Page 13 of Christmas Ever After
‘As i?—’
I don’t get as far as an overcompensated ‘As if!’ before she barrels on. ‘The day I met my Reginald, in dear old Claude’s shop, the snow globe was a Christmas tree and the moment we picked it up, the Christmas tree turned around, but it never happened again. It still lives on my kitchen windowsill. If my Reginald hadn’t seen it too, I’d have thought I’d imagined it.’
‘It spun?’ I can feel tendrils of my mind reaching out towards that word. Spinning again. It’s always spinning. That’s three snow globes now that have been seen to spin. There’s got to be something in that. I think of the nutcracker prince and the ballerina twirling this morning, and Raff’s uncertain but hopeful eyes when he gave it to me, and inevitably, my mind goes to the strength of his muscles underneath that hoodie, and my cheeks have gone involuntarily red before Mrs Bloom speaks again.
‘I like to think it was a sign from the universe. The Cupid’s arrow of festive decorations.’
I can see why Dardenne Snow Globes have got such a cult following. She’s put my snow globe back on the counter and I run my fingers over the glass again. A matchmaking niche. Finding love via the medium of snow globes. I turn it around one-handedly, but I can’t make the nutcracker and the ballerina move again. I can’t see how they everdidmove – the snowy ceramic ground they’re standing on looks completely solid. So what is Raff doing? Is there some sort of trickery in the figurines themselves, or their landscape, or is it more to do with reflections – holographic particles that catch the light and make it seem like something moves when it doesn’t… and why does it only ever happen once? And why didIhave to see something in there? The last thing I expected was that snow globe to move; it hadn’t even crossed my mind that it might…
Mrs Bloom looks alarmed when I make a noise of frustration out loud.
‘I feel like a traitor because I have one of these in my shop, and… I don’t hate it,’ I say by way of explanation. I canneverlet a soul know that I saw this thing move. I will never live it down after everything I’ve said about Love Is All A-Round.
I didn’t hate Raff either. I’ve never had a problem hating him from afar, but in the face of his kindness this morning, it was pretty impossible to maintain my dislike of him, no matter what jiggery-pokery he’s up to in that shop.
‘Raff’s not so bad,’ she ponders. ‘And I’m sure he’s not entirely to blame forallhis bad reviews. It’s not his fault he matched a young stoner with a seventy-year-old forager, is it? “Interest in mushrooms” is open to interpretation. An easy mistake.’
I laugh, but the elderly forager’s derogatory review is one of the many blazing out their singular red stars about ChristmasEver After as a whole, and I wasn’t wrong to suggest that his reviews are dragging us all down… no matter how much I didn’t hate Raff this morning.
After she leaves, a few customers come and go, but I’ve only sold two ready-made nutcrackers from the shelves, and when someone enquired about having one made, I faltered because I couldn’t fathom how I could ever manage it, and she quickly left with a cheery, ‘Maybe next year!’
There won’t be a next year if I have to refund the deposits for all the orders I’ve already got and leave a trail of disappointed customers in my wake.Iwill be getting the bad reviews that I’ve complained about Raff getting. And I have no idea how to get customer engagement and summon enthusiasm for nutcrackers when I can’t make a single one. I’ve been trying not to let it overwhelm me, but every moment of pain today is increasingly showing me that… I don’t know what to do. My business is bespoke nutcrackers. People order them as gifts with aspects that are significant to the loved one they’re shopping for. A football-loving nutcracker wearing a certain team’s colours for a football-mad friend. A grandfatherly nutcracker with a wooden dog sitting beside him. The customer brings me a photo and I do my best to recreate them out of wood. Favourite colours, activities, custom sizes, custom hair colours, clothing painted to resemble their own favourite item of clothing, faces painted to resemble the person in question, each a one-of-a-kind creation that makes The Nutcracker Shop stand out from other decoration shops.
When I’m not doing orders, I make nutcrackers that customers can buy off-the-shelf, and my shop is packed with all different sizes, from six-foot-tall life-size ones, to tiny ones for hanging on Christmas trees, but it’s physically impossible to use a lathe with only one hand, and selling a few pre-madenutcrackers off the shelves is not going to have much of an impact.
