The Things We Don’t Ask For

The first letter arrived on a Tuesday, folded into quarters and pushed through the cardboard postbox beside the classroom door.

Dear Father Christmas,

Please can you bring Mrs Bell’s husband back for Christmas because she is very sad and I think she misses him.

Love from Elsie.

P.S. I have been very good except when I kicked Oliver but he kicked me first.

Clara Bell read it twice before sitting down.

Outside, twenty-eight children were attempting to form an orderly queue for afternoon playtime. Somebody was crying because somebody else had stolen their hat. Two boys were arguing over whether penguins had knees. The familiar chaos of a Year Three classroom continued around her, entirely indifferent to the small piece of paper trembling between her fingers.

“Everything alright, Mrs Bell?” asked Louise, her teaching assistant, appearing beside the desk with a packet of tissues and a confiscated plastic dinosaur.

Clara folded the letter.

“Fine, thank you.”

Louise looked at her for a moment. They had worked together for seven years, which was long enough to recognise when fine meant something considerably less encouraging.

“Shall I take them out?”

“Would you mind?”

“Come on, you lot!” Louise called. “Coats on. Anyone without a coat can explain themselves to the frostbite.”

The children stampeded towards the door.

Clara remained at her desk, turning the letter over in her hands.

It had been eleven months since Daniel died.

Eleven months, three weeks and four days, although she had stopped counting aloud sometime around Easter when her sister suggested it wasn’t healthy. She had never explained that she wasn’t deliberately counting. The numbers simply appeared in her head, as naturally as knowing the date or remembering her own birthday.

Daniel had died on the twenty-eighth of December, which Clara considered particularly inconsiderate of him. He had always loved Christmas. He was the sort of man who wore novelty jumpers without irony, bought far too many presents and insisted on making the gravy himself despite being demonstrably terrible at it.

Their last Christmas together had been perfectly ordinary.

She remembered complaining that he had left his wrapping until Christmas Eve. She remembered the argument about whether the potatoes needed another ten minutes. She remembered him falling asleep during the film they watched every year, his hand resting on her knee.

She couldn’t remember what they had talked about over dinner.

That bothered her more than anything.

There ought to have been some indication that it was their last Christmas. A particularly meaningful conversation, perhaps, or some extraordinary moment that she could preserve and revisit. Instead, she had spent most of Christmas morning worrying that the turkey would be dry.

Three days later, a sudden heart attack had ended twenty-three years of marriage.

Clara looked again at Elsie’s letter.

There was something almost unbearably innocent about its certainty. Elsie had identified a problem, considered the available resources and written to the one person who, according to every Christmas film ever made, could accomplish the impossible.

Clara carefully placed the letter in her desk drawer.

She would speak to Elsie tomorrow.

Except tomorrow brought another letter.

Dear Santa,

Mrs Bell used to sing when we did our work but she doesn’t anymore. Can you make her sing again please?

From Oliver.

P.S. Elsie kicked me.

By Friday, there were eleven.

One asked Father Christmas to make Mrs Bell laugh properly instead of doing her teacher laugh. Another requested a new husband, preferably one who liked dogs because Clara frequently mentioned wanting one. A particularly practical child called Archie suggested that Santa might repair the old husband instead, although he acknowledged this could be difficult if the hospital had already buried him.

Clara found that one at half past four, after the children had gone home.

She laughed.

It escaped before she could stop it, a sudden, ridiculous bark of laughter that startled her so much she covered her mouth.

Then she cried.

She cried because Archie had written repair in his very best handwriting. She cried because her husband had been reduced to something a competent mechanic might fix. She cried because eleven children had noticed she was unhappy despite her determined efforts to convince them otherwise.

Most of all, she cried because she had laughed.

She had almost forgotten what it felt like.

“Perhaps you should tell them,” Louise suggested the following Monday.

Clara was cutting stars out of gold cardboard. She had been cutting stars for forty minutes and was beginning to suspect the entire education system could collapse beneath the weight of unnecessary seasonal crafts.

“Tell them what?”

“That Father Christmas can’t bring people back.”

Clara stopped cutting.

“They know that.”

“Do they?”

“They’re seven, Louise. Not stupid.”

“Nobody said they were stupid.”

