by Ali Harris
‘Sam?’ I gasp, turning just in time to see him step out from behind Felix.
I don’t need to tell him I’d given up on him. It’s apparent in my voice, but he doesn’t look sad, instead he takes a step towards me and smiles. He looks really smart, adorably so in fact, in a suit and skinny tie. His hair has been cut and styled and he looks very nervous.
I look at him in confusion. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’
He nods. ‘I came to tell you that I’m sorry, Evie. You were right that morning, you know, the day before I left for Brazil. I knew it as soon as you reminded me how important your career is, and how it’s your baby, just like Sophie is mine. You were right and I knew then that I wanted to be with you always. I don’t care how often you work, as long as I know we have forever to look forward to together.’ David hands him the shoes pats him on the shoulder and steps back.
‘When you went to Tetbury that day, I picked up Sophie from school and the two of us went looking for an engagement ring for you,’ I gasp as tears begin to fill my eyes. ‘But we couldn’t find one special enough.’ He pauses. ‘I thought about designing something, but I knew that would take too long and I didn’t want to wait any longer. So I delayed my flight by a day, got on the train to Tetbury the day after you got back and went to see David. I told him the whole story and asked him if he would make a pair of shoes especially for you. A pair that I could propose to you with. And that you could wear to our wedding...’
There is a collective gasp from all the women in the room. Even me. Especially me!
‘I went back the other day to collect them. But I was worried you may have got cold feet. After all, I haven’t been the best boyfriend recently...’
‘Sam—’ I begin.
He suddenly drops down to his knees.
‘Let me just do this Evie. I’m too nervous to stop.’ He swallows and stares at the box in his hands. ‘As soon as you told me that things had to change, I knew you were right. I knew without any doubt that I wanted things to be different because I didn’t want to be your boyfriend anymore, I wanted to be married to you.’ He looks up at me nervously. ‘Evie, I want to be as committed to you as you are to your work and as I am to Sophie. I want us to be a family. A patchwork family that already has two babies: mine and yours. These baby years are going to be tough but I know we’ll get through it together. After all, we’ve both had plenty of practice – and we’ve got lots of friends to help us.’
He smiles at all the people around us and looks back at me beseechingly. ‘Why am I always making a complete arse of myself in this shop?’ he asks and I laugh, remembering how he kissed me for the very first time in Hardy’s window. Then he takes the shoes out of the box and lifts them up to my eye level. I can see now that the writing on the labels, the wings on each inner heel, is different to all David’s other designs. Angelo’s is stitched in what looks like spun gold as are the words “To Evie, forever yours, Sam.” Today’s date has also been sewn underneath.
I’m aware the shop has come to a standstill, the customers and the staff are all frozen like the mannequins in the display: listening, watching, waiting.
I feel like I am here, but I am not. It is a dream, a fairytale, but it is also real. It is happening. This is Hardy’s, but it is also a beautiful ball. I am Evie, but I am also, suddenly Cinderella.
‘Evie, I think you know by now what I’m going to ask. I love you and I want to be with you always...’ Sam sounds choked. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘Yes!’ I laugh as I kick off my shoes, put my hands on his shoulders and slip the Angel wing shoes on. They are a perfect fit. And then I repeat myself, just for good measure, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Sam gets to his feet, lifts me off mine and we kiss. The staff and customers all cheer and the world whirls beneath my feet. Suddenly people are grappling for Angelo’s shoes, squealing and holding them up and shouting ‘Size 39 in jade, please!’ and the staff are running around. Amidst it all, are Sam and I, still kissing and holding each other, swaying softly like we’re part of the dancing mannequin display. As our lips part he whispers, ‘I love you Evie, I love everything about you...’
‘Including my job?’ I ask quietly, gripping his tie and then running my fingers down it.
‘Especially your job. After all, if it weren’t for Hardy’s we’d never have met, and if we hadn’t gone to Tetbury and met David, you wouldn’t have saved his business and I wouldn’t have been given the best advice of my life from old Mr Angelo...’
‘What was it?’ I ask.
