The Mistletoe Seller: A heartwarming, romantic novel for Christmas from the Sunday Times bestseller

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr Wicks. I’m much obliged to you.’

He shook his head. ‘I’d take you there myself if I didn’t have to look after my stall. Good luck, Angel. I hope you find your aunt.’

It was mid-morning by the time Angel reached Maddox Street. She had sold a couple of buttonholes, but most people were too busy going about their daily routine to be interested in purchasing such fripperies. She told herself it did not matter – she was going to find Aunt Cordelia and Lumpy Lil, and they would be reunited. Aunt Cordelia would realise that Mr Galloway was not to be trusted, and they would live happily ever after, just like in the storybooks. The only trouble was that she had no idea which house belonged to Mrs Adams, and the passers-by seemed reluctant to stop and answer her questions. Eventually, after waylaying an errand boy, she discovered that Mrs Adams owned a house in the middle of an elegant terrace.

Angel struggled to control her excitement as she knocked on the door. Aunt Cordelia was so close she could almost smell the gardenia-scented perfume she always wore. But it was a prim housemaid who opened the door.

‘No hawkers or traders.’

Angel put her foot over the threshold just in time to prevent the girl slamming the door in her face. ‘I’m not selling anything. I’ve come to see Mrs Wilding. I’m her niece, Angel Winter.’

The girl did not look convinced. ‘You might be the Angel Gabriel for all I know, but your aunt isn’t here.’

‘She must be,’ Angel insisted. ‘Mr Galloway brought her here the day before yesterday. He said she was to stay with Mrs Adams.’

‘Mrs Adams has gone to the country for the rest of the summer. She don’t like the heat of London.’

‘That can’t be true. Mr Galloway said—’

‘Get off the doorstep, girl, or I’ll call a constable. I told you, Mrs Adams and her guest have gone to the country.’

‘Did Miss Heavitree go too?’

‘If you mean that frightful creature who came with her – she was sent separate with the baggage and that stupid halfwit girl. They’ll be sacked for certain and left to find their own way back to London.’

Angel fought back tears of disappointment and frustration. ‘Where have they gone? Please tell me. I must find my aunt.’

‘I wouldn’t be allowed to say, even if I knew. Now go away and leave us in peace.’

‘Is there anyone in your household who might know my aunt’s whereabouts?’

‘There’s only me and the cleaning women here. The house is being shut up until the autumn, so come back then.’

‘Just a minute.’ Angel took the scrap of paper from her basket. Mr Wicks had written directions on the back of a receipt with his name printed in bold black letters and the number of his stall in Covent Garden. ‘Will you take this and give it to my aunt or Miss Heavitree when they return to London? It’s very important.’

The girl snatched it from Angel’s hand. ‘Anything, if you’ll just go away and leave me in peace. Now will you leave or do I call a copper?’

Angel sank down on the front step as the door closed. Her last hope had gone and she was alone in the great city, except for Dolly. How long she sat there she did not know, but eventually she rose to her feet and started retracing her steps, and after taking one apparently wrong turning after another, she found herself in Regent’s Circus, and was about to ask a gentleman the way to Covent Garden when the lady with him spotted the sprigs of lavender. With a cry of delight she plucked one from the basket.

‘Lavender, my favourite flower. It smells so sweet.’

The gentleman smiled down at her. ‘Just like you, my darling.’ He took a handful of small change from his pocket and dropped it into Angel’s basket. ‘I’ll take all the lavender.’

Angel gathered the sprigs into a bunch and handed them to him, hardly able to believe her luck. He presented them to his lady and she blushed and thanked him so prettily that Angel thought he was going to kiss her there and then, but he tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and they walked away, arm in arm. Angel gathered up the coins – sevenpence ha’penny in all – slipped the money into her reticule and picked up a nosegay.

‘Flowers, lovely flowers. Buy a buttonhole for your lady, sir?’

By late afternoon Angel had sold every single flower in her basket and was the richer by elevenpence ha’penny. Compared to a meagre threepence the day before, it seemed like a small fortune. She made her way back to Covent Garden with a smile on her face for the first time since she had been wrested from her home. She found Dolly chatting to one of the other flower girls. They stopped talking when Angel approached them.

‘Did you find your aunt?’ Dolly asked.

Angel’s smile faded. ‘No, they’d gone away and the maid didn’t know where.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Dolly gave her a hug. ‘I suppose that means I’m stuck with you for a bit longer.’ She eyed the empty basket. ‘How much did you make today?’

‘Elevenpence ha’penny,’ Angel said proudly.

‘Crikey, you done well.’ Dolly turned to her friend. ‘How much did you take, Ivy?’

‘Sixpence, and I thought that was good. Maybe the nipper has something we ain’t got.’

‘Big blue eyes and a la-di-dah manner of speaking,’ Dolly said, chuckling. ‘Never mind, Angel. You can pay me back by buying me a ham roll and a cup of tea for supper.’

Angel smiled and nodded, but inwardly she was crying for her aunt and her old life, which was fading into nothing but a happy memory. The realisation that this was how she was going to scratch a living from now on hit her like a thunderbolt, and there seemed to be no escape.

