‘It was the most bizarre of days,’ Annie said, sitting by the window in her guestroom, holding her phone steady in order to keep the signal at three bars. Julie’s voice was a little crackly, but Annie could hear just enough. If she really was the heir to this magnificent estate, one of her first commands would be to ask the local telecoms company to put in a decent phone mast.
‘So, it’s all real, then?’
‘It seems like it. This estate really does appear to belong to my family, although I can barely get my head around it. I mean … it’s massive. I haven’t yet explored the whole house and I found out today that it comes with its own village, complete with actual real life residents.’
‘I can’t believe it. You’re so lucky.’
‘I can’t believe it either. It feels like a weird dream. Get this though … this whole village, it’s like some kind of fairytale place that my grandfather decided to turn into a tourist village, but it seems he’s such a perfectionist that he died before he made the decision to open it. It has pubs and restaurants and cake shops and cafés … but none of them are open to the public. There are a hundred or so residents who basically serve each other.’
‘So where do they get their money from?’
Annie shook her head, smiling at the memory. ‘That’s the other thing,’ she said. ‘Honestly, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.’
‘Come on, spill the beans,’ Julie said.
‘What’s in that big building?’ Annie said, pointing at a low stone building at the village’s far end, which looked like a warehouse.
‘Ah, that’s the factory,’ Mr. Fairbrother said.
‘What kind of factory?’
‘They make all sorts.’
‘Can we have a look?’
‘Well, it’s your factory now,’ Mr. Fairbrother said.
The entrance was sculptured to look like two colourful toy soldiers, both holding up swords that crossed in the middle, and the double doors were painted gold. Mr. Fairbrother went first, Annie following after.
‘Oh, wow.’
Inside, the factory’s lobby reminded Annie of the kitchens at Stone Spire Hall. It was all pistons and pipes in bright colours, the way a child might imagine a toy factory or the guts of a giant Christmas robot.
Mr. Fairbrother went up to a red and green striped reception desk and rang a little bell. While he leaned on the counter, Annie wandered over to a set of shelves stacked with all manner of different toys, none of which she had ever seen before. For the most part they were made out of wood and metal, with clockwork cogs and handles giving motion to ornately carved and painted animals and mannequins. She squatted down to pick up one elaborate dog toy from a bottom shelf, which made a clicking bark at the press of its wooden tail. Turning it over, she found a manufacturer’s stamp:
Handmade in Wonder Toy Studios,
Undercastle, Lake District
Authentic and Unique
LIMITED EDITION: No. 1
Merry Christmas!
Picking up another doll, she found a similar stamp on its underside. She was just examining another when the door opened behind the counter and a man stepped through. Before Annie could react, he spread his arms and began to sing:
‘I welcome you to Wonder Toy,
It’s a beautiful day to bring you joy,
Happiness is in our hands,
Welcome to our winter wonderla—’
The man paused, and his wide smile dropped. ‘Oh, Les. It’s you. For a minute there, I thought—’
Annie stood up, the doll still in her hands. The man stared at her, and Annie stared back, unable to deny a wide smile. He wore a uniform of green and red and a little green hat which had a white bobble that hung down to his shoulders. He had a handlebar moustache flecked with spots of silver glitter. His cheeks glowed—rouge rather than natural—and his eyes were a startling, winter lake blue.
‘Are you a real elf?’ she asked slowly, putting the doll back on the shelf.
The man stepped back and gave a flourishing bow. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Davvie Sprinkle-Toes at your service. It is my pleasure to welcome you to Wonder Toy Studios. Would you like a guided tour?’
Mr. Fairbrother chuckled. ‘Nice show, Dave,’ he said. ‘You’d have made the old lord proud. This is Miss Annie Collins, Lord Wilfred’s heir.’
Davvie’s—Dave’s—smile dropped. ‘Oh. Well, Miss Collins, it’s lovely to meet you.’
‘Call me Annie,’ Annie said. ‘And it’s lovely to meet you too.’