‘That love is like finding a pair of shoes designed to fit you perfectly: they make you feel like you’re walking on air.’
‘Like these,’ I say, looking down at my winged feet.
Sam smiles and takes my hand. ‘And like us.’
I look up at him. ‘Sam, I’m so sorry I took you for granted. I was so scared that I’d ruined everything and you weren’t coming back. Hardy’s may be my home, but you and Sophie are my world’
He kisses me again. ‘I know. I’m never going to leave you. I promise.’
I turn around, wanting to thank David, not just for the shoes but for what he’s done for Sam and me, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I frown; I’m torn, but only momentarily. I want to find him, but this moment is about Sam and I, David Angelo – and his dad – won’t mind. In fact, I know exactly what they’d say: “Work can wait, Evie. True love can’t.”
‘Shall we go and find out how the takings are going?’ Sam says, eyeing up the cash desk and the flurry of staff and customers crowding the department.
I shake my head and lead him to the real staircase. As we begin to descend, holding onto the rail that is entwined with festive greenery, I feel like I am making an entrance into a new chapter of my own fairy-tale: the one that ends with a happy ever after.
‘I think the store can manage without me for an hour or so,’ I reply with a smile. ‘Besides, there’s someone who needs to be told our good news.’ I pause. ‘It doesn’t seem fair that one of our babies and not the other has heard it already.’ I glance up at the domed ceiling of Hardy’s and say a silent thank you for everything it has done for me, before smiling at my fiancé. ‘I think a celebration is in order.’
‘Eggnog and Christmas cake in Lily’s tearoom with Sophie?’ Sam suggests.
‘Perfect!’ I laugh as he turns and kisses me lightly on the lips. ‘This is going to be the best Christmas ever,’ I add joyously as I gaze at my husband-to-be.
‘A vintage Christmas!’ Sam replies playfully.
And it is.
Discover where the magic began. . .
Available in paperback and eBook
Thursday 1 December
24 Shopping Days Until Christmas
CHAPTER 1
I gaze out of my bedroom window into the dark winter morning as the snowflakes fall softly outside. Is this it? I wonder. It’s not a sudden change in the wind, like the one that carried Mary Poppins to the Banks family, or the tornado that carried Dorothy to Oz, but maybe, just maybe, this downfall is the universe’s way of telling me that my life is about to change. A flurry of snow to signal the flurry of action I’ve been waiting for so long.
I drop the curtains so that they fall back in place and dash over to my dressing table where my Advent calendar is propped up against the mirror. I smile as I open door number one and pop the chocolate in my mouth. The picture is of a snow globe. Another sign that things are about to be shaken up?
Half an hour later I slam the front door behind me, heave my bike down the front steps and hop on, feeling a thrill of anticipation. Today big things are going to happen, I just know it.
Today, like every work day, I’m wearing plain black trousers, a white shirt (with a thermal vest underneath) and flat brogues. I’m also wrapped in a cardigan, my sensible knee-length duffel coat, bobble hat, and a multicoloured striped scarf, which I’ve wound tightly around my neck and mouth. Not a great look but it’s not like anyone is going to notice a
t this time of the morning. Or indeed at any time. It’s been two years since anyone really looked at me. That was when Jamie broke up with me.
Obviously I’ve changed massively since then and I’m completely over him. Well, maybe not completely. But, you know, these things take time. Two years isn’t that long to get over a five-year relationship, is it? I don’t care what my sister says, it’s perfectly understandable that I’m not quite there yet. Besides, since we broke up I’ve been focusing on other aspects of my life. I mean, I don’t live with my parents any more, for a start. OK, so I do live with my big sister, Delilah, and her husband, Will, in the converted attic in their house overlooking a gorgeous square in Primrose Hill, but it’s different because I’m independent. Like a 28-year-old woman should be. Well, independent apart from the fact that in exchange for my lodging I have to look after my 3-year-old niece, Lola, and 2-year-old nephew, Raffy, before and after work. It’s not ideal, but I can’t complain.
