‘Turned back into it?’ she offers.
‘Well, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility, is it?’ I extract my arm from hers and go up to the window for a closer look. I stare up at the life-size nutcracker who is grinning woodenly down at me from his plinth in the otherwise empty display. ‘What if James really was …’
‘A magical nutcracker come to life?’ she finishes for me.
I don’t reply. The nutcracker has got wood-brown eyes that are darker than James’s, and hair that’s the exact same shade of such a dark brown that it looks black in most lights. It could be him. I mean, obviously it couldn’t because this is reality and nutcrackers don’t come to life outside of nineteenth-century children’s books and Tchaikovsky ballets, and definitely not in little Christmas villages in Wiltshire.
‘You don’t really think …’ Stacey trails off. Neither of us seems able to finish a sentence this morning.
I reach up and touch the window where one of the nutcracker’s wooden ball hands touches the glass from the inside, like if I can get close enough, he’ll blink or give me some hint … ‘Don’t you think it’s weird that this has been missing the whole time, and now James has disappeared, it’s returned?’
‘He was probably mending it and it’s taken him this long because he’s been so busy trying to save Nutcracker Lane. And he’s only got one functional arm – that must slow things down.’
‘You think he was really trying to save it?’
‘I think everything he said to you last night is true,’ Stacey says because I texted her the basics when I got home. ‘I think that when you knocked that nutcracker over, you metaphorically knocked him off his feet. I know a man in love when I see one, and I certainly know you well enough to know you’re snowballs-over-mittens for him too.’
‘And what if he’s …’ I gesture to the nutcracker in the window ‘… that.’
She doesn’t answer, and it hits me how devastated I’m going to be if he is that. If he somehow doesn’t exist … if he somehow wasn’t real. What the hell am I going to do without him in my life? I already miss him like a Christmas tree with half its branches cut off and it’s only been two days. The thought of this being it … of never seeing him again …
My eyes fill up with tears as the thought passes through my head. Never seeing him again is unthinkable. No matter what has happened between us, he can’t just be gone. If he’s turned into a wooden doll, I’m going to be even angrier with him.
I sniff hard, swipe my hands over my eyes, and square my shoulders. There is no way he wasn’t real. Wooden men don’t make you feel alive like he did. ‘Okay, sensible, non-magic-believing head on. He cannot be that nutcracker. It’s not possible. And what about this?’ I slap at the envelope in my hand. ‘What the hell is this?’
‘I don’t know. What exactly did he say to you last night?’
I repeat the shortened version of everything I told her in the message I sent when I got home.
‘So, what, you think he’s trying to prove you can trust him by giving you a third of the lane?’ Her face screws up in confusion. ‘But it’s not his to give away. He’s just the accountant, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t flipping know, Stace. I don’t know what he is. He told me he worked for a Christmas cracker company.’
‘Okay, let’s work backwards, retrace your steps. What happened before yesterday? When did you last see him?’
‘Before the accident in the factory. The night before. I told you about the outlet shop and the decorations and then there was kissing and we made a wish on the magical nutcracker.’
‘What did you wish for?’
‘Nutcracker Lane.’
‘What?’
I look up the lane towards the magical nutcracker, obscured from view by the curve in the street. ‘I wished for Nutcracker Lane …’
We share a glance and both turn towards the upper end of the lane. My hand is frozen in mid-gesture towards its general direction.
‘Well, they say wishes come true here …’ Stacey says slowly.
‘Yeah, but it’s a wooden statue. It’s a lovely story, but it doesn’t actually grant wishes. James was the only person who heard—’ I cut the sentence off as realisation finally hits and all the pieces I haven’t understood slot instantly together. ‘James was the only person who heard. Stace, that’s it! That’s what this has been about this whole time.’
‘You’ve lost me.’ She’s shaking her head.
‘He’s not just the accountant. He’s the new owner. This is the family business he has to take over in January. He doesn’t work for a Christmas cracker company at all. That was something he made up because he couldn’t tell us where he really worked. This is what he’s so scared of destroying. This is why he’s here. He wanted to find the festive spirit he needs to save his parents’ Christmas business, and this is it. It’s Nutcracker Lane.’
She tries and fails to stifle a yawn, clearly not following my epiphany.
‘He said he resented Nutcracker Lane. Why would you resent something you’ve only visited a couple of times as a kid? He resented the business that took his parents away at Christmas. He told me that. He specifically said his parents sold the illusion of a perfect Christmas.’
I throw my arms out to the sides and spin around to indicate the lane surrounding us. ‘But their own Christmases were all about work and material-value toys. This is why he was talking like there was a deadline to our relationship – because if I’d got as far as meeting his parents for Christmas dinner tomorrow, I’d have realised they were the darling couple who used to run Nutcracker Lane. Mr and Mrs Ozborne. The ones who haven’t been around much
