‘Random pictures are popping up every night and only the local coffee shop seems to know anything about them,’ he continues reading, ‘although owner Leo Summers remains silent on their origin. When asked, he simply replied, “A little bit of Christmas magic.”’
‘You didn’t tell me you’d had a reporter in,’ I say.
‘I didn’t realize he was. There was a bloke who asked me about the pictures a couple of days ago, but he just ordered a latte and left. I didn’t think he was a reporter.’ He shakes his head, unable to stop smiling. ‘This is fantastic.’
‘The best part about these pictures is the sense of nostalgia they bring in their nod to what the now-abandoned shops used to be,’ I read out loud from the next part of the article. ‘Surely anyone who grew up around these parts remembers popping into the greengrocer’s for their bread and milk and whatever bruised fruit was going for 10p a bag. We all remember the pick ‘n’ mix stand in Woolworths. We remember wandering around Hawthorne’s at Christmas with a sense of wonder in our hearts. These pictures remind us of what Oakbarrow once was, and for the first time in many years, walking down Oakbarrow High Street has been a pleasant experience.’
‘Wow,’ Leo says, still shaking his head in amazement.
‘It’s very true,’ the man who brought the paper says. ‘Whoever’s doing your artwork has got exactly the right idea about reminding people how great this street used to be.’
Leo’s eyes meet mine and his smile somehow manages to get even wider, and I’ve been smiling for so long that I might need a dentist’s help to readjust my jaw. We’re just stood here smiling at each other because it’s been a fair fifty-fifty project. The artwork might be me but the ideas are mainly Leo’s. The inventiveness and fun factor are all him, which is exactly what made It’s A Wonderful Latte stand out when it first opened.
‘They think it’s one of Santa’s elves,’ the man says. ‘My granddaughter said that’s what the teachers are saying in school.’
It’s not like I could stop smiling anyway, but that makes me smile even wider.
‘Which means they’re talking about it in schools,’ Leo says. ‘That’s exactly what we were hoping for and more.’
‘A lot of people are talking about it,’ he says. ‘My wife came in from the hairdresser’s yesterday and said it was all anyone had talked about. It’s made everyone remember what this street used to be like.’
Leo continues reading the article. ‘Regardless of who’s behind these mysterious paintings, whether it’s one of Santa’s elves, the ghost of Christmases past, or the Christmas Banksy of Oakbarrow, if you’re on the high street this December, look out for one of these fun pictures and be sure to pop into the coffee shop next to the old Hawthorne Toys building for your chance to win a luxury hamper. Even if you don’t win, you’re at least guaranteed A Wonderful Latte and a timely reminder of one of our best-loved Christmas films.’ He lets out a very unmanly squeal that’s almost loud enough to rival my seen-a-spider squeal and turns to face me, looking so excited he might burst. ‘Oh my God, George!’
Before I know what’s happening, he throws his arms around my waist, picking me up and swinging me around as I try not to drop the box of mince pies in my hands or spill my coffee down his neck, despite the possibility of it leading to shirtlessness.
His stubble burns my skin in the best possible way as his lips find my neck and he presses kiss after kiss there. It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself. Just an overexcited display of emotion that he can’t fully let out with customers in the shop. His arms squeeze tighter and he swings me around again before setting me back on the floor and pulling away, his eyes on my neck at the spot where he just kissed me, refusing to look any higher and make eye contact.
He shakes himself and turns back to the man at the counter. ‘You’re the newsagent, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah. Someone painted a picture of Santa reading a paper on my window last week and people kept phoning and asking if it meant I was coming back to work. I came for a wander down the high street at the weekend and it’s so much busier than I remember, and I miss my old shop so much. I thought it couldn’t hurt to try opening again.’
‘That’s fantastic,’ Leo says. ‘If only we could get a few more like you to come back, this street could be somewhere worth saving again.’
‘You can keep that.’ The newsagent pats the paper. ‘I thought you might like a copy if you hadn’t seen it. I’ll have a black coffee to go as I’m here. May as well get my first day back at work off to a good start, eh?’
