by Agatha Frost
“With your father,” Janet said through pursed lips as she hid the bag of sugar in the hallway console table’s cupboard, eyes going down to her guests mingling in the kitchen. “At least go up to your room and dry off first. Imagine what people will say.”
Claire wasn’t in the mood to play politely with her mother’s Women’s Institute friends. Their judgemental gazes lingered on her as she slipped through the crowded kitchen and out into the garden, but that would have been inevitable even if she were wearing her best clothes. Her mother’s friends found it impossible to ignore anyone in their mid-thirties, unmarried, and childless. Claire had been glad of the Candle Crimbo Bash, if only to avoid another excruciating party defending herself and her life choices.
Following the slippery steppingstones to the bottom of the garden, she heard her father and uncle’s similar laughter over Frank Sinatra crooning about Christmas on the small portable radio inevitably stuck on BBC Radio 4. Claire knocked before cranking open the door, and they both scrambled, casting shadows up the walls in the dimly lit shed.
“Oh my!” Her father, Alan, chuckled, clutching a bottle of whisky in his fist. “I thought you were your mother! You’re all wet.”
Unlike Claire in her party clothes that hadn’t been warm even before they got drenched, Alan and Pat were bundled in woolly hats, chunky scarves, heavy coats, and gloves. From what could be seen of their similarly round faces, they looked more like twins than ever, despite their age gap. Claire knew her father, the elder of the two, since he was the only one who ever sat in the creaky office chair next to the filthy potting table. The shed hadn’t seen much garden-related action lately, but it was still her father’s favourite haunt.
Claire had always thought her dad chose the shed because it was the only place dirty enough to keep her mother from venturing down from the pristine house. Claire found herself wrapped up warmly in the shed, visiting her father, more frequently since a surprise eviction had forced her to move back in with her parents.
Alan and Claire loved Janet dearly, but the little breaks helped.
“Sprinklers went off at the party,” she explained, perching on her usual plant pot seat in the corner – the cold terracotta ceramic stung her behind through her tight jeans. “Don’t suppose you know anything about that, Uncle Pat? I thought you turned them off this morning.”
“I did,” he replied after savouring a sip of whisky. “Even double-checked since I knew you were using candles tonight. And I didn’t tell a soul what you were doing.” He winked and tapped his nose. “You all needed that party, given how Nicola has been running things. She’s here, you know. It’s bad enough that she’s your next-door neighbour. Why do you think I’m hiding in the shed? I get enough of her at work. Lording it over us, acting like she’s the bee’s knees.” He smirked. “Want to know a secret?”
“Anything you say can and will be used against you, Pat,” Alan said, slipping back into his DI role easily.
“William Warton,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning in, “knew all about the 1999 Candle Crimbo Bash.”
Claire arched a brow. “He did?”
“Oh, yes!” Pat closed his eyes and bobbed his head as though it should have been obvious. “Couldn’t get anything past him. He was sharp as a fox. How do you think he kept the factory running smoothly for so many years? It’s only now he’s gone that we’re having all the troubles. He thought it was good for morale to let people believe they’d got away with the secret party of the century, so he turned a blind eye.” Pat lifted his tumbler in the air. “How I miss that man. He’d be spinning in his grave if he knew how badly Nicola was treating everyone. It’s only going to get worse, you know. She won’t stop until she’s either run the place into the ground or sold it.” He took another generous drink before holding the glass out, pointing a finger, and adding, “But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“I think that’s enough whisky for us,” Alan said, rubbing at his brow. “Look how we’re acting at our age.”
“You’re acting like brothers,” Claire said with a laugh, already pushing herself up off the plant pot, “and I’ll leave you to it after just one more question.” Training her eyes on Pat, she asked, “Who has access to the sprinkler system and the kitchen?”
“Oh.” He tapped his finger on his chin. “Let me think. Why the kitchen?”
“Because someone spiked the sugar with salt,” she said. “I was ready to chalk that up to bad luck, but the sprinklers went off and ruined everything. I can’t see that being a coincidence.”
“Are you investigating, little one?” Alan asked, a glint in his eye. “Sounds like you’ve put together quite a case. You’re a chip off the old block.”
“Just curious,” she replied, although she’d couldn’t deny the nagging itch at the back of her mind that propelled her to keep digging. “Sprinklers and kitchen, Uncle Pat.”
“Right,” he said, nodding. “There’s the shift managers – so, me, Abdul, Big Jimmy, and Little Jim.” He swirled the whisky around his glass. “I don’t think any of them would have reason to ruin your little get-together. Abdul knew, but he’s got bigger things going on right now. I never told Big Jimmy or Little Jim, and they’re sound lads. They wouldn’t do that.”
“Anyone else?”
“Nicola?” He shrugged. “If you turn the sprinklers back on at the mains, you can activate them remotely. It’s all new-fangled technology now.” He paused. “And maybe that cleaner fella? I can’t think why someone would want to do it, though. Are you sure it wasn’t a coincidence?”
“Maybe it was,” she said. “I just have a gut feeling. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Follow your gut, little one, and tell your mother we’re drinking tea.” Alan added another splash to his tumbler before reluctantly doing the same for Pat. “And get yourself dried off. You’re going to catch your death being damp in this weather.”
