Chapter Sixteen The Gift of Christmas

Chapter sixteen

The Gift of Christmas

Jayden forced himself out of bed on Christmas Eve.

Forced on his smile.

Forced himself onto the dreaded tube ride back to Five Mall.

He didn’t feel very festive. Even in the last couple of years, when he’d been alone at Christmas, he’d at least enjoyed the night before. When party season was in full swing. It was the day itself that was miserable. Not this year, though. And as he entered through the doors of the shopping centre and met with eerie silence, he discovered his prep had all been for nothing.

Stripped of the usual lights and welcoming cheer, the grotto was a shell of its former self. Not even the ridiculously loud burst of Christmas songs blasting from the speakers were playing. No merriment whatsoever. The vacuum of the vacant mall was like a replica of his insides.

Cold. Empty. Hollow.

Merry fucking Christmas.

“Oh, Jayden, there you are!” Emily appeared from inside the grotto carrying two stuffed bin bags. “Thanks for coming in. I would have called, but hoped you could do something with all this.” She gestured to the bags along with a cardboard box filled with candy canes. The ones he’d been giving out to the children.

“We’re closed, then?” Jayden stated the obvious. Bin bags. They always spelt ‘fuck off’.

“Afraid so.” Emily pushed back her hair. “I called Rick, but he didn’t answer. Left a message.”

“He’s gone home. Yorkshire.” One hundred million miles away.

“Ah, I see. Perhaps it’s for the best. I had a good old chat with Marianne, his agent, last night. Got all the deets of what happened.” Emily pinched Jayden’s arm, which he didn’t feel through the padded layers of his puffer coat. “I’m sorry, love. Marianne said it was all unfounded. No evidence for what’s been insinuated. But the commotion yesterday grew wings and spread. Someone uploaded a video about the whole thing. Terrible PR. We had cancellation after cancellation. We’ve had to do a statement. Management told me to shut down.”

“It’s Christmas Eve ,” Jayden said as if that might change things. “How can we shut Santa’s grotto on Christmas Eve ?”

“Not just the grotto.” Emily tilted her neck in that exaggerated sympathetic way people did when delivering bad news that didn’t affect them in the catastrophic way it would him. Like when he was told it wasn’t working out. “The whole mall.”

“What?” Jayden flinched. “Until when ?”

“Permanent.”

“All because of a rumour about Rick?”

“Not just because of that. We knew it was going to happen. The decent shops have all pulled out of contracts for next year. Looks like the car park is going to happen after all. Contract’s all signed. Bulldozing starts in the New Year.”

“What about me? My job? The cleaning one?”

“I’m sorry, Jayden.” She delved into her inside jacket pocket and produced an envelope, handing to over. “Here’s your P45. And a reference. Glowing one.” She smiled as if that would soften the blow. It didn’t.. “We’ve paid you direct into your bank today for the grotto stint and an extra week to apologise for the…redundancy.”

One extra week? That wouldn’t even get him to the New Year.

He stuffed the envelope into his pocket and couldn’t find any parting words. He’d been working for Emily for over a year, but somehow it wasn’t her, the mall, the job, or the money he would miss.

It was Rick.

He pulled down his beanie and went to walk away, but Emily grabbed his arm. “Did you want to…” she gestured to the two full bags of wrapped presents and the box of sweets. “Take these? Thought you might know somewhere who could make use of them? Otherwise they’ll be going on the skips arriving outside any minute now.” She checked her watch.

Jayden couldn’t shake the bitter irony of it all. Beautifully wrapped presents intended for excitable children believing they were from Father Christmas, tossed carelessly into a skip on the day the magic was supposed to happen. He thought of the countless kids, like him, who’d grown up in poverty or in care homes, waking up to nothing on Christmas morning, while the fat cats of Five Mall discarded gifts like rubbish, joy so carelessly thrown away.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can do something with them.”

So he did.

And for what felt like the millionth time, he clutched the handles of a bin liner filled with things people didn’t want.

Lugging them on public transport all the way to North Woolwich via tube, DLR and bus wasn’t ideal. But there was only ever one place he’d go, and his return to Rainbow House, one of the independent children’s homes he’d been in from age fourteen to eighteen before being kicked out once he’d become a legal adult, filled him with apprehension. It wasn’t exactly like coming home. There weren’t any parents behind the black metal gates waiting for his arrival with milk and cookies. All there was were kids like him with nowhere else to go and a rotating set of paid staff looking after them.

