A Stranger's Smile

The sound of the clock tower boomed out over the frozen buildings as it chimed an hour short of midnight. Tom lazily strolled past the tower and onto the outskirts of the broad market square, taking a long look around. A few hours ago it was swarming with last-minute Christmas shoppers, desperate to claim the remaining items on gift-shop shelves as presents for loved ones. But as this solitary figure trudged his way through the sludgy mess that was previously untouched crystalline snow, he found that he was the only person left in the bitter night.

Sliver flakes cascaded from the sky and littered themselves in his messy blonde mop, which was a visible beacon against his long dark coat and the black backdrop of the alleyway. He shook his head as he shivered, pushing the damp locks from the crooks of his eyelids. The cold moisture was spreading from the bottom of his jeans and crawling steadily up to his knees and he could hardly feel his feet, but with a sigh, he pursued into the square.

Tom’s shoulders dipped. He knew his family were expecting him back home an hour ago, chatting over wine about the past year and ready for the joint Christmas lunch they were to be sharing with his three band members and their families the following day, but he didn’t feel like turning back. There was something in the pit of his stomach that he wanted to shake but couldn’t – something that was eating away at him, smouldering the happiness that usually came at this time of year. It’d been there for some time now, getting stronger and stronger as the weeks faded into months. It was even affecting the way he performed onstage, and that’s when his friends began to notice. He felt alienated, secluded, and he didn’t know why. Danny had tried to put it down to the break-up, but that was just over a year beforehand and Tom was pretty sure that if it was missing her that was making him feel this way, he’d know. He was lacking in inspiration, too; nothing he’d written for the next album was positive and was deficient in the energy that the band’s songs usually had, so for the time being, he’d given up.

He yawned as the snowfall began to let up a little, the clouds melting away to reveal an ebony sky dotted with stars that made the whole scene seem much more beautiful. How romantic, Tom thought to himself, then kicked a lump of compacted snow in disgust. He pulled his scarf tighter round his neck and stopped at the corner of the wide square, which was lined with shops that bordered dark alleyways. The stone beneath his feet was deadly icy and he almost slipped as a sinister wind whipped past him, bearing down on his chilled form from the open sky above. The strings of dim Christmas lights shook in the breeze as they hung vulnerably across the square, nearly brushing the star on the huge festive pine tree that loomed overhead and the top of the war memorial statue that stood bleakly in the middle of the cobbled expanse. Tom gazed up respectfully at the stone monument, far too far away to see the carved names of the men lost in battle. He dug his hands further into his jean pockets and held back a sneeze, when he saw something move at the base of the statue.

He peered again into the gloom, taking a few steps forward in curiosity. The soft sound of rubber scraping against concrete met his ears and he saw a flash of something slip from the other side of the memorial before pulling itself back in again – what looked to Tom like a shoe. Maybe he wasn’t alone on Christmas Eve after all.

Tom cautiously began to walk across the square – not towards the memorial, but parallel to the shops, just so he could see what it was that was out of his view. His suspicions were correct; he had indeed seen a shoe, a black All-Star with white laces that were barely visible beneath a cloak of denim. He almost recoiled and his heart stopped momentarily as his eyes travelled upwards – a short curtain of damp, dark hair hung over a pale face, looking extremely eerie in the moonlight and reminding him briefly of a character in a horror film he’d seen. The shoulder length tresses, he supposed, belonged to a teenage girl, quite slight and wrapped in a black fleece. He paused and looked at her in confusion – what was she doing here, in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve? His eyebrows knitted together, but then he realised that she could indeed ask Tom the very same. He took a step forward as she shivered violently, wondering if the girl needed any help at all – and as he did so, her head shot up and she stared straight into his eyes.

Neither of the strangers broke their gaze, but each was intrigued. The blonde was taken aback and the brunette showed signs of fearless curiosity on her face, as if trying to picture his face from somewhere. Tom guessed this was down to his career, and wondered whether to approach her further or not; when she didn’t look away for another ten seconds, he put his right foot in front of his left on the compacted snow. To his mild surprise, the girl didn’t start or show signs of alarm as he drew near her. She simply cupped her pale hands round her nose and mouth, and tried to warm them with her breath.

Momentarily, Tom forgot about his worries as he stopped around five feet away from the girl. He thought that there was something mystical about her, something different about her aura. He figured he should probably say something as he became aware that he was still staring, but what? ’Lovely night?’

He coughed and looked at his shoes, and when he glanced back up at her, her lips had parted.

“You want to sit down?”

