There he was, as he imagined himself in his best dreams, authentic in a public space in his own private markings. Iris and Peggy exchanged another of their swift, proud glances as he looked over his shoulder to see the extent of the drawings down his back.
“I look wonderful,” he said to the twin pale figures who had led him to this. They were outside the subdued window display at Woolworth’s and Mark gave a slow twirl. “It all looks wonderful. I never thought I’d ever see all of myself, together.”
The three of them breathed in their spiced moment of epiphany. They knew these things didn’t come about too often.
Then, without particular displeasure, they realised the moment had been broken by the hum of an approaching car.
“I DON’T BELIEVE THIS!”
“Mmm?” asked Bob’s mate.
“All bloody night sitting with nowt happening.” Fiercely he swung the car to the left.
“What is it?” asked Sam, sitting forward, stomach lurching with the panda.
“First him and that orange, then you, Sam, and now this. All hell suddenly breaks loose. What a bloody nightmare!”
He hauled the car to an abrupt stop in the middle of the street. His headlights picked out three luminous bodies outside Woolworth’s.
They stood in the mesmerising glare of his discovery, not in the least bit startled. “Look at this lot,” Bob spat in disgust.
Sam began to throw up noisily in the back seat. Bob’s mate gagged on the fumes and the stuck remains of his packed lunch.
SALLY HAS ALWAYS SLEPT WITH HER WINDOW OPEN. OF COURSE IT IS a chancy business on this estate. The last thing Mark does each night before going to bed is to check each window in the flat, especially the easily forgotten one in the bathroom. But ever since she was old enough to argue, Sally has insisted on having hers open while she sleeps. She can’t breathe otherwise, she says.
Late at night Mark goes through the routine of sealing up the flat, locking the door and putting a kitchen chair behind it, and sometimes he will stop and listen to, perhaps, the slow moan of the wind through Sally’s window.
Tonight she is awake and the air is cool and still. She is thinking over the whole business of Christmas Eve, and starting to regret that she doesn’t have a stocking set out for Santa Claus. At school some of the kids were talking last week about leaving out wine, mince pies and some carrots for the reindeer. Sally kept her mouth shut, wondering how the kids didn’t work out that reindeer would never get through the door to eat carrots.
The moonlight is flat on her rows of cuddly toys; bears, gorillas, koalas, cats. Its progress across the room is stilted by piles of books. She has no bookshelves yet and her collection is scattered, some resting open, ready for other bedtimes.
Perhaps the kids at school last week had got it right. Iris clearly believes in Santa Claus. Even if she was using him as an excuse for Mam running out of the flat. For a moment Sally imagines the night as Iris pretended it; her mam calmly discussing Santa’s engine parts with him. The sad old man and the reindeer watching in head-shaking consternation. Her mam can do things, sort things out, Sally knows this. She calls her dad cack-handed and pathetic because he can’t. That was why he stayed at home while Mam ran out.
It is real, then. The whole thing is true. Sally wishes more strongly than ever that she had a stocking to leave out.
She turns over to look at the frozen window and wonder what Santa really looks like. At school they spent a morning drawing pictures of how they all thought he would look. Everyone gave him bright red clothes. A number of scuffles broke out in the classroom because there wasn’t enough red crayons to go round. It became quite a heated issue.
Sally couldn’t see the problem. She hung back and complacently coloured her Santa Claus a deep midnight blue. There! Then she gave him a glorious hat woven from emerald holly leaves, and gloves a startling white like those of her talking Mickey Mouse, which was propped at the end of her bed.
At lunchtime Miss Francis pinned up all the Santas and the class stood back to admire the effect. Sally’s dashing and brilliant Santa was consigned to the edge of the display. Probably because hers was faceless and this had made Miss Francis shudder, but Sally had drawn him that way because she couldn’t imagine what face he should have and didn’t want him to be an old man the way they said God was, and anyway, she didn’t know any old men to copy it from.
Which Santa, if any, will come tonight?
“Sally?”
The voice is oddly familiar. She won’t wonder, yet, who it is. If it is someone she doesn’t know, she doesn’t want to know about it yet.
“Sally? I’m here to tell you a story.”
She is still watching the window. Soundlessly she shrinks down inside her duvet. White hands creep up through the opened window. They have three black stripes up the back like Mickey Mouse’s gloves. They pause, unsteadily, on the sill cluttered with Sally’s toys, tottering on their fingertips as they find a space. They turn slowly about and then, with their ten digits as little feet, do a rapid dance. Sally laughs aloud.
“I’m here to tell you a story and then we’re going to go to the North Pole,” the voice tells her, and Sally realises that it is the gloves talking.
“I see that you read a lot of books, Sally. You know lots of stories already. Far more than the other kids at school. That’s why you hang back, isn’t it? When the other kids rush in, you hang back because you know what happens to people who are heedless. You’ve seen what goes on
