Page 41 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
Fine.
Considering that she was exhausted, sleep should have come as a blessed, sweet relief but that night it eluded her. Instead she thought about her current situation and how it was very similar to the situation she’d found herself in two years before. Memories of Steven were never pleasant; they turned up like gatecrashers at a party who just wouldn’t leave, but when Mattie wasn’t thinking about Steven, she was thinking about Tom and what she could do to finally bring their cold war to a swift and warm end.
Desperate times called for desperate measures – bright and early the next morning a temporary kitchen assistant started. Mattie had already had to limit her pig-in-blanket rolls to two per customer and had a 5 p.m. cut-off time, otherwise she’d never get anything done that wasn’t making pig-in-blanket rolls.
Meena was in her second year at catering college and, judging from the exquisite-looking cakes she posted on her Instagram, she knew her way round a mixing bowl and a pallet knife.
Mattie had been worried about sharing a kitchen made only for one person with another human being, but not only was Meena adept at making flaky pastry, she was also very small and didn’t talk much. She also had quite the work ethic. So, by three o’clock that afternoon, everything was under control and Mattie felt like they wouldn’t run out of baked goods, if she popped out for an hour to make a start on her Christmas shopping.
Armed with her list, she headed straight to the beauty shop on Rochester Street to buy Sandrine’s favourite perfumeanda scented candle. While she was there, she went off-list to buy Ian a male-grooming starter-kit because Sandrine had mentioned that he had become quite fixated on the fact that the fine lines around his eyes were starting to upgrade to crow’s feet.
In the very hipster gentleman’s outfitter, she bought Guy some four-leaf clover cufflinks because he was the most superstitious person Mattie had ever met. He wouldn’t even set foot in a park in case he happened across a single magpie.
Then she paused by a glass display case of bow-ties, which made her think of Tom, though she was trying really hard not to. Tom wasn’t on her Christmas present list because even though they shared a living space, even before their current hostilities, they certainly weren’t friendly enough to exchange gifts.
Anyway, if Mattie were to get Tom a present, it wouldn’t be anything brand new and box fresh. He’d want something old. Maybe a leather-bound book of literary criticism that stank of mildew, or a tweedy jacket that had been briefly fashionable sometime between the wars, with leather trim around the cuffs and pockets. A fountain pen, unused and unwanted for many years, waiting to be brought back to life with ink and a firm but light touch.
Yes, Tom would want something pre-loved. And as Mattie gazed at a young couple, the woman slowly tugging on the end of her boyfriend’s scarf to pull him nearer for a kiss, Mattie’s eyes prickled. Then, unbelievably, she felt a tear suddenly begin a slow descent down her cheek.
She was pre-loved too. She’d tried love and it had chewed her up and spat her back out. If that happened again (and judging by her mother’s track record of three husbands and four near misses until she’d met Ian, good love genes didn’t run in the family), Mattie knew that there’d be nothing left of her. She didn’t like to think of herself as a quitter, but she’d had to give up on love.
Mattie stepped outside onto Rochester Street. It was like a scene out of a Dickens novel, with its cobblestones and old-fashioned-looking shops with the bay windows, all strung with fairy lights and Christmas decorations. The little street thronged with couples, all arm in arm as they shopped together, trying to find the perfect gift, which represented what they meant to each other.
Come Boxing Day, Mattie would be perfectly all right with her single status. But there was something about Christmas and especially the run-up to Christmas, which brought out the melancholy in her now. Not just because it was the anniversary of her own particular heartbreak but because Christmas was a time of togetherness and family. Not just the family that you were born into but the family you made with someone else.
By swearing off love, Mattie was giving up on being someone else’s family too.
She bit her lip and tried not to blink as she made her way back to the mews. Tried to be pleased that she’d made a major inroad into her Christmas shopping, which she’d bought with money earned from doing what she loved. And how many people could say that they loved their jobs? That they’d found their calling in life? In lots of ways Mattie was very lucky. But as she opened the door to the tearooms and was enveloped in a welcoming smell of freshly ground coffee and the sweet, aromatic fragrance of mince pies out of the oven and heard the lively hum of chatter, the hissing chugga-chugga of Jezebel in full throttle and Cuthbert loudly singing along to Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas’, which was playing on his ancient tape deck, she took no pleasure in this world that she’d created.