Clara sighed and put down her scissors.

“I don’t want them thinking they can fix me.”

Louise pulled up one of the miniature classroom chairs, which creaked ominously beneath her.

“Maybe they aren’t trying to fix you. Maybe they just want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

Louise raised an eyebrow.

“Sometimes,” Clara amended.

“Well, that’s a start.”

Clara returned to her stars.

The truth was that she had no idea how to explain grief to children without frightening them. Death had been an abstract concept when she first started teaching, something that happened to elderly relatives and unfortunate goldfish. She had once comforted a little boy whose hamster had died by explaining that remembering someone was a way of keeping them close.

She had believed it then.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

Remembering Daniel was easy. Forgetting him, even briefly, was what frightened her. Every ordinary moment threatened to become an act of betrayal. If she enjoyed a television programme, she immediately wondered whether Daniel would have liked it. If she bought something nice for herself, she felt guilty that he wasn’t there to enjoy it. She had stopped making his favourite meals because cooking them for one seemed almost insulting.

Christmas was proving particularly difficult.

She had bought a small artificial tree, then left it in its box.

The decorations were still in the loft.

His stocking remained folded in the cupboard.

She had no idea what to do with it.

“Mrs Bell?”

Clara looked up.

Elsie stood in the doorway, clutching a piece of paper.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Are you cross with us?”

“Whatever for?”

Elsie examined her shoes.

“Because we wrote the letters.”

Clara felt her stomach tighten.

“Of course I’m not cross.”

“Oliver said you might be because Father Christmas can’t actually do that.”

“Oliver’s quite right.”

Elsie nodded solemnly.

“We know.”

Clara waited.

“We just thought it was worth asking.”

There was nothing Clara could say to that.

On the second Friday of December, the school held its annual Christmas jumper day.

Clara wore a red jumper with a reindeer on the front. Its nose lit up whenever she pressed a button concealed in the sleeve, although the battery was dying and the effect was less Rudolph guiding a sleigh and more emergency warning light in a disreputable nightclub.

Daniel had bought it for her.

“That’s a brilliant jumper!” Oliver announced as she greeted the class.

“Thank you.”

“Does the nose work?”

“Occasionally.”

“Like my dad’s car.”

Clara smiled.

It was the first time she had worn anything Daniel had bought her since the funeral. She had spent fifteen minutes standing in front of the wardrobe that morning, holding the jumper against herself, wondering whether she could bear the memories attached to it.

Then she had put it on.

Nothing terrible had happened.

The world had continued turning.

By lunchtime, the reindeer had received so many enthusiastic demonstrations that its nose had finally given up altogether.

“He’s dead,” Oliver announced.

“Oliver,” Louise warned.

“What? He is.”

Clara looked down at the dark little bulb.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose we’ll have to remember him fondly.”

The children giggled.

She found herself smiling long after they had returned to their sandwiches.

That afternoon, the class began rehearsing for the Christmas concert. Clara had chosen a simple song about stars, partly because it was lovely and partly because it contained no references to snowmen, which she had endured quite enough of during her teaching career.

The children were dreadful.

They sang at different speeds, frequently forgot the words and seemed collectively determined to finish every verse in a different key.

Clara stopped them halfway through.

“Right. Shall we try that again?”

A chorus of groans filled the classroom.

“With feeling this time, please. Not like you’re being held hostage.”

“What’s hostage?” asked Archie.

“Something your parents will understand when they hear this concert.”

Louise snorted from the back of the room.

They tried again.

This time Clara sang along.

She didn’t notice until the second verse, when Elsie turned around and smiled at her.

Then she noticed something else.

Every child in the room was watching her.

“Eyes on the board, please,” Clara said, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

They obediently turned back.

But several were smiling.

The trouble began with the Christmas tree.

Every year, Clara’s father had insisted that Christmas decorations should be brought down from the loft on the first Sunday of December. Her mother had always complained that it was too early, then spent the entire afternoon rearranging the ornaments until she was satisfied.

Clara had continued the tradition after getting married.

Daniel had never been particularly useful at decorating. He was good at carrying boxes and reaching high branches, but possessed no understanding of colour coordination and once hung an enormous glittering angel upside down.

She had loved him for it.

