Page 9 of Kiss Me at Christmas
“Shut it, Leo,” Carly snapped.
“What?” Leo asked, hurt. “You do!”
“Stop trying to be such a tough bitch all the time,” Ricco admonished Carly.
“And we discuss stuff, important stuff.” There was a defiant note in Isabel’s voice. She was a shy girl until it came to the causes she felt passionate about. Harriet had watched her hold her own during debates around LGBTQ+ and other social issues during their tutorial sessions; it was a pity she didn’t channel some of that energy into her homework. In another era these kids would have been labeled beatniks.
Harriet nodded. “Couldn’t you do all these things in the common rooms at school?”
“I can’t sing in the common rooms,” said Carly.
“And you can’t smoke there,” added Billy.
Harriet pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t advise it here, either. Aside from you being underage and risking lung cancer, this place looks like it would go up like a tinderbox.”
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?”
It was pointless to answer.
“Didn’t you ever have a den when you were a kid, miss? You look like someone who read theSecret Sevenbooks; this is our den, our place,” said Ricco, who did not in Harriet’s opinion look like someone who’d read theSecret Sevenbooks, but who was she to judge?
She checked her phone. Half past ten; most lessons would be on morning break time. She could sneak them back in after.It wouldn’t hurt to stop here for another few minutes.
“Okay, what do you make of Charles Dickens’s Christmas ghost story, then?” she asked.
Isabel groaned dramatically. “Are you going to make us do lessons?”
“I’m not making you do anything. You were already reading the text when I arrived. And Leo said you discuss books here, so…” She saw Ricco roll his eyes. “I’m just asking what you think of it.”
Carly and Isabel pulled themselves up on to the edge of an old stage block and sat with legs swinging. Ricco and Leo perched a couple of rows down from Harriet and turned round to face her and Billy.
“Bleak,” said Ricco.
“Interesting,” Harriet mused. “Did you know Dickens wroteA Christmas Carolto highlight the plight of child laborers and children living in poverty because he was frustrated by the upper classes’ lack of care for anyone below their social class?”
“Some things never change,” said Billy.
“Exactly! Britain was in the middle of an economic crisis; people couldn’t afford to buy food. Families were starving on the streets. Sound familiar? Maybe not the families starving on the actual streets, but the rest of it—”
“Cost-of-living crisis,” said Carly. The slashes at the knees of her faded jeans revealed black fishnet tights beneath.
“If you can call it living,” added Isabel, running her tongue back and forth across her lip ring.
“Got it in one. The modern focus is always on Scrooge learning his lesson and saving himself from eternal damnation—which is all well and good—but the backdrop to the story is a whole section of society that was invisible to the people who could actually help to make positive change. Dickens felt that people weren’t seeing what was going on right under their noses. The writing might be a bit old-English, but the text resonates down the decades.”
Harriet was enjoying herself. She’d been an English teacher for almost ten years before she switched to a pastoral role, but her love of the subject had never dwindled.
“Not much of a ghost story, though, is it, miss?” said Isabel.
“Oh, I dunno,” Leo butted in. “Maybe we’ve just become desensitized to it, you know? Once the Muppets had a go at it, it lost a bit of its horror, but in theory the idea of being alone in a big old house and having a ghost dragging chains and stuff about, well, that’s freaky.”
“I actually foundThe Muppet Christmas Carolquite frightening when I first watched it,” Carly admitted.
“Was that last year?” Isabel mocked.
“Like you’re so brave,” Billy challenged her.
“Yeah.” Carly joined in with a half laugh. “You hide behind cushions when we watch theSimpsonsHalloween specials, Isabel.”
