Page 2 of The Gingerbread Cafe
As an exquisite voice in the background sang of loneliness and being lost, a thought began to fuse like a snowflake in Nell’s mind. She’d been wondering what to do, hadn’t she? This seemed like the perfect plan. Not only did it settle her musings about what should happen with the café when the time came, but maybe she could encourage a few more moments of magic in Christmases to come too.
Having someone to catch you when you fell was a beautiful thing.
Chapter 1
There were worse things to be doing on a dull November day than sobbing into your apple strudel whilst a ferret nipped holes in your slipper socks. Weren’t there? And anyhow, Gretel Rosenhart knew that just like before, she would pull herself up like aSound of Musicstring puppet and get on with things. She poked the bowl of congealing pudding with her spoon and sighed. It was a poor excuse for a microwave pastry anyway.
‘Angel Gabriel!’ Gretel yelped as her pet’s spiky little teeth found flesh. It was an occupational hazard of being maid to an albino ferret with a penchant for toes. Good job she’d never wanted to be a ballerina. But her little man was right: it was time to get up and stop sulking. It had been two weeks since Nell had died. The dear, stubborn thing hadn’t even mentioned the illness until she could no longer hide it. Terminal. Such a loaded word, but her friend wasn’t just off on her travels. She could only wish Nell’s soul had flown somewhere lovely.
Gretel blinked back a tear. At least there was no danger of her feeling this dreadful again. There were no more people to lose, and that was just fine. Really it was.
She jumped up on one leg, trying to gently wriggle Angel Gabriel off the end of the other. When she’d reclaimed her nibbled limb, she padded across her tiny maisonette to the kitchen in her reindeer onesie. Moving aside a small mountainof tissues, she plonked her half-eaten mid-morning snack on the worktop and exhaled. What she really craved was one of Nell’s gorgeously iced gingerbread people, all frilly and smiling, smelling sweetly of nutmeg. But like all of the loveliest things, they would live only in her memory now. She couldn’t even bake.
Gretel shook her head.
‘We must crack on,’ she announced to Angel Gabriel, who probably wasn’t even listening.
It wasn’t her thing to dwell on what she couldn’t do or didn’t have. What shecoulddo was craft. So she should get dressed and get on with it. Creating stained-glass Christmas ornaments had seen her through the darkest of times; those creations were her light.
She picked up her iridescent glass fairy and smiled at her. Brigitte had become her favourite. She’d named her after her Austrian mother, who, like Nell, now hugged only in memories. Then there was dear little Rosa – for ever frozen in Gretel’s thoughts wearing pigtails and a hand-me-down Christmas jumper. A tightness clutched her throat. They said grief was a journey, but when would she be allowed to step away from the path?
Thud, thud, thud. Angel Gabriel arrived at her feet, dragging a pair of crafting pliers in his mouth. She bent down to save her tool and give his snowy white fur a fuss. His warm, fluffy body always felt like a little bag of calm.
‘Thank you, small guy. You’re all I need, huh?’ He didn’t answer, but then he never did say much other than the occasional squeak. She didn’t take it personally. ‘Although a bit more space wouldn’t go amiss.’
Since Nell had passed, her life had suddenly felt so much smaller. Gretel generally steered clear of people, but Nell had been her lifeline, and she’d loved every squishable inch of her. Spreading herself out on one of Nell’s old wooden café tables tocraft had become her life. She closed her eyes. The café had been shut since Nell had gone, but she could picture every detail. Its twinkling lights and sweet, spicy smells. Even that cantankerous jukebox. Would she ever get the chance to visit again? Or perhaps Nell’s lifework would be gobbled up and regurgitated into a faceless franchise, selling bitter coffee and factory-packed cakes.
Angel Gabriel tried to grab the pliers again. Gretel rolled her eyes. They didn’t say ferret meant thief for nothing.
‘You think I should commemorate Nell and the café with a glass ornament? I bet you’re missing them too.’
Strictly speaking, ferrets hadn’t been allowed in The Gingerbread Café – something about Environmental Health having a field day if he escaped into the kitchen. In fairness, he had form. But Nell had often turned a blind eye when Gretel snuck him in and left him sleeping under the table in her bag. He seemed to need company a lot more than Gretel did. She couldn’t pretend to understand much about ferrets, although she muddled through. This one had chosen her by looking particularly sorry for himself in an abandoned cardboard box on her way home from the café one blustery night. She’d brought him home and knitted him a fetching snowman jumper and the rest had been history. As much as Gretel tried hard to avoid becoming attached to living creatures, the odd one had the habit of sneaking in. She must keep a stricter eye on that.
Angel Gabriel sniffed his way over to the bags and boxes of craft equipment and handmade ornaments that flanked the room like sandbags. She sold the ornaments in her online shop, and Nell had been great at pushing them onto café customers too, when there’d been any. Maybe if Gretel was brave enough to face selling at markets, she could upgrade to a slightly less crummy home. But unlike her late mother, she wasn’t good with people. She got nervous.
‘We should make a start.’ Gretel climbed over ferret tunnels, empty tissue boxes and bits of discarded knitting projects to reach her crafting stuff. She gave her head a contemplative scratch before pulling open box lids and having a poke. ‘Pencil and paper … ?’
Like all good designers, she’d start with a sketch. She could see it already – the perfect stained-glass gingerbread house to remind her of Nell and her heart-warming café, though she had no idea where she’d display it in this shambles of a maisonette. When ideas came, they flowed quickly. She needed to get scribbling.
‘I’m seeing coloured lights around the door.’ She pointed to Angel Gabriel as though expecting him to find the pad and take notes. ‘And candy canes.’ Gretel remembered Nell’s trademark stripy apron with a pang. ‘A snow-topped roof.’ Was her ferret nodding now? Well, he did love to play in the snow. ‘And a Christmas tree!’
Angel Gabriel gave a small yelp and went to bury his face under a sofa cushion.
Gretel stood up and blinked. Although Nell used to keep the café festive all year long, having a real Christmas tree had been a once-a-year treat. She’d got her nephew to drag one in last year, even though he’d pulled a grumpy face and had sworn a lot. What kind of person didn’t love Christmas? No wonder he’d made her armpits clammy and her face all hot.
‘No Christmas tree,’ she confirmed to Angel Gabriel’s furry bottom. ‘Especially after a certain person nearly murdered my Christmas fairy with one.’
She shivered.
‘Ta-daaaaah!’ Gretel finally rescued her sketchpad and pencil from one of the boxes, which was quite a feat, considering how many there were. They’d surely been sneakily breeding.
Angel Gabriel popped his snowy head up, and apparently noticing Gretel’s tasty pencil, made a leap from the sofa onto the nearest box. Gretel gasped at the sound of tinkling glass beneath him.
‘People in glasshouses shouldn’t have ferrets.’ She scooped him off the box before it caved under his wriggling. That was one less job lot of glass snowmen to worry about.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
Who could that be? Gretel narrowed her eyes at the potential intrusion. With a heaviness, she realised she ought to face it. She made her way through the maisonette jungle to the front door, depositing Angel Gabriel safely in his cage as she went. If she’d learned one thing about ferrets, it was that they liked to escape, and it was a Herculean task to find them.
