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    A Midnight Clear
    A Midnight Clear
    A Midnight Clear
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    A Midnight Clear

    By Debbie McGowan

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    About this ebook

    A story from Boughs of Evergreen: A Holiday Anthology

    A MIDNIGHT CLEAR
    by DEBBIE McGOWAN

    It's a cold, desperate December when a young girl flees home, in search of food, shelter and the real Santa Claus. Stranded in George and Josh's hometown, she discovers that the spirit of Christmas can be found in the most unexpected of places. Includes the story of The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Andersen.

    * * * * *

    ABOUT BOUGHS OF EVERGREEN

    Boughs of Evergreen is a two-volume collection of short stories celebrating the holiday season in all its diversity. Penned by authors from the UK, the USA, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, these are tales of the young and the not-so-young from many different walks of life.

    Themes of family, friendship and romance take readers on a journey through some of the major holidays, both past and present, including Thanksgiving, Advent, St. Lucia Day, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Yule, Christmas and New Year. In each we find at the very least hope, and often love, peace and happiness.

    Proceeds from sales of this anthology will be donated to The Trevor Project. The Trevor Project is the leading national organization [USA] providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBeaten Track Publishing
    Release dateDec 1, 2014
    ISBN9781909192591
    A Midnight Clear
    Author

    Debbie McGowan

    Debbie McGowan is an award-winning author of contemporary fiction that celebrates life, love and relationships in all their diversity. Since the publication in 2004 of her debut novel, Champagne—based on a stage show co-written and co-produced with her husband—she has published many further works—novels, short stories and novellas—including two ongoing series: Hiding Behind The Couch (a literary ‘soap opera’ centring on the lives of nine long-term friends) and Checking Him Out (LGBTQ romance). Debbie has been a finalist in both the Rainbow Awards and the Bisexual Book Awards, and in 2016, she won the Lambda Literary Award (Lammy) for her novel, When Skies Have Fallen: a British historical romance spanning twenty-three years, from the end of WWII to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967. Through her independent publishing company, Debbie gives voices to other authors whose work would be deemed unprofitable by mainstream publishing houses.

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      Book preview

      A Midnight Clear - Debbie McGowan

      Advent

      The train arriving at platform three is the delayed 22:08 service for Manchester Piccadilly, calling at…

      The announcement diminished into the clear, midnight-blue sky, along with the mingled, evaporating breaths of passengers boarding and alighting. Every carriage was crammed full, not a free seat visible through the heat-misted windows. She shuffled forward with her fellow boarders, head down, shoulders pulled in tight, attempting invisibility. If she could just get past the doors, into the warmth. She didn’t even need a seat, and would probably crash out if she did sit, if she could only make it inside.

      Excuse me, love.

      The deep, coarse voice sounded near her left ear. She closed her eyes and sighed, turning and starting to walk away from the train without even looking to see who had spoken. She didn’t need to, as once again the guard shadowed her all the way along the platform, back through the gate and out onto the concourse. She glanced up, her eyelids so heavy, her eyes aching with sleeplessness and the cold. It had never occurred to her before that eyeballs could hurt.

      The guard gave her a defeated smile—the same smile he’d offered three times already that evening.

      I’m sorry, love, he said, and he did sound sorry for what it was worth. If you do it again, I’m going to ring the police.

      The thought crossed her mind that it wouldn’t be so bad if they did come and take her away to a cell. She could rest and it would be warm. But it was too dangerous.

      And a Merry Christmas to you as well, she muttered in spite, although she was too exhausted to properly follow through with the sentiment. Instead, she adjusted the straps of her rucksack and trudged out of the train station, onto the wide main road, the bitter wind battering her side with such force that the earache was instant. She turned her back to the gust and walked on. Tomorrow was another day, with different staff on different shifts, she knew. She’d been travelling this way for three weeks now—hop on a train and stay on it for as long as she could, get off, throw away the fare-evasion notice, wait for another train, hope she didn’t get caught before she made it on board or else it was another night in another doorway, bus shelter or, if she got lucky, a bin shed. The ones behind restaurants were the best, because then there would be food.

