‘Sounds genius to me, Margi!’ Izz had said. ‘Proper Elon Musk business-like thinking, that.’
She doesn’t read the news so probably thought that was an encouraging thing to say.
Izz is waving at me right this second from her lollipop crossing fifty yards away. She’s in head-to-toe neon which you’d think would make her impossible to ignore, but I’ve already seen her almost ploughed down by two school-run mums in sporty hatchbacks this morning.
Everyone’s in such a rush, and I don’t recognise half the grown-ups arriving for drop-off. Most of them are from the new builds that appeared on the green belt a decade back; most of them look very stressed and are glugging from big red takeaway coffee cups. Hardly any of them pay me any attention as I do my best to help the committee break even on baking powder. The ones who know me give me the thin-lipped, pitying smiles I’ve grown used to, and sure enough they rummage for notes. It’s nice of them – lovely, in fact – but I reckon I know what they’re thinking. It’s written all over their faces.That’s her. The one whose husband left her last Christmas only days after their big white village wedding. Silly old woman.I hear a group of mums laughing behind me and try to convince myself it can’t be me they’re whispering about, but still, I feel myself shrink a little.
I try to infuse as much positivity as I can into the thumbs up I’m giving Izz, and I watch as she enthusiastically returns one of her own. She’s what you might call a true innocent: the kind of person who sees the good in everyone and everything. I have no idea how she’s made it into her seventy-seventh year with that trusting attitude and wide-eyed gentleness. How does someone that jolly and at peace with life remain this sweet? Or avoid getting kidnapped with the promise of a van full of puppies?
I thank the universe every day that she’s my friend.
Here come the on-foot families. Izz shakes an invisible tin at me by way of encouragement. I draw a deep lungful of chilly morning air and greet them.
‘Merry Christmas!’ I cry, rattling my collection tin in what I hope seems a cheerful way and not at all like a mugging. ‘Support the grotto?’
‘Christmas gingerbread… grotto?’ one of the women, I don’t recognise her, definitely one of the newcomers, reads off my home-made placard by my feet, giving it a puzzled look. She brightens before adding, ‘Is that the stately home with the light displays and fireworks over Dunham way?’
I can tell from how her expression shifts that my reaction has already scared her.
I want to say,No, it bloody isn’t!Instead, I tell her, ‘We’re a smalllocalChristmas event, at the village hall. The model village display? All made from gingerbread? It’s a Wheaton tradition.’
‘So, no fireworks?’ she says, innocently enough.
‘Not so much as a sparkler.’
She slips a fifty pence into the slot – more to get away from me, I suspect, than out of any desire to support our lowly event, and she shuffles her kids in through the school gates.
I give my feet a good stamp to get the circulation going again. It really is freezing out here, and the temperature’s falling by the second. Or that’s how it feels to me.
‘Do you have permission for this?’ says a man’s low voice, making me turn my back on the sudden influx of cars crawling by, all vying for a space.
It’s another person I don’t recognise, but his lanyard gives it away. He’s the new head teacher, started last week. And from the looks of him, he’s only just finished his A levels himself.
‘Permission from who?’ I say.
‘Well…’
I reckon I’ve got him here; he’s flustering.
‘The council?’ he tries.
‘Pfft!I doubt any of that lot’ll be interested.’ I can’t even remember the last time one of them popped by the grotto. They’ll hardly mind me collecting a few quid outside the school.
The young guy’s still not satisfied. He’s all sharp dark tweed, pointy shoes, trendy round specs and nice sweepy-uppy hair – all of which would suggest a far warmer personality than the cold-eyed fellow currently pulling an unimpressed face at my home-made sign.
‘You can’t protest here,’ he says.
‘I’m collecting money for butter. It’s hardly Greenham Common. I promise I won’t be chaining myself to your railings.’
We both look around at the school perimeter. It’s crumbly Cotswold stone, not a railing in sight, but I think my point stands.
‘Hmph.’ He’s gearing up to say something else, and looking officious and weary all at once – again, it seems odd in such a young guy – but his attention is dragged away by a car pulling right up onto the pavement. ‘Excuse me, you’ll have to move,’ he calls out, gliding away, and I turn back to my task with a laugh.
He doesn’t seem village-headmaster material, somehow. Nothing like trusty old Mrs Fourmile who always supported the gingerbread grotto and was a dab hand with an icing bag herself.
‘He won’t last the term,’ I tell myself.
It’s as I’m shaking my tin once more that I spot it. Way along the high street, almost at the lane that leads off to Mum and Dad’s cottage – well, my cottage – there’s someone fixing a big green awning over a stall.