I inhale deeply and gaze around me wondrously. How could I fail to feel positive on a day like this? The roofs of the grand Regency houses on Chalcot Square are covered in white, as if a big scoop of vanilla ice cream has melted all over the peppermint, orange, raspberry and lemon sorbet-coloured houses. And the pretty garden that they surround looks like a Christmas cake that’s just been covered with a thick layer of royal icing. I push off, wobbling a little as I weave round it and cycle on to Regent’s Park Road.
I cross the road and head over to Primrose Hill, pedalling hard to break through the thick layer of snow that crunches under my wheels. Then I stop for a moment and just cruise downhill, feeling the wind whip against my cheeks, throwing my head back and closing my eyes so that I feel like I’m suspended in space and time. I open my eyes, grip the handlebars tightly and pedal furiously again. Because today, for once, I’m determined to go somewhere.
It feels as if I have been magically transported back in time as I cycle into Portland Place. No vehicles are on the streets and I can’t help but imagine them when they were cobbled and filled with horses and carriages. I’m just picturing myself in full Victorian costume, when I swing off down New Cavendish Street and onto Great Titchfield Street, past the unlit pubs and restaurants, and then I swerve down a smaller road, skidding to a halt as I pull up in front of Hardy’s department store: a place that has been my daytime home for the past two years and where, today, all my career dreams will finally come true.
CHAPTER 2
Hardy’s sits elegantly on the corner of two streets just north (or, as many people say, ‘the wrong side’) of Regent Street. Over the other side is Soho, home to numerous famous theatres, legendary restaurants and cool, destination bars. But here, in ‘Noho’, we’re like Soho’s less famous but much prettier sibling. Officially classed as in Fitzrovia, Hardy’s is too far from the big shops on Regent and Oxford Street for the crowds who flock there every day. Tourists don’t know we’re here, and Londoners would far rather visit salubrious Selfridges, quaint Liberty or just-plain-useful John Lewis than schlep all the way over to us.
The small but perfectly formed store seems to rise up before me now like a pop-up picture in a children’s Christmas book. I sit back on my saddle and glance up at it fondly, panting a little from my uncharacteristic race to the store. I’m not usually this desperate to get to work but today is different: the Big Announcement is happening at 9 a.m. My manager, Sharon, came into the stockroom last week and told me that they’re looking to promote someone to be assistant manager of the shop floor. She said that they had their eye on someone who’d been with the company for a long time (hello! Two years!), who knew the stock inside out (I’m only the stockroom manager) as well as the customers (I can name all of our regular customers off the cuff). Then she’d said they wanted someone who was passionate about the store. And if that wasn’t the biggest ever hint in the universe, then I don’t know what is. There isn’t anything I don’t know about Hardy’s. And Sharon knows how much I’d love to be out there on the shop floor, talking to customers, selling, being part of it all.
The store itself has seen better days, it has barely any customers and the stock wouldn’t look out of place in a museum, but I still love the old place. That’s why I was so excited to get a job here two years ago – even if it was only in the stockroom. I thought I’d only be working there for a short while, until they saw my potential and moved me on to the shop floor. But that still hasn’t happened. At least it hasn’t until today . . .
I glance up at the clock on the front of the store. It’s still only six thirty. I chain up my bike in the parking bay and find I can’t tear my eyes away from the store façade. Hardy’s is a beautiful four-storey Edwardian building with warm sandstone bricks that sit above the modern glass-fronted ground floor. Beautiful arched baroque windows line the entire first floor like a dozen eyes peering down on the street. Above them, thin rectangular windows are poised like eyelashes to flutter at passers-by. The rooftop silhouette is dominated by ornate columned balconies and a central domed tower, which is now lightly covered in a layer of snow. At the front of this tower is a clock that has been telling the time to passing Londoners for a hundred years. But looking at it now, the hands seem to stay perfectly still, like they’re frozen in time. Even the windows seem to stare blankly back at me. It’s as if the store is in a deep sleep.
