Page 44 of Kiss Me at Christmas
He shrugged, seeming to fold in on himself. “Yeah, no, it’s fine, whatever.”
She passed the book to Carly, who began to coo over them, and Isabel leaned in closer to her so that they could share the pages between them. Ricco scooched over to where Leo was sat on a checked wool blanket, his knees pulled tight into his chest and his head resting upon them. Ricco knelt in front of him and gently hooked a finger beneath Leo’s chin, lifting his face so that their eyes were level.
“I told you they were good, didn’t I?” His voice was soft, so different from his usual gregarious tone. “You’ve got this.”
Harriet watched them, her heart doing little backflips of joy. They were good for each other. Each boy hid from the world in his way but was made braver by the other’stemperament. Ricco was loud and outrageous as a means of keeping people at arm’s length. By contrast, Leo was taciturn. Unlike Billy, whose quiet was usually brooding, Leo’s reticence—like Ricco’s vivacity—was a protective mechanism; he folded himself small and pulled himself inward, making himself invisible to all but a chosen few.
In the process of averting his eyes from his friends’ tender moment, Billy had become fixated on a large packing crate in the far corner. Isabel looked up from Leo’s sketchbook and saw him.
“I swear to god, Billy, if you’re about to pull some Blair-Witch-in-the-corner shit, I’m outta here,” she said, following his gaze.
“No, it’s not that. I’ve just remembered something, from when I first came down and had a bit of a scout about…” He stood and began walking in the direction of the crate.
“What is it?” Harriet asked, getting up to follow him. The light didn’t reach very far and the corners were rendered gloomy lumps in the shadows.
“I’m going to pick up Sid again today, but I’ll only be gone for half an hour or so and then we’ll be back.” Billy didn’t make eye contact as he led the way to a packing crate and stopped. “In here.”
“Billy, are you sure everything’s okay at home? You collected Sid yesterday and Friday.”
“It’s fine,” he snapped, and then adjusted his tone. “It’s not a big deal. It saves Tess a trip.”
Harriet tried to read his expression, but his face was in shadow.
“Give us a hand?” Billy was smacking his fist under the lip of the wooden lid to loosen it.
Harriet did the same on the other end and together they pulled off the lid, coughing as dust motes swirledaround them. She peered over and looked inside. Lying one on top of another were long rolls of pale, canvas-like fabric.
“I didn’t really think about what they were at the time.” He gave a shrug. “I didn’t know I was going to be forced into being a drama nerd. I was hoping I might find something I could sell. Or a body.” He grinned.
“Eww, Billy! You morbid little soul. Here, help me pull one out.”
Grabbing an end each, they heaved out the roll nearest the top of the crate and laid it on the ground.
“I really hope this is what I think it is,” she said.
“Me too.”
She used her boot to shove at the roll, which unraveled like a giant scroll along the ground. It was, as she had hoped, a backcloth. It was somewhat yellowed with age and a little brown around the edges, but it was unused, and it was exactly what they needed. It must have been stashed there and forgotten when the theater closed down. It was miraculous that it hadn’t been nibbled by mice or moths, and thankfully the crate had saved it from the worst of the damp. They pulled out another three, to be sure, and they were blank too and in equally good condition. Harriet felt as though they’d been given a gift from the gods. And she wouldn’t need to sew anything with her feet.
“Leo, your blank, slightly stale canvases await you,” she said, grinning.
Leo hugged his sketchbook to his chest and smiled.
Fourteen
The ornate doors in thefoyer that led to the defunct restaurant and cocktail lounges next door had been opened up, and work had begun in earnest on those sections too. The old kitchens were ripped out and were being replaced with new stainless-steel fittings, while the bar and restaurant areas were treated with the same sensitivity as the theater proper as restoration works began to bring them back to their former splendor. Clearly, Evaline had confidence that her efforts would attract buyers with big bucks.
With teams working around the clock, the old buildings quickly became their own village; faces became familiar, starting with nods and smiles and moving on to greetings and conversational snippets as they passed each other in the corridors.
On Wednesday evening, as she drew near to the giant shimmering Christmas tree in front of the theater, she saw great rolls of red fabric being ferried into the building. New curtains. She smiled, excited, and dodged between them, taking the stairs two at a time and pushing through the main double doors to the balcony just in time to see the old stage tableau curtains—which pulled up into swags revealing the players—collapse heavilydown from their invisible tracks in a sea of languidly rippling fabric the color of cranberries. They landed with a mutedflumpon top of all the other curtains, which helped to reveal and conceal the magic of the stage and now lay discarded across the boards. These last and largest drapes released a cloud of dust into the air that rolled out into the auditorium like a gray sea fog.
Though she knew that none of this renovation was for her or the famous five, in moments like this it felt like it wasallfor them. It was thrilling to think that they would be the first people to put on a show here in fifty years, that theirs would be the first faces behind the new drapes, the first feet on the newly polished boards, the first voices to carry out into the resuscitated auditorium. Of course, it was terrifying too, but all troughs had their peaks, and these moments helped to temper her exhaustion as she worked all day at the school and then all evening at the theater.
She couldn’t see the famous five, but Leo’s loud sneezing echoed around the auditorium. The dust was an acrid twang in her nostrils, and she didn’t think they could realistically work here this evening.
“Harriet!” Ken’s voice snapped out. He came up behind her just as she reached the three teenagers who had taken refuge from the dust in the farthest corner of the dress circle. She turned to see Ken hanging on to the back of Ricco’s jacket with one hand and Carly’s sleeve with the other. Ricco’s jaw was jutted out in indignation, and he kept trying to wriggle out of Ken’s meaty grip.
Carly spat, “Get off me!”