‘Mattie! Can you take over for a minute? I’m dying for a wee!’ Little Sophie was fidgeting from one foot to the other, and Mattie lifted her hand in acknowledgment and quickly hurried over to the counter.
For the next half an hour she was caught up in the afternoon tea rush. Darting into the kitchen to put things in and take things out of the oven, trying to sort out a problem with the red velvet cake batter, which had separated. Then it was back to the tearooms to sort out a belligerent man who wanted to buy out their entire stock of pig-in-blanket rolls. She took drinks orders, cleared tables and said brightly, ‘Yes, Merry Christmas to you too,’ to departing customers.
It was a bravura performance for which Mattie definitely deserved some kind of acting award. The customers began to thin out but she knew there’d only be a brief lull before the late-night shopping crowd descended.
She very nearly did cry when she went back into the kitchen to find that Meena had several batches of puff pastry for tomorrow’s pig-in-blanket rolls already in the fridge.
‘You have literally changed my life,’ she said as Meena swapped her apron for coat and scarf and hat. ‘You will be back tomorrow, won’t you? We haven’t scared you off?’
‘This is so much more fun than catering college,’ Meena declared. ‘I always end up getting stuck sous-cheffing for some boy who can’t cook half as well as I can but thinks he’s the next Gordon Ramsey. I’ll see you at eight tomorrow.’
As soon as she was gone, Mattie drooped against the fridge. Maybe Mercury was in retrograde and that was why she was feeling so blue, she thought as she peeled herself off the fridge, opened the door and took out eggs, butter and cream.
If she was going to mope in here, then at least she could mope productively. And she wasn’t going to cry because there really was nothing to cry about – she was unloved by choice. And she especially wasn’t going to cry while she was creaming butter and sugar. Her French grandmother had always said that when you were cooking, you put your mood into the bowl along with your ingredients and nothing tasted good with a splash of tears.
She would bake Tom a cake. Cake made everything better. In the past, she’d baked cakes for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, once even a funeral. There’d been a cake in the shape of the Sydney Opera House for a friend about to go travelling. When Ian had retired after forty years in property management, Mattie had baked him a cake in the shape of an open toolbox. She’d even made tiny screws out of fondant.
Whatever the occasion, Mattie could make a cake for it, though she didn’t think she’d ever baked an ‘I’m sorry for betraying your deepest, darkest secrets to your workmates’ cake before. Still, she’d give it the old college try.
Now she was thinking about Tom more than ever. Mentally scrolling back to all the treats she’d made for bookshop events or just because it was a miserable Monday morning and everyone needed a little cheering up, and Tom’s reaction to each one.
He wasn’t like Nina or Posy who were effusive in their praise for a profiterole or a pecan and butterscotch doughnut. Even Verity would give an appreciative hum when she bit into her favourite apple and cinnamon crumb cake.
But Tom was never effusive or hummed appreciatively. Mattie clenched her fists as irritation rose up in her again like a prickly heat rash. It wasn’t just the coffee – over the last eighteen months, he’d eaten countless cakes and tarts and savouries all made by Mattie, and he’d barely grunted out a thank you.
Yet here she was: having to make amends to him through the medium of cake. She was half inclined to make Tom a coffee cake, but she could already hear Guy’s voice in her head saying, ‘Have I mentioned lately that you’re the most passive-aggressive person I’ve ever shared a womb with?’
Mattie decided that gingerbread was a less contentious option and as gingerbread was a staple of her festive menu, she had to make some for tomorrow anyway. She’d make gingerbread kisses because Nina had brought back more bags of Hershey’s Kisses from the States than any one person could eat. Before relations between tearooms and bookshop had become so frosty, she’d asked Mattie if she wanted some of the kisses to incorporate into her baking. ‘I’d much rather have the real thing than the chocolate substitute,’ Nina had said, her eyes holding that faraway look which meant that she was thinking about Noah. ‘I really think kissing is my favourite thing ever. It’s even better than leopard print.’
