Page 33 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘Right. You know, you really don’t need to add that much milk to scrambled eggs.’ She just couldn’t help herself. ‘I would just use butter. Everything tastes better with butter, and could younotuse a fork in that pan, please? I have a wooden spat—’
‘I might not have some fancy French qualification in pastry work but I am quite capable of making scrambled eggs,’ Tom snapped. It was clear that he wasn’t capable at all but Mattie felt so ashamed at her behaviour the night before that she had to let it go. Though she didn’t know why her poor non-stick pan also had to suffer.
Worse was to come downstairs. While Mattie and Tom had been partying, but not together, Nina had worked until 11 p.m. on Thursday night to finish dressing the shop (a sacrifice which she said that she intended to stop talking about around next Easter) so that next morning Happy Ever After officially looked like Christmas had vomited all over it, just as Nina had promised it would.
Nina had also taken full advantage of the fact that Mattie was off the premises and had attacked the tearooms with what looked like a pink and silver glitter cannon. However, she managed to keep her creative efforts away from the counter where food and drinks were prepared, so Mattie didn’t feel as if she could raise an objection.
‘Those boring Health and Safety regulations stifled my creative flow,’ Nina complained, though her creative flow really didn’t appear to have been stifled one bit. Mattie followed Nina through to the shop, her journey through the anterooms hampered by yet more low-hanging pink and silver stars, which were going to have someone’s eye out if they weren’t careful. ‘Anyway, behold my masterpiece!’
Nina proudly presented herpièce de résistance, a window display which featured the promised Christmas tree constructed entirely from green books. (Nina had had to borrow some of Verity’s precious Virago Modern Classics with their dark-green spines, a sacrifice that Verity said was much worse than having to stay at work until eleven.) There were also pink and silver wrapped presents under the real Christmas tree, waiting to be donated by customers to grateful recipients in the nearby care home.
And there was the not-small matter of the life-sized baby reindeer that Nina claimed to have no knowledge of.
‘What reindeer?’ she asked with a quizzical expression, even as her elbow rested on its little head, when Posy said that she’d quite categorically forbidden Nina from bringing any life-sized reindeer into the shop. ‘I can’t see a reindeer. Tom, do you see a reindeer?’
‘I’m having no part of this,’ Tom sniffed, ducking under a ‘Joyeux Noel’ banner that hung down from the arch that led to the Classics rooms. He brushed past Mattie, giving her a wary sidelong glance, and then disappeared into the depths of the Regency Romance room to shelve some books.
And even worse was to come. Lunchtime heralded the arrival of a BBC London TV crew who were there to film the unveiling of the infamous Mistletoe Booth, which, despite Nina’s assurances, was taking up as much room as the gigantic Christmas tree and was completely obscuring the lower half of the new-releases shelves.
‘Well, it’s not like there’s that many new releases in December,’ Nina had countered cheerfully.
To Mattie’s eyes, it looked like a bog standard photo booth, albeit one with Christmas decals and the words ‘A Happy Ever After Christmas’ stuck on it. Behind the curtain was a Christmas backdrop with snow and yet more reindeer; a big screen so you could see yourself posing; and a healthy sprig of mistletoe hung from the top, with a stool underneath for the kissers to sit on while they kissed.
‘So, they kiss and then as well as their photo popping out of the little slot on the left, the photo is automatically uploaded to the Happy Ever After Instagram account, and they can regram it from there,’ Posy explained to the TV crew as they had a quick run-through. Then she looked anxiously at Nina who’d spent the last hour coaching Posy. Nina gave Posy an encouraging thumbs up. ‘And also our mistletoe is ethically sourced from an apple orchard in Kent.’
Waiting out of shot was a very telegenic customer and her embarrassed boyfriend who had been selected by the TV crew to be filmed as the first couple to test out the booth.
‘Although, and I can’t stress this enough,’ Posy said, her face as red as the holly berries on the wreath attached to the shop door, ‘anyone wanting to use the Mistletoe Booth has to purchase a book first. We can’t just have people coming in off the street and expecting to have their picture taken.’
‘Yeah, right, of course,’ the cameraman said, as if they were going to cut that bit out. ‘Can we get a shot of one of your colleagues sitting on the stool?’
‘Not me!’ Verity said from behind the counter. ‘Nobody said anything about me having to be filmed and just … no!’
‘Only if you can shoot me from the neck up?’ Posy said. ‘It’s just when I sit down, if you catch me from the wrong angle, I look like I’m gestating sextuplets.’
Mattie needed to get back to the tearooms but, with Tom in the farthest reaches of Regency Romance, this was just the entertaining diversion she needed. Even though Sebastian Thorndyke had joined her and was surveying the scene with a faintly aggrieved huff.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘Why is there a gigantic photo booth blocking the new-release shelves?’
‘It’s not just any photo booth, it’s a Mistletoe Booth,’ Mattie said. ‘It’s thepièce de résistanceof Nina’s Christmas plans, apparently.’
Sebastian sniffed. ‘I thought that was the gigantic Christmas tree and/or the fake tree made of books in the window and/or the life-sized reindeer.’
‘Nina’s Christmas plans have manypièces de résistances,’ called out Tom, from the Regency shelves. ‘I don’t think she actually understands what apièce de résistanceis.’
‘Has someone told Tattoo Girl that most of herpièces de résistancesare taking up valuable floorspace for actual paying customers?’ Sebastian asked.
‘We have tried,’ Mattie said, glancing round to see that Sebastian’s usual haughty expression was distinctly unhaughty, and instead rather soft and tender as he gazed at his wife, who was still insisting that she wasn’t sitting in the Mistletoe Booth until she got a guarantee that she wasn’t to be filmed from the neck down.
‘They’d better not be upsetting my Morland,’ Sebastian grumbled. ‘If her blood pressure rises to unconscionable levels, then heads will roll. And anyway, this Mistletoe Booth thing; isn’t there meant to be kissing under mistletoe? Morland isn’t going to be kissing anyone, is she?’
‘She’s notyourMorland, she’s her own Morland,’ Mattie said, because Posy wasn’t Sebastian’s possession, though it was quiteendearingthat The Rudest Man in London (as he was known by theGuardian) was so solicitous of his wife’s wellbeing. ‘And kissing is the whole point of the Mistletoe Booth. People buy a book and then they’re allowed to take their partner into the booth to snap themselves kissing, though why they can’t do that on their own phones, I don’t know.’
But Mattie was talking to thin air because Sebastian had whirled round to grab a book from the nearest shelf. As the cameras started rolling, he strode into the shop and, in one fluid movement, sidestepped Posy so he could perch on the stool inside the booth. ‘I fully intend to pay for this book, Morland,’ he announced, then he pulled her onto his lap for a resounding kiss.
If anyone tried that with Mattie, even someone she was joined with in matrimony, she’d slap them round the face, but Posy clutched onto the lapels of Sebastian’s very expensive, bespoke suit jacket and swooned a little. Though the swoon could have been her high blood pressure reinstating itself.
‘Technically, you’re meant to buy the bookbeforethe kissing,’ Posy said once the kiss was over, taking the book from Sebastian’s hand so she could have a cursory look at the cover before bopping him over the head with it. ‘I didn’t know you were a big fan of George Eliot.’
