A Fairy Tale for Christmas

by Chrissie Manby

Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ben had Elaine at the NEWTS’ number because of Thea but he didn’t call and ask her to pass on the news. He waited until he was dropping Thea off at rehearsal the next day to let Jon know in person that he would be in the panto after all. Jon was in the auditorium with Kirsty. He was directing her in a solo.

  Ben and Thea waited in the doorway until Kirsty had finished singing. When she saw her little audience, she beamed.

  ‘Still looking for a Buttons?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Are you serious?’ said Kirsty.

  Ben nodded.

  ‘Thank fuck,’ said Jon, emphatically.

  ‘Language!’ said Thea.

  ‘We’re so pleased,’ said Kirsty. ‘You’ve saved the show.’

  ‘You haven’t seen me act yet,’ said Ben.

  ‘Well, we can remedy that right away,’ said Jon. ‘The rest of the cast will be here in five. Welcome to the cast, Ben Teesdale.’

  Ben deposited Thea at the door of the large rehearsal room where the children were practising a dance routine. She didn’t need him to stay by her side any more. He could hardly believe the difference in Thea’s confidence from that first afternoon of rehearsals. As soon as Ben opened the rehearsal room door, Thea spotted Georgie and Thomas and shot in under Ben’s arm to be with them. She didn’t even look back to wish him cheerio. Ben left the lunch-box with Thea’s sandwiches and snacks on top of the fridge in the corner of the room.

  It was a bittersweet moment. He couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t looked back to give him one last wave. And yet he knew that this was much better. He wanted her to grow in confidence and independence every day. It was the way of things that she would grow apart from him at the same time. As Jo had warned him, back when they were talking about a future Jo wouldn’t see, he would know that he had been a good parent when Thea went off to college and forgot to call him for weeks on end, just as he had once neglected to telephone Judy.

  Leaving Thea with her friends, Ben followed the handwritten signs back to the auditorium. Though from the outside the church building was plain and rectangular, inside it was labyrinthine. Ben found himself out in the theatre lobby again before he made it to join the rest of the cast.

  He got a very warm welcome. The entire gang was mightily relieved to see that Trevor had been replaced by such a good candidate. One who had four working limbs, all his teeth and his own hair. And he was under forty! Who cared if he could act or not? He looked the part. He might even fit the costume.

  Ben took his seat in the wings – Trevor’s old seat – which was a restraint chair left over from a performance of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Straps still dangled from the sides. Jon handed him Trevor’s script, which was heavily annotated.

  ‘You might not want to take any notice of those notes,’ Vince suggested. ‘If you can even read them.’

  Ben remembered Trevor’s awful handwriting from when Trevor marked his geography homework.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Jon clapped his hands. ‘Shall we take it from the top?’

  Bernie spoke the opening lines. Ben wondered what on earth he was getting into.

  ‘Well,’ said Jon, when the read-through was finished and they were all back downstairs in the bar. ‘That wasn’t awful.’

  He patted Ben on the back as though they were mates again.

  ‘You were great,’ said Kirsty, making up for Jon’s faint praise. ‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am you agreed to do this. We were looking at having to rewrite the entire script or kidnap some romantic hero from a society in Cornwall. Now the show really will go on.’

  ‘It was Thea who convinced me.’

  Kirsty nodded. ‘I had a feeling she would.’ But when she looked at Ben as she was saying that, Ben couldn’t help wondering if Kirsty knew that she’d formed a big part of his motivation too. There was something knowing in her eyes.

  Megan the chaperone delivered the children to their parents.

  ‘Was Dad good?’ Thea asked Kirsty.

  ‘He was very good. Where did he learn to dance so well?’ Kirsty asked.

  ‘I taught him,’ said Thea. ‘Like this.’

  Ben held out his arms to her and Thea jumped onto his feet.

  ‘You’d better not try that with Kirsty,’ Jon remarked.

  Kirsty rewarded Jon with a tight smile.

  Then Lauren – Prince Charming – joined them.

  ‘You were wonderful, darling,’ said Jon, wrapping his arm around Lauren’s shoulders and kissing her on the top of the head.