Now, on the third Sunday of December, Clara stood in her hallway staring at the loft hatch.

The stepladder was beneath it.

She had been standing there for nearly twenty minutes.

Her phone rang.

It was her sister, Rachel.

“Have you done your tree yet?”

“No.”

“Clara.”

“Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting anything. I’m asking.”

“Then no.”

There was a pause.

“Do you want me to come over?”

Clara looked up at the hatch.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s alright. I’ll come anyway.”

Rachel arrived forty minutes later with two coffees, a packet of mince pies and the sort of determined expression Clara remembered from childhood whenever somebody had stolen her sister’s bicycle.

They brought down the decorations together.

Inside the first box were the usual baubles, fairy lights and a wooden star that had belonged to their grandmother.

Inside the second was Daniel’s Christmas stocking.

Clara picked it up.

It was green velvet, embroidered with his name in crooked gold thread. She had made it during their first Christmas together, when they were young and broke and thought homemade presents were terribly romantic.

There was a hole near the heel where a chocolate orange had once stretched the fabric.

Rachel watched her.

“You don’t have to put it up.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“I know.”

Clara ran her thumb over the embroidery.

“I don’t know where he goes now.”

Rachel frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“At Christmas. Where does he go? His stocking, his place at the table, his presents. Everything’s still here except him.”

Rachel sat beside her on the floor.

“I don’t think there’s a rule.”

“There ought to be.”

“Probably. You always did like rules.”

Clara gave a small laugh.

They sat quietly for a while.

Eventually Rachel reached for the box of decorations.

“Shall we start with the lights?”

Clara nodded.

They put up the tree.

They hung the baubles.

They placed the wooden star at the top, although Rachel had to stand on a chair and Clara spent the entire operation threatening to ring an ambulance.

When they finished, the sitting room glowed with familiar colours.

It was beautiful.

Clara hated it.

She loved it.

She wished Daniel could see it.

That evening, after Rachel had gone home, she took the green stocking from the box and hung it beside her own.

Then she sat on the sofa and cried until she fell asleep.

The final week of term arrived in a frenzy of glitter, glue and increasingly desperate attempts to maintain the curriculum.

Clara had abandoned any ambition of teaching long division before Christmas. Instead, she set the children the task of writing instructions for making gingerbread biscuits, which at least involved measurements and the possibility of something edible.

By Wednesday, the classroom smelled of cinnamon and burnt sugar.

“Mrs Bell?” asked Elsie, as Clara helped her scrape an unfortunate-looking biscuit from its baking tray.

“Yes?”

“Do you think Father Christmas reads every letter?”

“I expect he tries.”

“Even the ones that ask for impossible things?”

Clara hesitated.

“Especially those, perhaps.”

Elsie considered this.

“Good.”

“Why?”

“Because we wrote another one.”

Clara looked around.

The entire class had gone suspiciously quiet.

“What sort of letter?”

Oliver raised his hand.

“It’s a secret.”

“Then why have you told me about it?”

He lowered his hand.

“Oh.”

Clara laughed.

“Well, whatever it says, I’m sure Father Christmas will do his best.”

She thought no more of it until Friday afternoon.

The Christmas concert had been a triumph, largely because nobody had fallen off the stage and the audience had applauded enthusiastically despite the occasional questionable musical interpretation.

Parents had collected their children, the classroom had been tidied and the last of the gingerbread biscuits had been distributed.

Clara was preparing to leave when Louise appeared in the doorway.

“There’s something you need to see.”

“What have they broken?”

“Nothing.”

“That sounds unlikely.”

“Come with me.”

Louise led her into the school hall.

The lights were off except for the Christmas tree in the corner, its coloured bulbs reflecting across the polished floor.

Beneath it sat a large cardboard box.

Clara frowned.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

Inside were twenty-eight envelopes.

Each had been decorated with drawings of stars, snowflakes, reindeer and the occasional dinosaur. Every envelope bore Clara’s name.

She opened the first.

Dear Mrs Bell,

I like it when you read stories because you do all the voices. I hope you have a nice Christmas.

Love from Thomas.

The second contained a photograph of a gingerbread man with a particularly alarming expression.

Dear Mrs Bell,

This is for you because you said your husband liked gingerbread. Mine looks funny but he tastes nice.

