I dissolve into a fit of giggles as James’s cheeks go the same colour as the red stripes in the knitted hat on his head.
‘Hat shop, fourth on the left,’ he calls after her as she heads up the lane.
‘Encouraging shared custom – that’s good.’ Stacey comes out of the back room with an armful of new jewellery to restock what was sold yesterday. ‘Nice hat.’
The bell in the tip of the green-and-red-striped cable knit hat jingles when he moves as he steps inside. ‘Do you mind if I borrow Nia for a minute?’ he asks her. ‘I keep stealing her for this, that, or the other.’
‘Oh, I assure you, it’s not the other I’m worried about.’ Stacey shoos us both away. ‘Go on. Make sure you get up to a bit of this, that, and the other.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ I turn back to Stace as I go to follow James out. I keep leaving her to cover the shop while we’ve been busy setting the nutcrackers out, and although she always says she doesn’t mind, it’s becoming a daily thing.
‘Of course not. Nee, one of the main reasons we decided to go into this together was so I can go to school assemblies and parent–teacher meetings and pick Lily up when Simon’s working late, and so you can go off with hot men who look like Disney princes whenever you need to and neither of us have to worry about the shop being covered. It said those specific words in our contract.’
I grin. Our contract would’ve been a lot more fun if there had been a mention of Disney princes in it.
‘Besides, you two are trying to save Nutcracker Lane – that benefits all of us in the long run,’ she continues. ‘And if Simon looked like that, I wouldn’t want to leave his side for a moment either.’
‘It’s nothing to do with th—’
‘Your whole demeanour changed when he popped his head in. We met when we were eleven, Nia, and I’ve never seen you react like that to a man. He’s someone special, even if you don’t realise it yet.’
I can tell from the grin on her face that she knows I’ve already realised it but I don’t give her the satisfaction of admitting it. ‘Back in a minute.’
‘Take your time,’ she calls after me. ‘Take all your time. As much time as you need.’
I pull my gingerbread woman jumper down as I follow James and go up the step into his shop, giving the Macarena-ing Santa a wide berth.
‘What are you up to?’ I look around at the chaos. Almost everything from the window is strewn around the aisles and he’s got the nutcracker village onto a shelf and is trying to lift it one-handed. I rush over and take the other side. ‘You’re not meant to be lifting heavy things.’
‘It’s not heavy, it’s just so bulky that I don’t have enough functioning arms to manage it.’ He makes us turn around with the plastic village between us, even though I protest that if we fall over, it’s going to hurt him a lot more than it will me, but he’s ever the perfect gent and insists on being the one to walk backwards.
‘What are you doing with all this stuff?’ I ask as we pull into the side to avoid the group of carollers walking up the lane and singing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”. Angela waves cheerily.
‘Are there more?’ I say to James, my eyes following the singers over my shoulder as they swish up the lane in their floor-length Victorian dresses. It’s impossible to count them.
‘Maybe. I don’t know. I’m used to counting sales figures, I never thought I’d end up counting carol singers.’
It makes me laugh as we carry on moving.
‘Giving it back,’ he says quietly.
It takes me a moment to realise he’s not still talking about the carol singers.
‘You were right. It’s not mine to sell. Why should I earn money for stuff that can be used to improve the lane?’
‘What about what the new owner wanted? I thought you were “following orders”? Aren’t you going to be in trouble?’
‘Frosted reindeer bollocks to the owner. By the time anyone even realises, I’ll be long gone. I won’t be here after Christmas; I won’t have to deal with the consequences. What’s the worst anyone’s going to do? I’ve still got shelves of the excess products he wants sold, but this big stuff that used to be part of the lane itself … Let’s put it back.’
He winks at me and I feel so fluttery that I nearly trip over my own feet. Stacey’s right – I can’t remember the last time a man had this effect on me. I’ve never looked forward to seeing someone before. Never missed someone when they weren’t there or searched for excuses to spend time with them. And yet, every time James smiles, I forget about everything else in the universe. Apart from the enthusiastic way he talks about not being here after Christmas and how it makes my stomach drop.
We turn the corner at the end of the lane by the Christmas bookshop and go down the narrow offshoot from the main lane that leads to the point where the nutcracker factory behind joins. There are large security doors separating the two, but before you get to those, there’s the outlet shop where my grandma used to bring me every year to buy a new nutcracker to add to our collection.
It’s manned by factory staff rather than rented by independent shopkeepers like the rest of Nutcracker Lane, and although it used to be open all the time, the factory have obviously decided it’s not worth it anymore because it now only seems to open whenever they’ve got an excess of staff and can spare someone to sit in there for a couple of hours.
‘Have you bought this year’s nutcracker yet?’ James asks like he can tell what