  Lauren pursed her lips. ‘I need to have a conversation with you about the Giggle Twins.’

  Jon rolled his eyes skywards as Lauren took hold of his collar and led him off.

  There was something about the gesture that seemed familiar to Ben. Then he remembered that it was the face Jon had always pulled when Charlie, the girl he’d stolen away all those years ago, was in a mood with him. There was something of Charlie in Lauren too. Her petite frame, her glossy chestnut hair, her pout. Jon clearly had a type.

  ‘Jon!’ Lauren complained. ‘Don’t roll your eyes at me.’

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ Jon said.

  Kirsty shook her head as she watched Lauren take Jon into a corner.

  ‘Looks like he’s in trouble,’ Kirsty observed. Then her attention was drawn to Thea, who wanted to tell Kirsty all about the upcoming Christmas Fayre at her junior school. And then Kirsty was endlessly patient as Thea told a story that involved two boys and a girl who had all-but-identical names. When Thea drew breath, Kirsty turned back to Ben.

  ‘Are you going to be able to make the rehearsal on Tuesday?’ she asked. ‘I know this is all quite a surprise for you and you’ve probably got a diary full of things to do in the run up to Christmas.’

  ‘No,’ said Ben. ‘Except bringing Thea here, there’s nothing in my diary except work.’

  ‘Wonderful. I mean. You know what I mean … If you do have time,’ Kirsty continued. ‘If it’s not too much of an imposition, maybe you and I could rehearse on our own at some point, to bring you up to speed with what Trevor and I had planned? I could come to the shop one afternoon. While Thea’s at school. If you’re not too busy?’

  Ben said he thought that was a very good idea.

  ‘It’s short notice, but how about tomorrow afternoon?’

  Ben thought about everything he really had to do. All the paying jobs he needed to get out of the way before the beginning of the Christmas holiday. Then he said, ‘That would be great. What time?’

  ‘How about lunchtime? I’ll bring some sandwiches.’

  ‘Dad likes ham and cheese best. With pickle,’ Thea told her.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The following morning, Ben raced into the shop after dropping Thea off at school. He had enough jobs to keep him busy for months. Most of them were supposed to be sorted out before Christmas. But Ben spent his first two hours in the shop doing anything but paid work. Instead, he tried to make the place look half decent. He wished he had the resources to employ a cleaner. Since he didn’t and since he hadn’t actually done anything beyond slosh bleach down the loo a couple of times a month since he took the shop over, Ben had his work cut out before Kirsty’s arrival. He donned rubber gloves and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. In two hours, he actually rendered the shop cleaner than when he’d moved in. Who knew the tiles on the tiny bathroom floor were actually pale-blue and not grey?

  As a finishing touch, Ben dashed across the road to the corner shop and bought one of the deep-red poinsettias on the flower rack outside. The plants were all fairly shabby specimens that definitely wouldn’t last until Christmas but he found one that would probably make it through lunchtime and paid an extra three quid for a chipped ceramic pot decorated with snowflakes to put it in. It gave the place a colourful festive touch. It made it look as though Ben cared.

  And Ben did care, he found. He wanted Kirsty to be impressed. It was a sensation he hadn’t felt for a long while
.

  Kirsty arrived exactly on time. In a bright-blue dress over dark-pink tights, Kirsty was like a wild tropical bird. A walking blast of sunshine. Outside, it had barely got light at all that day and it would be going dark again by four, but having Kirsty in the shop was like being transported into July for a moment. And they had a picnic for that extra touch of summer in December.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you,’ said Ben.

  He had been agonising over how he should greet her. In the end, he went for a luvvie kiss – after all, they were going to be spending the afternoon acting – but he went for the wrong cheek and they ended up bashing noses.

  Kirsty stepped backwards, holding her hand to her nose as her eyes began to water. It was not the best of starts.

  But it got better. Ben took Kirsty’s coat and hung it alongside his in the office at the back of the shop. He pulled out a chair for her to sit on.

  ‘Lunch first?’ Kirsty suggested. ‘I took Thea’s advice on board and made you ham and cheese. I hope they’re OK.’