He chortles to himself as Leo starts making his drink. I want to stay and talk about how fantastic this is, maybe find an excuse for another hug, but another customer comes in who will need serving too, and it’s now late enough that no amount of mince pies will save me from Mary’s wrath.
Leo’s facing the coffee machine so I touch his shoulder as I slip past. ‘See you later.’
‘Hey,’ he reaches out and catches my hand, giving it a quick squeeze, ‘thanks, George. I’ll fetch some apologetic hot chocolates down later for making you late again.’
‘You really don’t have to,’ I say, but the coffee machine finishes off the newsagent’s drink with such a loud puff of steam that it drowns me out. Casey, Jerry, and everyone else at the bank deserve much more than a hot chocolate for the nonsense they’re letting me get away with, and Leo really doesn’t need any more reasons this morning to wonder if I’m not quite as financially astute as someone who works in a bank should be.
Chapter 13
‘I can’t believe we got in the paper,’ Leo says when I go in through the side door that night. ‘Mum’s bought six copies, she’s getting at least four of them framed as Christmas gifts.’
‘I took a copy home for my dad and he wants your autograph. I think he was relieved to find out that when I go out in the nights to paint pictures on shop windows that I am actually painting pictures on shop windows. God knows what he thought it was a cover for.’
He laughs. ‘I was stalking the newspaper website earlier and the article has been shared a few hundred times. And our post of last night’s picture that I showed you this morning has got over a thousand likes now.’ His smile is so wide that it makes the room seem lighter than it is.
‘Thanks for the hot chocolates you dropped off at the bank earlier,’ I say. ‘Sorry I managed to miss you again. I particularly liked the “Christmas Banksy of Oakbarrow” you’d written on my cup.’
He grins. ‘Well, I was hoping to hand it to you in person, but you were on a break again. At least I know why you’re okay with late nights now – it’s clearly because you do absolutely no work during the day.’
‘I do! You just have terrible timing. You must wait for me to disappear and then come in. I’m starting to think you’re actively trying to avoid me.’ Deflection. That’ll throw him off the scent.
He’s grinning as he answers. ‘Actually, I was really hoping to catch you just so I could squeal about the article some more, but I couldn’t stay because we were so busy. Mum had a queue to the door by the time I got back.’
‘That’s fantastic. I thought it looked busier outside today.’
‘Yeah. It’s brilliant that the newsagent has reopened, and the light was on in the florist’s shop today and someone was inside cleaning. I reckon they’re thinking about coming back too. It’s been there since 1902, it can’t have been an easy decision to close up.’
‘This is exactly what we need. More shops so people have got a reason to come here. If enough shops reopened and customers came with them, we could get enough people together to fight the hike in business rates. The council aren’t going to listen if there are only four businesses on the street, but if there are twenty-four who are making a profit and bringing people to the area then they can’t ignore us.’
‘In that case, we’d better go and do another picture for our adoring fans.’ He winks at me. ‘You fill the bucket, I’ll make the tea.’
Leo disappe
ars upstairs and I run hot water into my empty bucket in the kitchen sink to wash off last night’s picture of Santa getting a spray tan on the tanning shop, complete with orange skin and tiny white boxer shorts. I wander over to the kitchen table where the newspaper is open on the page of our article and read through it again, even though I’ve already read it approximately forty times today. People are raving about my artwork, something I never thought would ever happen, and it’s all because of Leo and his belief in me. It all feels a bit unreal, and for the first time, like we’re actually making a difference here. We really have a chance of making Oakbarrow High Street better.
When Leo comes back, he’s got the usual two teas in biodegradable takeaway cups which he somehow manages to carry in one hand. I go to lift the bucket out of the sink but his fingers close around the handle, the side of his hand pressing against mine, and I feel that familiar spark, the one that makes me want to keep touching him, no matter how miniscule the touch is.
‘I’ll carry this. You lock up.’ He tosses me his keys and I catch the huge, jangly bundle. ‘It’s the one with the blue cap.’
