Miracle on Christmas Street: The most heartwarming and hilarious Christmas read of 2020

by Annie O'Neil

  ‘Music,’ Martha intoned. ‘They were playing it all the time.’

  Josh laughed good-naturedly. ‘It wasn’t the music you hated, Martha, it was the type of music.’

  She gave a tight-lipped nod, adding an expert swirl of icing to the top of her gingerbread Christmas tree as she did. ‘Noise pollution is not music,’ she said tapping a tiny little gold star into place at the top of the tree.

  ‘I suppose that’s true,’ Jess said, not really understanding.

  When the woman next to Martha distracted her with a question about some miniature snowflakes she wanted to use, Josh leant towards her, the scent of oranges and cloves surrounding her as he did. ‘She’s got a lodger who’s in a band. Tyler. No one knows why she hasn’t kicked him out yet.’

  Jess gave a non-committal shrug. Maybe Martha was lonely and having someone to complain about was better than having no one there at all. She instantly thought of Mr Winters and wondered if … No. No matchmaking. No interfering with anyone’s lives. She’d learnt her lesson. The hard way.

  ‘So what will you be doing for Christmas Day, dear? Any big plans?’

  Jess shifted uncomfortably as a few more pairs of eyes turned to her. ‘Oh, you know …’

  ‘Hmmm …’ said Martha, narrowing her gaze. ‘I’m doing a bit of that as well. Would you hand me the hundreds and thousands, please?’ Once Jess had passed them over, Martha cleared her throat. ‘EmmaGemma,’ she said pronouncedly to a couple of the women still waiting to hear Jess’s plans, ‘could you run me through the recycling bin dates again, please? They keep changing them.’

  Jess smiled. Martha had switched the spotlight off her the instant she’d seen Jess’s discomfort. She definitely owed her a favour. And also wanted to get out of here before anyone else could ask more questions.

  After decorating a handful more cookies, and receiving a discreet invitation from Martha to join her for a sherry during the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day, Jess took the opportunity to slip out of her seat when Drea, Josh and his daughter became embroiled in a heated discussion about whether or not a reindeer could also be a unicorn. She thanked Chantal for her incredible evening then, as discreetly as she could, slipped back behind the door of number 14 with a whole new set of considerations to stew over. Her awkwardly flipping stomach had definitely liked Josh. Her flushing cheeks had, too. But she also flushed when she was lying so was she attracted to him or lying to herself about something? Drea’s hawk eyes had pinged between the pair of them all night. She’d been quite quiet for Drea, actually. Too quiet. Which made the whole making-new-friends thing a bit more nerve-racking. She saw it all the time in the schoolyard. A lonely, frightened new kid over-keen to make friends with the first child to be nice to them and then, all of the sudden, kablam!, it turned out they’d made a mistake. They should’ve held out. Waited for someone who may not have seemed the obvious friend choice on the surface but who, in the end, would offer the most rewarding, genuine friendship. Perhaps she was part of some greater ploy of Drea’s to take over the whole of Boughton and turn it into Christmasville – a sort of reverse of Potterville. A place where cheer and good tidings were the only things allowed. Which would, of course, mean Jess would have to move because she was really finding it hard to plumb the happy feels these days.

  All of which made her think of Mr Winters who, once again, had been a no-show.

  People she hadn’t ever seen before had come to Chantal’s night so if he were to have appeared at any of the nights so far, it would’ve been hers, but … perhaps he simply didn’t like people.

  She pressed her face to her front window and stared at the dark house at the end of the street. People who didn’t like people didn’t let complete strangers help with their tulips. A tiny ah ha! moment surfaced. Mr Winters had green fingers. And green-fingered people, no matter how cantankerous on the outside, had to, like the very best chocolates, have gooey insides. Why else would Cadbury have named their big tubs of chocolates Roses? She pulled up a search engine and tapped in a few key words determined to find out exactly which type of rose Mr Winters was, hoping, against hope, that she wasn’t kidding herself that his thorny exterior truly did hide a beautiful, yet to be revealed, bloom.