She spoke kindly, as if to a friend, something Tom found quite peculiar but pleasant nonetheless. He gave a quick, awkward smile before stepping forwards and gently sitting on the frozen stone to her left. He fidgeted a little, unsure of whether or not to ask if she was alright, for he had never been in this situation before and never met a person who appeared quite like she did. She stared off into the distant blackness as he looked down at her battered, faded shoes; to an outsider, she perhaps looked quite oblivious to his presence.

“Is there… any particular reason you’re out here? Are you alright?” Tom asked, even though the girl seemed perfectly at ease, albeit a little cold.

She shrugged. “I could ask you the very same,” she replied, echoing his thoughts, “both of those questions,”

She turned her head to face him, her large chocolate brown eyes glistening in the moonlight; her face, younger than his, bore an expression Tom could hardly read except for that it contained no fear. “But yes, I’m alright, thanks. Brilliant, in fact.”

Her voice suggested maturity beyond her years, surprising Tom. She looked at him expectantly and he quickly garbled that he too was fine, but she didn’t look as though she believed him. However, she didn’t press it and turned her head back to the Christmas tree. They were strangers, after all.

“I’ve never known it be so silent,” she spoke suddenly, a slight smile lighting her face. “I think it’s my favourite time of year… bar the temperature,”

“Yeah, it is quite beautiful,” Tom replied truthfully, uncertainly, and a heavy sigh left his lips before he could stop it. Normally it was his favourite time of year too, but this time around he felt more out of the loop than ever, hence why he was out there in the first place.

She noticed his sudden melancholy gesture. “What does bring someone to wander from their home in the middle of tonight?”

He turned his head back to her and she surveyed him again with a sympathetic gaze – obviously, she trusted him to an extent and found him as approachable as he found her. He mimicked her by shrugging. Approachable she may have been, but Tom couldn’t even put a finger on the reason he felt so low, and he didn’t really feel like sharing this with her. “I just feel like being alone,”

“There’s no harm in that,” she replied fairly. “But you’re not alone now,”

“That’s true.” Tom said with a slight smile, to which she responded with a larger one. He paused for a moment, and then said, “You still haven’t told me the reason a girl like you is out here,”

“A girl like me doesn’t need one,” she said contentedly, stretching as the very last snowflakes melted into their peers on the ground. “I don’t tend to have real reasons for many things in life, except those of need. I’m here just because I feel like it,”

Tom pondered over her words – they intrigued him. A faint smile still played on her cherry lips, and she shivered again, wrapping her hoodie tighter around her. She looked back at his expression, his pursed lips and heavy brow, and her smile faltered a little.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” she pointed out, “so why so glum?”

Tom gaped a little at her boldness. “I… I don’t know,”

She frowned. “You don’t know why you’re upset?”

“No,” Tom revealed, before pausing, He didn’t know why it didn’t feel weird talking to a teenage girl he didn’t know like this, but it was almost like talking to a therapist, only with a freezing cold slab of concrete instead of a leather couch. He figured it might be better if they knew a little more about each other. “What’s your name?”

The skin around her eyes drew tight and she clenched her hands, but then relaxed.

“Pippa.” She revealed simply, before pausing. “Who are you?”

“Tom,”

“That doesn’t exactly tell me a great deal about who you are, but then we are two strangers on a street in the middle of the night, so I’ll take it,” she responded neutrally.

A muscle twitched in Tom’s cheek, forcing a slight smile at her words. “Well, ‘Pippa’ doesn’t tell me too much about you, either,”

Pippa’s shoulders jerked once in soft, silent laugher. “Well, you only asked me my name, whereas I asked you who you were,”

After a moment, he sighed. “Tom Fletcher. I’m here with my parents and my friends over Christmas, usually I share a flat with my band in London –”

“A band, huh?” she interjected as normally as if asking about the weather, staring off into space again.

“Yeah… a band,”

Her head whipped round. “I thought I’d seen your face before, long ago or something… mind you I see a lot of faces. What do you do in your band?”

“I sing and play guitar,”

“Are you popular?”

“Well, I’d like to think –”

“Even if you were, there’s no use telling me the name of your band because I won’t be able to place a song to it,” she yawned, cutting across him again. “I don’t own a radio, or a television. Nor do I buy magazines…”

Pippa laughed suddenly, a soft and melodic yet loud sound that rang out in the square. Tom puckered his brow, trying to make sense of what she was saying.

“Where do you live, Pippa?” He asked, wondering if her family was housed in the roughest, poorest part of town - yet he couldn’t really imagine anyone from there being too poor to own a television.

