Taster story: Green Stars and Santa

*Here's one I made earlier*

I was eight years old and Lucy was six. Outside, it was two degrees and the sky was the colour of concrete, but we didn’t go outside much in those days. December 1988 was the month Cliff Richard had a Christmas number one and Lucy found out about Santa.

“Alice, curtains!”

I looked up and saw my mother, coffee in hand, jaw tight with fear. Lucy had wanted to watch the other children out of the window and I’d forgotten to close them. “Sorry mum” I mumbled as she yanked them shut. She softened, “no love – I’m sorry.”

Since school finished we hadn’t been out once. I didn’t mind much; I hadn’t made any friends round there anyway, but Lucy was a pain. The injustice of having to stay indoors was the source of daily tantrums.

Today we were going to go out though – it was Christmas Eve and Mum had agreed that we could go to the Christingle service at the local church. A staunch atheist, this was a huge compromise for her. Every year Lucy and I begged to be allowed to go and watched with animal envy as other children brought home oranges bedecked with dolly mixtures and candles. There was one condition of our outing: that we went to the afternoon service and came home in daylight. Mum said it would still be dark enough in the Church for the candles to twinkle.

The service was due to start at 3. By 2.15 Lucy and I were at the front door in our hats and coats, even though it was only a ten minute walk. Lucy formed a one-woman conga all the way there singing, “we’re going to Christingle! We’re going to Christingle!” I sighed in exaggerated embarrassment, suppressing a giggle when I met Mum’s eye.

Christingle was everything we’d hoped and more. Despite mum’s assurance that we would have darkness, the sun shone through the stained glass, making patterns across our faces. The oranges smelt like kept promises and the dolly mixtures were pure decadence. Mum even let us go to the front for ‘Silent Night’, where we stood, mouths opening and closing like guppies because we didn’t know the words. I thought I saw her crying, but she said it was just the Frankincense.

We left without fuss as soon as it finished and were still on a high when we got home. But something was wrong. When Mum tried to open the door, the chain was on from the inside. Shaking, she put her hand around and undid it.

“Stay close to me girls.”

Lucy was first to spot what was missing. We had so little to take that it made scant difference to the room’s overall sparseness.

“The tree!”

Two feet tall and plastic, the tree had been our other winter treat. Mum surprised us with one from the pound shop and we’d decorated it with ornaments made at school. Now it was gone. Lucy started crying, mum gripped my shoulder so hard it hurt, I didn’t move. Who would take the Christmas tree and why?

Like all anxious people, our first thought – our only thought – was that our fears had come true.

“Do you think it was him, Mummy?”

“Stay here and don’t move.”

Lucy and I were good at keeping still – we always won musical statues at parties. We stayed, good as gold and still as corpses in the middle of the room while Mum went upstairs. Her shriek, like the music starting up again, made us move. We ran upstairs and found her on the floor by the bed. She looked tired. “Your presents” she said in a small voice. Lucy was confused, “but Santa hasn’t brought them yet.”

A knock at the door turned my stomach to lead. “Don’t open it Mum, please.” She walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. I studied her face as she squinted in the fading light and watched as her look changed from terror to confusion, then calm.

“It’s OK girls.”

“It’s not Daddy?”

“It’s not Daddy”

“Is it Santa?”

“It’s the Police.”

“Goody!” Lucy liked the Police.

They brought good news – five houses in the street, six including ours, had been burgled. He hadn’t found us after all.

The Police found the window that had been forced open and one of the neighbours came round to nail it shut until New Year, when it could be fixed. Mum made him coffee while Lucy and I watched shyly from the corner.

We were saved but there were no presents, until I remembered that on the last day of term we’d had a lucky dip at school. Most children had torn into their gifts straight away but I’d kept mine, just in case. I checked - it was still at the bottom of my school bag. I looked at it, pretending it was all mine for a second. The wrapping paper was covered in laughing reindeer and faded, like it had been left on a shelf for a long time.

“Mum, Lucy, look! We have a Christmas present.”

I let Lucy open it. Inside was a string of emerald stars, which clinked like coins and made patterns on our faces, like the Church windows had. It was cheap, plastic and beautiful.

“For me?” asked Lucy. “For everyone” Mum answered, hanging it over the fireplace. She told us that the stars were us and all our friends – the ones we left behind and the ones we hadn’t met yet – come to spend Christmas with us. I knew really that was a bigger fib than the one about Santa, but Lucy started naming them all and later it became a game to tell our secrets to them.

Mum gave us five pounds to spend on whatever we liked in the corner shop. We bought Pink Wafers, Wotsits, Kinder Eggs, grapes, Tizer and chose After Eights for Mum.

We ate them all together in the lounge beneath the stars.

(Words: 996)