  5 December

  ‘Coooooeeeeee!’

  Drea. Had to be.

  ‘Jess?’ There was a knock on the door then a triple ring of the bell. ‘Jessica. Open the door. We need to discuss what you’re doing on the fourteenth.’

  Crumbs. Goosebumps prickled across Jess’s skin. She hadn’t come up with anything yet. She pulled her feet up onto the sofa and muted the television.

  ‘Jess? I have a plate of biscuits and I am in urgent need of a cup of tea to eat them with,’ Drea persisted.

  Her mind reeled trying to come up with something. Anything. Well. Not anything. It had to dazzle. Nope. Nothing. She was fresh out of sparkly, knock-your-socks-off-ideas. She squished herself even more tightly into the corner of the sofa.

  ‘Jessica.’ Drea laughed and let the mail flap clank into place. ‘I can see you. Would you open the bloody door? It’s freezing out here.’

  Embarrassed, Jess leapt to her feet and pulled open the door. ‘Sorry, I—’

  ‘Christ, woman. What’s got into you? Do you still have that cold? You seemed all right last night.’ She looked around the house. ‘Crikey. Please don’t tell me you’ve finished decorating.’ She scrunched up her nose as her eyes darted round the place. ‘What is it? Some sort of mismatched minimalist look? If so, sorry, doll, epic fail.’

  If just about anyone from her old life had made that comment, Jess’s hackles would’ve flown straight up. For some reason, from Drea, it was simply observant. She was right. Jess had done the bare minimum in terms of making her house feel like a home. The estate agent had rung about picking up the For Sale sign earlier. She’d sounded harried, about to head off on a three-week trip somewhere warm and beachy, so Jess had said there was no rush, she’d done it already, they could pick it up in the new year if that suited. A total lie. She hadn’t taken it down. She wouldn’t, she’d decided. Not until she’d started her new job and made sure she could handle it. That way she’d save the estate agent the trouble of putting up a new one.

  Jess ushered Drea in and headed towards the kettle.

  Drea followed her with the plate of biscuits. They were clearly from last night and had been decorated by a variety of people, if the craftsmanship was anything to go by.

  ‘Right,’ Drea tapped the table with her shiny red fingernail. ‘Sit down and talk.’

  ‘I thought you were here to talk to me,’ Jess replied, a little more sulkily than a thirty-one-year-old woman should address a new neighbour. Friend? Anyway. She gave her head a shake. ‘Sorry. I’m just—’

  ‘Why’d you move here?’ Drea cut in.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I?’

  ‘No.’

  Oh. Perhaps she should’ve written up a quick little bio and slipped it through everyone’s letter box the day she’d moved in. Created a new backstory even. Told everyone she was part of a witness relocation programme. Actually, that would defeat the whole point of being in witness protection. She definitely felt as though she needed a buffer; a cover story for her to live amid this wonderful collection of delightfully normal people going about their day-to-day lives as she tried to get a grip and follow suit.

  She looked at Drea’s kind, expectant face. Yeah, she was a little bossy, but something instinctively told Jess she was an ally. Perhaps confiding in her would help ease the anxiety gnawing away at her.

  The kettle flicked itself off.

  ‘Go on,’ Drea nodded towards the counter. ‘Make us a cuppa. Builder’s for me, please. Then come and sit down and tell Auntie Drea all about it.’

  An hour later, Jess felt miles better than she had when she’d woken up. Invigorated even. It could’ve been the four cookies
and two cups of tea she’d consumed, but Drea had a way of putting things into perspective that even her parents hadn’t been able to. Although … Jess had kind of put the whole St Benny’s thing into soft focus. Time to make a change. Losing perspective on what really mattered. Not in total agreement with the influence parents had over the curriculum.

  Okay fine: she’d lied.

  Jess had told Drea she’d had a run-in with a student (true) and the student’s parents (true) about a grade (total lie) and that the parents had threatened to sue unless Jess was fired (true) but an alternative arrangement was reached after mediation from another parent on the school board, a judge in real life (a Number One wife), and that Jess had ultimately left of her own free will (partial lie).

