‘We’re always told that a festive-looking street is good for business. Head Office are always saying that decorating the outside helps business on the inside. Mr Hawthorne must’ve thought the same,’ I say, instantly realizing it was a careless sentence and waiting for the inevitable, ‘In a bank?’ comment that will surely follow.
Leo’s silent.
I’ve got so excited by the Christmas decorations that I remember from when I was little that I’ve temporarily forgotten how hard this must be for him, and I look back to see him trailing his fingers through the dust covering a candy-striped arrow sign reading ‘North Pole’.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask softly.
‘Mm,’ he mumbles, and I get the feeling I could’ve asked him if he’d seen a giraffe waving from Saturn’s rings and his response would’ve been the same.
I make another path through boxes of baubles as I go back over to see what he’s looking at when he drags a dustsheet off a pile of props: a gigantic sleigh turned upside down, an oversized display book for the naughty and nice list, a postbox for letters to Santa, and neatly wrapped giant presents.
‘This was my father’s chair,’ he says, dropping down into a wooden seat he’s just uncovered with a thunk so heavy that it reverberates through the room and reminds me how much weight he’s carrying on his shoulders.
‘You never told me what happened to your father,’ I say, perching carefully on a knee-high resin reindeer next to him.
‘Apart from my mum and sister, I’ve never told anyone what happened to my father.’ His fingers rub over the arm of the bright red throne, cherry-coloured wood with curved arms and carved details painted in what was once white but has now faded to a dull magnolia. I remember the chair with Leo’s father sitting in it. It was glittered back then and always had tinsel wrapped around the legs, with a dark burgundy velvet seat, shiny gold cushions, and sparkly holly leaves along the back.
I cock my head to the side, wondering what he means. ‘What happened to your father?’
‘I knew you were going to ask me that.’
‘So tell me.’ I lean down and try to catch his eyes but he refuses to look at me. ‘It might help to talk about it.’
‘Don’t, Georgia, please.’ His voice is low and shaking and he hasn’t called me Georgia once since he found out who I was named after. ‘I’m hanging on by a thread here and if I talk about it, I’m going to cry …’ His voice cracks and he cuts himself off.
The plastic reindeer doesn’t move easily so I squeeze it with my legs and try to jump it a bit nearer, in probably the most undignified move I’ve ever done in front of a man. Or any human in general. ‘It’s okay to cry, Leo.’
‘No, it’s not,’ he snaps, sounding like he already is.
‘Yes, it is. I know you’re trying to be strong for your mum and sister but you don’t have to do that with me.’ I reach over and squeeze his knee. ‘Talk to me, please. It’s got to be better than bottling everything up inside and pretending you’re okay when you’re not.’
He finally looks up at me, his normally bright eyes red-rimmed and damp. It feels like he’s searching my face for ridicule, like he’s expecting me to make fun of him, and I hold his gaze until he sighs and drops his head, his curls flopping forward in defeat.
‘We were fishing down by the river. You know, the Barrow that runs along the outer edge of town?’ He says it so quietly that I have to lean in to hear him. I remember him saying something about his father dying on the river during the phone call.
‘It was late autumn when the salmon are swimming upstream but we were both terrible fishermen and on the rare occasions we caught anything then neither of us would have the heart to kill it so we’d just put it back in the water and let it carry on with its day. We did it quite often but I think it was more an excuse to spend time together, just the two of us, than through any real love of fishing. Anyway, this one day everything was completely normal; we were sharing our flask of tea and eating the cake Mum always packed for us. We were laughing and joking as usual, and suddenly he went completely white, his face contorted in pain, he clutched his chest and fell out of his chair. He was dead before he hit the ground.’
Tears are rolling down his face and my chest is aching with how much I want to hug him but I also know that if I wrap my arms around him, he’ll break down and stop talking, and above all else, I want him to keep talking. I settle for squeezing his knee a bit harder.
