Page 94 of It Always Snows on Mistletoe Square
Ben stares at me for a moment, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Elle, can’t you see? This is all some sort of intricate deception we’ve become embroiled in. Some strange illusion that we’ve fallen victim to. At first it was a bit of fun when all we were doing was watching some strange stories from the past. I didn’t know how they were doing it, but I was impressed by the level of trickery, the realness of it all. I’d have probably walked away after that first story if it hadn’t been for you. But I wanted to get to know you, and the only way I could do that was to allow myself to become open to all this … fantasy, illusion, I don’t know what to call it, because none of it is real, is it? It can’t be.’
‘Actually, I think it is real,’ I reply. ‘I don’t know how or why this is happening. But it is. Remember how you were just telling me earlier that you’d love to see your mother, to know why she gave you up so you could get some sort of closure. This is your chance, Ben. This is what you wanted.’
‘Not like this, though,’ Ben says, gripping both my hands now as he stares wildly into my face. ‘Not like this, Elle.’
I look back at Estelle and Angela standing calmly on the steps behind us. They don’t seem in the least fazed by Ben’s reaction.
‘Don’t look at them!’ Ben turns my face back towards his. ‘They’re the puppeteers creating this freak show!’
As Estelle is about to reply, the door opens behind her, and the young Angela appears, now wearing a coat and scarf over her earlier outfit. She carries a couple of handbag-size bags and an empty holdall. She locks the front door, and then hurries over to Holly House, presumably to get Tanzy’s things for her likely stay in hospital.
The break in conversation while we watch this simple act seems to calm Ben a little; his fast, shallow breathing steadies and his hands don’t grip mine quite as tightly.
‘Ben,’ Estelle says carefully, as though she doesn’t want to startle him. ‘I’m pleased you’re questioning all this at last. I was waiting for one of you to. What Angela and I have asked you to witness over the last few days has been very unusual and, I’ll agree, often difficult to believe. It’s good you’re questioning this experience – you’re human, you should, it’s in your nature. But please don’t dismiss everything that’s happened because it doesn’t fit with what appears normal to you. Few things in life are ever normal. There are things going on around us all the time that can’t quite be explained. So we pretend that they’re not really there, or not really happening to make ourselves feel better.’
Estelle pauses to let Ben digest this thought.
Ben doesn’t speak, but again I feel him relax a little more.
‘It will be okay,’ I whisper. ‘I promise.’
Ben nods. His grip loosens and he releases one of my hands so he can stand by my side, instead of directly in front of me.
Content that she has Ben’s full attention now, Estelle continues. ‘Everything that’s happened, from the time you both read our adverts in the newspaper, has brought us here to this very moment. All the stories we’ve told you have had some meaning either to us or to you. There’s been a reason for everything you’ve both experienced, and in a very short while you will understand why. But you must let us tell you this one last story for it all to make sense.’
Ben holds Estelle’s gaze for a moment, then he sighs deeply and looks down at his shoes. ‘Can I really trust you, Estelle, when you say we are going to see my mother?’ he asks, looking back up at her.
‘You can, Ben.’
‘But I’ve never seen her before,’ Ben says, still sounding incredibly anxious. ‘How will I know it’s really her?’
‘Trust me, Ben,’ Estelle says. ‘I’m not allowed to lie to you. Neither Angela nor I have ever lied to either of you – we simply can’t.’
Finally, Ben nods. ‘All right, I shouldn’t trust you, either of you,’ he says, continuing to look at them both. ‘But for some unknown reason, I do.’
The young Angela suddenly comes out of Holly House. She walks down the steps carrying all her bags.
‘Bloody taxis,’ she says, looking round the square. ‘Never one around when you actually want one. I guess I’ll have to go out to the main road and try to flag one down.’
As she finishes speaking, a black cab comes trundling around the corner.
Angela drops her bags and is about to raise her hand when it stops right beside her.
‘Angela?’ the cabbie asks through his window.
‘Yes?’ Angela says, looking surprised. ‘How did you know?’
‘You called us earlier? Sorry it’s taken a while. Christmas Eve, innit? Even Santa would struggle to get a cab tonight.’
Angela raises her eyes to the sky and whispers, ‘Thank you.’ Then she climbs into the cab with her bags and they drive away, around the square then out onto the main road.
‘Now what?’ Ben asks, but Estelle is already pointing in the opposite direction.
We follow her hand and see a young, slight woman walking slowly along the pavement. She’s wearing scruffy-looking clothes that look far too big for her – baggy blue jeans held up with a leather belt, a long bottle-green cardigan, a black-and-white t-shirt with the wordsChoose Life printed on the front, and on her feet, black lace-up boots. Perched on the back of her head is a burgundy beret, and in her arms she’s carrying what appears to be a bundle of clothes in a plastic washing basket.
‘Come,’ Estelle says, leading us down the steps to the path outside the house. ‘Let us not impede her.’
As the woman gets closer to us, she keeps looking at a scrap of paper balanced on top of the washing basket, and then up at the houses as she passes them. As she gets to our house, she stops.
