Christmas Lights

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Christmas Lights Page 6

by Amelia Andrews


  She’d felt sorry for Millie, walking all that way to her home to deliver an apology. In the freezing morning air no less.

  Not that she should have felt sorry for her. It had been a foolish thing to do. Attending someone’s house uninvited was never a good idea. But Millie had seemed sincere.

  Kay’s eyes flitted over the envelope on the chair beside her. Part of her wanted to ignore it, to not be reminded of the horrible altercation and the subsequent tears it had caused.

  But then a bigger part of her was curious to know what Millie had said. There was a slight chance that the letter was as cruel and cutting as her words from the previous night had been and the entire nice routine in the car had been a ruse after being caught.

  Kay liked to think she was a good judge of character, and that didn’t seem likely. Millie had seemed sincere, genuine, and kind.

  She focused her attention on driving near the front of the Town Hall to see if the protestors were still in place. If they were, then she would be forced to park around the back of the building again.

  She didn’t like parking next to the building when her staff didn’t have the same luxury, she’d rather park with them if she could. Sadly, the protestors were still in place, taking that option off the table.

  Kay let out a sigh and drove around to the back of the building. There were a few protestors by the rear gate, but they seemed content to just wave signs rather than rush the car like the protestors the previous evening.

  The gate was quickly opened and she drove in and parked up. As she gathered her belongings, she picked up the envelope from Millie and shoved it into her bag.

  It was three o’clock and Kay was having a late lunch. A very late lunch. The day had rushed by with a series of meetings, committees, telephone conferences, and emails. The only reason she was eating lunch at all was because Steven burst into her office with a cup of coffee and her favourite sandwich from the local café.

  She’d gratefully handed him some money and thanked him.

  She opened up a web browser and started to look at the local newspaper website. She had a love hate relationship with it. It was an effective way of getting news to the people, as well as taking a reading of public feeling on subjects. But then they also published things she’d really rather they didn’t. And Jonathan had a vendetta against her which meant most of the local news items were twisted to show her in the worse possible light.

  She scrolled through a few articles, noting that most of it was filler and not that interesting. She avoided the article about the Christmas tree, noting that the comments had grown up to a staggering five hundred and twenty. Not one of them positive, she was sure.

  Her mind returned to the morning and seeing Millie. It wasn’t the first time Millie Yates had popped up in her mind that day. For some reason, she’d been quite a prevalent feature.

  She sat back in her chair and slowly chewed her sandwich, wondering why the left-wing activist had someone managed to snag a prime position in her consciousness.

  If she was honest with herself, it was obvious. Millie Yates was an attractive, young, go-getter. They were miles apart when it came to politics, that much was obvious. But the drive, the desire to do good. It felt familiar. Achingly so.

  She put her half-eaten sandwich back into the packet and got the envelope out of her desk drawer where she had placed it that morning.

  She ripped it open and read the short, hand-written letter within.

  She smiled and then read it again.

  It was a sincere apology, one which didn’t absolve Millie of her actions, and while she attempted to explain them as borne out of frustration, she made it clear that she was aware that didn’t fix anything. She signed off with a joking plea for a Christmas tree and a little drawing of one.

  Kay grinned, put the letter back into the envelope and put it back into the desk drawer.

  She may have been at opposite ends of the political spectrum when it came to Millie, but she suspected that they could have a sensible debate and agree to disagree or meet in the middle.

  If only all her constituents were like that.

  She held her breath and listened. A few moments later, she could hear the distant sound of the protestors chanting. The crowds had died down, as she’d expected they would when she hadn’t acknowledged them. But there were still a handful of people hanging on.

  She hoped it would continue to fade until things went back to normal. But she knew she had no control over that. If the organisers chose to whip people up again, it wouldn’t take much to revisit the protests of Monday.

  No matter how bad it got, she couldn’t back down. To do so would be disastrous for her and the town. A politician who caved to public opinion was a politician about to be turfed out of a job.

  Besides, she hadn’t made the decision about the Christmas tree on a whim, the town’s finance would really not handle that kind of pressure.

  There was a knock on her door.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Steven came in. “Am I interrupting?”

  She picked up the rest of her sandwich but gestured for him to come in anyway. “I have a few minutes.”

  He closed the door behind him and sat down. “I’ve been speaking with your public relations officer—”

  Kay laughed. “That must have been a treat.” All council members had access to a public relations official from Westminster. They were to be consulted on in times of crisis to provide advice. Often it was unpersonalised gibberish and Kay hadn’t even bothered to remember the name of her PR person.

  He grinned. “Not really. She recommends doing something positive to get some good publicity.”

  “Well, she’s really earning her London-weighted salary, isn’t she?” Kay commented.

  “She recommends going to a charity, or an outreach programme,” Steven continued. “I think it’s a good idea. Especially if we don’t invite the press and let social media do it for us. Also, if we invite the press, I worry that the protestors might get wind of it.”

  “Agreed.” Kay nodded thoughtfully.

