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

‘Me too.’

‘What have we got left, eh? A coffee shop, a bank, a charity shop, a tanning shop, a television repair shop with an old CRT TV in the window to really attract modern day customers, and a lingerie shop called Aubergine.’ Leo laughs. ‘Aubergine. I mean, of all fruits and vegetables to name a lingerie shop after. It’s not even a distantly sexy vegetable, is it? Even cucumber has a vague phallic connotation, but aubergines? They’re not quite the first thing you’d associate with sexy lingerie, are they?’

‘Maybe she meant the colour, not the vegetable?’

‘Call it Deep Purple then. Even that’s sexier than Aubergine.’

‘You’ve clearly spent an abnormal amount of time thinking about this. You don’t strike me as a sexy lingerie type of guy. Do they do plunge bras in your size?’

‘I’ve never been in there,’ he says with a grin. ‘I just don’t get it. It makes me laugh because it’s so random. Why not Pomegranate, or Celery, or Granny Smith?’

‘Well, it doesn’t get much more seductive than Granny Smith, does it?’

‘See?’ he says. ‘You get it. Shops called Aubergine are a testament to Oakbarrow as it is now. It looks more like a brothel than a lingerie shop and its name doesn’t make a blind bit of sense. No wonder no one shops here anymore.’

‘Say what you want, but Aubergine are still open. Poorly named vegetable decisions or not, they’re still going when most other shops have closed.’

‘I reckon it’s a cover for a drug cartel or something. Maybe it is an actual brothel.’

I raise an eyebrow and it makes him grin again. ‘So where are you? All this time we’ve known each other and I can’t believe I’ve never asked you where you work before.’

I meet his eyes and try to keep a straight face. ‘Aubergine.’

He stops walking so abruptly that he nearly falls over his own feet, and my shoulder knocks into his arm as his eyes flick between mine and my mouth.

‘I might believe you if you could keep a straight face.’ He grins. ‘Nice try, though. You nearly had me there.’

I burst out laughing. ‘Sorry. Couldn’t resist.’

‘I’d have done the same.’ He knocks his shoulder into mine again, deliberately this time, and it makes a little shiver run up my spine. At last he turns around and walks forward again so he can see where he’s going. ‘Where are you really?’

I go to answer and suddenly realize that I can’t. I hadn’t even considered that he might walk me to work. What on earth am I going to tell him? If I say One Light, he’s going to make the connection straight away.

‘The bank!’ I say as a moment of blind panic combines with a moment of inspiration. If I was a cartoon character, a lightbulb would’ve just pinged above my head.

He laughs. ‘Well, if that isn’t life imitating art, I don’t know what is.’

I look at him in confusion.

‘The real George Bailey worked at a bank too, didn’t he? Well, the Building and Loan, that’s close enough.’

‘Oh, right! Yes!’ I laugh but end up overcompensating and come across as marginally hysterical.

‘So was your career mapped out based on It’s a Wonderful Life or is that just coincidence?’

I look at the One Light sign sticking out from the charity shop in front of us. ‘Just coincidence.’

‘Maybe fate has more of an It’s a Wonderful Life-shaped influence than you think.’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’ I bite my lip as I look at him. I don’t want this to end yet. I could stay here and talk to him all morning but we’re nearly at the door of the bank and if we get much closer, he’s going to expect me to go inside.

‘Well, thanks for walking me,’ I say breezily. ‘You should get back to your mum. See you tomorrow!’

‘It’s chucking it down. Go on, get someone to let you in, I’ll wait.’

He’s too nice for his own good. And mine.

I don’t work here and if I knock on the door, whoever answers is going to say exactly that. I peek in the window of the bank as I hesitate over what to do and see Casey setting out leaflets on one of the tables in the waiting area. Casey! My best friend, and now, a godsend. She’ll play along.

I knock lightly on the door just in case anyone else comes to answer it.

‘George!’ she says, sounding surprised and confused in equal measure. ‘And Coffee Man.’

Leo nods to her. ‘I’ve been called plenty worse than that.’

‘Hi, Casey!’ I say, wondering if anyone will notice my voice has suddenly gone up three octaves. ‘Just come to work! In the bank! Where I work!’

‘Right …’ Casey says slowly, her eyebrows rising up towards her hairline where her blonde hair is pulled back into a conservative bun.

‘Are you going to let me in before we need an ark out here?’

‘Of course,’ she says smoothly, stepping back and pulling the reinforced glass and sturdy metal door fully open. ‘Come into the bank where you work.’

I knew I could rely on Casey.

Leo shuffles forward until the huge umbrella is pressed right into the open doorway so I can go through without getting a drop of rain on me. As I turn to thank him, I don’t miss the way he’s looking up at the sign for One Light next door or the way his eyes have gone distant.

‘Thanks, Leo. You’re my knight in shining … coffee apron.’

He looks back at me and blinks, looking like he was lost for a minute, then he pastes a smile back on his face, steps back and twirls the umbrella so raindrops spray from it in a perfect spiral. He does a curtsey. ‘Always a pleasure to serve you, Madame. And thanks for the coffee. Have a good day, lovely, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Hey, Leo?’ I say as he goes to walk away. When he turns back, I make a point of looking him in the eyes. ‘Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you every morning.’

He gives me a sad smile. ‘I think you mean my coffee, but thanks.’

I watch him walk away until he rounds the corner out of sight. ‘No, I mean you,’ I whisper to the empty street.

That sad smile makes me realize how scarily wrong you can have someone. I thought I knew Leo. As well as you can know someone you chat to for two minutes a day, anyway. That’s two minutes a day, six days a week, for the past two and a half years. If you add it up, that’s quite a lot of time to spend talking to someone, and I still never knew. Leo would be the last person I would ever expect to be suffering with depression. It just goes to show that you never know what kind of battles people are fighting on the inside.

And I know I have to do something. Leo needs customers. He needs to feel important to the town – as important as he makes me feel every morning. Leo is kind. I’ve seen him knock the price of a coffee down for an old man who’d gone to pay and found he didn’t have enough cash. I’ve seen him make a special batch of dairy-free muffins just so a vegan customer could have one. Every day I see him walking down the road towards the churchyard with a coffee and a bag of food for Bernard.

Doesn’t he deserve some kindness in return?

Chapter 3 (#ulink_78e39cef-a86e-5c26-8b93-c07d312779d6)

‘All right, what’s wrong with him?’ Casey’s standing with her hands on her hips when I close the door and turn around.

‘What? Nothing!’