‘I did everything I could. There was no phone signal so I had to leave him and run up the bank to call 999, then run back down. I did CPR, I did all the rescue breaths, everything I could think of, everything the operator was telling me down the phone, the paramedics had to drag me away when they got there, but it was too late.’
So that’s what he meant when he said he couldn’t save him the other day. ‘Do they know what it was?’
‘A massive heart attack. So severe that he was gone in seconds. It was just so quick, you know? One minute he was there, and literally thirty seconds later, he was never coming back.’
‘God, I’m so sorry,’ I say, blinking back tears of my own. ‘I can’t imagine how terrible that was.’
He shakes his head, his curls quivering with the movement, and I want to reach out and brush them back, stop him hiding his face behind his mass of hair.
‘I’ve never told anyone that before,’ he says, his voice sounding wrecked and broken. ‘What is it about you? Why is talking to you so easy? You make me feel like I can say anything and it’s somehow okay because I’m saying it to you.’
‘You can say anything,’ I say gently, at odds with how hard I’m squeezing his knee. He’s going to be lucky if he doesn’t need a replacement kneecap by the end of this. ‘It’s okay not to be okay, Leo. Bloody hell, you watched your father die in front of you. You can’t just brush that under the carpet and pretend it didn’t happen. You’re allowed to have feelings too.’
‘You don’t understand. My mum and dad spent every day together for fifty years. My mum’s life revolved around him and suddenly he was gone. Her life was empty. She stopped cooking because she didn’t have anyone to cook for, she stopped cleaning because there was no one to appreciate it. For a long while, she stopped getting out of bed. The only thing that gave her life any meaning again was the idea of buying the coffee shop.’ He lets out a sigh so deep that it sounds like he’s been holding it in for a very long time. ‘And my sister … he was her hero. She didn’t cope with it at all. She lashed out, she blamed the doctors, the ambulance crew, the NHS, and mainly, she blamed me.’
‘People do that in grief. That doesn’t mean it was anyone’s fault. It just means that life is unfair and desperately searching for someone to blame is part of coping with the unfairness of it.’
‘Yeah, well, neither of them can deal with me falling apart too.’
‘I’m sure they’d rather you fall apart than end up doing something stupid because you’re trying to ignore your own grief and pretend everything’s all right when it isn’t.’
‘It’s better since you came along.’ He glances up at me and presses his lips together, his mouth curving up into a sad smile. ‘Everything’s better since you came along.’
I blush at that, wanting to look away to hide my embarrassment, but determined not to turn away when he’s so raw and laid bare, vulnerable in this moment. What I want to do more than anything is tell him how amazing he is, how inspiring it is that someone can go through that and still get up each morning with a smile and a joke for every customer.
All I’ve wanted to do since the moment I picked up that phone is make his life better – no, not even that. I wanted him to realize that life is wonderful, even when it doesn’t seem like it. Above all things, it’s always, always worth continuing to live.
And then there’s the guilt. How much better would he think I made his life if he knew I’ve been lying to him since the day after the phone call? He’s just shared something with me that he’s never told anyone before
, and I can see from the slump of his shoulders and the tremors going through his hands that it took a lot. How is he going to feel if he ever finds out that I’m not who he thinks I am?
He sniffs and rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, George. I didn’t mean to say any of that –’
He goes to get up but I launch myself at him. Of course, I catch my foot on the leg of the reindeer and tumble into his arms rather than wrap him up in a protective hug, but you can’t win ‘em all.
‘You okay, my lovely?’ he murmurs as I struggle to get myself back into an upright position and slip my arms around his waist. A little thrill goes through me when he squishes me against his chest, his whole body closing around me as he hugs me back.
‘It’s been a while since you called me that,’ I say, my red cheeks hidden against his soft jumper.
‘Ah, it’s just a generic pet name. I call all customers who look like they won’t punch me that. There’s only one I call George Bailey though, and she’s a bit more special than anyone else.’
I giggle nervously and he holds his arm out. ‘Here. You should hit me. I deserve to be slapped for how sickeningly sappy that was.’
