“This place is magical,” said Jenny, taking up the theme. “I don’t need to tell you . . . it’s Dickens’s Curiosity Shop, steep stairs, rickety buildings . . .”
“Tell me about it, with the rickety buildings,” interjected Adrian. “Our shop’s had a leaking roof on the frontage for four years. You don’t see hide nor hair of our landlord then, of course. We just have to get the buckets out.”
“It is an amazing atmosphere though,” said Daniel. “That’s what Zoe and I always loved. Do you think the Harry Potter Diagon Alley was based on Christmas Steps? That weird diagonal thing has got to be reasonably unusual, to say nothing of the whole timeslip effect.”
“Might have been. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. We could ask. It would be great publicity if J. K. Rowling said it was . . .”
“Aren’t we getting a bit off the point,” pleaded Grace. “The rates? Our landlord?”
“Landlord? Is there only one?”
“Looks like it,” said Grace, relieved they were back onto the issue at hand. “I’ve been having a dig around. It turns out me, Adrian, Louise, and Graham all have the same landlord, who is—as Adrian has mentioned—not around much. It’s an offshore company called Kestrel Properties Limited. Also, we’ve all got the same lease agreement, more or less, which is not something we all realized before . . .”
Daniel’s head had shot up. He was listening intently.
“And there’s only two directors. The registered managing director and company secretary’s a bloke called Samuel Bird. The other one’s Desiree Bird. I’m guessing she’s the trophy wife.”
His delightful client. Of course. He had forgotten to check, distracted by being sent on compulsory leave; but now he sighed and wondered whether to confess there was a connection.
“Okay, full disclosure time,” he admitted and then briefly explained his dilemma.
The group were silent for a moment.
“Well,” said Adrian, “we’ve got nothing to lose talking to—and in front of—you, Daniel. Perhaps you can even help us. Talk to this Mr. Bird . . .”
“As long as you understand I have to be able to demonstrate that I have acted in his best interest and not—well—yours,” said Daniel.
“Sure,” said Grace. “Hopefully he—and you—will consider it in his best interest not to crush all his existing tenants with unreasonable rents because then it won’t just be Noel’s shop empty, it’ll be all of them.”
“And no major retailer will want to take on these places anyway,” said Jenny earnestly, appealing directly to Daniel now. “Think about it, you need to tell Mr. Bird . . . the access is terrible. We’re on a flight of steps, for goodness’ sake. The disability access is nonexistent.”
Didn’t Daniel know it . . . he had had to leave Zoe’s wheelchair at the bottom of the steps the last time they came. He had worried about it being nicked, until Zoe pointed out that heavy old dilapidated NHS wheelchairs were hardly sought-after items.
“And also,” Jenny continued, “deliveries are tricky. I have to park at the top, bring in my stock down the steps and then move the van or I end up getting a ticket. And then, whenever I’m delivering flowers for a wedding or whatever, I have to go and fetch it again to load up. It’s a major pain.”
“We all have to do that,” Louise told Daniel earnestly.
“And I take it your client will definitely use the rates rises to justify raising the rent in line with them?” asked Adrian.
“Well, he’s not compelled to or anything,” said Daniel. “There’s nothing to say he should.” But he thought, given Mr. Bird’s inability to see the bigger picture, along with his and his wife’s fondness for money, they probably would. “Has anyone spoken to the council about the revaluations?” he asked. He could at least give them a bit of a steer. Nothing wrong with that, surely?
“I did speak to the valuations officer,” said Adrian. “He told me all the commercial properties in Bristol were earmarked for a new valuation in a program rolling out over the next three years. It was unfortunate for us that we were in pretty much the first tranche.”
“I’m sure other retailers in Bristol will be up in arms,” said Grace.
“Hmm, but they aren’t yet,” said Adrian. “Once the big boys with their lawyers and their chartered surveyors get involved they’ll doubtless be fighting the City Council on it. But no one will bother with the issue until it affects them and by then, we could all be history.”
