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chaotic rendition of ‘Away in a Manger’.
The soft light cast by their lanterns gave their faces a radiance and a solemnity that was timeless. Except for the odd headphone wire that hung down from under their hats, they could have been children from any century. After they had finished, all fifteen of them shuffled in for mince pies and little star-shaped chocolates and then shuffled out again, being very careful not to knock into the glass baubles and candles that lined the shelves in the shop. Carrie put a ten-pound note in their bucket and they moved on up the road, lanterns swinging, pushing each other and giggling. Jen watched Carrie’s face as she looked at the departing children.
    â€˜How you doing?’ she asked, shutting the door after them and linking her arm through Carrie’s arm.
    â€˜I’m fine,’ said Carrie. ‘Really. I always look for his face when I see a group of children. I probably always will. It’s a kind of reflex now. I look at children two or three years older than he was when he went and it gives me an idea of how he might look now, how tall and stuff.’
    â€˜It’s hard to imagine someone getting older when you can’t see them. Those age progression images that you see on the TV news always look really strange,’ said Jen.
    â€˜I imagine the parents looking at the picture a computer has generated of their child, and thinking, “I would never have done her hair like that” or, “I wouldn’t have put her in that blouse”. It must be terrible to see an approximate child and know that’s all you are ever going to see,’ said Carrie, and Jen saw her clench herself against the words. The pain was always there, waiting to launch itself at her.
    â€˜Anyway, it makes me happier, not sadder to see children having fun and doing all the things they should be doing,’ Carrie said, moving around the shop, straightening the clothes on the rails and re-stacking items that had fallen out of place.
    At six they shut up shop and Jen went home to ‘soak my feet and have a bloody big glass of red wine’. Carrie placed more orders, looked through some catalogues she had been sent and totted up the day’s impressive takings. It was eight before she finally left the shop. When she unlocked her bike, she discovered that the back wheel had developed a puncture. Cursing the rip-off merchant who had had the audacity to sell her a bike with such worn rubber tyres, she started to push it home along the narrow streets. The air smelt of coal fires, once the fuel of the railway workers who used to live in these small terraces. Now of course, most of the houses had underfloor heating and shiny, wall-mounted radiators – real coal fires were simply a fashionable accessory, not a method for keeping warm. A couple walked past, sharing a bag of chips with two wooden forks. They looked so happy, so carefree in their matching hats, like another species thought Carrie bitterly, and the chain fell off her bike.
    â€˜Fucking. Fucking. Hell,’ she said and gave it a good kick.
    â€˜What’s that bike ever done to you?’ asked an amused voice behind her and Carrie turned round to see the man from across the road walking towards her. She made the kind of small coughing noise that was shorthand for, ‘Yes, ha, ha, very funny, now leave me alone,’ but he stopped and surveyed the offending machine.
    â€˜Ah, the chain’s off,’ he announced. She bit back her impulse to congratulate him on his keen powers of observation and started wheeling her bike along the pavement. He fell into step beside her.
    â€˜I don’t think I have ever properly introduced myself,’ he said. ‘I’m Oliver Gladhill. Carrie, isn’t it? Mrs Evans at number eight told me your name. I was going to come round, so I’m glad I’ve bumped into you now. I’m having a party for Christmas. I’ve been in the