‘Do you have enough?’ I shake the heavy mangle of metal, trying to locate one blue-capped key in the muddle of keys. ‘You own one coffee shop. Starbucks’ bosses wouldn’t have this many keys if they had one for all their branches.’
‘They were Dad’s. He always had them on him. I don’t know what they’re all for, I just always remember him with this clink-clank of keys in his pocket so I like to keep them on me.’ I feel his eyes on me as he speaks. ‘Sorry, I know it’s stupid, it’s just something of his that I like to feel in my pocket. Kind of a reminder that I’m doing the right thing.’
‘It’s not stupid.’ I part the keys in my hand, trying to work out which shade of blue, in the many shades of blue key caps, painted tops, and keyrings, actually locks the coffee shop side door.
‘What’s Santa’s secret entrance?’ I ask as my fingers fall on a smooth metal key with a handwritten tag attached and a red and green enamel ‘H’ dangling from it.
‘Dunno.’ He shrugs. ‘Something to do with Hawthorne’s?’
‘Your dad had a key to Hawthorne’s?’
‘Makes sense. Like I said, his mate used to let him change into his Santa gear and leave his stuff here, then he’d go out through this alley and into Hawthorne’s basement door round the back there.’ He points to the end of the alleyway past the bins. ‘They always called it Santa’s secret entrance. I assume it’s the key to that.’
‘Do you think it still works?’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘Are you saying you want to give it a try?’
I look up at the side of the building towering above us. It’s always been a pinnacle of this street. Two storeys taller than any other building and with roof tiles patterned to spell out ‘H Toys’ at the back, meaning you could always see it from the motorway whenever you drove towards Oakbarrow. When I was little, Mum and Dad would always tell me to look out for Hawthorne’s so we’d know we were almost home. It was such an impressive building back then and people used to travel for miles to visit it, and even now, after a decade of disrepair, it’s still instantly recognizable.
‘You haven’t answered but I feel we might need a quick revision on what constitutes breaking and entering,’ Leo says.
‘But we’ve got a key,’ I say. ‘Do you think they’d still have a burglar alarm?’
‘Well, the security company they used went out of business years ago, the original owner is dead, and the shop’s been abandoned for at least a decade, so I doubt it.’ He looks at me with one eyebrow quirked up and one lowered. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘Wouldn’t you love to see what it looks like now?’ I say excitedly. ‘You’re always talking about how much you loved Hawthorne’s. It’s like the wreck of the Titanic on the ocean floor but with hopefully less barnacles. I can’t believe you’ve had a key all this time and you’ve never broken in!’
‘Some of us like to obey the law. Besides, I didn’t know I had a key. I’ve never paid much attention to what’s on there other than the ones I use.’ He looks between my face and the keyring in my hands. ‘And now you’ve said it, I’ve suddenly never wanted anything more in my life.’ His face breaks into a huge grin. ‘Quick, dump everything in the kitchen and I’ll grab a torch.’
* * *
‘And I thought you were such a good, law-abiding girl, George,’ Leo says as he brushes cobwebs away from Hawthorne’s basement door and inserts the key into the rusty lock. ‘You’re a bad influence on me. My mum’ll never make you mince pies again if we get arrested for this.’
‘Almost persuasive enough to turn back but not quite.’
He glances up and smiles and for one weird moment, his eyes linger on my lips and I think he’s going to kiss me, but he quickly looks back down at what he’s doing. I must’ve been imagining it. Those overexcited neck kisses this morning did something to me and now I’m just fantasizing about Leo’s mouth at odd times. That must be it.
The door creaks in the silence of the night as he pushes it open inch by inch, like he expects an alarm to start shrieking and laser beams shining across the room. All that happens is we obviously disturb a moth’s nest because a series of irate moths come flapping out into the night.
‘Not quite the large, angry guard dog you were expecting?’
‘Ha ha,’ he mutters, pushing the door open fully and peering in.