“Funny how they picked us first,” said Louise gloomily. “We’re easy prey.”
They all nodded in unison.
“So,” continued Adrian, “I had a word with the valuations officer about whether the rateable value was wrong. He wasn’t keen to suggest it was possible to challenge it, but I bet it is—if I only knew how to go about it. All he came up with was this taper relief thing.”
“What on earth is taper relief when it’s at home?” asked Jenny.
“You don’t have to pay the full rise straightaway. If you’re a small business—which I am sure we all qualify as—then you can gradually work up to the full amount over three years.”
“And when do the rents increase?” asked Graham.
“That’s a matter for individual leases,” ventured Daniel, and Grace nodded.
“I’ve already checked that out,” she said. “We’re all in agreements where the rent can go up annually by as much as the landlord wants. It’s a pretty crappy lease, actually, on several counts. The next rent review is in April.”
“We’d better make sure we’ve got a pretty good idea to meet the extra costs by then,” said Graham. “That’s when the rate rises start to kick in too. A double whammy.”
“I’ll go back to them,” said Adrian, his chin jutting in determination, “but I just don’t know what to say.”
Daniel sighed. “Tell you what,” he said, feeling guilty that it was his client signing the death warrants of these businesses, “why don’t I put a little exploratory call in to the valuations office myself and see what gives? I’m probably not going to be able to do anything, but there are a few questions I wouldn’t mind asking.”
They all looked at him with hope in their eyes, which made him regret his offer instantly. “I really don’t think I can change anything but—like I said—I probably ought to do it for my client anyhow.”
“Your client Mr. Kestrel whatshisface?” asked Grace.
“Sam Bird. And Noel of course,” he said quickly. “Clients.”
“Business gets quite good for us from April,” said Jenny, sounding a little more upbeat. “It’s the start of wedding season.”
“Talking of weddings,” said Grace. “I’ve been thinking.” They all turned to her expectantly.
“Look,” she went on, “I have no magic solutions, but we need to think about how we can pull together. We are together anyway. We all support each other informally, that’s why I love it here, the way we help each other out with loading and unloading, covering each other’s opening hours when we need to and all that.”
“’Course we do,” interrupted Graham. “When we can. And I really appreciate it too. I appreciate all of you,” he said, unnecessarily ferociously to hide his emotion. “We’re like family.”
“Exactly,” Grace went on, her eyes shining with tears. “Exactly. You’re like my dad.”
“I think he was hoping he was more like your brother,” commented Adrian dryly and they all laughed.
“Aaanyway,” Grace went on, grinning in spite of herself, “as I was saying, like a family we all have different strengths, different skills to offer, and I just realized last night that actually we all cleverly manage to not step on each other’s toes at the same time as—amazingly enough—having a rather large thing in common with one another.” She looked around the room expectantly, willing them on.
“We’re all on Christmas Steps?” said Jenny, confused.
Grace looked frustrated. If she seemed like an earnest school teacher right now, they were
a particularly dense class. “Nooo, well, yes we are—but also . . .” She paused for effect and Graham jumped in.
“We all do weddings,” he said.
“Yes,” said Grace, triumphant. The class was not so thick after all. “That’s right. We all do weddings. At least we don’t all do weddings but, when you think about it, we all have a little bit of our business that is, or could, contribute to the planning of a wedding.”
“I see what you mean,” said Louise excitedly. “Obviously I’m doing wedding cakes—not just wedding cakes but, to be honest, they’re the bit of my business that pays the best, especially since everyone started having piles of cupcakes or croquembouche instead of the tiered option, the profit margins on them are good . . .” She trailed off, and then brought herself back to the point. “Anyway, so yes, obviously weddings are bit key for me; for Grace that’s all she does; Graham, you said yourself just now you’d like to do catering for outside events . . .”
“Yes, but small ones,” he said. “We’re not kitted out for giving a four-course dinner to two hundred guests.”
