Completing the Tenner

In that year’s biting winter, the city hung like a backdrop in a forgotten play, where Stuart played his lonely part. He was a character straight out of Dickens, his life a cautionary tale echoing in the hollows of the city’s heart.

Christmas, they said. A time for warmth, for family. But for Stuart, it was just another stretch of time, another chapter in his saga of emptiness.

His mother’s voice, loud and clear, cut through the silence of his room. “Stuart, open your door, it’s Christmas. The kids want their sweets.” But to Stuart, her words were distant echoes from a world he no longer belonged to, a world where happiness and celebration still held meaning.

Lying there in his bed, a cocoon of solitude and despair, Stuart was a man lost in his early twenties. The exact number of years eluded him, lost in the fog of his tumultuous life.

His job as a night watchman at a construction site, working for Ark Security Services, was his only anchor to reality. His life revolved in a loop of night shifts and drug-fuelled dawns, a solitary existence interrupted only by his incessant need for the next fix.

Weekends were a hazy marathon, beginning on Friday afternoon and ending on Monday morning, each hour marked by a paltry wage of £1.50 per hour. Being around people, their laughter and light, only served to remind Stuart of his own darkness, his fall from what was once normal. He despised them, hated their joy, their ordinary lives.

His existence was simple yet infinitely complex – work, drugs, and a profound sense of being merely tolerated, even by himself. That Christmas, he had chosen to work on New Year’s, having begged for both but was denied the excess.

Now, his sister Yvonne’s voice, demanding and insistent, shattered his self-imposed exile. Reluctantly, Stuart emerged, playing the part of the weary brother, handing over the sweets hidden in his room – a place no one else dared enter. Then, retreating back into his private hell, he wept.

Stuart’s memories of Christmas were fragments from another life. He recalled one year, perhaps he was seven or eight, a rare outing with his parents. The Barras market, the snow (or was it rain?), and the magical window display of toys. His heart had leaped at the sight of a Scalextric set, a dream that seemed almost within reach.

But life, as always, had other plans. From the toy-filled window to a clothes shop, the magic dissolved, leaving only the dull reality of life’s disappointments. Yet, his father’s mysterious absence and reappearance with a large bag sparked a moment of wonder, a fleeting hope.

Years later, Stuart sat, typing out his story on a cold December morning, tears streaming down his face as he relived that memory, so vivid yet so distant.

Christmas in the Patterson household was a festival of innocence and joy. The ritual of baths, early bed, and the mysterious happenings of Christmas Eve. The morning brought excitement, the search for the hidden door handle, the anticipation of presents.

The living room was a trove of treasures on those Christmas mornings, but all that mattered to Stuart was the Scalextric set. It was a moment of pure joy, where envy and rivalry faded into the background, replaced by the simple pleasure of a child’s dream realized.

Two decades later, Stuart found himself in Teen Challenge, wrestling with his demons, seeking a foothold in a lifelong dominated by addiction. Christmas in rehab brought its own ghosts – memories of past celebrations, the pain of awareness, the longing for a simpler, happier time.

The locked door of the lounge, the buzz of a sober Christmas, the presence of families and loved ones in thoughts and prayers – all these elements wove a tapestry of what Christmas had become for Stuart. It was a day of mixed emotions, of new faith struggling to find its place in his existence.

And then there were Paul and Pru Evans, their kindness, their presence a reminder of what Christmas truly meant. Their words, “You guys are our family,” echoed in Stuart’s heart, a message of hope, of restoration, not just for him but for all those connected to him.

Sitting there, on that Christmas day, Stuart realized he was in a new kind of heaven, one where redemption was a real possibility, where the past, with all its shadows, could not completely darken the present or the future.

It was a Christmas of realization, of understanding that the course of his life, once so dark and predetermined, could be changed, could lead to a new end, a new beginning. Stuart’s story, woven through the memories of Christmases past and present, was a journey of redemption, a testament to the enduring power of hope and the possibility of change.