Watching an empty shop is something I never do. I keep myself busy all the time, but today has dragged along. Now I’m on the crowded bus home from work, standing room only, clinging onto a pole with my left hand, and trying to hold my right arm above my head so no one bumps into it, and every pothole, every slam of the brakes, and every fellow passenger who shoves past sends so much pain blazing through my hand and down my arm that I feel light-headed.
It’s December, the buses are only going to get more crowded from now until this month is over, and I feel small and unnoticed. I don’t want to be fussed over by strangers on a bus, but it would be nice if someone just offered me a seat. I’m used to being strong and independent, and Ihatehow vulnerable I feel with only one functional arm and one that’s hurting so much I can barely think straight, and I hate how much I much wish that someone, anyone, would notice I’m struggling and show kindness. Apart from the other shopkeepers, the only person who’s made me feel like they care lately is the one person who really,reallycannot.
I’ve noticed a few curious looks from the driver, and as I make my way to the front of the bus when we approach my stop, he seems to realise where he knows me from. ‘Itisyou from the video, isn’t it?Youate all the mince pies!’
For a moment, I wonder how on earth he knows, and then it hits me. The livestream. The livestream was never cut, was it? It went live to at least five hundred viewers, and he must’ve been one of them. Dideveryonehear Jorge’s chanting and oinking? Just how bad did the whole incident look on camera?
I rush home to open my laptop and attempt to use it left-handed to scroll to the Ever After Street social media pages and track down the link to the livestream. Surely Mitch will havedeleted the video straight away? It’s not like it’s still going to be there, available for all to see me having one of the most humiliating moments of my life, is it?
Except… it is. And it seems likeallhave seen it. Well, 15,539 people to be exact. How have fifteen-thousand people watched this? Do people have nothing better to do with their lives than watch a stranger get injured?
I press play, and it starts with me and Raff on the stools, and I stop it instantly. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to relive the mortification of yesterday yet again. I can’t face the thought of seeing what all those people have seen. The petty argument with Raff. My desperate cling onto the archway. My jumper riding up, my trousers slipping down, displaying my oversized, stretch marked belly. No one wants to see that. It’s a moment I’ll be reliving in my head for many months to come, and I certainly don’t need to see the YouTube version too.
I find myself battling that feeling of being totally alone again. No onecares.
I pull my phone over and call my mum. No matter how old I get, I still wish I had a loving and supportive family, and in times of crisis, Istillthink my mum will be there for me when I really need her.
‘Oh, hello, darling.’ She sounds harried when she answers and I can hear the echo as she puts me on speakerphone and the swishing sound of her pulling a coat on. ‘Can’t talk now, I’m on my way to book club! Everything okay there?’
No. Everything isfarfrom okay. But what’s the point in saying it? She’ll promise to call me back later and then get distracted by all the other things she has do and I’ll be even more upset when she forgets to ring.
‘It’s fine,’ I say instead. ‘Just wanted to say hello.’
‘Well, hello and goodbye, darling. Cheerio.’
The line goes dead before I can even say goodbye in return. She hasn’t got time for me. That’s the thing about my mum – she’d probably listen if she didn’t have knitting class, or yoga class, or a wine tasting, or basket weaving class to get to. After the divorce, she was so eager to fill her life with things to do that she never gave herself time to think about my dad, and as a bonus, her packed social life ensured that, whenever I spoke to him, I would pass on how busy and happy she was without him.
I could phone my dad, although it’s been so long since I saw him that I’m not sure he even remembers my name. Neither of my parents approved of my career move from dancingThe Nutcrackerto making nutcrackers, and neither have ever let me forget it. A daughter who was a ballerina was something to be proud of – one who works in a shop, not so much. My parents worked hard to pay for my ballet training when I was younger. When I didn’t immediately return to dancing after my accident, they thought I was throwing my life away. It might be theonlything my parents have ever agreed on.
I balance the phone on my thigh and use my left hand to type a text to Mitch instead, which takes longer than it should and has more mistakes in it than necessary, even though it still gets across the general gist of my insistence that he take the video down immediately.
Mitch replies instantly.