Leaving them to crank Frank’s jazzy voice even louder, Claire snuck back into the sparklingly bright kitchen and saved Damon from the WI gang that had formed tightly around him.
“About time,” he hissed as he followed her down the hallway. “The minute I said I was single, they pounced.”
“Thought you’d be a bit young for them.”
“Tried to set me up with every daughter, niece, and single woman they know in a fifty-mile radius.” He shoved his glasses up his nose as he glanced over his shoulder into the kitchen. “I was running out of polite ways to tell them to clear off without actually saying it.”
“Shame, they would have had you married before the night was over. Quicker than any dating apps.” She gave him a playful nudge in the ribs before hopping onto the first step. “I need to get changed if we’re going back to yours. Don’t fancy sitting around in this all night.”
“Don’t suppose you’ve got anything that’ll fit me?” he asked sheepishly. “I’m frozen through.”
“My dad’s stuff will probably fit,” she said, motioning for him to follow her upstairs. “Second door in from the end of the hall.”
Leaving Damon to dig around in her father’s drawers, Claire entered her own bedroom. As clean as it had been before she’d left for work that morning, her mother had been in and made it show-home ready, not that she expected any guests to open the door to Claire’s room.
Apparently, it ‘didn’t look good’ that Claire was back living at home at ‘her age’, so they wouldn’t mention it at the party. But if someone wandered in, at least they wouldn’t find ‘total squalor.’ To Claire, a bra hanging off the bedpost and a glass on the bedside table didn’t equal squalor, but that was an argument she was certain to lose. Claire’s mother cleaned when she was anxious, and Janet was never more anxious than in the days leading up to her annual Christmas party.
After quickly feeding her two cats, Sid and Domino, and changing their litter, Claire looked at the factory still lit up on the hill beyond the farm. She wondered if the party had reignited once the sprinklers switched
off. Instead of feeling excited, she yawned; the night certainly wasn’t going where she’d expected it to – not that she’d had any idea what would need to happen to constitute a legendary sequel party
Drink, dance, laugh, sing, drink, dance, leave, and wake up on Damon’s sofa the next morning feeling rough as anything?
Possibly.
But now that she was at home, looking up at the factory, she wasn’t totally upset about it. If the party had happened earlier in her tenure, she might have felt differently. Even without her mother’s pointed reminders, Claire knew seventeen years was an awfully long time to work at one place, especially when that place was a factory where she was completely replaceable. The clock was ticking, and as yet another Christmas approached, she was still ignoring the itching feeling.
This itch didn’t relate to figuring out what had ruined the party.
This one was always there.
An itch for change.
Pulling away from the window, she returned her focus to what her father had called her ‘case.’ Ruling out her uncle and probably the rest of the shift managers left Claire with two suspects. Nicola, whom people had started referring to as The Warton Witch, and Kevin, the cleaner.
Like Maggie and Flavio, Kevin wasn’t really part of the core group of Warton employees. Again, they didn’t exclude the cleaner on purpose, but he was separate. Like Maggie’s revelation about having a daughter, hearing Kevin was married had come as a complete shock. But then again, she knew little about the other hundred or so people she worked with daily. She and Damon clung to each other; he’d been stuck in the Warton rut almost as long as she had.
“Claire?” Damon whispered through the door. “You in there? You won’t believe what I just heard.”
Claire opened the door, surprised to see Damon in one of her father’s woolly green and red Christmas jumpers and baggy jeans. He suddenly looked twenty years older, but she decided not to say anything.
“What?” she asked as she closed the door and plugged in her hairdryer.
“I was in your parents’ bedroom, and someone was in their en suite. I didn’t realise until I’d already stripped down to nothing.” He paused, and his cheeks turned red. “Thankfully, they didn’t come out, and I put on the first things I could find. I would have left, but then I recognised the voice.”
“Wasn’t my mother, was it?”
“It was Nicola,” he called over the sound of Claire blasting heat at her short, mousy hair. “At least, I think it was. I mean, we hear her voice on the speaker system at the factory nearly every day so it’s hard not to know it.”
Claire turned off the hairdryer.
“Who was she speaking to?”
“I can’t be sure,” he whispered, leaning in, “but I think she was calling the police, and I think she was talking about the party.”
Claire turned back to look out the window.
She might not have enjoyed working there, and she might not have known all that much about the people she worked with, but they were all stuck in the same boat.
She wouldn’t let them sink.
“Then we need to warn them,” she said, already heading for the door.
“We’ll never make it. The police will already be on their way from the station.”
“I know a shortcut,” she said, glancing down at the black formal shoes Damon had chosen from her father’s wardrobe. “You’re going to wish you’d borrowed his boots.”
Claire hurried downstairs, surprised to see Nicola applying red lipstick in the hallway mirror. She fluffed up her ginger hair as she kissed her lips together. Her eyes went to Claire, and she gave a tight smile before turning on her heels and strutting into the kitchen with a soft sway in her hips.
