I feel the sense of melancholy too as I look around. Toy shops are meant to be happy, enchanting places, but now, this magical place gives the same dismal feeling inside as you get from standing outside and peering in the window, taking in the lone cobweb-covered teddy sitting in the once-great display among a load of dead flies. This shop is the embodiment of what has happened to every other shop in Oakbarrow. The epitome of what was once loved and popular, something that drew crowds to the area, now left abandoned in time, exactly as it was on the day it shut down, ten years ago.
Near the entrance is a rack of ‘try me’ vehicles for children to ride around the shiny tiled floor on – scooters for older kids and ride-along ladybirds and ducks for littler ones, their only riders currently of the eight-legged variety. There’s a hexagon-shaped cardboard arena for duels between remote controlled cars, the two battlers, now with broken plastic and missing wheels, lying in pools of battery acid leaked from their remotes. There are rows and rows of toys that I remember from my childhood – Tamagotchis, Furbies, action figures of Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spirograph boxes, Sylvanian Families, and more Barbie dolls than you can shake a stick at.
‘Wow, is that an original Game Boy?’ Leo picks up a box and blows dust from it. ‘That was one of the best presents I ever got back in the Nineties.’
‘Me too.’ I peer over his shoulder at the retro box. ‘The year Mum and Dad got that for me, I accidentally saw it in a cupboard before Christmas and had to pretend I didn’t know what I was getting on Christmas morning.’
‘Accidentally, huh?’
‘Yes!’ I say indignantly.
He grins. ‘Oh good, because I always used to go looking. I knew all the hiding places.’
‘Your dad was Santa, Leo! That’s against the rules for everyone but especially for you.’
‘You know what I’m like when it comes to behaving. You honestly think I was a perfect model child who brought good Christmas mojo on myself?’ He waggles his eyebrows. ‘Obviously that only started when I was 30. I’m all about good Christmas mojo now.’
We both dissolve into giggles and we’re still laughing as we take in more shelves stacked with jigsaws, dolls from every generation dating back to the post-war years, train sets and toy car racing tracks, Scalextric sets, chemistry kits, skipping ropes and frisbees, and there are stands of choose-your-own marbles and rainbow spinning windmills, and the floor is packed with hula hoops leaning against the walls, kites, and gigantic dolls’ houses.
Leo is still holding my hand as we go up the open-tread staircase to the second floor, even less modern than downstairs. Up here are the most popular toys of years gone by, from Rubik’s Cubes, slinkys, and Space Hoppers to Hornby trains, Matchbox cars, Care Bears, and My Little Ponies.
The main part of the second floor is where Santa’s grotto stood. I give Leo’s hand a squeeze as we stand and look at the empty space in silence, and he lifts our joined hands and presses them against his chest, curling his fingers tight around mine.
I remember so clearly visiting Santa in his red-painted wooden shed with sheets of cotton-wool snow nailed to the roof. Beside it there was a lifesize empty sleigh pulled by plastic reindeer and a snowy path leading up to the door, lined by giant candy canes and populated by staff dressed as elves who used to manage the queues and take your picture when you sat on Santa’s lap.
‘Did you spend much time here as a kid?’ I ask, my voice sounding like a shout in the silence of the shop.
‘Yeah, loads when my dad was working as Santa.’ His voice sounds hoarse from the dust and decay in the air. ‘Mr Hawthorne, the man who owned it originally was an absolute legend. He was the heart and soul of the place. He opened in 1950 and worked here until he was 93. He’s what you and I remember from when we were young. He was the kind of guy who went above and beyond for his customers. He’d often see children crying because they wanted something so badly but their parents couldn’t afford it, and he’d slip a little note to the mum or dad saying to come back on Christmas Eve, and there it would be, waiting for them, free of charge just because he wanted to make children happy.’
‘He sounds wonderful.’
‘He was. He truly loved his job and did it solely because he loved it so much. It’s probably a good thing that he died when he did because seeing it like this would’ve killed him. In those days, it seemed like it would be here forever.’
