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“Oliver. Nice to meet you. Am I actually helping here? I can just get out of your way.”
“No, no way, we need the help,” Russell said, scratching his impressively bushy beard. “How are you with ladders?”
“Fine.”
“Great.”
Oliver was directed to a group that were stringing the greenery from various points along the road, tying it to the buildings with twine threaded through existing, hidden hooks.
“Do you do this every year?” Oliver asked, passing the next bunch of pine branches and eucalyptus and mistletoe up to Russell.
“Yep. Usually in time for the start of Advent, but we’re a couple of days late this year,” Russell said, aiming his head torch at the hook in the eaves of the building. “There’s a lot of committee planning that goes into this.”
“I can imagine,” Oliver said with a laugh.
“A couple of the guys that usually help us out couldn’t make it this year, and we prioritise decorating the churches. So the street had to wait.”
“Do you have anything else to do after this? I might be able to help out.”
Russell grinned. “I’ll get your number before we’re done.”
Shoppers still milled through the street while the team were stringing up the decorations, stopping to look up at the deft work to turn sprigs of greenery into beautiful garlands along the edges of the buildings.
It looked beautiful, and smelledincredible.
To get all the buildings decorated took a few hours, and the number of people walking past slowed to a trickle as the lights in the shops slowly went out, one by one. After an hour or so Oliver noticed Mr. Daly from the toy shop working with the red-headed man who’d been questioning Oliver about the bookshop the other day. They knew each other?
There wasn’t time to dwell on that; Russell moved quickly, clearly comfortable with what needed to be done to get the decorations up.
The air shifted when things were almost done. The old ladies were clucking and cooing their approval and making plans to get home before it got colder and darker. The teams who had been doing the actual work were making noises about a pub.
“Coming?” Russell asked.
There was no reason for Oliver to say no.
He followed the group to one of Bath’s older pubs, one with low beams and a broad selection of real ale on tap, and let himself be coaxed into a corner booth with a pint of ale in his hand. It wasn’t what he’d normally drink, but it tasted pretty good.
The pub was decorated too, though far less tastefully than the BID committee’s efforts. Shiny foil decorations were strung from the ceiling, from the bar, doorways, and multicoloured twinkly lights lit up every window. A battered tree slumped drunkenly in one corner, topped with an equally inebriated angel with wings made from paper bar mats.
Mariah Carey warbled from the jukebox and no one seemed to mind.
This kind of camaraderie was slightly foreign to Oliver and it didn’t take him long to decide he liked it. People squeezed into the booth around him, laughing and clutching drinks and piling coats on the backs of chairs.
“What is it you do?” a man with a broad Welsh accent asked, and before Oliver could swallow his beer to reply, someone piped up from behind him.
“He’s aninternationally famousauthor. And illustrator.”
Oliver forced himself to smile and nod. “That about covers it, yeah.”
“Is that right.”
It didn’t seem to Oliver like he was required to answer. He shifted himself around and found himself face to face with Jack Daly.
“Thank you for that.”
Oliver could do spiky and acidic too. It didn’t quite come as naturally to him, but he could when the situation called for it.
“You’re welcome.” Jack smirked.
