Cautiously, she peers around the door. The lamp is lit, and arranged on the shelves and windowsills are dozens of glasses. All sizes: wine, pint, tumbler. Each glass has a candle burning within it. The twinkling of the Christmas tree lights adds to the soft glow. Behind the counter, seated on her stool, is Eric the Viking, a book open in front of him.
She has never seen a Viking cry before. He doesn’t cry like he laughs, with big noisy sobs; he just lets the tears fall. He looks tired, and scruffy, but there is something else. He is looking at her like his life depends upon this moment – on her. And she knows, as her mum knew in that out-of-season coffee shop, that she loves this man.
‘You came.’ He tries to grin, but his face crumples and he rubs a big paw of a hand across his eyes. ‘Gets me every time,’ he says. And she can see him trying once more to smile. He nods down at the book. ‘Can’t help it. Poetry. Sets me off.’
She takes a step towards him, but he holds up a hand. ‘I thought you weren’t coming. Clare texted me and Lando did too. I used your key, and saw your bag. But I thought I’d left it too late. So I wrote you something.’ He looks briefly behind him, at her wall of words, now curling with cold and damp. ‘I pinned it there. But really I wanted to read it to you.’
‘Read it now,’ she says, staring back at him, taking him all in.
His old grin is back this time, ‘I’ll cry,’ he tells her.
‘That’s okay – I will too.’ She is already. She pulls off her woolly hat and unwraps her scarf, but doesn’t move from where she is standing.
And the Viking from Birmingham pulls down a piece of paper from the wall behind him and in the flickering candle light reads what he has written out for her:
Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.
His voice falters on the last line, and the fragile vulnerability of this releases something in her. And then she is around the side of the counter – boots, jumpers, coat and all – and he pulls her to him. The stool is knocked over, but it doesn’t matter. When he kisses her, she can feel his hand in her hair and then on her cheek. She reaches up her own hand and interlaces her fingers with his. And then he has his arms wrapped tight around her and Jo sinks into the certainty that she has found her home.
(A place for everything and everything in its place.)
Eventually the stool is righted, she is sitting on her side of the counter (still in her uncle’s coat, face red from the cold and crying. And from the Viking’s beard), and he is on his side, in his normal spot.
‘Where have you been Stationery Girl? I thought you were never coming.’
So she tells him about it all; her friends and the Highgate Cemetery ghosts.
‘So you broke in?’ and the walrus laugh is back.
‘Yes, I suppose we did,’ she says, in some surprise, wondering why she ever thought she was average.
He wants to know about all the characters they have researched, and their ideas for conversations, only stopping her briefly so he can nip next door to his shop. He brings back a bottle of champagne, some smoked salmon, and two boxes of biscuits – presents from patients (including Dwayne, who can now see straight, but as Eric the Optician predicted is attending all his Christmas parties wearing a patch). They drink the champagne from mugs.
At the end of her recital he says, ‘It just proves your Uncle Wilbur was right.’
She looks at him enquiringly.
‘He’d seen this area change a lot over the years, but he always said people are much the same and more alike than they think.’
Jo nods, thinking of her favourite uncle and of the ghosts, picked at random, who all found something to share.
‘So, you think Lando and I spend all our time scrapping …’ Eric starts, in mock protest.
Soon after, Jo asks to borrow Eric’s phone and takes a selfie of the two of them, which she sends to Lucy. She feels it is the least she owes her. Eric also forwards the photo on to Lando and Clare.
‘You have no idea how many people have been bugging me about where you had got to.’
This reminds her she needs to speak to her mum but, looking at the time, she decides it is too late to call now. She will ring her in the morning – and then realizes it is the morning; it is nearly two o’clock.
After this, Jo borrows the phone again and sends the photo and a message to Ruth and Malcolm. She has a feeling they will be waiting up to hear from her. She sends her apologies, that she won’t be joining them for Christmas Day. It seems Eric the Viking has other plans. She just hopes it is a Nordic tradition to stay in bed all Christmas Day.