  ‘Anything I don’t have to make myself is OK by me,’ said Ben.

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  Ben put the kettle on while Kirsty unpacked her picnic.

  The sandwiches were doorstops. What Ben didn’t know was that Kirsty didn’t ordinarily make such enormous sarnies but while she was supposed to be on a diet and Jon said she should stick to two sandwiches only at lunch, she was going to make sure they were as big as reasonably possible.

  And they were delicious. One of Kirsty’s first missions upon arriving in Newbay was to find the best bakery in town. She asked around and was guided towards Motcombs, one of those artisan bakeries where everything is made with the very best ingredients. Motcombs prided themselves on making their bread with ‘ancient, naturally low gluten grain’. Which turned out to make loaves of bread that were as heavy and indigestible as breezeblocks. Not to mention the fact they cost nearly a fiver a time. Kirsty bought three during her first three weeks in Newbay and tried to convince herself they were doing her good. They were certainly giving her jaw a workout. But in the end, Kirsty decided that life was too short for joyless artisan baked goods and she asked for directions to the nearest Greggs. It was Greggs’ bread they were eating now.

  ‘And these are for afters,’ Kirsty said, whipping out a bag containing two huge mince pies. ‘I’d have bought yum yums but the first door is open on the advent calendar so I declare it is officially the mince pie season.’

  The mince pies were slightly warm and when Kirsty opened the bag, the scent of allspice filled the shop.

  ‘Now, doesn’t that smell like Christmas?’ she commented as she cut one in half.

  Ben agreed. Despite having been in the shop for six months, Ben didn’t think the place had ever seemed so warm and cosy.

  After lunch, Ben and Kirsty set to work on their lines. Though Cinderella was all about getting to meet the prince, there was no doubt that her scenes with Buttons were the real heartbreakers. Not that you would have known that had you seen Kirsty playing Cinderella opposite Trevor Fernlea in the role as her besotted friend. Coming from a chap who was certainly north of seventy, Buttons’ more flirtatious lines seemed cringe-worthy at best. The words took on a very different tone when Kirsty played opposite someone she might feasibly have fallen in love with.

  Since agreeing to step into Trevor’s shoes, Ben had worked quickly to learn his lines and he and Kirsty soon found an easy rhythm to their exchanges. If Ben was nervous, Kirsty didn’t know it, and playing two old friends soon had them acting like old friends too.

  But the lines were easy. The dancing was the part of the role with which Ben most wanted to be brought up to speed. Together, he and Kirsty moved everything on the shop floor out to the edges of the room to give them the space they needed. Their first dance together came at the point in the panto when Cinders thinks she is going to the ball, before her Ugly Sisters squash her hopes.

  ‘But I don’t know how to dance!’ Kirsty cried in character.

  ‘Everyone knows how to dance,’ said Ben as Buttons. ‘You just have to follow the rhythm of your heart.’

  He placed his hand on his chest, as the script required, but if Ben had followed the rhythm of his own heart right then, he would have been dancing a jitterbug. Kirsty cast her eyes towards the ground shyly as Ben held out his hand to her. Of course, she was only acting coy but the way she looked up at him from beneath her lashes made him catch his breath. Though she was still dressed in her quirky dress and tights, when Kirsty became Cinders, even in the unprepossessing surrounding of a computer repair shop, Ben could already see her in a ballgown with the light of a chandelier glittering on sequins and casting stars about her face.

  ‘How could any prince fail to fall in love with you,’ he said, sticking to the script but suddenly meaning every word.

  Kirsty stepped into his arms, ‘Oh, Buttons,’ she sighed.

  ‘Just pretend I’m the prince …’

  Kirsty swooned in Ben’s embrace. They hovered in that tableau for a moment, then …

  There was a knock on the shop door.

  Laughing, Kirsty stepped away.

  ‘Am I interrupting something?’ asked the man in the long brown overcoat. ‘Do you clean hard drives?’

  Kirsty perched on the counter while Ben attended to his customer, who looked exactly like the sort of person who should be worrying about the state of his hard drive. It seemed to take an age to reassure him that Ben could return his laptop to factory settings. But at last …

  ‘Shall we dance?’