‘So what happened? Someone else took over?’
‘A son, I think. Someone who didn’t understand that what kept it going for so many years was the personal touch and the absolute love that Hawthorne poured into it. It became all about stacking the shelves with cheap toys for expensive prices, and when the boom of the internet started, they didn’t have a hope in hell of competing. They were out of business within a couple of years.’
‘You know a lot about this place.’
‘This is my childhood,’ he says. ‘This and the café that was next door. My sister and I used to hang out here after school and in the holidays when Mum got fed up of us under her feet and sent us to see Dad at work for a few hours. Mr Hawthorne gave us free run of the place. He let us play with anything we wanted. He never worried about us damaging anything, he just wanted us to enjoy ourselves,’ he continues as we wander further around the floor. ‘You only have to look at it now to see how much anyone cared after Mr Hawthorne died. No one’s even bothered to clear it out or try selling it for retail value. Some of these things are probably valuable to collectors by now but they’re just left here to rot.’ He seems genuinely frustrated by it.
‘This place was really important to you, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah, in a weird way. My sister’s older than me so she grew out of toys and wouldn’t be seen dead here while I was still playing with Action Man and building every Lego kit I could get my hands on. I felt special here. Mr Hawthorne always asked my opinions on new things he was thinking of stocking. I think when you’re a kid, no one really listens to your opinion because you’re just a kid, and when someone does make you feel valued, it really sticks with you.’
‘I think this place has probably stuck with a lot of people round here. It was a real treat when we got to come in here.’
‘Exactly. That’s the saddest thing. I genuinely think this place could’ve lived on. It might not have been able to compete with the internet giants, but I thought there would always be a place for it in Oakbarrow. You see people going retro more and more nowadays. I overhear a lot of talk in the coffee shop because people come here thinking it will still be open and stop in for a cuppa when they discover they’ve come all this way for nothing. Grandparents bring their screen-raised grandkids to get something they enjoyed when they were little. Parents desperate to break a kid of their iPad addiction. Anyone sick of toy cars that snap in half after three minutes.’
‘I see it a lot too,’ I say without thinking. ‘People are always coming in looking for old toys of their generation. People’s faces light up when they see something that reminds them of their childhood.’
His eyebrows knit together as his forehead furrows. ‘In the bank?’
Bollocks. ‘Where they come to get their money out so they can go to the places that sell these retro toys. Obviously.’
He shakes his head. ‘Anyone would think debit cards had never been invented.’
‘Oh, well, you know older people are a bit scared of technology, aren’t they?’ I say, sending up a silent apology for stereotyping an entire generation.
He knows I’m lying. Even in the darkness of the shop, I can almost hear the cogs turning in his mind, trying to work out how someone who works in a bank would see people’s faces light up at the sight of retro toys.
‘What was that?’ I grab his arm like something has scared me. Now is the time to create a diversion. The less he thinks about me and my place of work, the better.
He shines the torch upwards. ‘Probably just bats in the roof. Bat poo was definitely one of the man
y things we’ve waded through tonight.’
‘How comforting,’ I mutter.
‘Don’t worry, scaredy cat, I’ll protect you.’ The diversion works as he seems to forget all about my job. He slings an arm around my shoulder and squeezes me into his side and I snuggle as close as I can without it getting weird as we take the next set of stairs up to the third floor and come face to face with a wall full of board games. Classic red and white Monopoly boxes, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Operation, Guess Who, Twister, Connect Four, Hungry Hippos, Cluedo, Snakes and Ladders, Buckaroo, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and those frustrating Magic Eye pictures that I could never see no matter how hard I tried.
Leo pulls out a Mouse Trap box and wipes dust off it. ‘Wow. This was my favourite game when I was little. My friend had it and I never did, and every time I went over to his house, I wanted to play it, but he’d be bored because he’d played it loads.’
‘Shall we have a game?’
He looks at me like a red frog has just appeared on my head.