‘Go on.’ I give him a gentle shove. ‘Stop being frightened of living.’
‘What?’ He turns to face me and my cheeks heat up instantly. It’s too close to what we said on the phone and I should’ve realized it before the words were out of my mouth.
‘I mean, stop being frightened of anything living, they’re just moths,’ I amend, quite pleased with my quick thinking. It’s a shame it’s not quick enough to make me shut up before I get into these messes in the first place.
He narrows his eyes at me and I’m just about to create a diversion when he speaks. ‘Says the girl whose biggest concern about me sleeping on the floor is that spiders could come and get me in the middle of the night.’
‘It’s not my main concern.’
He makes a noncommittal noise as he leans past me to shut the door behind us, leaving us in complete darkness on a small landing area with far too many cobwebs. He flips the torch on and shines it around to get our bearings. We’re in a stairwell at the back of the shop, with steps below us heading down to the basement area, and steps above leading up to what I guess is the shop floor.
Leo shines the torch upwards, revealing cobweb bunting strewn between every stair rail and crisscrossing to the wall, and I’m not sure if the cobwebs have collected dust or if we’ve found several really worrying new species of spider.
‘Sorry, I’ve only got one torch.’ Leo offers me his arm and I slip my hand through it automatically. ‘Stay close so you don’t trip over anything.’
I could easily use the torch on my phone, but the heat from his body and the softness of his jumper under my fingertips make me realize that it’ll be more enjoyable if I ‘forget’ my phone light.
‘You’ve been here before,’ I say, holding his arm close as he navigates expertly up the stairs.
‘Not since my dad was working here. Didn’t think I’d ever be here again either. Thanks, law-breaking friend.’
‘Oh, come on. It’s not exactly the start of an illegal drug smuggling and money laundering ring, is it? It’s testing a key we found to see if it works. I’m not about to open my jacket and offer you six kilos of cocaine and a few bottles of poison.’
The smell in the stairwell is cloying with musty dampness and dust that hasn’t been disturbed for years, and we leave footprints behind us in whatever the muck on the steps is. The stairs keep going, and I realize this is a secret stairwell hidden away from customers’ eyes. It was probably a fire escape once, but stairs zigzag above our heads, joining each floor of the shop to a multitude of
storage rooms. No wonder I used to watch staff disappearing out the back to collect orders and think they’d gone to Narnia.
The first sets of wooden and glass double doors that we come to are instantly recognizable as the ones that stretched out behind the checkouts on the first floor. Leo puts his hand on one and pushes, a cloud of dust flying around us as the door creaks, the hinges groaning after so many years of rusty stillness. He steps through and holds it open for me.
‘Wow,’ he says under his breath, shining the torch around.
We’ve come out behind the checkout area, one long counter built from brightly-painted giant Tetris blocks with four separate tills stood along it, frozen in time. I can’t imagine anywhere in Oakbarrow needing four tills running now, and it’s hard to believe that anywhere ever did, and yet I can remember how long the queues here would get, especially at this time of year.
Leo uses his hand to cover the torch beam as we venture further into the shop because we’re near the ground floor window and could be seen if anyone happened to walk past.
‘It’s like a time capsule spanning seven decades,’ I say, as I look around at the shelves of forgotten toys. The only thing that hasn’t forgotten them is the spiders, who are clearly quite happy in their undisturbed home. ‘Also, if they ever make a sequel to Arachnophobia, I think we’ve found the set.’
Leo laughs as he picks up one of the soft toys lining the floor, a floppy-eared stuffed rabbit the size of a 5-year-old, and runs his hand over the handlebar of a child’s bike, one of many lined up in a rack, still waiting for an owner. ‘Dad bought me my first bike here.’
I step a bit closer to him because there’s a wobble in his voice and I have a feeling this shop means more to him than he’s letting on. ‘Sorry, dark,’ I mumble when my shoulder bumps into his back, not because it’s dark, but because I get the feeling he needs a bit of human comfort.
He reaches down and takes my hand, locking his fingers between mine and squeezing.
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