“Where do I live?” she repeated. “Oh, well, right now it’s right here on this spot. Tomorrow, it will probably be on the outskirts of this square and round the shopping district, and at night it may be in the doorway of that café down by the river. It shelters a lot from the wind and rain there,”

Tom blinked. “You’re homeless?”

“S’right,” Pippa continued without a hint of wistfulness or gloom. “Since I was twelve, my home has been these streets,”

“But…” Tom was taken aback. This girl had nothing but a small rucksack and the clothes on her back and yet there seemed to be a permanent smile either on her lips or in her eyes. And what did he have? He had a home, an address; he had money in his bank account; he could rely on friends and family he loved; he had security and felt safe in his life, and he had a career he wouldn’t swap for the world, even during the lows. But all there had been on his face these last few months was a frown or a scowl, resilient and there without reason.

Pippa seemed to read his mind. “It’s not like I’m happy roughing it, of course I’d rather have a home – it’s just that I choose to ignore the tragedy,” she said, like it was the easiest thing in the world. “I’m thankful that I’m still alive, that I have a few friends after my old life was left behind, that I’m of reasonable health – for the time being anyway… and I see it as a challenge that I get to start my life again and build it by myself. There’s a chance I may never get off the concrete, but I’ll never know unless I try. And if you’re going to try, you got to be positive about it, haven’t you? You got to have a smile on your face, or you won’t get anywhere. If you smile, you can turn the world around.”

Tom was quite literally lost for words. What Pippa had just said made complete and utter sense to him, and even though the same message had probably been relayed to him countless times throughout his life, it’d never had the same impact as it did coming from this young girl. It seemed that now, his way forward was so awfully clear. Before, it’d seemed hard for him to change, to find the motivation to continue writing songs and put passion and happiness back into his life. He knew that everyone had troubles but compared to Pippa’s, his were minor – and if she could smile her way through hers, then he sure as hell should be able to do the same with his.

“I’ll look out for your band, Tom,” Pippa said, snapping him out of his daze as she stood and looked at the clock, which was chiming midnight. “Happy Christmas.”

And with that, she picked up her rucksack and strolled off into the night.

-

Tom looked out over the roaring crowd, the strong summer sun unforgiving against every person in the park, but none of them cared. He wore a large grin as he played the last note of the second to last song on the set list, and his audience screamed in appreciation. He swigged from the water bottle at his feet before picking up his microphone stand and carrying it out onto the thrust part of the stage, feeling happier and more alive than he’d done in a long time. He was a little overwhelmed by his fans and the number of them - he always had been – and as he opened his mouth and prepared to make the stage debut of the last song of the show, the song he wrote eight months ago on Christmas Day, he thought of the girl that had inspired it and thought that if it could help at least one person in the audience today, he’d be happy.

“You don’t have to have money, to make it in this world…”

Two hundred miles away, a teenage girl could be seen sitting cross-legged outside an electronics shop. Paint was splattered across the pavement, ruining the canvas she had been scraping her spare begging money together for since Christmas to be able to buy. Now, it was worthless, the black mess destroying the basis of her new way of earning; the reckless youths had wrecked the painting she could have sold for money to help her buy a little more food each day, plus another canvas. It had taken her months to paint the most detailed work of art she’d ever created with her talent, and now it was all just a waste.

“C’mon and show us your teeth, and what you've got underneath …”

She sniffed away a tear, looking bleakly round at the shop window she sat against at the sound of the strange sentence she’d just heard. A large widescreen television was in the display, showing a live feed of a concert somewhere - or so the icon in the corner of the screen told her. She was about to turn away to clean up the mess and salvage some of her paint when a grinning, blonde figure on the stage caught her eye. He looks familiar, she thought to herself as he played his instrument and sang to the crowd, a darker-haired guitarist joining in too. She could hear the sound playing quietly out of the shop door, and she sat round properly to listen and watch.

“Smile, smile, smile,
You've got to smile, smile, smile,
Just remember to smile, smile, smile – and turn the world around!”

She froze, startled, as the blonde sang that last line. She knew those words – it was something she frequently told herself – and as the camera zoomed in on the singer, with a start she remembered telling them to him, too. Tom, she recalled. The young man she met that Christmas Eve, who seemed so astounded by her outlook on life, and at the time looked so troubled…

The song played out and the band walked offstage, the screen cutting to a shot of a television presenter. Pippa was frozen in her position for a moment with shock, daring to believe the person she'd just seen on the screen was real. She turned to the splatter of coloured mess on the floor, and knew immediately who her next painting was going to be of. She smiled.