      This town was deathly quiet, with not much still open—a fast-food place, a pub, an old-fashioned cinema with people streaming out in a warm blast of popcorn-scented air. She slowed a little as she passed, absorbing the heat and the smell. How long since she’d eaten? Not since Blackpool, and that was two days ago, maybe three. She couldn’t remember anymore. Her brain didn’t seem to want to work, but she kept trying to think, working backwards, retracing the places, the people, all now blurring into one. She stopped and pulled the tattered paper wad from her pocket. Yes: two days. Blackpool was where she lost her pencil.

      She moved off again carefully, the numbness in her feet now spreading up her legs, a cold, biting numbness rather than the sort that obliterates all feeling. With her next step, her left knee buckled, and she pushed her foot down, bracing against the pain. She needed to stop walking for a while, but where? Shop doorways had bars across them, and there were no bus shelters. Around the back of the fast-food restaurant, she could see them, the bins, a man in black-and-white chef trousers dumping steamy rubbish.

      Three weeks on the street had made her senses keen, and she could smell it from where she stood. Wonderful, unmistakeable combination of tomato, spicy meats, melted cheese and bread dough. Her legs took her there without her conscious control, and she clung to the locked gates, peering into the now dark yard, the sounds of laughter and conversation coming from behind the closed door. She swallowed back the saliva and blinked hard. No point crying. The tears would only freeze on her face and no-one was there to see them, wipe them dry, kiss them away.

      Back onto the gusty high street, a gritting lorry indiscriminately spat its load, blasting her legs with coarse, salty lumps. A cold one tonight, the women on the train had said, expected to drop to minus four, chance of snow, a white Christmas. There was a time when that phrase would have excited her more than any other. Now it scared her to death because that might just be how it ended. The prospect squeezed at her empty stomach, so empty it was long past rumbling. Her hunger was an excruciating hollowness that burned right through.

      The orange flashing came into focus a moment after the sound of the car horn registered. She stepped back, peering inside the dark saloon car, the driver shaking his head in despair. She didn’t have the energy to apologise, and he didn’t care enough to accept. She waited for him to turn out onto the road, looking to see where he had come from. A petrol station. Better than that, a petrol station with an arrow painted on the edge of the front wall, pointing around the side of the building, and a sign.

      Customer toilet.

      Ask for key.

      She stayed where she was, watching the driver of the only car on the forecourt, biding her time. He tapped the nozzle, returned it to the pump, and headed inside to pay. She slowly wandered over, waiting near his car until she saw him come out again. She moved off.

      Merry Christmas, Tony, she called to him as he walked past. He stopped and turned back.

      Excuse me?

      She looked at him and faked a laugh. Oh my God. How embarrassing! I thought you were somebody else. Sorry.

      He frowned in puzzlement. No problem. He got back in his car, and she quickly went inside the shop, straight up to the counter. She smiled at the guy on the till and pointed back at the man who had just left.

      Hi. My dad forgot to ask, but I’m desperate. Can I… She crossed her legs and nodded meaningfully in the general direction of the toilet.

      The guy on the till stared at her for a few seconds while he figured out what she meant. Oh! Yeah, sure. He climbed off his stool and unhooked a ring the size of a dinner plate from the wall. He passed it over the counter.

      Thanks, she said and scooted away before he noticed that the man and the car were gone.

      The customer toilet wasn’t much warmer than outside, but it was out of the wind and she could at least sit for a while. No toilet seat either, so it wasn’t even that comfortable, but she honestly didn’t care and leaned back, resting against the cistern, fighting the urge to close her eyes. She reached into her pocket and extracted the wad of paper, clumsily unfolding it and running her numbed, reddened fingers along each row of boxes.

      It didn’t have a chocolate behind each door, reindeer, or a jolly fat man dressed all in red, but right now, this Advent calendar meant more to her than anything else in her possession, and she was so angry to have lost her pencil. She’d even tried stealing one from a newsagent’s, and he was really nice about it—gave her a good telling-off and a Mars bar, but he wouldn’t let her take the pencil.

      She thought back to the beginning—the first of December, sitting on the number 78 bus all the way into the city. She’d remained on it when everyone else got off at the bus station, crouching out of sight until the driver left and went for his break. Later, from the safety of her seat on the daily shopping coach, she had watched him return and scratch his head in confusion, convinced

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