It might be the 1 December but you wouldn’t know it here at Hardy’s. It’s supposed to be the busiest shopping period of the year, but each day the store is like a ghost town. And to make matters worse, the board of directors has decided to go minimal on the decorations this year. So they’ve got rid of Hardy’s traditional, crowd-pleasing fifty-foot-high Norwegian spruce, which has stood next to the central staircase, dripping with decorations and proudly guarding its bounty of beautifully wrapped gift boxes each December for decades. Instead, in a fit of frugality, Rupert Hardy, the fourth generation Hardy family member to manage the store, suggested that we make use of the two dozen tacky silver artificial Christmas trees that his father, Sebastian, had bought back in the 1980s but never used. Rupert said that they are a nod to the new, trendy ‘Christmas minimalism’, but we all know that it’s just a money-saving measure. But at what cost? I feel like asking. No one wants to shop at a place that is devoid of Christmas spirit. And customers only have to see the sorrowful-looking windows to conclude that Hardy’s is severely lacking in yuletide cheer.
I sigh as I look at the spray-on snow framing the dozen small, sad trees, which are apparently meant to symbolize the Twelve Days of Christmas, three in each of the four big store windows. They look pathetic. And now the real snow that has settled on the pavements this morning is illuminating the sorry state of our halfhearted Christmas windows even more.
I walk into the staff entrance at the side of the building, swiping my card and smiling at Felix, the security guard, who is, as ever, utterly occupied by his Sudoku. Along the corridor, I pass the staff noticeboards featuring details of the latest ‘Employee of the Month’. This month it’s my good friend Carly. I’m really happy for her; she deserves it. She does a great job in the personal shopping department, with her gift for finding the right style for anyone, no matter what their size, shape, personality – or even proclivity. (She once had a pre-op transgender client who, after two hours with Carly, walked out of Hardy’s looking like he no longer needed an operation. Amazing.) She says she’s like a matchmaker, except with customers and clothes.
I can’t pretend, though, that I’m not disappointed that it wasn’t my turn to be given the accolade. I’ve never been awarded Employee of the Month, whereas Carly’s received it twice in the six months she’s worked here. But it’s OK, I tell myself as I stand in front of her picture – noting how everything about her seems to sparkle with life: her eyes, teeth, skin, hair; she’s practically iridescent – today it’s my turn. Carly may have got the job in Personal Shopping, but a managerial role for someone who knows Hardy’s inside out? That’s much more me.
The n
oticeboard features a photograph of every staff member. I’m proud to say I know each one of them; I know their partners’ names, their kids’ names, ages and their (infinite) talents. I know where they live, what their worries are, their hopes, their dreams. There’s Gwen, the beauty department manager; a bright, incredibly polished woman, who is hiding a terrible secret behind that beaming, painted-on smile: mountains of credit card debts. Then there’s Jenny, Gwen’s faithful assistant. She’s thirty-five and has been trying for a baby without success. In the two years that I’ve worked here I’ve watched her go from a hopeful honeymooner to someone who believes she may never be a mother. She and her husband want to have IVF treatment and she is desperate to make sales in the store so she can earn more commission to pay for this. It’s awful seeing her so despondent now the store is so quiet.
Then my gaze settles on the photo of Guy, who works in Menswear. I suspect he had his teeth whitened especially for the picture; I almost need sunglasses to look at it. He’s fabulously camp but recently he’s lost his sparkle. His long-term boyfriend, Paul, dumped him for a younger man and, with his fortieth fast approaching, Guy has been swathed in uncharacteristic melancholy for weeks. Everyone’s rather worried about him.
Another staff member heading for forty and unhappy about it is my manager, Sharon. She lives with her elderly mother. I suspect that the only thing she has in her life is her job. I certainly know that she’s besotted with Rupert Hardy, not because she’s told me but because I’ve seen the way she looks at him as they do the rounds of the store together. Her brittle edges seem softer when she’s with him; her body relaxes, her tongue isn’t so sharp, her expression is warmer. I think she would soften even more if only he would show some reciprocal interest. But he doesn’t, and so Sharon prowls round the store like a frustrated lioness, snarling at anyone who crosses her path and, as a result, is hugely unpopular.