They’d been neighbours before they were boss and employee, but they’d never been friends. Another gut feeling insisted that Nicola thought she was above her. Given how beautiful Nicola was, Claire sometimes believed it – though, less so now that she’d had plenty of opportunities to see how cold and unappealing the woman was beyond the pretty visage.
Rather than making a scene by going through the kitchen, Claire and Damon snuck out the front door and crept down the side of the house. Music and laughter poured from the shed as Claire helped Damon over the fence before following him. Sticking to the edge, they set off across Ian Baron’s fields. The grouchy farmer would have come out yelling with his fists above his head if he could see them, but it was thankfully dark enough to hide them.
“Is this why you sometimes show up to work covered in mud?” Damon asked as they hopped across the partially frozen ground on their way up the hill.
“Only when I sleep through my alarm.”
They reached the top of the hill, and though they no longer felt the cold, their icy breath as they choked for air made the chill obvious. Even with so little time to warn their co-workers, they took a minute to lean against the wall outside the factory and let their lungs catch up. Claire heard a distant siren and pulled Damon through the gates.
The factory looked nothing like they’d left it. Club music – no decking the halls or having merry little Christmases here – blared from inside as rainbow disco lights flashed through the gigantic industrial Victorian windows.
“Has someone brought a fog machine?” Damon shouted over the music as he yanked open the heavy doors. “Now this is legendary.”
“How long have we been gone?” she called back over the heavy techno beats, squinting at the foggy shapes dancing in the strobing lights between the factory machines.
“Too long.”
“It’s about to get even more legendary,” Claire said, peering around for the source as a DJ talked into a microphone. “Over there!”
Rushing past their sticker station, they skidded around the packing station and ran along to the foot of the metal staircase leading up to the walkways and offices. In the time since they’d left, someone had set up an entire DJ booth, complete with its own lighting rig. Claire didn’t know if this had been part of the original plan, but it pained her to know what she was about to do.
“You need to turn the music off!” she shouted. The proximity to the speakers drowned out her voice. “The police are coming.”
“Whaaaaat?” the DJ shouted back, barely lifting her headphones. “Can’t hear you, babe. I don’t take requests.”
“The. Police.” Her tongue and lips wrapped around every word. “Are. Coming.”
“Yooo, party’s over,” the DJ called into the crackly microphone. The music cut out suddenly as she slapped her laptop shut and yanked the wires from it. “Old Bill are on their way. Scatter.”
Someone somewhere turned on the ceiling lights, and once again, the packed factory emptied in every direction as the DJ disassembled her setup at lightning speed. Claire thought about offering to help, but she knew she’d only get in the way. Besides, she still hadn’t confirmed if Nicola was the one behind the sabotage.
“I don’t think we even work with half these people,” Damon said, gazing around the factory as people dashed about all around them. “Why did Nicola have to call the police?”
“Because she’s our boss,” Claire said, already setting off to the canteen, “and she’s allergic to fun.”
Claire pushed through the double doors and walked straight up to the kitchen door. It was locked, but she saw shoulders through the screen pulled down over the serving window. She banged her fist on the door.
After some scrambling, Flavio appeared, bright red lipstick smeared across his lips, and his shirt partially unbuttoned. Behind him, Maggie was reapplying her lippie using the back of a serving spoon as a mirror. Biting into her bottom lip to stifle any reaction, Claire watched Maggie saunter across the kitchen with a smile that hadn’t been there earlier.
“Don’t get all shy now,” she said, pinching Flavio’s cheek as she passed. “It was only a snog, and you’re a good kisser. See you on Monday morning.”
“What have I done?” he whispered, as he tried
and failed to wipe the red lipstick from his mouth.
“What people do at Christmas parties,” Claire said with a laugh as she walked into the kitchen. “Listen, the police are on their way.”
“What?” Flavio cried. “No! I didn’t think it was illegal. I just did what she said!”
“Did what who said?”
“Nicola!” Flavio turned and pushed his hands into his thick, dark hair. “She turned up at the end of the shift and told me to leave the kitchen for five minutes and to never ask questions or tell anyone about it. I didn’t know what she was doing. I should have tasted my food, but I was in a rush. You people expect miracles!”
“You knew this earlier?” Claire asked with a sigh. “And you didn’t say anything?”
“She told me not to!” He spun around, hands spread wide. “She paid me not to. Five hundred pounds. I can’t afford to turn something like that down. I stand in here serving you all, listening to all the complaining about how little you’re earning, but we earn even less. And you call the police on me? I can’t—”
“Flavio!” Claire interrupted. “Nicola called the police to break up the party. Nobody knows what you just told me. Well, I know now, but since you had no idea what Nicola was actually up to, I won’t tell anyone.”
“Really?” Flavio frowned at her. “Why would you keep this secret?”
“Because allowing someone to put some salt in the sugar isn’t a crime,” she said with a soft smile, “and I’m one of those people who sits out there and complains about my job. I didn’t even think about what it must sound like to you.”
“It’s okay,” he said with a shrug. “I will open my own restaurant one day. I won’t be here forever.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“You have a passion?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, her gut wrenching. “I do like candles, but it feels silly even saying that here. I have a dream. A shop. It’s silly.”
“Dreams are not silly.” Flavio took a step towards her. “Claire?”