Still the closest thing to a home he had.

He dumped the two bags and box of sweets by his feet to press the buzzer. Despite the building housing teenagers, the wider independent company that ran the business looked after children of all ages at various sites across the city. He scoffed at the word business , as if abandoned children were a means to make a profit. But Jayden wanted to visit this one. Because it’s where he’d grown up. Learnt independence. Discovered real loneliness. Made friends. Siblings, of sorts.

He glanced up at the imposing brick structure that had once been both a sanctuary and a prison, apprehension stirring his insides. He hadn’t been back here for a while. Certainly not on Christmas Eve when the teens behind those walls suffered a fate that wasn’t their fault—Christmas was just another cold day in December to them.

And to him.

“Hello?” Lisa Green’s familiar voice washed over Jayden like a damp cloth over a dirty child’s mouth.

“Hey, Lisa. It’s Jayden. Jayden Collins.”

“Oh my days, Jayden! Come in!” She buzzed, the gate unlocking, and Jayden gathered up the bags and box to clamber his way up the path to the front door, which opened for his arrival.

Lisa was the closest thing the children inside had to a regular parent. On the payroll, she was technically an employee. But she exuded a warmth that felt like she wasn’t there just to pay her bills. She cared. The money wasn’t great, so Jayden assumed she remained here for the kids she helped, as well as it giving her a steady income.

“Jayden Collins!” She beamed, arms wide, her heavy-set body like a welcoming pillow for him to be coddled within. “Our star in the making!”

Jayden dumped the stuff on the doorstep to walk into her arms. She squeezed him, rocking him from side to side how he’d expect his mum might want to. One day. When she remembered how she still had a son. Lisa let him go. As his mum had done years before.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Thought you might make use of these.” He gestured to the bags of wrapped toys and the box of candy canes. “Not sure this lot will want them, but maybe the little ones next door will? Came from the Santa’s grotto I’ve been working at.”

“Oh, yes! Aaron mentioned. Come in.” She beckoned him inside. “They’re all having a FIFA tournament in the common room. Welcome to join in. I’ll make you a nice cup of hot chocolate, eh? Marshmallows? Like old times?”

Jayden stepped inside the familiar hallway, not much different to his Halls of Residence, except the kids themselves had cleaned the communal area downstairs courtesy of a daily rota. The noticeboard still had the same old instructions that had been there when he’d roamed here—what to do in an emergency, the curfew times, important phone numbers. As well as the various posters detailing local events and activities for kids in care to sign up to. University open days, clubs, charity events.

To his right was the communal living room where a few of the teens gathered on sofas and bean bags, controllers in hand tapping away to play FIFA on the wide screen TV. It looked almost normal. As if they were a bunch of mates playing video games together. Except, Jayden knew, it wasn’t like that. Everyone in there was trying to forget they had no family to spend the holidays with. Instead, they had to make do with each other and the video game donated by some business as part of their corporate responsibility, along with the shitty tree and handful of gifts underneath bought by the local authority.

Jayden slipped out of his coat and gloves, slapping them on the back of the sofa as he watched for a while, a smile growing. No one noticed him. He didn’t know all of them. Kids at this place came and went, and he was two and a half years gone. But Aaron was there, right in the middle, lounging on a beanbag, pink hair brighter than the broken fairy lights on the tree. He’d be leaving here soon, too. They’d find him somewhere else like they had Jayden, shunting him into the real world to cope whether he was ready or not. And he wouldn’t be. Like Jayden hadn’t been. Aaron might come across as someone who could handle himself, but Jayden knew beneath the layers of toughened skin, lay a vulnerable boy.

Because he was one, too.

After a while, he grabbed a load of candy canes from the box and rained them across the room. “Merry Christmas!”

“Jayden!” The few he knew leapt from their seats to hug him. Expect for Aaron. He was way too cool for that. Instead, giving a nod of recognition. The others gathered up the sweets, some to chomp into right then, others to sneak into pockets for when they needed a sugar fix to get them through the lonely nights.

