‘I’ve yet to see it open this year. I check it every time I walk past. They’ve restocked the nutcrackers but seem to have given up on actually allowing people to buy them.’
‘The lane’s been too quiet. You can see why they wouldn’t want to spare the staff. At least the ones being made in the factory are guaranteed to be shipped overseas or sold wholesale. Why waste time on a dead end – literally?’ He uses his eyes to gesture to the corridor around us. It’s narrower than the main part of Nutcracker Lane. The ceiling is low and claustrophobic, covered in unlike the rest of the lane, and all that’s down here is the nutcracker outlet shop, the public toilets, and the security doors that lead to the covered walkway between the Christmas village and the factory. The factory that’s soon to be expanded if Scrooge gets his way.
It really is a dead end. The doors are foreboding steel with plenty of “Danger: Keep Out” signs covering them and both a key and a security code required to enter them from this side, neither of which anyone on Nutcracker Lane has. When school trips came here to go on a tour of the nutcracker factory, this was always the meeting point where children and teachers would be greeted by a surly-looking bloke in a hard hat and yellow safety jacket with a clipboard and list of rules to follow.
The budget for school field trips is one of the many things that was cut years ago, back when Scrooge first decided they didn’t pull in enough cash and cost too much in staff training and health and safety measures, regardless of how much enjoyment they gave children or how popular they were with people who could book tours during certain times in December.
‘But the nutcrackers they sell are special.’ I nod to the outlet shop. ‘Not just standard mass-produced ones, but special ones from the factory – ones with mistakes and flaws, ones that were tested but never put into production, practice pieces, and ones that are wonky or otherwise unsellable, all with characteristics that you don’t find in typical high-street stores. That’s why my grandma always came here for the yearly nutcracker. She liked unusual things and things that didn’t quite make the grade. She was the kind of person who felt sorry for the last little spindly tree in the lot and brought it home to nurture it back to health and would always buy the limp 10p plants on the sale shelves in the garden centre and lovingly plant them up and tell them how special they were and be oh so proud when they flowered beautifully the following year.’
‘So doing well with broken things runs in the family then?’ He looks down at himself, and it takes all my willpower not to drop the nutcracker village and throw my arms around him.
‘You’re not … I mean …’ I swallow hard and shake my head at myself. ‘If I plant you in the garden and tell you you’re special every day, are you going to sprout daffodils from your head next spring?’ I turn it into a joke because it’s not normal to want to hug someone this often.
‘If you make me feel that special, I’ll turn into Santa and fly through the Northern Lights on a reindeer for you.’
I grin and take it for the joke it is, because I can’t tell him I think he might be the most special person I’ve ever met.
There’s a podium next to the security doors with an empty display case on it, and James balances his side of the nutcracker model village against his hip while he digs a set of keys out of his pocket to unlock it, and between us, we slide the model back onto the stand and switch it on. A tinny tune of the most recognisable bars of The Nutcracker ballet opening march plays and the miniature conveyor belt starts moving tiny plastic nutcrackers into the model factory and out the other side.
‘It looks better here.’
I look up at him and smile. ‘I approve of the hat.’
He reaches out towards my chest and lifts the glittery green resin Christmas tree necklace I pulled over my head this morning. ‘One of Stace’s test pieces. I get all of her trial runs before she decides whether to make a full batch of them, and she gets all of mine. Lily’s got a whole box full of half-legged or one-antlered wooden reindeer to paint because she won’t let me throw them away.’
He smiles as he settles the necklace back against my chest and his hand drifts down my arm until his fingers close around mine and he tugs gently. ‘C’mere.’
Instead of pulling me to him, he pulls me back up the small corridor until we’re huddled under a lamppost. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I wanted to say thank you for last night.’ He casts his eyes upwards and before I realise what he’s doing, he leans down to press his lips against my cheek. It’s just a quick peck with no lingering this time, but it catches me off-guard and he pulls back before I have a chance to register that I wanted to grab him and pull him closer.
‘And you just had to do that under the mistletoe?’
‘No, but I thought it’d be more fun this way.’ He’s smiling in a way that says he couldn’t stop if he tried to.
I can feel the smile on my face mirroring his and there isn’t a single part of me that doesn’t want to reach up and pull him down so we can do it again.
‘You must think I suffer from narcolepsy,’ he says, thankfully before I have a chance to act on my desires. ‘Every time you turn your back on me for two minutes, I fall asleep on your sofa.’
An unexpected laugh bursts loudly out of my mouth and takes the moment for kissing him
