Patrick laughs, and I do too, because this is what matters, us setting out on our great big unapologetically happy life together, letting love happen.
Epilogue
Summer
Winter’s legacy is still everywhere in Wheaton, if you look for it.
Even though every trace of Christmas has been packed away in storage for next time, even though all the curious grotto visitors and Izz-and-Alexi supporters have gone home, even though you wouldn’t necessarily know just from looking at us that our tiny little Wheaton village caused an internet sensation, sparking apparently endless memes and one great flood of generosity – despite all this, there is still, out there, every day, between all of us Wheatonites, a new, special spark that connects us.
We won’t forget in a hurry what it was like last December when we were all reminded of what really matters and we woke up as if from a long sleep under individual roofs, behind individual locked doors, and we joined together to do something good.
The snow lay for two whole weeks over Christmas, most obligingly, really setting off the grotto exhibit perfectly. The mulled wine ran dry, and Santa Claus ran right out of teddy bears and candy canes and had to send an elf to the cash and carry three times to keep up with the demand for presents.
The totaliser on Fern and Shell’s website froze for a while and Patrick made a guess that the server had crashed due to volume of traffic, but when it came back online on Christmas Eve, we’d not known how to contain the explosion of joy inside ourselves at the sight of that number: 300,000 pounds and still climbing.
It was Izz and Alexi’s broadcast that had done it.
There’s merch now, would you believe?Let Love Happen, the T-shirts say, Alexi’s words. Pink’s the most popular colour, followed by forest green, Fern’s suggestion. And we’ve got a logo too. Lucy designed it.
And yes, sheiscurrently in New Zealand, but only on a holiday to see her mum and dad. She’s felt the legacy of our Christmas shake-up too.
She’d been sketching scenes in the school gym of the kids looking at the gingerbreads, when the Wheaton art gallery owner just happened to be in. Peering over Lucy’s shoulder, she asked, ‘Localartist, are you?’ and Lucy’s moment of hesitation in replying – wanting to say that yes, she was a local, actually – had told Lucy everything she needed to know about where she wanted to be.
She’s got her first two paintings displayed in the gallery windows already, and if you need to ask the price, you already know you can’t afford them. She’s terribly exclusive now, you see, my Lucy.
It’s not all artists’ smocks and artsy Cotswolds glamour, however. Half the week she’s engaged in a new community project behind the scaffolds at Wheaton Village Hall, working with the young people to paint a new mural to complement the original – a snapshot of life in the village now – and I’ve only heard the parents singing her praises about how she’s encouraging a whole new generation of little artists.
Anyway, the grotto committee is still going strong, only I’ve handed the reins over to the new volunteers. There’s so many of them, all guided by Fern, who, I have to say, has really come into her own now she’s taken over at Bizzy Izz’s. She hasn’t changed a single thing about the chintzy retro cafe, other than making the place ‘internet famous’ with her socials and adding her own freshly baked bread to the menu – which she makes in rustic small batches every morning, the way Sully taught her.
Shell’s often to be found in there, holding the phone and filming Fern’s live cooking demos, when she’s not up at Brambledown helping Tommy Brash and proving herself to be an excellent apprentice farmer, that is.
But listen to me, chatting on when there’s an event to get to.
I’ve worked my hair up into a mass of silvery waves over my new undercut style, something I always wanted to try but talked myself out of so often, thinking everyone would think it was too young for me, until I asked myself was I really going to let that stop me? I only need to approve of myself these days.
I’ve made up my face following the girls’ tips, and I’m zipping up my new floaty dress and making for the door, in my Docs, of course.
If I run, I’ll make it.
Wheaton’s never looked nicer. Not even in the snow.
It didn’t take us long to string the rainbow bunting all down the high street, not when everyone pitched in to help, and I mean everyone, even old Mr Scrimengor and Rodney Carruthers, who accepted defeat, if not gracefully, but with all the fortitude of men utterly thwarted by the budgeting, which was all that mattered in the end.
We presented our costings and our balance to the nice people from Historic England who found themselves in agreement with us that a village hall must remain a village hall if there’s public backing and a huge wodge of ready money. The scaffolding will be coming down in a few weeks now the roof’s almost been restored, just as it was before.
‘There you are!’ Izz shouts from her cottage garden as I approach. ‘You’re late.’
Alexi emerges from a froth of roses and alstroemeria in the borders. He’s transformed the flower beds since he started visiting and staying longer and longer each time, and now Izz has freshly cut flowers on the kitchen windowsill every day as they make the most of each second they’ve salvaged together.
Alexi drops the secateurs into a basket. ‘Shall we?’ he says, and we all join the wandering stream of locals making their way out into the sunshine and past the school where the Gingerbread Christmas WORLD exhibition (and grotto) will be held again this December – applications for display spots on the tables have already closed and we’ve been promised donated builds from all over the globe once again this year.
We pass the hall where work continues noisily inside on the heating system; all presided over, you’ll be pleased to know, by the recovered painting of the goggle-eyed King George by an unknown artist of limited talent but great enthusiasm sometime in the 1950s. We’re promised a grand reopening next autumn, if all goes well; a dance party for the whole village, and I know who’ll be first to take to the floor.
‘Oh, I see them,’ says Izz, more sprightly than I have ever seen her, now she doesn’t have to pretend. So much of her happiness nowadays comes from the well within her that replenishes itself with Alexi who, it turns out, is a pub quiz master and the Stubborn Greys have become the team to beat. You can try, but it won’t happen.
We’re just in time. Sully is waiting by the doors of his newly refurbished bakery, and there by his elbow is his grandfather, wearing something closer to a smile than anything I’ve ever witnessed on that man’s face, and Leo Bold, the village’s super head teacher – well, we think he’s super: we didn’t need a turnaround report from some inspector or an uptick in pointlessly stressful exam results for our little ones to tell us that. He’s already planning his first nativity for the kids, to be held in his own school gymnasium, since we’ll have the grotto back in the newly refurbished and properly heated village hall – which is booked out every December in perpetuity for the gingerbreads.
The rest of the year there’ll be all manner of clubs and societies in there – including a watercolours class for grown-ups, a little side project of Lucy’s, and Bobbie’s boot camps, as well as all the old book clubs and baby groups, and there’s rumours of a new local history society headed up by Tommy Brash who we see around the village more often these days, now he has a little help at the farm. I’ve heard Leo’s being roped into that little venture too.