  Ben and Kirsty found each other again in the middle of the shop floor.

  It wasn’t quite as it had been before the customer interrupted them. They didn’t go over the set-up to the scene again but concentrated on the dance steps. A couple of times they danced right into the shop window – the space wasn’t large enough – which had them both laughing. Ben was delighted by the sound of Kirsty’s giggle.

  From time to time, people passing by stopped to watch the dancing. An old couple linked arms and smiled indulgently as they remembered their own dancing days.

  ‘I could have danced all night,’ said Kirsty, as Cinders getting home from the ball.

  Me too, thought Ben. Me too.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  After nearly an hour, Ben and Kirsty stopped for a tea break and to eat the last mince pie.

  ‘So, you’re a Newbay native,’ said Kirsty.

  ‘Yep. Lived here all my life apart from uni and a few years in London after that.’

  ‘It seems like a good place to grow up.’

  Ben told Kirsty about his childhood in Newbay and how much had changed – or not – in the thirty-odd years he’d known the town.

  ‘The seafront is exactly the same as it was in the eighties,’ he explained. ‘The only thing missing is the donkeys. And the donkey mess. When I was five, I tripped over and landed face first in a steaming pile,’ Ben admitted.

  ‘I’m sure that’s supposed to be lucky,’ Kirsty said.

  ‘Didn’t feel like it,’ said Ben.

  Then Ben told Kirsty about her former co-star, Trevor Fernlea, who had taught geography before he retired.

  ‘He was a crack shot with a board rubber,’ said Ben. ‘Got me on the side of the head for not concentrating a couple of times. I don’t think you’re allowed to throw things at children any more.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ Kirsty said. ‘That sounds brutal. And he seems like such a gentle soul. It’s hard to imagine Trevor ever getting into a rage.’

  ‘You can’t imagine what a pain in the proverbial it must have been to teach us lot.’

  ‘I don’t believe you were so bad,’ said Kirsty. After all, Jon had told her that Ben was a swot.

  ‘I was irritating in my own way. I was a dreamer,’ said Ben. ‘Always looking out of the window.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with dreaming,’ said Kirsty.

  Kirsty told him about her own childhood, g
rowing up in Essex.

  ‘I was always scribbling dresses in rough books. Dresses for my film premiere. Dresses for the BAFTAs. The Oscars …’

  That made Ben smile.

  ‘I was so sure I’d be a star.’

  ‘And now you are.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Kirsty accepted the compliment with grace. ‘You know, I always wondered what it would be like to live by the sea all year round. We came on holiday. I didn’t think it was possible to grow up here. I don’t know who I thought lived in places like Newbay in the off-season. How lovely to be able to go to the beach after school.’

  ‘But you got to go to London at the weekends when you were a teenager,’ Ben countered.

  ‘Yeah. I suppose I did have that.’

  ‘When I was a teenager, I wanted to be in your position. I wanted to be in the big city. Newbay seemed so small. It still is.’

  ‘But there’s something comforting about that,’ said Kirsty. ‘I love living in a place where people nod “hello” when you pass them in the street.’

  ‘And where they know all your business. Trust me, at least one of those little old ladies who stopped to watch us will have been on the phone to my mother by now.’

  Kirsty laughed. ‘Then we should have given them something worth gossiping about. Something like the Argentine tango.’

  She pouted at him and did a little dance with her arms. Was she flirting?

  ‘Can you do the tango?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I’ll show you next time.’

  ‘But how did you end up here?’ Ben continued. ‘It must be dull being in Newbay after travelling around the world on a cruise ship.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Kirsty. ‘I’m making some good friends. Like you.’

  There was a pause. Kirsty didn’t get round to explaining why she was in Newbay – about Jon – instead she said, ‘I was sorry to hear about Thea’s mum. It must have been very hard for you. Still is, I bet.’

  ‘It gets easier,’ said Ben. Which was different from how he’d felt such a short time ago. He didn’t stop to question why.

  ‘Can I ask what happened?’