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The rain floated down outside—a fine, gentle, misty rain that clung to eyelashes and soaked through socks in moments—and inside in his shop, Jack Daly scowled fiercely at the activity across the street.
Festive Children’s Book Shop!the banner screamed in garish red.
Closing Christmas Eve!
Jack’s scowl deepened.
People rushed down the cobbled alley, obscuring Jack’s view in flashes of jewel-coloured coats, black umbrellas, armfuls of shopping bags. The terrible weather clearly hadn’t put anyone off coming out to get some Christmas shopping done.
The bell above the door jingled and Jack forced himself to paste on his professionalsmile as a woman clattered in with three children in tow.
“We’re just looking,” she said, warning them and flashing Jack an apologetic grin.
The kids were already running away from her and if they had heard, they were pretending they hadn’t.
The Magic Toy Shop had been open for a little over four years now, and Jack had a solid business plan of slow and steady growth. The shop was nestled down one of Bath’s twisting cobbled streets, which gave the whole area a quietly magical feel, and at this time of year, when the Christmas lights were strung between the buildings, the magic was dialled up a little higher.
The kids seemed initially less interested in the toys as they were in the slide and the treehouse—something that was vitally important when Jack had been drawing up the designs for the shop. The treehouse, and the slide, and the crawl-spaces between the shelves that kids loved to hide in. The antique wardrobe with the false back, where it was practically required to push aside the faux-fur coats to get to the next room and look at the rows and rows of fairy dolls and ugly gnomes for sale.
It was as much an experience as it was a shop, and Jack had plans, damn it, for a second-floor bookshop next year.
And now this… this…amateuracross the street was going to throw a spanner in his plans and Jack thought he was entirely justified in being annoyed by that.
“We’ll just be five minutes,” the woman said, and Jack forced himself to pay attention to his customers. “They’ve been begging to come here since we got into town.”
“It’s fine,” Jack said with a smile, waving away her apologies. “I didn’t put a slide in just to turn away kids who want to play on it.”
“I’ll be back on Wednesday,” she said in a low voice. “To get the last of the shopping done when they’re in school.”
“If you need me to put anything aside for you just let me know,” he replied. “You can send me a message on Instagram if that helps. I can arrange for home delivery, too.”
“Why would anyone want home delivery?” she said, shaking the water from her cropped brown hair. “I want to go down the slide.”
Jack laughed. “You’re welcome to.”
“Kids!” she yelled, turning away from Jack and towards the squabbling which had broken out around whose turn it was. “Time go!”
The kids made the appropriate protests but trudged obligingly towards the door. The woman turned back and grinned at Jack over her shoulder.
See you Wednesday,she mouthed at him. Then, to the kids, “Come on, we’ll have a look in the book shop before we go home.”
Jack’s returning smile turned into a scowl.
It was practically theft, was what it was. He’d established this shop and built his presence here. He’d done the outreach and worked with the children’s hospital in Bristol and painstakingly built his social media presence until The Magic Toy Shop had been listed as one of the top five toy shops in the UK by the Guardian.
Instead of moping, Jack forced himself to get up from behind the counter (polished oak—his granddad had come out of retirement to make it for him bespoke) and tidy up the display of stuffed animals and their adorably quaint matching clothes that he imported from a small business in Romania.
That had been part of the plan he’d refused to budge on, even when everyone was telling him he needed to move with the trends. The shop wasn’t filled with ‘plastic tat’, as his friends with kids had called it, or whatever was the latest must-have toy of the season. He worked with suppliers from around the world to offer unique or bespoke or limited edition toys that you couldn’t just order online for half the price. The shop was a lifestyle brand, and deliberately so.
The sun set early these days, but the steady stream of customers lasted right up until he closed the doors at six—later than usual for December, so people could stop in after work for some last minute shopping. Some came in with the intention of dropping a few hundred pounds on Christmas gifts, some others just wanted to play in the treehouse, and both types of customer was fine by him. As far as Jack was concerned, footfall was footfall. He’d lost count of how many times someone had warned a child that they weren’t buying anything today, and the kid had left with one of Jack’s distinctive black card bags with the black ribbon drawstrings. He’d joked plenty of times that the magic of the shop was the ability to change parents’ minds.
Once the displays were tidy and everything was ready for the next morning, Jack started to close down. His evening routine was quiet and familiar, flicking off the lights, transferring the receipts to the safe, pulling down the shutters and locking them.
The drizzle had stopped, thank God, but the cobbles were still slippery and Jack grabbed the gold door handle as he stepped outside to make sure he didn’t end up on his arse.
“Hey, are you okay?”
Jack forced himself to look up.