  “You could go to ActionPlus, take a few phone calls like you did last year?” Steven suggested.

  Kay quickly shook her head. She didn’t want to risk bumping into Millie again. If she couldn’t get her out of her head, that was a good indication to avoid contact with her.

  “No, let’s try something different,” she said.

  “The food bank?”

  Kay thought about it for a moment. Food banks in the UK were a political hot potato. Many claimed the fact they existed was a clear sign that Britain was starving and that the system was broken. Conservative policies and austerity was often blamed.

  However, research showed that most of the people who used the food bank did so as a stop-gap measure. An expensive car repair bill could cause a family reliant on their car to get to work to not have money for food, and therefore the food bank was a solution.

  Another point was the perceived lack of judgement from the volunteers who ran the food banks. People who manned Government-run departments were known for their no-nonsense and often uncaring attitude. But the food banks were frequently staffed with the kindest society had to offer. Sometimes, that didn’t help the person using the food bank to get the help they needed, help the council could provide.

  Food banks were a complex issue. But, on the whole, Kay agreed with them. Even if she disagreed with some people over the reason why they existed.

  “Yes,” she decided. “That sounds like a good idea. Can you organise, on the quiet?”

  “Absolutely, I have a contact there.” Steven stood up. “Around six?”

  Kay nodded. “Yes, you’ll have to remind me, though.”

  He laughed. “I always do.”

  Chapter 18

  “Millie, do you want to be a festive lifesaver?” Christoph asked.

  She spun her office chair around and looked up at him. Her knee-jerk reaction was to say yes immediately, but she was
trying to learn to kerb that behaviour.

  “What do you need?” She asked diplomatically.

  He pulled up a chair and sat next to her. “Feel free to say no, it’s very late notice.”

  She smiled and nodded to encourage him to continue.

  “We had arranged to send Donna, Sam, and Michael to the food bank tonight.” Christoph rolled his eyes dramatically. “Best laid plans, and all that. Something’s come up and we need them here to help with a technical issue we have with the phone lines and to run some tests.”

  “So you want to know if I can volunteer at the food bank tonight?” Millie guessed.

  Christoph nodded. “It’s very late notice and if you can’t, feel free to say no. No pressure.”

  Millie shrugged. “I don’t have anything on, I’d like to do it. Besides, some hands-on charity work is what Christmas is all about, right?”

  Christoph clapped his hands together with glee. “Yes, exactly. Thank you so much, Millie. You know where it is, right?”

  “Yeah, my friend has been a couple of times, she spoke about it.” Millie remembered discussing it with Claire on the drive up from London a few days ago. Even though that now seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “Well, if you know anyone else who could donate some time, that would be great.”

  “I’ll ask around,” Millie promised.

  “Christoph, you won’t believe this,” Jeremy, one of the online chat technicians said from his desk.

  “What is it?” Christoph asked.

  “We just received a large donation; five grand.”

  “Five?” Christoph jumped up out of the chair and rushed over to look at Jeremy’s screen.

  “Yeah, no gift aid though, because it’s an anonymous donation,” Jeremy said.

  “Wow,” Christoph ran a hand through his short hair. “Looks like someone is in the Christmas spirit. We need to tell Donna, I bet she can put that money to good use immediately.”

  Millie watched the hub of activity the sudden large donation was causing with a smile. She turned to Joanna, who sat next to her.

  “Do we get big donations like that very often?”

  Joanna shook her head. “No, we get the odd five hundred pounds, maybe. Now and then we’re named in someone’s will. But people in this area don’t really have that kind of money to splash around.”

  Joanna turned back to her computer and Millie did the same. But she couldn’t focus on her tasks, the excitement of the donation was causing quite the stir in the office. She reached into her bag and got her phone and headphones out.

  She opened her Spotify account and selected a calm, Christmas playlist. She popped in her headphones and tried to focus on the spreadsheet in front of her. The Christmas music took her back in time to the last Christmas she had celebrated with her family in the UK. The smell of treats baking, and the debates about which ornaments would go on the tree.

  The tree.

  She let out a sigh.

  Trees were now going to be synonymous with Kay Nightingale. The grand withholder of trees.

  Millie had been trying to not think about Kay all day and failing completely. Her ridiculous behaviour hung in her head and she wondered what Kay made of her. Did she think she was rude, or just stupid? What kind of idiot turned up at someone’s house like she had? Walking all that way without even thinking about how to get to work in time. It was typical of Millie to be so focused on one thing that she completely omitted the obvious.

  Millie shook her head to throw the distracted thought from her head. It didn’t matter what Kay thought of her.

  Except it did. Millie wished it didn’t, but it really did.

  Chapter 19

  Millie looked down at her clipboard and then peered into the plastic crate on the table in front of her. She picked up the first tin and checked it’s quality, as well as the best before date before making a note of it on her checklist.

  She was surprised at the scale of the food bank operation. She was in the central location, which was attached to the main warehouse. But the food bank operated in five locations throughout the town and the surrounding villages, mainly in churches and other public spaces.