Lisa came in with trays of hot chocolate and marshmallows and the kids grappled for them, Jayden joining them all for their Christmas Eve shenanigans. It was nice to be part of something for a while. He played FIFA despite him being rubbish at it. Chatted to the others about the benefits of going to university—Lisa’s insistence. He was even allowed to join them for dinner, which two of the girls were cooking, and he gorged on spaghetti bolognese as if he hadn’t eaten in days. By the evening, many drifted off to bed, leaving Jayden in the living room alone with Aaron.

“Did you apply?” Jayden asked as they sat side by side on the sofa, Aaron twirling a candy cane in his hand.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He nudged his knee with his own. “Hope it works out for ya.”

Aaron nodded, scraping black nail varnish from his thumb. “Honestly, can’t wait to get out of here and start living on my own terms. When I’m eighteen, I can make my own decisions. Maybe get some answers.”

“Careful with those answers. They’re not always the ones you want.”

“Don’t I fucking know it.” He looked Jayden in the eye. “What are you doing back here, anyway? Not the bullshit about delivering presents and these.” He held up the sweets. “It’s Christmas Eve , man. Shouldn’t you be out getting laid?”

Jayden flopped his head back on the sofa. “I’m starting to believe what they say about us abandoned kids.”

“What’s that?”

“That we’re destined to always be alone.”

“Attachment disorder.” Aaron bumped his shoulder to his. “No fucker gets past that.”

Jayden held his gaze, but Lisa opening the front door to let someone in ripped them apart. They both twisted to peer over the top of the sofa at the incoming.

“Harry, you almost didn’t make it.” Lisa tutted. “You missed dinner.”

“Ate at Devon’s,” Harry said as he stepped into the hallway, ripping off his coat hood to display dishevelled dark hair.

“Told you,” Aaron whispered to Jayden. “Full on transitioned.”

“What’s up, Harry?” Jayden held up a hand in a wave.

Harry grunted, then leapt up the stairs opposite as Lisa came to the doorway. “Curfew, Jayden. Sorry, love. You know the rules.”

Jayden slapped a hand on Aaron’s knee. “Take care of yourself, A.”

“Always do.”

Jayden then hefted up from the sofa and out to the front door. “Merry Christmas, Lisa.”

“You too, love. Have a good one.”

Jayden didn’t want to disappoint her and tell her he’d be alone, as usual, so he used that fake smile he’d perfected and stepped out into the biting air. A fancy car waited on the road beyond the gates, engine idling with the window wound down and a blond bloke, around the same age as Rick, popped his head out.

“Oi, Dev! Stop flirtin’!” he hollered to a boy in the shadows, glancing up at a window on the top floor. “We gotta get back for Bea.”

Jayden recognised the kid. Devon . Same age as Aaron and Harry, and had come into the home when Jayden had been leaving. Might have even taken his room. He was a footballer. Had potential to be going somewhere and by the looks of the car he bundled into right then, he’d landed himself a decent foster home to ensure his success. The plush car drove off, swathing Jayden in darkness, and Jayden zipped up his coat, shoved on his beanie and made his way out of the gates toward the bus stop. He waited in solitude for the night bus that was also devoid of people. Everyone else was somewhere else. With friends, families and loved ones, where children looked up at the sky hoping for a sign of Santa’s sleigh.

And for some ridiculous reason, Jayden looked up, too. Maybe he’d find his Santa.

No such luck as the bus drew in and he boarded it, head slumped on the window as it navigated the roads lit up with Christmas lights. He alighted the bus at Piccadilly Circus, the nearest he could get to his campus. The place was awash with the usual nightlife in London, added with festive cheer. Jayden wandered aimlessly through the backstreets. Maybe he could pop in for a drink somewhere. A dance. He had money in his bank. He could go to Inferno, see in Christmas with the other loners.

But he stopped outside an ornate, nineteenth century theatre adorned with a poster advertising the show going on inside: A Christmas Carol . Scrooge played by none other than Derek Thompson. Jayden inhaled an intrepid breath. His blood boiling at the man made up to be Ebenezer Scrooge because it was the man beneath the make-up who needed to be visited by a morality ghost or two. Derek Thompson needed his own wake up call. So with his fists clenched, Jayden skipped around to the stage door, waiting in the shadows until the bitter end to do just that.

A few others joined him, eager for the cast to emerge and sign their programmes, and Derek came out. Ever the star. The ingratiating lead, taking pictures and signing autographs, silken charm not fading until his admirers dispersed and left Jayden the only one there.

