‘I’m so sorry, you lovely thing. I’ll pay for the damage—’ I catch sight of a price tag tied around his unbroken arm and lean across to read it, turning the tree-shaped cardboard over in my fingers. ‘£926!’ I say aloud. I’ve never had a heart attack before, but I suspect this is what one might feel like.
I’ve heard people use the phrase “eye-wateringly expensive” but this is the first time I’ve ever looked at a price tag and felt my eyes actually start to water.
Nearly a thousand pounds. Every part of my body has tensed up. I cannot pay that. I’d struggle to find a spare £26 at the moment, never mind the £900 as well.
I drop the price tag and look around in panic. There’s still no one here. Wherever the shop owner has gone, even the noise of the nutcracker falling hasn’t brought anyone running back.
No one has seen me. No one knows it was me. If I just left …
That £926 is pulsing in my head like a sign flashing in neon red. I’ve got so much stuff to buy to host Christmas for my family this year, never mind supplies to make stock, and food and presents, and in January, I won’t have a job. Not a proper job anyway, only my online sales and whichever craft fairs Stacey and I can get a spot at, not including the petrol it takes to get there. And that’s only assuming they’d let me pay it off in small amounts. The thought of being expected to find nearly a thousand quid right now makes a cold sweat prickle my forehead.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper. And I run away.
I dash back across the lane and into Starlight Rainbows, kicking the weighted Santa hat doorstop I made out of the way and slamming the door behind me, even though we’ve decided to keep it open to make the shop more inviting.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Stacey looks up from replacing one of her necklaces that’s been bought from the mannequin in the window.
‘I knocked over a giant nutcracker and broke it and now I’m going to owe that shop nine hundred quid,’ I say in such a rush that even a professional translator wouldn’t be able to decipher it.
‘Can you split that sentence into more than one word?’
I lean against the wall and knock a bauble skew-whiff and don’t even bother to straighten it as I take deep breaths and try to calm my heart rate while I repeat myself.
‘You have to go back,’ Stacey says when I’ve finished. ‘Explain that it was an accident and ask if they’ll let you start paying it off in January. They run a Christmas shop; they must understand how tight things can be at this time of year.’
‘Or I could hide in the back room and never come out. I’ll go home after dark and stay in my shed making decorations and you can sell them, and between us, I’ll never have to show my face here again and no one will ever know it was me. How’s that for a plan?’
We both know I’m not serious, but I start pacing the floor anyway. ‘What am I going to say? And I’ve run away and made it all worse. Now I’ve made myself look like a criminal. I’m a fugitive. A life on the run beckons. Oh my God, I’m going to get involved in organised crime and be indoctrinated into a gang, and all sorts.’
‘Your only crime is murdering a nutcracker. I don’t think the punishment is twenty-five years behind bars, but maybe they’ve changed the charge of second-degree murder to include wooden dolls now.’
I narrow my eyes at her sarcasm and she laughs. ‘I need a cup of tea, so go on, go back over there and confess so you can watch the shop while I go and get one, or there might end up being a real murder committed due to tea desperation.’
I try to delay the inevitable for a few moments longer, but I know she’s right. I’m not a good enough liar to pretend it wasn’t me, and my conscience is already getting the better of me. Stacey and I have done craft fairs where people pick things up and pull them around and break them and then hastily put them down and hurry guiltily away, or even better are the ones who draw your attention to it and say, ‘This is broken, love. It was like that when I picked it up. I wonder how that happened …’ I would much rather someone outright apologise and offer to pay for it, even though it doesn’t matter as much with a £2.50 pair of earrings as it does with a £926 nutcracker. ‘And what is with that weird pricing?’ I say to Stacey.
‘Nia!’ she snaps. ‘You’re delaying. Get on with it.’
I’ve known Stace since the first day of secondary school, and sometimes I wish I hadn’t because she can see right through me. I grumble as I set the door open again and force one foot in front of the other to traipse back across to the open door with the Santa still Macarena-ing outside, feeling like some sort of hefty cyclops rather than an elegant ballerina this time.
Inside, the shop is still empty. Where on earth is this person? The nutcracker made such a crash when it fell that I’m surprised someone from the UK’s seismology team hasn’t turned up to investigate the unexplained earthquake that just registered on their scales, and yet