  ‘… The main point being, if they’d really wanted to sue, they would’ve,’ Drea was saying with a force of conviction that Jess found reassuring. ‘They sound rich enough and stupid enough to bowl on in whether or not they should’ve. Since they didn’t? I’m guessing the school advised them on whether or not they had a case. They obviously didn’t, so … that means you were right all along but they – and by “they” I mean the parents – wanted someone made an example of to appease their egos over the fact that they’ve spent their lives raising a little shit.’

  Jess nodded. That was about the long and short of it, apart from the fact the disagreement hadn’t been over Crispin’s grades.

  As for her? She’d been told she could either leave quietly with a neutral recommendation or leave loudly and be fired for incompetence with no recommendation. They’d known she would choose the former. She was only thirty-one and they knew as well as she did that she had never wanted to do anything but teach.

  ‘People like that make my blood boil,’ Drea delicately wiped a crumb away from the corner of her perfectly done-up lips. ‘They think it’s completely acceptable to cover up the fact they can’t raise their own child properly with threats. As if throwing money about will disguise the fact they’ve raised a heinous little ankle biter.’

  ‘Oh, well …’ Jess tried to protest but couldn’t. Crispin Anand-Haight had been one of her least favourite students. Ever. Over eight years of teaching some two thousand children, so … yeah, she pretty much agreed with Drea on this one. ‘I just want to draw a line under it, you know? Walk into my new life without anything hanging over me from the old one.’

  Drea barked a laugh. ‘Good luck with that one, darlin’.’ She laughed again, took a sip of tea, choked on it, made a bit of a gagging noise as she tried not to spit her tea out entirely then, eventually, regained her composure only to start laughing again.

  It wasn’t that funny. Message received, loud and clear. Baggage was baggage, but how could you let go of something that felt as though it had crept into your bones?

  ‘People overcome worse things,’ Drea eventually said. ‘You’ll be fine, doll.’

  Jess stopped herself from snapping that having her entire professional reputation falsely besmirched was pretty high up there in the Worst Things That Could Happen list, but took a tactical bite off the gingerbread man instead. It wasn’t as if hashing over her past was going to change what had happened.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked Drea once she’d finished eating the gingerbread man’s head.

  ‘What about me?’ Drea’s normally confident demeanour stiffened into something a bit closer to defensiveness.

  ‘Why’d you move here? You said you used to live in Nottingham?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Nottingham,’ Drea said airily. ‘The Melbourne of the Northern Hemisphere.’

  Jess’s chins doubled in surprise.

  ‘Joke.’ Drea took a more thoughtful sip of tea. ‘Let’s just say, Nottingham was a chapter of my life I could’ve done without writing.’ She picked up a snowflake-shaped biscuit and began to pick off the hundreds and thousands one by one with the tip of her nail, painstakingly lining them up on the kitchen towel Jess had offered in lieu of serviettes.

  ‘So you’re from Melbourne?’

  Drea nodded.

  ‘When was the last time you were back?’

  ‘Four – five years ago? Not since I moved.’ Again, a note of defensiveness covered the response. ‘I should’ve gone back. Not permanently, I’m happy here, but … I missed a few things with my boy a mother shouldn’t.’ Another hundred and thousand was removed from the biscuit.

  Jess left the next, obvious question unspoken.

  ‘Men,’ Drea finally said. ‘A man in the case of Nottingham, but—’ she waved her hand in the air between them as if cleaning a slate and starting over. ‘It’s men who’ve been at the base of most of my problems.’

  Jess stayed silent. It was her best tactic for getting a child to tell the truth, eventually, when they were trying to worm their way out of something with a fib. Not that Drea would be fibbing about anything, but … who knew?

  ‘What did you think of Josh?’ Drea changed the subject, her expression innocent, but her eyes telling another story.

  ‘Nice.’ Jess said cautiously. Was she being asked if she fancied him or was Drea making a claim on him? ‘He’s definitely got the eye-candy thing covered.’