  Donations arrived at the warehouse and were processed for quality and shelf-life, before being filed away in the correct place in the warehouse. Then pickers came and took what was needed to the location that was open that evening. It was a large and slick operation and Millie had already decided that she’d be back to give them her support on a regular basis.

  “You done this before?”

  She let out a sigh.

  Jimmy had been hanging around her and trying to engage her in conversation since she arrived. Even if she were into men, she would not be into someone like Jimmy. He was young, scruffy, smelt bad, and drifted around like he didn’t want to be there.

  “Sort of,” she said vaguely.

  “I been doing this for a month,” he said, pronouncing f’s in month that didn’t exist.

  “Cool,” she replied, focusing on the task in front of her and hoping that Jimmy would go back to his own crate.

  “Yeah, judge ordered it.”

  “You better get on with it, then,” Millie suggested.

  Jimmy laughed. “Yeah, true.”

  Millie watched him go back to his crate and wondered what kind of crime he had committed to be ordered to do community service. And if it was wise to give someone like Jimmy a job that involved handling food.

  “And this is the processing point,” she heard Luciana, the head of the food bank explain. She turned to see Luciana enter the room with Kay Nightingale in tow.

  Shit, Millie thought. What were the odds?

  Kay looked at her, surprise registering in her eyes. She nodded a greeting and Millie returned the gesture.

  “We receive donations throughout the day,” Luciana continued to explain. “Let me show you the delivery area.”

  The two women crossed through the warehouse and out of sight, a smartly dressed man following them.

  “I’d do her,” Jimmy announced the moment they were in the next room and out of earshot.

  Millie spun to face him. “Excuse me?” She demanded.

  “Nightingale,” he explained. “I’d do her. You know, fuck her.”

  Millie’s jaw dropped open and she blinked. She couldn’t believe he was being so brazen and crass. “That’s disgusting.”

  Jimmy shrugged. “She’s not that old.”

  “Not that!” Millie argued. “The way you’re talking about her. She’s a human being you know, not a piece of meat.”

  Jimmy just rolled his eyes, picked up a random item from his crate and walked in the direction the two women had gone. He looked at her and waggled his eyebrows, indicating that he was intending to start trouble.

  Millie picked up a tin of beans from her own crate and followed him, not trusting him one bit. They walked through the storage racks until they were in the loading area.

  “We have two vans that we use for deliveries and pick ups,” Luciana explained, pointing to the large roller door and then to the industrial fridges. “Obviously some of those deliveries are time sensitive.”

  “Do you have refrigeration in the vans?” Kay asked.

  “Some, it’s actually very expensive to run,” Luciana said.

  Jimmy passed behind the two women, out of their line of vision so he could unashamedly look Kay up and down as he did.

  He looked at Millie and waggled his eyebrows before slowly licking his lips.

  Millie realised that Jimmy was trying to upset and offend her, trying to provoke a reaction. She was accidentally creating the audience he so desperately wanted. She shook her head and turned away, walking back to the processing area.

  She saw the smartly dressed man who had been trailing behind Kay talking to Roberto, one of the food bank volunteers she’d been introduced to on arrival. She walked behind some shelving to give them some space to carry on what looked like a very serious discussion.


  “We want to expand to do school deliveries,” Roberto explained. “But the money isn’t there.”

  “I understand your frustration, Rob, I do,” the smartly dressed man replied. “If there was anything I could do, I would.”

  “I know you would, Steve. I’m just… frustrated. We’re on the front line, I’m hearing everyday what this service means to people. And there’s so much more we could do. More we should be doing.”

  “Kay is aware of the work you do,” Steve explained. “She’s doing what she can, but finances are so tight at the moment.”

  “She is aware how hard up people are, right?” Roberto asked.

  “She is. She’s doing everything she can to create long-term solutions. Trust me, I wouldn’t work for her if I didn’t believe in her. She’s an economist, she’s getting Bromford back on track and building the infrastructure we need to fix poverty. It just takes time. And with central government cutting funding, it’s tight. But she’s doing it. She’s not just soundbites, she puts her own money where her mouth is. Just today she asked me to give a large anonymous donation to a charity.”

  Millie clapped her hand over her mouth to stop the audible gasp from travelling. She’d been eavesdropping and didn’t want to be caught. Especially with sensitive information like that flying around.

  She crept away and returned to her crate. She finished up the inventory and quality control check in a hurried daze.

  Kay had obviously been the person who had made the donation that had made such a difference that afternoon in her office. Unless there were two rich philanthropists throwing money around? Unlikely.

  But she’d kept it secret, why? Surely that kind of publicity would have been good for her, especially now. And why had she chosen ActionPlus? Was it anything to do with Millie? And why was she here now? Why was this a day of wall-to-wall Kay Nightingale for her?

  She finished up the crate and went to the ladies bathroom for a much-needed moment of peace. Her brain was racing with questions and she needed to settle herself down a little. She splashed a little cold water on her face, careful to not completely destroy the little makeup she was wearing.

 

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