“God forbid,” said Jenny, “that’s the last sort of wedding event you’d want. Nightmare. Anyway all the big hotels that cater for those sorts of numbers have their own in-house catering. What you’d be brilliant at is the quirky, smaller events where people hire unusual venues and have boutique-type affairs: afternoon tea for sixty people, that sort of thing.”
“That would be brilliant,” said Graham. “I could do a champagne tea, with sandwiches, savories, little meringues. I wouldn’t want to do the main cake though.”
“I should hope not,” said Louise, mock sternly. “That’s my department.”
“And I especially love doing the flowers for those sorts of things,” interjected Jenny, enthusiastically. “You can get a license to get married more or less anywhere nowadays. I did the flowers for the most glorious wedding in the physic garden by the ruins at St. Peter’s in Castle Park last summer. It was really beautiful.”
“I’d love to do that. What about if it rained?”
“Buy some canopies, a marquee or something,” suggested Adrian, totally entering into the brainstorm. He thought his role in the wedding theme was probably marginal, but Grace had other ideas.
“Adrian, you should be providing a service for the grooms,” she said. “Even if they’re hiring their own morning coats, or if they’ve got them anyhow, you should be working with me and Jenny and the bride because, let’s face it, she’s the one making the decisions—her and her mum usually. The bride tends to want to know that the groom and his team are going to fit in with the theme. You should be providing cravats and handkerchiefs.”
“Brilliant!” said Adrian. “And I sort of already do. I think I mentioned to you,” he said to Grace, “that a couple of your clients came into my shop last month and gave me one of the best day’s sales that I’ve had in a while.”
“There you go,” said Grace. “And socks.”
“Socks,” he said, picking up instantly. “Socks are a big thing. I’ve found an amazing new sock supplier who will dye socks to any color out of about, I dunno, fifty shades.”
“Excellent,” said Jenny. “I’ll recommend they come to you as well, to get accessories that match the flowers.”
“So, there we are,” said Grace. “We boost each other. We maybe even do one of those wedding shows, the exhibitions. They’re usually early spring because so many people get engaged over Christmas and Valentine’s Day.”
“They’re expensive though,” said Louise doubtfully. “I looked at doing the biggest Bristol one last year, in a fancy hotel out of town, but even a tiny stand was a huge price.”
“Sure, I know. I’ve looked at it too,” said Grace. “But we’ve never looked at doing it together, sharing costs . . . persuading brides that Christmas Steps is the only boutique, exclusive, one-stop wedding shop in the city.” She held her hands out wide. “Whaddayathink?”
Daniel realized after he got back to the boat that he hadn’t asked the Christmas Steps crew for their advice about Noel’s shop. It was clear though that it was going to take a very special person to take it on. Now he understood. They were a family. His job was to find the missing part of that family, so they could all work together. The wedding idea was a brilliant one, he thought. Not being an avid shopper and reacting in horror to the thought of having to shop for some girlie wedding plan made his heart sink but he could see how having everything together could work. An integrated, bespoke, boutique service. It was a winner. So, that meant he was looking for someone who filled a gap in that service. But what? He might need to ask Cara. She was a girl and she was planning her wedding to Paul. She would know.
Kate, like Daniel, was also in a reflective mood. Seema had been an absolute pain but she thought her friend would be proud that she had witnessed her doing something silly, joyful, and Christmassy. With a gorgeous man in tow, too! That should get her off her back a bit. She relived the moment when Daniel had pulled her back against him on the sled. That had been delicious, and she had been touched almost to the point of tears seeing him so easily and naturally interacting with the boys. How amazing it would be to have someone to share the ups and downs of life with. She could see that, but could she ever replace Tom? She had always been proud to say he was the love of her life, but pride could be stubbornness too, couldn’t it? Sometimes, just recently, she had been wondering whether the true point of this ridiculous Christmas exercise was to loosen up enough to realize that there was a life beyond her marriage to Tom. Maybe.