Gradually, day by day, Angel became accustomed to life in Covent Garden market. She learned the tricks of the trade from the other girls and soon became as adept at turning broken blooms into buttonholes and nosegays as the very best of them. But it was far from an easy way to earn a living and she was out on the streets in all weathers. Summer turned into autumn, when the chill turned the leaves on the London plane trees to shades of copper, bronze and gold, and icy winds rattled the windows of Mother Jolly’s dosshouse. Angel’s fingers and toes were numbed with cold as she stood on street corners. She managed to save a few pennies to purchase a rather moth-eaten woollen shawl from a dolly shop in Shorts Gardens, but the soles of her boots were worn into holes and leaked when it rained. It would take months to earn enough to buy a second-hand pair, and winter was on its way. Angel knew that she was not suffering alone – it was the same for all the flower girls – but that was little comfort. As the nights grew frosty and the evenings drew in, Dolly developed a cough that dampened even her normally buoyant spirits.

Summer flowers had long since vanished from the stalls, and hothouse blooms were hard to come by and costly. The girls were forced to find alternatives to hawk round the streets. Some of them chose watercress, oranges or even matches, and, in desperation, others took to the streets at night selling themselves.

Angel visited Maddox Street several times in the months following that first visit, but the house was always shuttered and empty. On the last occasion she slid a note under the door, giving her address as Mother Jolly’s, in the hope that one day her aunt would return to London. She had heard nothing since and times were hard. Gardenias and carnations made wonderful buttonholes, but they cost more than she could afford and she had taken to selling watercress. Even then, there were plenty of much younger children engaged in the trade, and their pinched faces, stick-thin limbs and bare feet, blue with cold, touched the kind hearts of many a housewife, whereas Angel found herself largely ignored.

She no longer had Jack Wicks to help her out with bunches of lavender as he had closed his stall until the spring, but on his last day he had given Angel his address in Hackney. With Dolly too sick to work, Angel scraped the money together to pay Mother Jolly, but selling watercress at four bunches for a penny brought in barely enough to keep them from starvation. Dolly insisted that she was getting stronger every day, but she was weak and simply walking to the washroom exhausted her. Angel knew that she must do something drastic or neither of them would survive the winter. She had an open invitation to visit the Wicks family, and she was in dire need of help. Perhaps Jack could find her work in his market garden. Winter was closing in and Angel was growing more desperate with each passing day.

It was a long walk to Pratts Lane and it took Angel all morning to reach the red-brick cottage surrounded by market gardens. Her breath curled around her head and her cheeks tingled from the cold, but the air on the edge of the city was remarkably fresh and free from the worst of the smoke and stench from overflowing drains. She stopped to gaze out at the vast expanse of marshes that stretched as far as she could see, with the canal at Hackney Cut threaded through them like a silver ribbon. She knocked on the door and waited, hardly daring to breathe. Mr Wicks might have forgotten her or, even worse, he might regret having asked her to visit his home. The temptation to retrace her steps and hurry back to Seven Dials was almost irresistible, and she was about to turn on her heel when the door opened.

‘Good Lord. If it isn’t Angel Winter. You’d better come in out of the cold.’ Jack Wicks ushered her into the narrow hallway, and the warmth of the cottage and the smell of baking bread was almost too much for Angel. She leaned against the wall, struggling with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and Jack’s voice seemed to fade into the distance.

The next thing she knew she was seated in a chair by the range and someone was chafing her cold hands.

‘Are you feeling better, dear?’

Angel’s vision cleared as she met the woman’s concerned gaze. ‘I’m sorry. I felt a bit faint.’

‘Jack says you must have walked all the way from Seven Dials. Is that right, Angel?’

‘Yes, ma’am. I shouldn’t have come.’

Jack’s face loomed into view. ‘I invited you here on many an occasion back in the summer, so let’s not hear any more of that talk.’ He handed Angel a steaming mug of tea. ‘Here, love, take a sip of this. I dare say you haven’t had a bite to eat since breakfast. Is that right?’

Angel did not want to admit that she had eaten nothing at all and very little had passed her lips the previous day, but she managed a nod as she sipped the hot, sweet tea.

‘I thought so.’ Jack exchanged meaningful glances with his wife. ‘Well, we can soon remedy that. Sally bakes the best bread you’ll ever have the luck to taste.’

Sally Wicks straightened up, wiping her floury hands on her apron. ‘We were about to eat, my dear, so I hope you’ll join us. But sit awhile first. You look done in.’ She turned away to stir the contents of a large black saucepan.

‘Thank you, but I don’t want to impose,’ Angel said anxiously. ‘I came to ask your advice, Mr Wicks. Things have been a bit tight lately.’

Jack pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. ‘I can understand that very well. Winter is always hard for those who depend on the market for their living. That’s where we’re fortunate in having our own market garden. I dunno how we’d survive the cold months if we didn’t have a store of vegetables and the sale of the dried lavender to rely on.’