Page 57 of The Gingerbread Cafe
‘Who?’
‘Sorry,Franny.’ He was trying to wriggle out of this already.
‘Right, well, I was just telling her …’
Why was he hesitating? She wasn’t giving him the chance to make up another lie.
‘Telling her that you’re a stuck-up twat of a chef who can’t wait to have his own proper restaurant withtop-notch cuisineandgreat table linen. What kind of complete nob gives a shit about table linen?’
He laughed. ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong.’
He laughed. She was standing out here at the crack of freezing dawn, bleeding bare feet and without any knickers on, and he waslaughing? After she’d given herself to him so trustingly? And after everything she’d just heard him say?
She was not sticking around for this.
Her feet took over and she marched towards the tree, desperate to reach The Gingerbread Café on the other side of it. She needed to close the door on this madness.
But there he was, rushing after her again. She turned towards him. ‘Stop following me! Don’t you think I feel foolish enough already? I fell for everything you told me. I fell foryou.I believed that you were changing, that you weren’t some pretentious, grumpy-faced sod. I thought you cared about me, about Nell and the café. And all along you were just trying to win me around so you could get your own way. In the café andother places. You probably still think gingerbread is beneath you.’
He reached for her arm again, but she pulled away.
‘And you’re a bully. Maybe you’re not so different from your horrible dad after all.’ She heard her own sharp intake of breath as soon as she’d said it. And as she looked up she saw the hurt in his eyes.
He turned his back on her and began striding away.
She took a step backwards, getting ready to bolt in case he changed his mind, but her back hit something hard. She dropped her shoes and turned, her flying arms pushing the thing in panic. It was rough against her hands – a makeshift wooden shelter from the fair. The one they’d kissed in last night. It had been unstable then too, and just like her it was falling hard.
And then she heard it.Thwaaaaack. The shelter had toppled and hit the Christmas tree. The tree lurched forwards, its branches shaking. Flower petals and glass ornaments showered down like confetti mixed with ice.Ching ching ching. The glass broke into shards as it hit the cobbles.
Gretel shot a look to the tip of the tree, where Angel Brigitte wobbled for her little glass life. Would the tree hit the floor? No. Its roots were firmly planted. But with its new angle, the angel struggled to cling on. The tree’s tip vibrated. Gretel’s mouth opened in the shape of a slow-motion wail, but there was no sound.
She tried to drag the shelter from the tree, but the action made the branches shake harder. The angel was hanging by athread. Gretel gasped and ran around the tree, her feet slipping against the cobbles. She flung out her arms as she saw Angel Brigitte breaking loose. But Gretel wasn’t fast enough.
The angel crashed down onto the cobbles, splintering into more pieces than it would be possible to fix. Gretel felt the crack as though it had happened deep inside her core. As though it was the sound of her own soul breaking.
Just when she thought that was it, little glass Rosa fell from another branch and cracked like an eggshell next to Angel Brigitte.
Gretel felt the tears pouring out of her, hot and furious. This was a sign. No, this was a great, glaring omen. She should never have stepped away from her Christmas sanctuary. Turning her back on her memories, putting her fragile heart on the line. It had been reckless.
Her shoes still lay strewn. She shoved them into her bag, before collecting what she could of her broken glass angels. Her feet were collecting more cuts, but she didn’t care. They were already bleeding from her run. Now her hands would be too.
She limped towards the front door of The Gingerbread Café. At least it was too early to be seen. And from the looming clouds, it looked as though the impending rain would wash away any stains on the cobbles. The way her skin was crawling, she needed a serious shower too.
But more than anything, she needed to be alone. To get away from this. Because her heart had never felt heavier. Without a doubt, this was the worst mistake of her life.
Chapter 46
‘What a bloody noise,’ Gretel complained to Angel Gabriel as she harrumphed down the stairs from her flat to the café in her mince pie slippers. Obviously it wasn’t Christmas, but she was past caring about that. The sooner she could get back to her cosy old festive life, the better. She just had to untangle herself from this one first. The universe would send her a way, because much like this excessively loud postperson, the universe always delivered. She just had to look out for the sign.
In fact, whoever had just posted whatever it was had made such a racket, it was as though they’d been hell-bent on letting her know something had landed. It was probably just as well, as she’d overslept. Not that she felt like opening the café today. Not one little dot.
It was the day after her Monday morning row with Lukas. She’d spent yesterday hiding inside the café and obsessively cleaning after the mess of Sunday’s fair, and everything that had followed. Curtains drawn, doors locked, as though her life had needed a good old scrub.
Her mind hadn’t stopped chewing over the events with Lukas and regurgitating them in different shapes. She barely knew what to think, other than she felt humiliated and furious. She wasn’t proud of her actions. Like an out of body experience, she’d felt dangerously out of control. Her flight instincts hadtaken over and who knew what had happened to her mouth. She’d accused him of manhandling her, which she unequivocally knew he hadn’t. It hadn’t hurt when he’d taken her wrist and she hadn’t felt unsafe. And the thing she’d said about his dad had come from nowhere. She’d never even met the man.
Yet when she weighed it up against what Lukas had done … Making her trust him, fall for him, even sleep with him. Pretending he cared about her and even saying they could keep the café together, when all along he was still mapping out his Michelin-starred dreams, down to the detail of thegreat table linen.Had the lies just been to keep her on side, so she’d agree to anything and sign whatever legal documents he put in front of her? Was Swingy Bob Whimple in on it too?
She wondered with a sickening pang whether he’d always had designs on stealing away herfirst time, or if that was an extra bit of sport. He knew how inexperienced she was. She’d been honest with him. She’d always struggled to feel close enough in any of her previous, extremely short relationships. Why on earth had she dared to change that?