‘You know we’re both in our thirties, right?’
‘Oh, come on. We’re in an abandoned toy shop. It would be wrong if we didn’t play with something. Besides, you’re never too old for a game of Mouse Trap.’
‘The box says “six and up”.’
‘There you go then, we qualify.’ I take his arm and pull him across to a soft-carpeted reading area stuffed with bean bags and little chairs, surrounded by shelves of books. I remember many a happy hour reading here, it was the perfect place for parents to leave their kids with the staff while they popped downstairs to buy surprise Christmas presents. The plush deep-red carpet is faded and threadbare now, worn away by customers and, more recently, probably something fun like cockroaches, and the array of books that used to delight are falling from the shelves, damp and stuck together.
Leo brushes off a space on the carpet big enough for both of us and sits on his knees, and I sit down next to him as we open the box and peer at the plastic pieces inside.
‘Wow. I remember this like it was yesterday.’ He reaches in and pulls out the red basket trap and turns it over in his hand, and a smile immediately breaks across his face. ‘You always have such great ideas, George.’
He spreads the board in front of us and gleefully tips the plastic bits out. Neither of us can remember the rules or be bothered to read through the instruction leaflet, and even though you’re meant to build the game up as you play, we just set the trap up and start.
We’re basically just throwing the dice and moving the number of spaces, chasing each other around the board, shouting ‘cheese!’ a lot but never remembering to take any of cheese wedges you’re supposed to collect, and setting the trap off for the sake of it even though none of our mice are in the cheese wheel space.
The trap was always the best bit anyway. The swinging foot that misses the bucket at least twice and finally connects, sending the little metal ball down the blue path and through the guttering to the pole that drops the other ball into the red bathtub, catapults the green diver upside down into the bowl, and finally brings down the trap. I remember the jerky movement of that basket coming down as one of the most satisfying moments a child ever experiences. As an adult, it’s a bit bonkers, but I was never happier than the last day of each term at primary school when everyone would get to bring a board game in and Mouse Trap was always the firm favourite of everyone in the classroom, including the teacher.
Leo’s laughing so much he’s breathless, and there are tears of joy running down his face. I’m leaning against him, and we’ve regressed to throwing plastic mice and cardboard cheese at each other, and giggling so much that we’re holding each other upright to save overbalancing and rolling around on this ancient carpet.
‘Why didn’t we realize how mad this game is when we were young?’ he says in my ear. ‘You basically spend the whole time resetting the trap. My mum always said it was a waste of time and now I’m the same age, I understand why.’
We give up on playing it pretty quickly. We’ve still got tonight’s window to do and we’ve only made it up to the third floor of Hawthorne’s four storeys, and we’re not leaving without exploring properly. It’s a responsibility of adulthood to explore every nook and cranny of an abandoned toy shop.
‘Thanks, George,’ he says as we poke all the plastic bits back into the box, set the folded board on top and put it back on the shelf.
‘What for?’
‘Another wonderful night.’ He wipes tears of laughter from his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I’ve spent so much time in this shop but that was the most fun I’ve ever had here.’
I grin at him and he grins back and he looks so happy and buoyant and carefree that it’s definitely been worth a little breaking and entering, and when I glance in one of the distorted funfair mirrors on the wall as we pass, I look as happy as him. Even with the warped glass making my head look all squiggly, my smile matches his, and I realize that I haven’t felt this happy in forever either.
The toys on the fourth floor get even more vintage. It’s stacked with old-fashioned boxes from Muffin the Mule marionettes and what must be the very first of the Easy-Bake ovens to James Bond Aston Martin cars and Troll dolls that date all the way back to the Sixties. We poke our heads into one of the rather unimpressive store rooms, so different from the Narnia-esque land of neverending toys that I’d always pictured. Once, they must’ve been meticulously organized and stacked floor to ceiling, but the shelving has collapsed over the years, and now there’s just higgledy-piggledy mountains of unwanted toys that have stayed where they’ve fallen, buried in dust, their boxes nibbled by mice.