Jack, tired out from the sledding and the running around with Daniel and Krishna, had been fractious and argumentative that evening. Soothed, eventually, by the routine of supper, advent calendar, and bedtime, he had been heavy-eyed and potentially tearful by the time she had tucked him up in bed.
“I like Daniel,” he said, sleepily. “He’s nice. Can we see him again?”
“He is nice, monkey boy. There are lots of nice people like Daniel. We can have them all in our lives, can’t we? Seema is nice. Helen is nice. Mrs. Akintola is nice, isn’t she? She’s going to be babysitting you in a couple of days, so I can go to my Christmas party at work. You like her too, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Jack, uncertainly. He definitely did like Mrs. Akintola, although she was sometimes a bit too keen on big hugs. Being engulfed into her vast, cushiony chest while she exclaimed over his gorgeousness was an acquired taste.
“She’s not a daddy, though is she?”
Kate paused, and thought carefully. “Daniel isn’t a daddy, sweetheart,” she said. “You only have one daddy, don’t you?”
“But he’s nice though,” Jack insisted.
Once Jack was asleep, Kate turned on the radio and immersed herself in her jewelry making. She had enough stock, hopefully, to satisfy Anastasia and her friends, but it wasn’t just about having enough. She knew from experience it was about having more than enough so that people felt they were choosing their favorite thing. Over the last few nights she had concentrated on the cheaper items such as the friendship bracelets with a single semi-precious stone, along with labels explaining what each of the stones represented. There was beautiful striped green malachite for confidence—she could probably do with more of that—and then there was moonstone for intuition and patience, pretty pink rose quartz for love and trust, and so on . . . Actually, she thought as she worked, the friendship bracelets, with their colored cords to match or contrast with the stones, could be the little project Anastasia wanted her to let her friends do.
Talking of which, she should stand up for herself more. Maybe that should be her new year resolution: to say what she felt and not take any crap. Taking crap had been a bit of a theme over the last four years. Where was the old, confident Kate, whose passion and energy had made Tom laugh, marveling at her determination. “You’ll always achieve whatever you set your mind to, girl,” he would say fondly. “I pity the man who gets on the wrong side of you. Never mind our
semiautomatics, if we had you in Afghan the dissidents would run away screaming . . .”
“Thanks,” Kate had said wryly at the time, but she dared herself to wonder what Tom would make of her efforts now.
That night she dreamed more vividly than she had done for months. She and Jack were in a house she didn’t recognize, but somehow she knew it was their home. She was in the kitchen preparing salads for a barbecue. The sun was shining in through the open French windows into the garden. It had a stone-flagged patio leading to a wide lawn with a football goal on one side and a discarded boy’s bicycle. There was a deep bed of flowers on the other side against the brick garden wall. In it she could see lavender, blowsy roses, tumbling honeysuckle, and other plants Kate didn’t know. She could even smell the cut grass warmed in the hot summer sun. There was a barbecue on the patio and a man in a striped apron, like the one Tom used to wear. But it wasn’t him. She couldn’t see the man’s face, but Jack was laughing and messing around with him and a shaggy brown dog, who was barking excitedly. Kate smiled in her dream. This was the life she wanted. Simple things. And then there was an insistent thrumming noise, a rushing sound, like a shower. She looked up to the ceiling in this mysterious house she was in but then realized the noise was from outside. She looked back into the sunny garden and was dismayed. Rain was falling, blurring the garden into gray. The sky was dark, like evening, the water was pelting the rose bushes, ripping off the petals as she watched. The stone patio was now dark and slick and there was nobody there—no dog, no man, no Jack.
9 Days ’til Christmas
Kate woke with a lurch of dread. The rain which had invaded her intriguing new dream was real. It was sluicing down her window, washing away the grime from the street and darkening the dawn sky as if it were still nighttime. The snow had disappeared, save for mounds of brown slush in the gutters, even that fast disappearing as the cars swished down the street.
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