Tears blur the workbench in front of me and I try to blink them back as the tip of my brush dunks into the white primer. It’s not even him – it’s the fact that it’s happened again. Yet another guy who can’t be satisfied with just one person. Is it me? Am I not good enough for them? Other men get married and stay in committed happy relationships and their eyes don’t wander. And yet, even when I meet someone who seems like one of the good ones, I repel them like water on oil paint. This makes it the fifth guy who’s cheated on me in the last five relationships. That is not a promising ratio. And I’m the common denominator.
Maybe it’s time to give up on love forever. I don’t know why I keep trying when it’s becoming clear that every relationship is going to end the same way.
I shake my head, sniff and wipe my eyes, and hum “Little Drummer Boy” as loudly as I can. Painting nutcrackers always makes me think of this song. No use dwelling on it. Another unfaithful man is not worth any more tears – not when it’s December tomorrow and Nutcracker Lane will open to the public for the first time this year and my decorations will be for sale. This is something I’ve dreamed about my entire life and Stacey and I have spent the past few years trying to make it happen. Sharing a Christmas shop with my best friend. Yet another cheating boyfriend makes no difference to how amazing that is.
***
It’s late by the time I’ve got the strings of nutcracker bunting finished and transferred to the little workshop in the back room behind the main shop. I should’ve been painting out the back, but this is my first year, and I wanted to watch from the window as the other shop owners finished their final preparations before tomorrow and left one by one. I wanted to watch the last of the Christmas lights be turned off as the sky gradually darkened above us.
The clear roof has always been my favourite thing about Nutcracker Lane – the way you can watch the skies and experience the weather. Even though it’s warm and dry inside, the rain still patters down and the snow still blankets us, unlike the fake layers of felt snow that are piled up around the edges of the lane.
I pull on my red coat, tug my bag over my shoulder, and turn the lights off in the back room. One final walk through the shop floor reveals there’s nothing else I can tweak or change. I’ve been here every day for the last month, transferring stock from my garden shed-slash-workshop, rearranging tables and display units, setting out everything just right and then setting it all out again in another formation until it really is just right and Stacey yells at me to stop fiddling.
I want it to be perfect. My own shop on Nutcracker Lane is what I’ve always wanted, and I’m desperate for nothing to go wrong. I could easily spend another hour carefully rearranging the wooden snowman family that is standing near the counter or displaying the array of hand-painted baubles and hanging decorations that are set out in wicker baskets on a table, but even I know that I’m tweaking for the sake of it, and the shop already looks like the cosy little Christmas haven I always imagined my shop on Nutcracker Lane would be.
I set a hand-painted “’Twas The Night Before Christmas” glittery plaque straight on the wall and then have to do it again because it was straight anyway and now it’s wonky, and I adjust the gingerbread-house earrings on a mannequin in Stacey’s side of the window. It’s going to be amazing working here with my best friend. Going halves on the rent and sharing the shop space – her Christmas jewellery on one side, my Christmas decorations on the other, a window each, and one counter and till between us. We’ve done craft fairs at the weekends for years, but this is the first time either of us will have an actual shop for the season.
I give one of the retro Nineties-style foil garlands hung across the window a final fluff-up, hoping that my nostalgic display will encourage the feeling of walking into a homely cottage and not a shiny, flashy shop. My decorations are handmade and old-fashioned by modern standards, but I want them to invoke the feeling of Christmases gone by, before every decoration had to sing and dance and be controlled via a smartphone app.
I step out onto the honey-coloured crazy paving and bend down to turn off the multicoloured lights wrapped around the tree outside the door. There’s an identical one outside every other shop doorway on the street, each one decorated in the owner’s choice, usually displaying some of the goods. Ours is covered in hanging wooden stars and gingerbread men I’ve made, and acrylic holly leaves and candy canes that Stacey’s made.
Every shop on Nutcracker Lane is identical – all large redwood log cabins with fake snow draped across their slanting roofs and a three-foot-tall Christmas tree in a red Santa’s sack planter outside the door. The shopkeepers are allowed to decorate their own cabins in any way they choose, and each one has a wide double window and a sign nailed above the door displaying the name of their