‘Toy shops are meant to be magical places,’ Leo says. ‘They make adults feel like kids again and give kids a chance to enjoy being kids. Seeing it like this is just wrong.’
‘I’d love to rescue this place,’ I say. ‘It’d be a hell of a project, but can you imagine seeing Hawthorne’s open again? It would be incredible.’
‘Me too.’ He suddenly lights up. ‘I’d love that. Wow.’
The idea of how amazing it would be to see Hawthorne’s restored to its former glory floats into my mind. ‘It would be impossible though, right? I mean, we both have jobs, and we have no idea who owns it now, and whoever they are, they clearly don’t care about it very much …’
‘Christmas is the one time of year to believe in impossible things,’ he says, then takes a step back and looks at me in pretend shock. ‘All right, what’s gone wrong here? We’ve switched roles. You’re meant to be the positive one. Either you’ve slipped me some of that potion or you’re rubbing off on me. And whichever it is,’ he takes my hand again, ‘I’m enjoying it and I wouldn’t mind it continuing.’
Oh, me too, Leo. I squeeze his hand with both of mine. ‘I put extra wart of toad into the potion last night.’
He bursts out laughing and his laugh echoes around the shop, making the building seem more alive than it has in many, many years.
* * *
‘Thanks for the push into criminality,’ Leo says as we get back to the little landing we arrived on. ‘It was awesome to see this place again. So much nostalgia.’
‘A real blast from the past.’ I look around, reluctant to end this yet.
‘Look.’ I nudge him with my elbow and point towards a red door down the next set of steps. It’s got a metal label that says ‘storage’ on it, and underneath someone has stuck a white sticker with ‘Christmas’ scrawled across it in faded marker pen.
Leo does a sharp intake of breath. ‘My father’s grotto will be in there.’
I bite my lip and put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Do you want to have a look?’
‘No,’ he snaps instantly. Then he swallows and turns away and I give his shoulder a squeeze. I hadn’t realized how difficult coming in here might be for him.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbles under his breath. ‘Yes. More than anything.’
Even after all these years, the first smell that hits
me when we open the door is the metallic scent of tinsel. Christmas decorations always have the same scent to them. No matter how long they’ve been in a box in the attic, they always smell the same as they did when you put them away.
We’re below the ground level of the building now and there’s no chance of being seen from the outside so Leo pulls the cord hanging by the door, looking surprised when we hear the generator outside stir and the lightbulb flickers into life, still lighting up the room after all these years.
You could say that Christmas has thrown up in here, but that would be an understatement. It looks like someone’s scooped the remains of a tinsel factory and a fairy light manufacturing plant into a room and thrown a few plastic reindeer in for good measure. If the North Pole existed, it would have less Christmas stuff than this room.
‘Wow,’ I say, not knowing where to start. I have no excuse to stay glued to Leo’s side now we’ve got some light so I reluctantly pick my way across the room, sidestepping boxes of plastic snowman parts, jumping over great arches of lights, and waltzing around seven-foot-tall candy canes.
I stop and stare at a sign leaning against one wall. It’s bigger than I am, and it reads ‘Merry Christmas from Oakbarrow’ in between two bells. I recognize it. ‘Didn’t this used to be up at the end of the high street as you walked out of town, past the church?’
‘Yeah,’ he replies without looking over.
I pull the sign forward and look at the one behind it. This one says ‘Merry Christmas’ with Santa in his sleigh being pulled by two reindeer. ‘And this one used to be up near Woolworths as you get onto the high street.’
I delve further into the pile and pull out a stack of jingle bell shapes made of rope lights. ‘And these are what used to hang from the lampposts. What on earth are they doing here?’
‘Mr Hawthorne was responsible for the street decoration.’ Leo sounds distracted.
‘I thought it was the local council.’
‘It was. They maintained it, but he bought the lights and paid for the running of it and stored them for the rest of the year.’
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