I reach out and wrap my hand around his wrist instead, pulling it back to where it was resting on my hip so he’s cuddling me again.
The movement of my fall has obviously jogged one of the Christmas decorations because a Santa on a shelf suddenly starts dancing and playing a tinny version of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and it makes us both jump.
‘And it just happens to be the song at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life,’ he whispers against my hair. ‘Do you think the universe is trying to tell us something?’
‘Mm,’ I mumble, snuggling a bit further into his chest.
His breathing has that shuddery hitch you get after a long cry. It takes me right back to the phone call and hearing it down the line then too. If it’s humanly possible to want to hug him tighter than I wanted to then, it’s now.
He seems happier though. Lighter, somehow. Like sharing that has lifted a weight that even he didn’t know he was carrying. And I feel privileged that he’s opened up to me. The real me, not a random stranger on the phone, an actual friend. And he doesn’t make any attempt to pull away, and it should probably be weirder than it is to just stand here hugging him, but it feels so natural with Leo.
‘At least he was with you when he died,’ I say after a few long minutes.
‘Only you could try to make death into something positive.’
I pull my head back and look up at him with a sad smile. ‘Even I can’t put a positive spin on that. I just mean that at least he was with you at the end. He was happy, doing something he enjoyed with someone he loved. He could’ve been on his own doing his tax return or something like that. I know nothing ever makes it better, but …’
‘In some ways it could’ve been worse?’ he finishes for me and I nod.
‘I’m trying so hard to be him, to run It’s A Wonderful Latte as he would’ve run it, and I’m just … not. I never wanted this for my life and now it is, I feel like I’m failing at every turn.’
‘You’re not.’ I squeeze his side and let my fingers rub his jumper for a minute. ‘I promise you, Leo. Speaking as a customer, it makes such a difference to go there every morning and see a lovely face and a friendly smile, to have a two-minute chat with someone who makes the effort to know my name and remember how I like my coffee. That’s you being you. It’s nothing to do with what your father would’ve done. That’s what’s so great about high streets. The personal touch. The chat. The knowledge of your customers. I hate going into these huge busy shops where the cashiers don’t even look up as they grunt the total in your general direction. You make people feel valued. Sometimes I go to order something in a coffee shop and I feel like an inconvenience for interrupting the staff chatting with their mates, which they carry on doing instead of answering something I’ve asked them.’
‘So what you’re telling me is that you cheat on me with other coffee shops?’
I burst out laughing and give his arm a light slap. ‘Ah, it’s not two-timing if I only go there to see how crap they are compared to you.’
‘So we’re a dysfunctional marriage where you have sex with other men to prove to me how good I am at sex?’
Leo and sex and having sex with Leo shouldn’t be in the same sentence and my face heats up at the thought, but I can’t help the grin spreading across my face when our eyes meet, his dancing with mischief that it’s been a while since I’ve seen.
‘And I call you my favourite customer.’ He winks at me and pokes at a box of tangled fairy lights with his toe. ‘Bit different to the fancy designer decorations at the soulless retail park, huh?’
I look around the basement at the decorations that once graced our high street, their boxes now discoloured beyond recognition and sporting some impressive damp stains, and the unboxed decorations half-covered by threadbare tarpaulin with corners chewed by God only knows what.
‘Did you know that Oakbarrow won a best-decorated high street competition in the Eighties?’ he says. ‘Mr Hawthorne had an old newspaper clipping in a frame behind the counter.’
‘Leo, that’s it!’ I grab his arm excitedly as an idea hits me.
‘Do you know how nervous I get every time you say that?’
‘Ha ha,’ I mutter. ‘Do you think it’s still there?’
‘What, the newspaper clipping?’ He shrugs when I nod. ‘I don’t know. Why? What are you suggesting?’
I grin at him. ‘I’m suggesting we break the law again, but properly this time.’
