turned to me. ‘See you Saturday morning.’
I nodded and watched as she made her way to George’s side. She put a hand on his back and said something whereupon he nodded and shook hands with Norris, then waved at me.
‘Thank you,’ he mouthed across the shop. He prodded Maya to do the same and then they all left, the last of the punters to go. Jaz winked at me through the shop window as they walked down the street. She looked so happy.
At a shout from the front door – ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ – we all turned to look at Norris, who’d spun the open sign to closed and was grinning at us.
‘Oh, hello, Father Christmas has perked up,’ said Eugene.
‘He has,’ said Norris, pulling off his hat and rubbing his hair so the white tufts stuck up like meringue peaks. ‘And do you know why?’
‘You weren’t arrested for indecency?’
Norris shook his head and clapped his hands together. ‘That man. That man! He’s just saved us.’
‘What man?’
‘That man,’ said Norris, whose face had turned so puce I thought he might explode. I’d never seen him look so cheerful. ‘George something who was here with Florence’s friend.’
‘Spencer?’
Norris nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it, George Spencer. He’s an internet millionaire who founded some shopping site.’
‘What shopping site?’ I shrieked.
He flapped a hand in the air. ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything about these things, as you all know. But he’s offered to pay our lease. Lives round the corner and thinks it’s important that we stay open. Daughter’s a big fan of reading, apparently.’
‘You’re kidding?’ said Zach.
‘He can’t be a millionaire, he looks about eleven years old,’ I added, thinking of George’s smooth face and nerdy spectacles. ‘Jaz just said he works in computers.’
‘Exactly,’ said Norris, still nodding furiously. ‘Some shopping business that Google’s just bought for a fortune and he wants to help us out. It was all thanks to the petition, apparently.’ He bent over to pour himself another drink and raised his glass at me.
I shook my head in disbelief. Jaz was unknowingly dating a tech millionaire, and a modest tech millionaire at that.
We all glanced around one another in stunned silence, before Eugene leapt in the air and whooped, and we all followed suit, our arms over one another’s shoulders. I winced as wine from various glasses spilled to the floorboards but told myself not to ruin the moment.
‘So thank you all very much for all your efforts,’ said Norris, once we’d calmed down. ‘Because it’s worked and I couldn’t… I can’t… I’m not sure I would ha—’ He paused and blinked around at all of us.
‘You all right, Norris?’ asked Eugene.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, clapping himself on the chest and coughing. ‘I’m just ever so grateful.’
‘I can’t get over this,’ said Zach. ‘We need to celebrate. Excuse me, elf,’ he said, shuffling behind the till.
‘What you doing?’ asked Eugene.
Zach pulled his phone from his pocket, plugged it into the lead and the opening bars of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ tinkled over us.
We drank the urn dry of wine so Norris went downstairs to retrieve a dusty bottle of whiskey from his office. We drank that, too, even though I hated whiskey. I ate six mince pies while we danced around the hardback table to Wham! and Shakin’ Stevens, then more Nat King Cole and Mariah Carey again because it was Eugene’s favourite. If you’d passed the shop and seen a large snowman twirl a Christmas pudding under his arm while an elf moonwalked – very badly – back and forth against the floorboards you might have worried you were hallucinating. It was the perfect evening until I remembered Harry and started collecting up glasses, carrying them downstairs to wash up.
Zach dried while I washed and we hummed ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’.
‘You packed?’
‘Nah, I’ll shove a couple of black T-shirts into my bag on Saturday morning.’
‘We’ll miss you,’ I said as I handed him another glass. Declaring this collectively, on behalf of the shop, felt less intense than admitting it was me, personally, who’d miss him.
‘Will you?’ he said, wiping his hands on the tea towel.
‘Course. Although I won’t miss tidying up after you,’ I added, and because I was tipsy and it seemed like a good idea, I scooped up a palm of bubbles and blew them at him.
Zach laughed, wiped them off his cheek and then we smiled at one another just long enough for it to feel weird. My cheeks