stared at me, wild auburn curls blowing about her face. ‘What now?’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Eh?’
‘Five minutes ago you thought he was a twisted psycho stalker. And then you drag me out here like your life depends on it. I don’t understand …’
She took a breath and smiled at me. ‘You’re my best friend. So I’m here to support you.’
Genuinely touched by this, I smiled back. ‘Thank you.’
‘And anyway, maybe if we go down this route you’ll get it out of your system.’
‘Ah.’
Wren looked around. ‘So, where did you meet him?’
I looked around. With the arrival of a new day the whole Christmas Market had taken on a magical appearance, the brightly coloured lights that framed each stall reflecting in the damp pavements, while the blazing glow from the whirling carousel illuminated the windows of the surrounding buildings. The air temperature had dropped considerably and tiny white flakes of snow swirled in the air above the bustling market stalls. For a moment it was hard to get my bearings.
‘I think it was near the beginning of the craft market,’ I answered, ‘or at least, that’s where he kissed me. The stall I demolished was further down New Street because we walked a little afterwards. But it’s all a bit of a blur to be honest.’
‘Well, let’s start at the kiss and work backwards,’ Wren suggested, hugging my arm. ‘Where did that happen?’
‘By a stall with hand-painted glass tree baubles.’
We followed the line of craft stalls, passing displays of garish felt hats, jewellery, delicate silk scarves and hand-dipped candles until Wren let out a squeal and tugged at my arm. ‘There!’
My heart began racing as we approached the stall, memories of the stranger’s concerned questions, his breath on my face and that kiss suddenly bombarding my mind. The large, teardrop-shaped bauble was still hanging from its silver-painted twig in the mottled gold pot at the front of the stall, exactly as it had been when he caught up with me. Shivers chased each other up my spine as my fingers brushed its lustrous surface.
‘I was here – looking at this – when he reached me.’ I closed my eyes and remembered the warmth of his gentle voice behind my ear, the light touch of his hand on my shoulder.
Wren was already summoning the attention of the stallholder. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Yes, love?’
‘This might sound a bit weird, but we’re looking for a man.’
The lady behind the counter let out a cracked, throaty laugh that could only have been created by a serious nicotine intake over many years. ‘Aren’t we all, dearie! That’s what I want for Christmas, eh, Sylv?’
‘Ooh too right, Aud,’ laughed the short woman beside her who was swathed in so many woollen layers she resembled a forty-something rainbow-hued sheep.
‘No, I don’t think you understand,’ Wren pressed on, undaunted. ‘You see, it’s a particular man we’re looking for …’
‘That’s the beauty of youth,’ Sylvia grinned back. ‘When you get to our age, chick, the ones that aren’t that particular are the only ones we’re likely to get!’ The two ladies launched into cackles again and Wren shrugged helplessly at me.
‘It was yesterday,’ I explained. ‘I was looking at this bauble and then a guy joined me. He was about six feet tall, with russet-brown hair and a green, brown and cream striped scarf?’
The stallholders’ laughter ebbed and Audrey leaned towards me across the fragile glass ornaments. ‘What time was this?’
I made a mental calculation. ‘Just after two o’clock, I think.’
Audrey made a loud sucking noise of air through her teeth, not unlike the sound my father makes whenever I mention the band I sing with. ‘Trouble is, kid, there’s been a fair old bunch of good-looking young men past this stall the last few days. All panicking over presents for their mums, bless ’em.’
‘He kissed her,’ Wren offered. ‘And then he disappeared.’
‘Ooh, now hold on a tick,’ Sylvia replied, her frost-flushed cheeks reddening further with the mental effort. ‘Come to think of it, there was a young man we noticed kissing a girl.’ Gesturing enthusiastically at me, she added, ‘Turn around, chick!’
I obeyed and the two women engaged in some excited muttering until Sylvia instructed me to turn back.
‘Now, it’s only vague, love, but I do remember something like that happening.’
‘Really? Can you remember anything else? About his face, or whether he gave a name?’
Audrey laughed. ‘Well, you should know, love. You were a lot closer to him than we were.’
It was clear that this was as far as the conversation could go. ‘Well, thank you anyway,’ I replied. Wren was still chatting with Audrey and Sylvia as I began to walk slowly away. I was slightly disappointed by their lack of memory but encouraged by the fact that I obviously hadn’t dreamt the whole thing. Tracing my steps back past the Town Hall and down towards the start of New Street, I tried to piece together my flight from the toy stall.
Footsteps behind me heralded Wren’s arrival and she reached my side, panting slightly, stuffing her hands into her pockets. ‘So, that’s a start, right?’
I smiled. ‘Absolutely. Look, you don’t have to do this, you know.’
‘I know. But now I know you weren’t hallucinating, I’m actually quite excited about the whole thing.’ She nudged me with her shoulder. ‘It’s like something out of a chick-flick, isn’t it? The handsome stranger, the sudden meeting, the kiss that should be accompanied by a Randy Newman score …’
‘Apart from the fact that we have no idea where the leading man is,’ I reminded her, thrilled by the analogy nevertheless.
‘Pah, details. So where next?’
I gazed down the slope of stalls towards a beer bar with strange rotating wooden slats and large polar bear on top. ‘There was a toy stall down that way – that’s what I collided with.’
‘Excellent. And seeing as you more or less demolished the stall, you should be easy to remember.’
Wren has such a way with words sometimes …
I could feel a cold sweat beading around my neck under my scarf as we headed towards the site of yesterday’s second-most mortifying moment. My right arm and shoulder still burned from their sudden meeting with the wooden stall frontage and my cheeks were burning now, too. How had I managed to lose my carefully constructed sense of self-dignity twice in one day, in such spectacular fashion? Inevitably, my thoughts strayed to the first such instance and I felt my heart plummet as the memory of Charlie’s horrified expression returned. If Wren was correct in her assertion that my preoccupation with the handsome stranger was a diversionary tactic to stop me thinking about Charlie, then it wasn’t working very well. Angrily, I shook his face from my mind and turned my attention to the task at hand.
The toy stall was further down New Street than I remembered and I was surprised to see how far the stranger had walked to reach me in the craft market. He must have really wanted to find me. This thought thrilled me. Surely it proved that he was somebody special, that he saw something in me worth chasing after?
When the jumbled pile of plush toys and hand puppets came into view, I braced myself for the abuse bound to flow from the portly male stallholder, but was surprised to see a lanky, bespectacled youth manning the stall instead.
‘I can help you, yes?’ he asked in a broad German accent, his adolescent eyes drinking in every detail of my