Love Archie.

Clara smiled through sudden tears.

The third was from Oliver.

Dear Mrs Bell,

Thank you for helping me when I couldn’t do my maths. I hope you have a good Christmas. Sorry about the reindeer.

Love Oliver.

P.S. I didn’t break it on purpose.

She opened another.

Then another.

Some contained drawings. Others held small handmade gifts: a paper snowflake, a bracelet of plastic beads, a carefully folded origami star.

There were letters thanking her for teaching them to read, for helping them when they fell over, for remembering their birthdays and for letting them choose stories on Fridays.

One simply said that she made school feel safe.

Clara pressed it against her chest.

At the bottom of the box lay a final envelope.

Unlike the others, it was addressed to Father Christmas.

Clara looked at Louise.

“What’s this?”

“Read it.”

The letter was written in several different handwritings, the words crowded together as though everyone had insisted on contributing.

Dear Father Christmas,

We know you can’t bring Mrs Bell’s husband back because when somebody dies they can’t come home again. Mrs Bell told us that when Oliver’s hamster died.

But we think Mrs Bell has forgotten that she is still allowed to be happy.

So instead of bringing her husband back, please can you help her remember all the nice things she still has?

We thought we could help you because you must be very busy.

Love from Year Three.

P.S. We hope you have a nice Christmas too.

Clara read the letter again.

Then she sat down on the edge of the stage and wept.

Louise sat beside her without speaking.

After a while Clara wiped her eyes.

“Did you help them with this?”

“A little.”

“How much?”

“Spelling, mostly. Archie wanted to write that Daniel was probably having a lovely time in heaven, but Elsie said we couldn’t know that for certain, so they had quite a philosophical argument about it.”

Clara laughed wetly.

“That sounds like them.”

“They’re good kids.”

“They are.”

Louise handed her a tissue.

“There’s one more thing.”

“Oh, Louise.”

“Nothing dramatic, I promise.”

She reached into the box and produced a small paper star.

On it, in Elsie’s unmistakable handwriting, were the words:

You can be sad and happy at the same time.

Clara stared at it.

She had spent nearly a year believing that happiness and grief were opposing forces. That allowing one meant abandoning the other. She had been so frightened of moving forward that she had forgotten it was possible to carry something with you.

Daniel wasn’t coming home.

There would be no miraculous Christmas reunion, no familiar footsteps in the hallway, no voice calling from the kitchen to ask where she had hidden the gravy boat.

She would never have another ordinary Christmas with him.

But there would be other Christmases.

There would be her sister, her friends, her ridiculous pupils and their terrible singing. There would be burnt gingerbread and broken decorations and arguments about whether penguins had knees.

There would be moments when she missed him so fiercely she could scarcely breathe.

There might also be moments when she laughed.

Perhaps that was enough.

On Christmas Eve, Clara woke early.

For the first time in twenty-four years, there was nobody beside her to complain about the hour.

She made herself a cup of tea and carried it into the sitting room.

The tree lights were still on from the night before. She had forgotten to switch them off, something Daniel would undoubtedly have mentioned with great theatrical concern about the electricity bill.

She smiled at the thought.

On the mantelpiece hung two stockings.

Hers was red.

His was green.

Clara stood looking at them for a long moment.

Then she reached into the pocket of her dressing gown and took out the little paper star Elsie had made.

She tucked it into Daniel’s stocking.

“Merry Christmas, darling,” she whispered.

Her voice sounded strange in the quiet room, but she was glad she had spoken.

Then she went into the kitchen.

She had promised Rachel she would bring dessert for Christmas dinner, and there was a chocolate roulade to make.

Daniel had always loved chocolate roulade.

He had also been absolutely hopeless at rolling it, insisting every year that it was supposed to look like a collapsed railway tunnel.

Clara took out the ingredients.

She switched on the radio.

A familiar Christmas song filled the kitchen.

For a moment, she stood perfectly still.

Then, very quietly, she began to sing.

Not because everything was better.

Not because she had stopped missing him.

Simply because she knew the words.

And somewhere, in a house not very far away, twenty-eight children were waking up to discover whether Father Christmas had answered their letters.

Clara hoped he had.

He had certainly answered hers.