Chapter 14
‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ Leo calls over as he and my dad navigate a six-foot-tall nutcracker out of Hawthorne’s tiny basement door, Leo walking backwards with the feet while my dad wraps his hands around the neck like he wants to throttle it. If someone doesn’t start saying ‘to me, to you’ in a minute, it’ll be a sign of an impending apocalypse. Quoting the Chuckle Brothers is the law when moving furniture, like shouting ‘pivot!’ when manoeuvring large items up a staircase. ‘I’ve never been in trouble with the police, ever. I didn’t intend to start at this point in my life.’
‘You worry too much,’ I tell him.
‘We’re stealing!’
‘We’re reclaiming. Borrowing, if it makes you feel better.’
‘Your daughter has some kind of influence over me,’ Leo turns to my dad. ‘She makes me tell her all sorts of private things, she hypnotizes me into breaking and entering, and now she’s bullied me into becoming a thief.’
My dad laughs. ‘There’s this little word called “no” …’
Leo looks over at me and grins, nearly losing his footing on a broken bit of concrete. ‘Where would be the fun in that?’
‘This is a good idea,’ I protest, shivering at the sudden warmth that floods me at the affectionate look in his eyes. ‘It’s all just sitting there. It was for the street once, why shouldn’t it be used for the street again?’
‘Because the street itself hasn’t broken into a building to nick it. No one’s going to prise up its paving slabs and chuck them in prison. Us, on the other hand …’
‘You have customers now. We should give them a nice street to be on. Give them a reason to stay and shop at the other shops here. Do you know the old greengrocer? He popped in today to tell Mary he was thinking of coming back now the supermarket has gone. She hadn’t seen him for a few years. Apparently he’s got even more gorgeous in his retirement.’
‘Mary?’ Leo’s ears visibly prick up. ‘Doesn’t Mary work at the –’
Bollocks. ‘Mary. One of my colleagues at the bank. Very common name. That’s right, isn’t it, Case?’ I raise my voice so she can hear me from the kitchen. ‘The greengrocer popped into the bank to tell our colleague Mary that he was thinking of reopening with a skeleton stock next week to see how it goes, didn’t he?’
‘Sure.’ Casey appears in the kitchen doorway
, pushing thick blonde hair back. She points at the giant nutcracker. ‘That was on the corner before Hawthorne’s with a sign round its neck directing people in.’
‘Anything else?’ I ask.
‘It’s bloody difficult on this crappy old newspaper.’ She waves around the frame of aged print that Leo and I rescued from the floor behind the counter of the toy shop where it had fallen down. ‘It’s too yellowed to make out anything except the big things.’
‘I might be able to help seeing as I was the one who decorated most of it in the first place, even though it was a fair few decades ago now,’ Dad says.
‘It doesn’t have to be exactly the same,’ I say. ‘I just thought it would be nice to make it as nostalgic as possible. From the very beginning of this, we’ve wanted to remind people of what these boarded-up old shops used to be. What better way than to decorate it as close as possible to how people remember it? We’ve got this amazing old picture of a prize-winning high street that Mr Hawthorne preserved all these years, we may as well try to follow it as closely as possible.’
‘With the exact same crappy old decorations that look like they belong exactly where they came from – the Eighties. Except we get them with thirty years’ worth of extra mould. Yay.’ Casey pokes her tongue out at me. ‘I don’t know how you talked me into this.’
‘Free coffee.’ I stick my tongue out back at her. ‘And because if we don’t do something, this is probably going to be the last Christmas that any of us spend on this high street.’
‘Yeah, because we’ll all be in bloody prison.’ Leo relieves my dad of the nutcracker and stands it up on the pavement, walking it one side at a time to where the alleyway joins the street.
‘Still all clear,’ Bernard calls from his position as lookout at the corner by the bank, a good spot because it gives a view right down to the churchyard and right the way up past Hawthorne’s towards the old Woolworths and the start of the high street, just to be extra careful that we don’t get caught.
Maybe Leo’s got a point about prison after all.
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