Page 10 of The Gingerbread Cafe
‘Hey, lady, can somebody clean this table? And why can’t we find a highchair?’
‘Miss … ?’
Gretel shook her head. What? There’d been so many questions, she had no clue where to start.Didthe café have a highchair? When would she have time to learn to bake lebkuchen? And would that stupid, clunky till even do refunds?
Questions and answers glugged around her head as the beast continued its taunting hiss. Lukas was right: this was like being inside a pressure cooker. Boiling alive like one of his useless, rotten carrots.
‘Oh God.’ She stepped back from the machine, her face hot with steam. ‘I just can’t …’ She held up an apologetic hand to the impatient queue and scurried towards the kitchen. She slammed the door behind her and ran instinctively to the sink, terrified that her churning stomach was about to empty its contents. She leaned over the stainless steel, the stark surface wobbling to a blur as her eyes glazed over with tears.
In the distance, she heard the café’s front doorbell tinkle again, presumably as more people crammed themselves in. Orperhaps some of them were storming out, fed up of crappy service and the hopeless loser in charge. Maybe the marauding crowds were busy nicking broken biscuits and emptying the till, if they could work out how to open the sodding thing.
She stepped back from the sink and untied the strings of the apron, which suddenly made her feel clammy and constricted. ‘I’m so sorry, Nell. I’m not worthy of wearing this.’
Her eyes dared to lift to the windowsill, where her latest creation sat. It was her stained-glass gingerbread house, complete with little glass Nell on the doorstep in her candy-striped apron. Well, Gretel needed somebody to talk to, now Angel Gabriel was banned.
‘This place used to be my sanctuary, Nell. Since Mum …youwere my sanctuary. But now you’re gone, and the café’s becoming my worst nightmare. I can’t deal with all those people. Where did you find the smiles, the patience, the love? I don’t have any of that. Do you think I wasn’t born with it? Or that I just need practice, like when Angel Gabriel was hopeless at peeing in his new litter box?’
Sometimes she was almost sure her little glass figures uttered wise words in return. But other than the background rabble, there was silence. She rifled up her sleeve for a tissue, suddenly conscious that warm tears had been streaming down her cheeks. At least a good crier was always prepared.
Not even annoying Lukas could be bothered to barge in on her today, although she guessed that was fair enough. She’d always known where she stood when she’d set out on this doomed expedition. Alone, in sad Christmas knitwear. Wasn’t that just how she liked things? She began pulling the apron off over her head, but the strap caught on one of her plaited pigtails and she was left wrestling with it like a child stuck in a deckchair.
‘Why doesn’t it want to come off?’ she groaned, her limbs flailing.
Her elbow knocked against something and she yelped. Fighting her face free, she saw a sign. One of those metal hanging things with cute messages, that Nell used to like.Keep Calm and Wear Candy Stripes. She couldn’t remember seeing it before, but surely it had been there. And hadn’t she just asked for some guidance? Perhaps it would be rude to ignore it.
She huffed and wriggled her way back into the candy-striped prison – but only because it was marginally easier than losing half a head of hair.
‘Well, be careful what you wish for,’ she warned little glass Nell. ‘I’m dreadful at this. I can’t even serve up a flat white because I’ve no sodding idea what theflatbit is. And people are probably running off with the takings as we speak.’
She fiddled with the apron strings which drooped sadly at her sides.
‘I can’t run the show by myself, you know.’ Her glass ornament was probably listening. ‘And mean old Lukas is hell-bent on selling it as soon as the ink is dry. What hope do I have of honouring your wishes?’
Little glass Nell was silent again. Gretel exhaled.
Then from somewhere in the background, she heard it – the interfering jukebox. It was playing ‘The Christmas Miracle’. And was it a trick of the fairy lights, or did her glassy companion just wink at her?
‘So that’s your answer?’ Gretel tried not to roll her eyes. ‘Tie the apron back up and hope for a miracle?’
‘Miss.Miiiiiiisssss?’
A voice shouted through from the café. She barely knew her own mind any more, but those people weren’t going away. Perhaps themiracleplan was the only thing she had. She tied her apron and took a deep breath. It was time to keep calm and face the mayhem and mochaccinos.
Chapter 9
When Gretel stepped back out into the café, things had gone from bad to worse. The place looked like a zoo with no zookeeper. The tables were a disaster where she hadn’t cleared them, children were catapulting her shoddy excuse for gingerbread to see how many more limbs they could break off, and she was sure people had been behind the counter serving themselves and leaving a trail of sticky-fingered destruction.
As though she didn’t feel jittery enough, the delinquent jukebox seemed to be stuck on the stressful crescendo part of ‘Carol of the Bells’ fromHome Alone, where Kevin frantically prepares for the baddies.Da da da da, da da da daaaaaa …Well, at least he’d had a plan. All she had were sweaty palms and a stomach full of dread.
‘This gingerbread is simply awful. I won’t be coming back.’
Oh, and she also had people complaining about her hard bloody work. If only they knew the internal battles she’d been through just to open that café door this morning, not to mention the physical strife. Now she couldn’t wait to slam the damned thing closed – and December was meant to be her favourite time of year.
‘You OK?’
It was only when the stranger spoke that Gretel realised she’d been visibly shaking. ‘Erm …’
Gretel took a moment to assess the girl, who was sitting on a high stool at the end of the counter, sipping a hot chocolate like she’d always been there. Had she helped herself to a drink too? Her long fire-red hair was poker straight with a blunt fringe that only a kooky girl could carry off. As though rebelling against any more colour, she was dressed only in black and white, with a white shirt, short black pleated skirt and black DM boots. Even her pale skin was etched with black drawings of birds and angel wings, though they looked strangely more like Biro than tattoo ink. How old was she? It was difficult to place her with the thick black eyeliner and lipstick. Late teens, perhaps? Although Gretel was conscious she still looked impishly childlike herself.