‘So, you’re Lord Wilf’s heir, are you? I wondered what would happen when the old guy popped his clogs. Any chance that we could finally—’
‘Open?’
Dave smiled. ‘So I’m not the first person you’ve spoken to, then?’
‘I had a talk with Mr. Fairbrother—Les—on the way back,’ Annie said to Julie, kicking a stool against the wall by the window and then standing up on it. Checking her phone, she saw the third bar of reception appeared a little steadier. ‘It turns out my grandfather was something of an inventor. However, he was also a perfectionist. He had all these grand plans for this place to open as a tourist village, but he never actually did it.’
‘How lovely, but how sad at the same time that his dream was never realised.’
‘I know. It’s bizarre. And when you see it all, it’s hard to believe. I mean, the factory, all the staff are dressed like elves. They don’t actually seem to mind—it turns out they get paid pretty well and they do a maximum of five hours per shift. And all the cafés and shops are kind of in this weird state of preparation. They only actually serve the village residents, so they’re not very busy, and they get to spend their time figuring out the absolute best recipes for everything.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘I had this caramel and chocolate muffin infused with Christmas spice from a cake shop on the way back, and I literally thought I was going to die, it was so good.’
‘Sounds wonderful. How on earth did your grandfather afford it all?’
‘Well, I had to ask that, since it’s all apparently now mine—which I still can’t get my head round, by the way—and there are a few things. Among some boring stuff like investments, they actually do ship out some of the toys that they make, and there’s also a brewery that makes Christmas-spiced local liquor. I had a glass of some in the factory and it was divine. Oh, and there’s a live-stream from the factory that is super popular. And get this—my grandfather actually has a contract with the Post Office to reply to Christmas letters. Most of the letters kids post to Father Christmas, Lapland or Greenland or The North Pole, end up in an office in grandfather’s village where a team of workers dressed as elves sit down and write replies.’
‘No!’ Julie chuckled on the other end of the line. ‘Isn’t that a bit of an anti-climax?’
‘You’d think, wouldn’t you? But they wear elf uniforms and sing Christmas songs as they do it. Makes it feel kind of magical.’
‘My kids wrote Christmas letters last year, but they never heard anything back,’ Julie said.
‘According to one um, elf—he told me his name was Bunty Glitter-bottom, or Brian, if I preferred—they actually have a year delay, which keeps them in business all year round. So the letters they received last Christmas will be returned this year. They literally spend all year replying to last Christmas’s letters. Apparently they respond quicker to email—the modern world and all that—but letters are still the preferred method for most little children.’
‘It’s like a fairytale, isn’t it?’
Annie sighed. ‘I keep expecting to wake up,’ she said. ‘I was all ready to put on a pair of elf slippers and do a little jig when Mr. Fairbrother told me I have an appointment with the accountant tomorrow.’
‘Puts a dampener on it, doesn’t it?’
Annie let out a shrill laugh, then quickly put her hand over her mouth. ‘I told him to turn up wearing a Christmas hat,’ she said. ‘I think there was a little too much liquor in that muffin—’ A bell tinkled by the door. Annie looked up. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go. I just got summoned to dinner.’
They said their goodbyes and Annie hung up. As she put the phone down on the window ledge, she let out a long sigh.
This was incredible. Beyond incredible, it was almost unbelievable. Breathing slowly as she looked out of the window at the distant glitter of moonlight on the lake, she reminded herself what she had once promised if she ever won the National Lottery.
‘It won’t change me,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll stay the same person that I was before.’
But how did you go about that when you discovered out of the blue that you had inherited a country estate and an entire adjoining village? You felt like you needed to tie weights to your feet to keep yourself grounded. She could click her fingers and demand a unicorn steak for dinner and Mrs. Growell would somehow try to find it. She could order Mr. Fairbrother to trim the privet hedges into a likeness of Michael Jackson and no doubt he’d be out there at dawn tomorrow with his shears.
Three days ago she was turning off her fridge with the dodgy non-closing door to save electricity. It would be easy to forget.
She went over to the bed, pulled on a jumper, and headed downstairs.