He grins despite being threatened with festive headgear. ‘And if I show up looking any less festive than this between now and December 25th, you’re going to torture me with increasingly more awful Christmas hats daily until I beg for mercy?’
‘Exactly,’ I say cheerfully, my grin matching his.
He hasn’t let go of my hand yet, and I think the closeness is scrambling my brain because I’m not even sure what we’re talking about.
‘Does it look busier to you?’ He finally realises our hands are still entwined and extracts his fingers from mine.
‘Kind of,’ I say because I’d thought it but hadn’t dared to hope it might be true, but I can’t be imagining things if he’s noticed it too. We’re halfway up the lane between the florist and the coffee shop, and it does look busier than it has in recent days.
A woman walks past clutching one of the nutcrackers we’ve hidden and James nudges his shoulder into my arm excitedly, offering me a gleeful grin when I look up at him. We start wandering up towards the magical nutcracker and he nudges me every time we see people stopping to admire the line of nutcrackers. It really does seem busier, with people stepping out of shops and sitting on the benches eating cakes from the Nutcracker Lane bakery and carrying coffee cups from the coffee shop. Not a huge number, but it’s been so quiet lately that even the smallest increase in visitors is noticeable.
Mrs Brissett’s daughter is covering her shop, so Mrs Brissett is in full wish reconnaissance mode, lurking behind the giant nutcracker with a mop and bucket, pretending to be a cleaner to blend in.
Behind us, there’s a commotion as Hubert whizzes back up the lane on the scooter he’d gone to buy, crashes, and tumbles headfirst into the boy and family he’d bought it for. It’s impossible not to laugh at the scene and I can’t help looking up at James, at the crow’s feet crinkling around his eyes and his bright, resplendent smile, a tell-tale dent in his cheek as he bites the inside of it to stop himself laughing out loud as we watch Hubert pick himself up, dust himself down, and hand the scooter safely over to its intended owner, along with a bag of peppermint sweets that are now crushed to smithereens.
‘You look like you’re having fun.’
‘I am.’ James looks surprised as the words pop out. I’m surprised too, because I’d expected him to mutter something Grinchy and walk away, but his eyes are shining when he looks back at me. ‘I really am, Nee. This place … These people … I feel like part of something here. I’ve never felt like that before.’
‘It feels like you were meant to be here this year.’ I don’t say quite how much he’s added to my experience of Nutcracker Lane, and how different things would’ve been if his shop hadn’t opened opposite ours. When I’m with him, I feel like anything’s possible, even saving Nutcracker Lane, and a few weeks ago, that felt like a truly impossible dream. ‘Things would be different if you hadn’t come along.’
‘Nia, I—’ James is cut off by having to jump aside as Hubert’s ward zooms past us on the scooter, and from the pained expression on his face, the jolt obviously hurt. The boy does a turn and zooms back and we decide it’s safer to head up to the magical nutcracker and see how Mrs Brissett’s doing with her wish-granting.
‘A unicorn, and a snowstorm big enough to close the school for a whole year,’ she reports as we approach, shaking her head of grey curls fondly. There’s something so adorable about childhood innocence. Deep down inside, wouldn’t we all like a unicorn and a snowstorm?
A boy goes towards the giant nutcracker, and James crouches down and pretends to be doing something to the lamppost control box and I turn around and examine the point where the end of the tinsel is attached to the metal post like it’s so enthralling that it could be a miniature Colin Firth performing a striptease.
He inclines his head until he can look up and wink at me, and we listen as the boy takes his nut from the vending machine and goes up to the nutcracker. He’s not the usual type of person you expect to make wishes on magical nutcrackers, and I can’t help sidling around so I can see him, pretending to examine the lamppost so thoroughly that a tiny Hugh Grant could now have joined the miniature Colin Firth in this festive striptease.
The lad is about fifteen or sixteen with messy blond hair and an oversized hoody, and he keeps looking around like he’s hoping his mates won’t spot him. I expect him to wish for the latest iPhone or other hugely expensive technological thing, but he breaks his nut and says quietly, ‘I wish for something to bring my family together.’
‘What does that mean?’ I whisper to James.
‘People are so divided these days. You can live with a whole family you know nothing about. One of my best friends knows more about his own sister from following her on social media than he does from actual conversations. People spend every moment on their phones. Even when they have “family time”, their phones are still on the table so they’re distracted by the possibility of a notification or what they might be missing on Twitter.’
‘Times were better when we were young. I’m eternally grateful for growing up in the Nineties.’
‘A board game!’ James gets to his feet, looking like the injuries force him to take longer than he wants to. He leans around
