Page 4 of Christmas Ever After
I reach out, trying to grab at something,anythingto keep myself upright andnotsplat onto the pavement, and there’s something cool and metal under my hands. The arch! I’m hanging onto the arch! ‘Help!’
Someone’s screaming. I’m not sure if it’s me or Mrs Bloom or possibly both of us. A gasp has gone through the crowd.
‘Quick, get the stool under her!’ Mitch shouts. He’s trying to reach up to me, but he’s not tall enough. His hands barely reach my ankles where they’re dangling high above the ground. ‘Get a ladder!’
My grip is slipping. My hands are sweaty with fear of how I’m going to get out of this. I’m flailing above the cobblestones. My jumper is riding up and my trousers are slipping downwards. I can feel the cold morning air rushing around the bare skin of my not-small belly, and the arch… The arch is bending under my weight. It’s designed for hanging bunches of mistletoe and a garland or two, not full-grown shopkeepers who buy too many cakes and spend all day sitting in front of their woodturning lathe making nutcrackers.
All the muscles in my body are screaming from the exertion of trying to hold my weight up, and panic is rising. There seems to be no way out of this without hurting myself. Landing on my bad leg could be disastrous. Mitch has got the stool. He’s trying to guide my feet towards it, but it’s too far away, there’s too much space between me and it, and I can’t see. The more I move about, the more I’m slipping.
‘Someone’s gone for a ladder,’ Mitch calls up.
It’s too late. The arch is crumpling under my weight.
‘Call the fire brigade!’ someone cries.
‘No need for that!’ I yell hastily. The situation is already bad enough as it is. A load of hot men in uniform turning up to rescue me like a cat stuck up a tree would really take the biscuit.
Besides, even if I could hold on for that long, the arch wouldn’t.
Mitch is below me again, holding his arms up. ‘I’ll catch you!’
‘It’ll never work!’ I call back. Mitch is pushing seventy. If I land on top of him, he’ll probably be pushing something else before long – up daisies, most likely. ‘Get out of the waaaaaaay!’
I try to gesture with my fingers, but at the same moment, the metal of the arch twists in on itself and collapses and I scream as I let go.
I squeeze my eyes shut when I fall, knowing this can only end in immense pain and even more embarrassment. Instinctively, I put my hands out to catch myself, and land with a crash on the cobblestones, my hand crushed underneath me, and a sickening crack that I hear both inside and outside of my body – a crack that echoes through the street.
To add insult to injury, the twisted remains of the arch come plummeting down on top of me and land squarely on my chest, causing another jolt to go through me.
Something’s broken, I know that much. My leg was badly broken years ago when I was a ballet dancer and it’s a bone-deep pain that you don’t forget. Someone lifts the arch off me as I lay there on the ground, trying to assess myself.
‘Oh, poor Franca.’ Mrs Bloom is on her knees at my side in an instant. ‘Are you hurt? Can you sit up?’
‘I… um…’ The truth is, I haven’t worked out how much I’m hurt. That was such an impact and my entire body feels like it’s juddering and I don’t know which bits are actually injured yet. I try to push myself up with my hand and let out a cry of pain when it immediately reveals which bones made that awful cracking noise.
‘My fingers are broken.’ I pull my hand out from under me and hold it up limply. I justknow. The pain is radiating from myhand and although my whole arm is throbbing, I can pinpoint it to the fingers of my right hand.
‘Oh noooooo!’ Mrs Bloom wails. ‘Raff! Look what you’ve done!’ She looks around, searching for the man – scam-artist – in question. ‘Where is he? Oh, that rotten… Don’t tell me he’s gone!’
She clambers to her feet and stalks around, peering into the crowd, searching for him. ‘It was a bump and run!’
Raphael Dardenne is nowhere to be seen. Of course he isn’t. As if he’d have the common decency to cause serious injury to a fellow shopkeeper andthenhang around long enough to make sure she was okay. Raphael wouldn’t know the meaning of decency if it hit him in the face.
Speaking of faces, Jorge’s appears above me in my hazy vision.
Ooh, maybe this is it. Maybe our moment is finally going to happen. Maybe he’ll bend down and lift me easily from the ground, overcome by his feelings at the thought of me being hurt… He’ll set me carefully back on my feet and we’ll…
‘Who ate all the pies? Who ate all the mince pies?’ His sing-song voice interrupts the daydream. ‘Youate all the mince pies. You did, you did.’ He sounds like a small child, except even a small child wouldn’t be that insensitive.
‘Jorge!’ Mrs Bloom admonishes him, but he continues laughing at me.
‘Iknewit was a mistake to sell you so many cakes! I should have put you on rations for the sake of Ever After Street – there’s probably a dent in the road now!’
My eyes are watering. They’re not tears – it’s from the wind chill and the pain, not from his comments about my weight, although it’s hard to tell what hurts more – my hand, my pride, or his unexpected cruelty. Maybe it’s deserved payback for the breath comment?
‘That’s enough, Jorge!’ Mitch pushes him away and folds his arms like a bodyguard. ‘We can’t continue filming. Franca’s hurt. That’s it, everybody.’ He addresses the wider crowd and flaps his hands to disperse them. ‘Nothing to see here. Go on with your days.’
Jorge takes one last disparaging look at me, and then, he oinks. Like I’m a stuck pig and this is my own fault because I’m not a size ten. He continues oinking all the way back to the bakery.