  ‘That he does,’ Drea said, eyes dropping back to her biscuit’s diminishing amount of hundreds and thousands. ‘Do you fancy taking a crack at him?’

  ‘What? Eww! No. I don’t want to take a crack at anything.’

  Drea rolled her eyes. ‘You’re a sensitive little bear, aren’t you? All I meant was, the man’s available, you’re a teacher so a shoo-in to get along with his children—’

  Jess cut her off. ‘Just because I teach children doesn’t mean I want to date someone with children.’

  Interesting. She hadn’t realised that was one of her criteria.

  Drea opened her mouth and made a noise as if several sentences were battling to be the first one out of the chute. None of them won.

  Jess answered the questions she was pretty sure Drea was trying to ask ‘Yes. I do want children of my own one day, but not now. No. I don’t want a boyfriend – widowed, single, married, with or without children, hot, ugly, whatever. I want to be on my own. And as for “taking a crack at anyone”?’ She faltered. The truth was she was feeling weird about physical contact these days. As if she had some sort of PTSD from the Cheese Sandwich Incident. She could remember her hands on Crispin’s arms and then his fist connecting with – bleurgh. She didn’t want to think about it.

  ‘I’m presuming you have an ex and that he did quite a number on you.’

  Jess surprised herself by snorting. Her break-up with Martin had surprisingly little to do with why she was feeling the way she was. ‘It’s actually a bit weird how little I think of him.’

  It was, as well. She’d cared for him. Obviously. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been living with him. Had thought she’d loved him, even. They had similar taste in restaurants, box sets, and board games. Not living in one another’s pockets, as her parents did, had never been a problem. It was, Jess realised, an easy relationship, but not a very passionate one. The truth was, with their busy, hectic work-based lives, she and Martin barely saw one another except at joint social events, of which there were very few. She was up at five-thirty most mornings, away to school within the hour and not home until seven or eight, when she usually had some marking or preparations for the next day’s work. Martin, a city-centric estate agent, had incredibly erratic hours and, as a ‘takes contacts to make contacts’ kind of guy, was always out meeting and greeting (read: at the pub).

  Drea said, ‘I like the way he says, “All right, son?”’

  Jess blinked, confused. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Josh,’ she explained, levering the final hundred and thousand – a red one – off the biscuit. ‘Whenever he speaks to Eli, he calls him son. I like it. “Come here, son.” “Put that down, son.’ ‘“Good job, son.”’ She got a faraway look in her
eyes, as if she were imagining calling her own son son.

  ‘Was your son’s father not involved in his life?’

  ‘Nah,’ she said with a wave of her hand.

  ‘Are you missing him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your son,’ Jess prompted gently.

  Drea’s eyes glassed over then she gave her head a short sharp shake. ‘Course I do, but he’s a man now. Doesn’t need his mum micromanaging his life from however many thousands of miles away, does he?’

  Jess scrunched up her nose. ‘Did you ever do that?’

  Drea shook her head then shrugged. ‘I was … I – I could’ve been more consistent with him.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I was either all over him for something or telling him to pull his socks up and do whatever it was on his own. But that was usually because I had a boyfriend and was trying to make him happy.’

  Jess shot her a questioning look.

  ‘Most men, in my experience, do not take to another man’s sprogs, so … I coulda done better.’ Drea’s nose twitched as if she was fighting some unwelcome tears. She began to tease the hundreds and thousands from yet another biscuit. ‘I only kept on at him about the important stuff, though. School. Manners. Responsibility. And he did it. Ploughed through uni and law school without me there nagging him or wrapping him in cotton wool. He’s a good kid, even if I do say so myself.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Spencer.’

  The way Drea said it sounded so full of love and longing and regret it made Jess’s eyes well up.

  ‘I’d love to meet him one day.’

  Drea cleared her throat and finally met Jess’s eyes. ‘With some luck, you might.’

  ‘Really?’ The idea of meeting the male form of Drea was strangely cheering to Jess.