Page 30 of The Gingerbread Cafe
‘The street used to be buzzing all year round,’ Eve said, having arranged a selection of glass offcuts into a flower shape on the table in front of her. ‘Although nowadays you might be better off selling some of your goods online. Footfall isn’t what it used to be.’
Phoebe nodded. ‘I do some live crystal sales on Instagram to try and make ends meet, but still. It shouldn’t be that way. I invested in my own shop because I want to see real people. To feel their energy, their vibrations. I want to make a difference.’She pulled another slice of cake onto her plate. Was that her third? Her chakras really must be out of sorts.
‘Told you your mission was bigger than just breathing life into one little café,’ Amber called across to Gretel as she was handing out safety equipment. She noticed Amber was wearing a short black and red tartan dress tonight instead of her usual black skirt and white shirt combo, and the extra colour suited her. ‘Should we ask them for their take on FW?’
Gretel plonked a pair of safety specs and a dust mask down on the table in front of Amber and hoped it would soon be time for her to wear the latter. At least she hadn’t shouted out her usual swear word nickname for Miss Whimple in front of all these nice new potential customers. Although Gretel had to admit the nagging worry that a collection of business owners whose own businesses weren’t thriving probably wouldn’t be dropping by to spend a fortune on gingerbread between classes. And if the shops in the street weren’t busy, the café would surely suffer from a lack of shoppers stopping by to refuel on tasty treats. Maybe focusing only on the café’s problems would be like trying to patch up a serious fracture with one of those cheap, not very sticky plasters. Gretel exhaled. For now, the mission of getting through tonight as a non-people person in charge of a rabble felt quite overwhelming enough.
Chapter 26
As the evening of Gretel’s first stained-glass crafting session progressed, she noticed how difficult it was to keep everyone on track.
Trying to disguise her trembling hands, she’d set up her demonstration table at the front of the café so she could show them how to create their first Christmas tree. It had been unnerving having all those eyes on her, but somehow she’d managed to talk them through making the templates for each section of the tree and tracing around them onto glass, just like she’d rehearsed. She’d shown them how to score and break the glass and how to file it smooth. She’d even been brave enough to nip from table to table, helping them with the tricky process of wrapping their pieces with copper foil tape and soldering them together. Her heart had soared; she’d been proud of herself.
What she hadn’t accounted for was that she was dealing with creatives. Gretel had hoped to see a room full of shiny green, uniform trees by the end of the session, but what she was faced with was a mish-mash of colours and shapes, most of which looked nothing like any sort of tree.
After her final inspection, Gretel walked to the front and put her hands on her hips, because taking up extra space would surely make her look more authoritative. It worked for Lukas – not that she was thinking about him.
‘Ahem.’ Gretel looked around the room, waiting patiently for the class to notice her. Should she have done that more loudly? Or was clapping better? She tapped on her demonstration table and winced as she saw Angel Gabriel’s head poke out of her bag. To her relief, he sleepily popped it back in. He belonged upstairs, but it felt mean to leave him on his own all evening.
At last the class took the hint and looked at her.
‘So. Who has a lovely green Christmas tree to show me?’ Gretel asked.
A couple of the residents waved their hands and she nodded at them, thankful that at least some folk were listening to her around here.
‘I made a rainbow of colours to represent the chakras,’ Phoebe confessed. ‘Too much green was making me feel unbalanced.’
‘I think I’d be unbalanced if I was on my fourth slice of cake,’ said Amber. ‘I don’t know where you put it.’
‘I made a stem of eucalyptus,’ Eve cut in. ‘It just doesn’t feel like Christmas in January, once my decorations have come down. I did use green, though.’ The florist looked at Gretel apologetically through her cat-eye glasses, and as Gretel noticed how similar her creation looked to the silk stems in Nell’s flat, she made a mental note to ask her if she’d helped Nell choose them.
‘I made a tree, but I chose a pretty lavender colour,’ said Bea. ‘I hope that’s OK.’ She looked a little sheepish. ‘It almost matches Eve’s hair.’
‘It is beautiful,’ Gretel admitted. As much as she wanted to tell her class off for not following the brief, she was impressed by their creations, even if most of them were a little wonky and there was an awful lot of broken glass. ‘And do you know something? I’m starting to realise that sometimes you’ve got to do things your own way. Once you’ve worked out what on earththat is.’ She looked around the café, with its holly wreaths in the window and the plastic Christmas tree she’d tried to decorate to look like Nell’s. It all looked wonderful, but the consensus tonight had been that Christmas all year didn’t work for most people. And if she was brutally honest, her own Christmas-obsessed life had been far from jolly for a while.
As though someone somewhere was agreeing with her, the sound of a guitar twanged through the silence. The jukebox had broken into the jittering intro of ‘Time Warp’, sending a wave of goosebumps across Gretel’s pale skin. She rushed across and pressed the override button before Amber could burst into a spooky rendition. Since when did that interfering machine contain any tunes that weren’t Christmassy? Maybe Lukas was right about the wiring.
‘So next week can we design and make something of our own choosing?’ asked one of the Jane and Jayne duo, bringing Gretel back to the present. ‘Because my creativity feels stifled when I’m working to someone else’s template. You know?’
‘We’ll see,’ Gretel replied. They had a point, but all this changing of plans was disconcerting. She’d mapped things out meticulously in the hope it would feel less frightening that way. People couldn’t just start going off script.
Amber had stood to clear a few things away and reheat the hot chocolate pan, although Gretel suspected from her curious jumping and hip shaking that she was demonstrating that dance from ‘Time Warp’, in case Gretel wasn’t taking the hint. A few of the others got up to help pack away and shimmy along too, even though they only had Amber’s loud humming to accompany them now Gretel had halted the jukebox. What would be next with this lot – ‘Do the Conga’? But once again, as much as Gretel wanted to feel cross with them, she couldn’t help smiling. She felt warmed by their bustling, the laughter and the sense of warmth and community that had been bubbling around theroom all evening. Was she silly to have cut herself off from real life for so long?
Bea shimmied over to her and squeezed her arm. ‘You’ve done a great thing this evening in bringing us all together. I sensed it wasn’t easy for you, but it’s what’s been lacking around here for far too long. People are like bees – we need community, even if we don’t always know it. Maybe this will be the start of us trying to communicate properly. Who knows what else will come of it if we keep putting our heads together? We’re a creative bunch.’
‘Maybe you could teach us how to bake too? You’re the master at gingerbread cake,’ said Phoebe as she wiggled past with her empty plate.
‘Oh yes, girl. I second that,’ Zekia piped up. ‘Tell us your secret.’
There was a chorus of agreement from around the room and everyone turned to look at Gretel, their awed faces sending a wave of pride straight through her.
‘Your baking is divine,’ Eve agreed. ‘Nell would have been impressed.’
So she had known Nell, Gretel briefly registered, as her cheeks flushed. She was over the moon that she’d baked something of her very own that people were actually enjoying. It was spurring her on to want to try more. In this nurturing, creative bubble, it felt safe to admit a few things. Perhaps this community could help her. If she wanted to succeed in this café, maybe she did need to let people come ashore on her one-woman island.
‘Can I share something?’ Gretel asked, tentatively. ‘Tonight’s gingerbread cake is the only thing I’ve managed to make without burning or making a total mess of.’ She was still sneakily buying in most things, and she knew it wasn’t cost-effective.
‘So you’re getting somewhere,’ said Zekia, her voice always so warm and reassuring.