“Would you like me to sign something?” Derek asked, holding out his hand.

“You can sign an oath.”

“Excuse me?” Derek retracted his hand.

“You can tell the truth. About what really happened between you and Rick Thornton.”

Derek glanced around. “Do I know you?”

“We’ve met.” Jayden cocked his head. “But I doubt you remember. I was an elf and your wife was screaming obscenities at my Santa.”

“I think you have me mistaken for someone else. Merry Christmas—”

“Madison and Morgan. I’ll bet they’re looking forward to Santa’s visit tonight? Or have the lies you told your wife to protect your affair ruined that for them, too?”

Derek inched forward, dropping his voice to threatening levels. “I don’t know what you think you know—”

“I know you fooled him. You made Rick think you were in a relationship. And your lies caused him to lose everything. I don’t see how you can think that’s fair.”

“Life isn’t fair, kid. Life at the top, even less so.” Derek’s sneer dripped with condescension. “I hand that to you as a lesson for your budding acting career.”

“Fuck you.”

Derek laughed. “Feisty.” He ogled him up and down. “Can see why Rick likes you.”

“You’re an arsehole. A cheating fuck of a husband. And an even worse father. I hope you have a miserable fucking Christmas and may the New Year bring you penance.”

Derek saluted him. “Give my love to Rick, won’t you?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Derek’s tone changed, suddenly smooth, almost conciliatory. “The world of acting is ruthless. If you want to make it, you’ll learn that. You step on toes—it’s unavoidable. Especially when people put them right in front of you to trip you up.”

“Those toes belonged to a decent man. A great actor with a career you ruined for self-preservation. A man with feelings .”

“I didn’t set out to deceive him. If he hadn’t come to my dressing room with that stupid fucking key on a chain, none of this would have happened.”

“It’s his fault, then? Stupid Rick for falling in love with the character you played for him.”

Derek studied him, as if seeing him for the first time. A flicker of respect passed over his face before he shrugged, maintaining the cool detachment that had enabled him to climb the ladder Rick held for him by keeping his mouth shut.

“He’ll find something else,” he said. “He’ll land a role and people will forget.”

“That’s what he was doing until your wife ruined it. Now he’s gone. Given up. Fled back home.”

“Then the Yorkie villager isn’t cut out for the city life anymore.” Derek shrugged, backing away to the safety of the theatre. “That’s not my fault.” With that, he disappeared behind the stage door and it clanked shut, shunting Jayden into darkness, fierce breaths visible in the bitter air.

Drained by the confrontation, Jayden marched through the streets adorned with festive cheer filtering from every pub, club, and restaurant. Not even the glittering lights above could wipe off the residue of anger clinging to him like a snake’s teeth searing into his skin. If Derek Thomspon was who he had to be to reach the top, then maybe he didn’t want to. Success wasn’t worth chasing if he had to sacrifice integrity. Maybe there was another path for him?

But the path he followed then was back to loneliness, and he pushed through the main entrance to his residential block, the stark fluorescent lighting slow to switch on. He blinked a few times to adjust to the darkness and retrieved his key from his pocket as the familiar sound of silence grew more painful tonight than it ever had. He’d spent two other Christmases here alone, but somehow this year’s solitude felt heavier. More foreboding.

Then a figure by his room door stumbling up from the cold floor had Jayden’s pulse racing. He gripped his keys, poking the metal spokes between his fingers in case he had to launch a counterattack. It’d be a crazy burglar to rob a student’s digs during the holiday season. Nothing here except him. But he wouldn’t put it past those who needed shelter for an evening and he held his breath as the lights came on one by one and illuminated them both.

“Rick?” Jayden’s heart pounded. Was he seeing things now? Was he the one being visited by ghosts?

“ Jayden …” Rick stumbled closer, voice weak as if fearful of his reaction.

“What are you…? How did you…? I thought you were in Yorkshire?”

“I was. I drove back.”

“What? Why ?”

“I realised I hadn’t given you your Christmas present.”

Jayden’s lips parted. “My present?” He glanced around Rick to the empty floor. No bag. No wrapped box. No key on a chain. Not even a bin liner. “What is it?”

Rick took a step forward, cupped Jayden’s face in his gloved hands, and kissed him. “Me.”