the lane surrounding us. ‘But their own Christmases were all about work and material-value toys. This is why he was talking like there was a deadline to our relationship – because if I’d got as far as meeting his parents for Christmas dinner tomorrow, I’d have realised they were the darling couple who used to run Nutcracker Lane. Mr and Mrs Ozborne. The ones who haven’t been around much in the past couple of years – the same time his father got ill. They loved this place so much – it would break their hearts to see it go under. What he said yesterday was true – he came here to find a way of saving Nutcracker Lane. It’s his father’s dying wish.’
I think back over all the things James has said to me. He’s always been cagey about his job, but every so often, things have slipped out that, if I’m honest with myself, made it blatantly obvious he wasn’t talking about Christmas crackers. ‘And to be fair, if we’d have known he was Scrooge, we would have avoided him—’
‘I was hoping you’d find your way up here.’
We both scream at the unexpected voice in the quiet lane and turn to see James walking out of a fake-snow-covered gap between the shops, one hand shoved into his pocket, and the fingers of his broken arm clutching a few envelopes.
He’s wearing jeans and a red shirt with a white reindeer pattern all over it, and my first instinct is to r
un at him and jump into his arms, which is not advisable for his injuries. What I actually do is burst into tears because he’s real and not a giant nutcracker come to life.
‘What are you doing here so early?’ I stutter out eventually.
‘Putting letters through everyone’s door informing them that they now collectively own a third of Nutcracker Lane. I own a third, you own a third, and now they own a third between them.’ He closes one eye and tilts his head to think about it. ‘Could be interesting if there are disagreements.’
The sight of his smile makes the tears fall harder. ‘Why would you do this?’ I hold up the envelope in my hand so it hides my face as I try to get my emotions under control.
‘Because you once said to me that if I can’t take over this business, I need to find someone who can. And I found someone who can, and more importantly, I found someone who makes me believe that I can. And I can’t do this without you, Nia. I can’t imagine going to work every day without you next to me. And if we’re going to open as some kind of nutcracker museum year-round, we need permanent staff.’ He glances at Stacey, and he’s even enough of a gentleman not to mention the pyjama bottoms. ‘With plenty of time off for craft fairs, of course.’
‘Well, now you’ve found your nutcracker prince, Nee, I’m going to go home because Lily’s probably bouncing on the bed by now and I need to shower and change before work. See you both at nine!’ Stacey backs away with a wave, looking like she can’t get out of here fast enough.
I turn back to him and waggle the envelope around. ‘What are you playing at, James? What is this? Trying to buy me off? Typical Scrooge. As always, everything’s about money with him. And you.’ I realise I still can’t reconcile that they’re the same person, and that nothing I’ve said so far makes sense. It’s hard to hang on to my anger when I look at him, chewing his lip, his thumb fiddling with the corner of one of the envelopes in his hand, but if this is some attempt to throw money at a problem and hope it goes away in typical Scrooge style … I’m not willing to let my guard down yet.
The Little Christmas Shop on Nutcracker Lane Page 30
