It’s a Wonderful Night: A delightfully feel-good festive romance for 2018!

I freeze. Crikey, I’d remember if she’d ever actually done that, wouldn’t I? What if she’s been in and spoken to Mary when I’ve not been there? She’s going to know it was me in a flash. I love doing a bit of seasonal window-stencilling on the inside of our windows. Nothing that obstructs the display, just a few flowers in the spring, eggs at Easter, falling leaves in the autumn. There are white snowflakes tumbling down now, although I did have the forethought to use a different stencil on Leo’s window to avoid suspicion.

Leo’s gaze is on the window but his eyes are still distant and he’s not really seeing it. ‘My dad would’ve loved it.’

‘Did he like Christmas?’

‘He loved it. He was Christmas personified. You were saying yesterday that you grew up here? Did you ever come into the café that was here before I bought this place?’

‘Yeah, all the time.’ I smile at the memory. ‘My mum would come into town to do her shopping every Saturday morning and we’d always stop here for a hot chocolate and a toasted teacake on the way home. Especially at this time of year. She’d take me to visit Santa’s grotto at Hawthorne Toys and then we’d come in here for a cuppa and something nice to eat, loaded down with bags of presents.’

Leo’s eyes are suddenly intense; far from being distant, they’re shining with amusement. ‘Do you remember an old guy who used to sit at that table?’ He points to a single table in the corner, next to the window, looking out. It’s the only part of this shop that hasn’t changed in thirty years. Leo redid everything when he took over, except that chair and table.

A memory stirs in my mind. ‘Did he have a mop of white hair and a dark grey beard? Always had a newspaper or two spread across the table in front of him?’

He nods.

‘Yeah. I remember him helping Mum with her bags one day when it was crowded. Another time, he overheard her wondering what the weather was going to do that afternoon and looked it up in his paper for us. He gave me 50p once. I must’ve been really young because it was, like, the most money I’d ever seen. Mum let me go into Woolworths on the way home and get pick ‘n’ mix with it.’

‘He was my dad,’ Leo says with a smile that’s halfway between proud and sad.

‘No way. Really?’ I remember the man well, he was never without a kind smile and a friendly wave. ‘He was like a permanent fixture here. He always seemed to be sitting there in that same seat, watching the world go by.’

‘He loved it here. It was his second home. At this time of year, he was playing Santa at Hawthorne’s next door so he’d be here between shifts. He was best mates with the owner of this place so he’d get changed in the staffroom here and sneak in through a door in the alley between us so kids would never see Santa until he was in the grotto.’

‘No way,’ I say again. ‘Your dad was Hawthorne’s Santa? The guy who always sat in that corner was Hawthorne’s Santa?’

He nods.

‘But he was the best Santa ever. He wasn’t a man dressed up as Santa, he was the actual Santa.’

‘I hate to break it to you, Georgia,’ Leo says with a grin, ‘but I feel it’s my duty to inform you, as an adult, that Santa isn’t real.’

I roll my eyes. ‘You know what I mean. He was like Richard Attenborough in Miracle on 34th Street. He was the closest thing you could ever get to a real Santa. People used to travel for miles to see him. The queues were always ridiculous but no one ever complained because he was worth the wait. I never believed in Santa, I’d always known it was Mum and Dad who put the presents under the tree, but I still wanted to visit him because he seemed so real. Mum was a grown woman and she always said he even made her start to wonder …’

‘That was my dad,’ he says with that same half-proud, half-sad smile.

‘I can’t believe he was the same man who used to sit here in the café. Talk about breaking the illusion. I think you’ve just destroyed my childhood, Leo. He wasn’t supposed to be someone who went next door and took a costume off, he was supposed to hop in his sleigh and go back to the North Pole with his reindeer and elves.’

Leo swallows hard. ‘I like to think that’s where he is now. If there’s a heaven, that’s what it would be for him.’

‘How long ago did he die?’ I ask gently. I can see he’s holding onto his emotions by a fine thread, and I don’t know if pushing the subject further is a good idea or not, but Leo needs a friend, someone he can talk to, and you don’t get that by backing away from difficult topics.

‘Three years ago last month,’ he says, his voice sounding raw.

‘I’m sorry.’ I nudge the cup against his hand again, mainly because I’m scared that if I actually touch him, I won’t be able to stop until I’ve climbed over the counter and wrapped him up in my arms. I know so much deep, private stuff about him that it’s a struggle to remember that he doesn’t know I know it. ‘So you bought this place to honour him?’

‘Not really. Kind of.’ Leo smiles a sad smile, his eyes damp. ‘He had always planned to buy it in his retirement. Like I said, he was best mates with the owner, they were due to retire at the same time, and they’d struck a deal years before that his friend wouldn’t sell it to anyone else. I think Dad thought it’d be a nice, gentle job to keep him occupied. So they’d both retired and he’d just started the process of buying it, and then …’ His voice cracks and he swallows again. ‘He left the money, and my mum and sister agreed that we should carry on what he’d started and I should step into the shoes he’d always wanted to fill.’

‘Wow,’ I say, struck again by how you never know what people are going through behind a smile. Even with the phone call, I had no idea of the connection Leo had to this coffee shop or what had led to him buying it. I remember his smile as I peered in the window on the first day he opened. It must’ve been mere months after his dad passed. That day must’ve been so bittersweet for him, and yet his smile was bright enough to pull me in from the outside. ‘That’s a beautiful way to honour him. He’d be so proud if he could see it now.’

Leo pushes himself off the counter where he’s been leaning and I focus on the line the edging has made where it’s dug into his forearm. ‘Yeah, well, pretty soon it’s going up a creek with no paddle, so I doubt he’d be proud then.’

‘Of course he would,’ I say, but Leo doesn’t look like he’s listening.

‘Flipping heck, it’s quarter past nine,’ he says, his attention on the clock on the wall. ‘I’ve made you late for work. Your boss can’t be so easygoing that he’d be happy about that.’

Bollocks. Never mind a boss, I’ve got a 73-year-old assistant manager who’s sweet and innocent on the outside but has a backbone of steel and spikes of wrought iron when someone does something she doesn’t approve of. Poor timekeeping is one thing of the many things she can’t abide.

‘It’s easy to lose track of time talking to you,’ I say, trying not to think about Mary and the two volunteers due in this morning, undoubtedly waiting in the car park out back at the moment. I’ve got the keys and I’m always there by 8.45 at the latest.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Leo says. ‘I didn’t mean to ramble at you like that. Talk about unprofessional.’

‘Leo, don’t. It was great. I love talking to you.’

It gives me a little thrill to see his cheeks turn red. ‘I can close up for a couple of minutes and walk you in? I’ll talk to your boss and take all the blame?’

‘No, don’t you dare. Your mum’s not even here to mind the shop. You could miss a walking club of twenty customers in that time. Besides, I do not want you to bear witness to the terrible lies I’ll have to come up with to satisfy my boss. I was thinking sheep in the road, does that sound realistic to you?’

‘Hmm. Doesn’t really work unless you live somewhere where there are actually sheep. Not a lot of sheep come shopping on the high street.’

‘Yeah. Can’t remember the last time I served one.’

It makes him laugh.

‘See? I’m a terrible liar!’

‘Ah, Georgia. If all else fails, tell him “women’s problems”. Always works for me.’

‘Women’s problems works for you?’

He grins. ‘Genius, right? People are so confused by that excuse coming from a man that they don’t even question it.’

‘You’re an evil mastermind under that sunny smile, aren’t you?’

He does a gallant bow. ‘I try my best.’

‘I’ll tell you what, before I run off, can I have three hot chocolates to go, please?’

‘As a bribe or for use as a shield?’

‘If you promise not to judge me – a bribe.’

‘Good thinking.’ He turns around and sets about making them. ‘You’re single-handedly keeping me in business today. Is this one bank manager who really likes hot chocolate or three managers to placate?’

I hate lying to him about this, it’s so stupid, but how can I tell him anything different? ‘One manager and two colleagues who’ll have had to cover my desk for twenty minutes. They won’t mind but one of your hot chocolates will certainly smooth the way,’ I lie, thinking about the three old ladies freezing in the car park. A hot chocolate would give them something to dump over my head if they weren’t all chocoholics.

‘Yikes,’ he says. ‘I’d better put extra spray cream on top for good measure.’

I watch as Leo makes one cup after the other, obviously rushing to save me being even later than I already am, putting each one on the counter and filling them up with more squirty cream than should be legal at this time of day before fitting the lids on. Our fingers brush as I hand him the money and listen to the ding of the till again, a real old-fashioned bell ringing sound, and watch as he slots each cup into a cardboard cup holder and holds it out to me.