Page 77 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘Well, you’ve definitely broken a couple of ribs and possibly your collarbone,’ she announced. ‘Not to mention a mild concussion. I don’t like head wounds. They can be tricky things. Now, normally I’d say you weren’t to be moved, but you can’t lie here and get hypothermia, on top of everything else.’ She gazed around at the little group of concerned colleagues and bug-eyed bystanders. She pointed at Tom and Sam. ‘What I really need is a couple of strapping young lads, but you two will have to do.’
Very slowly and very carefully, Nina, with much gasping and biting her bottom lip, was transferred to the sofa while Mattie raced upstairs to fetch a quilt.
But by the time Mattie came back downstairs, Nina was shaking with shock and cold. ‘Let’s get this around you,’ Cynthia said to her, taking the quilt from Mattie. ‘The rest of you aren’t needed if you’re just going to stand around gawping.’
‘I never had a chance to sort out the till float and now there’s a queue of people outside,’ Tom said, and they all looked over to the door, which they’d locked when they’d brought Nina in, where a small group of shivering shoppers were waiting for admittance.
Mattie felt utterly helpless and knew of only one thing she could do to offer more assistance. ‘Anyone want a nice cup of tea?’
‘Milk and two sugars, please,’ Cynthia said, giving the uncharacteristically silent Nina one last tuck-in. ‘No tea for this one in case she needs to have an operation once she gets to hospital.’
When Mattie returned with Cynthia’s tea, made by her doting husband, Nina was still motionless on the sofa and Posy was on speakerphone.
‘It’s less than a week to Christmas! Who will manage the shop without Verity here and Nina with a gaping head wound?’
Posy’s distress shocked Nina out of her inertia. ‘Nobody said it was gaping.’
‘It isn’t gaping,’ Tom called out from behind the counter where he was serving the only customer in the shop who wasn’t rubbernecking the makeshift field hospital that had been set up on the sofa. ‘Posy’s exaggerating for dramatic effect and I will manage the shop. I have worked here for five years, you know,’ he added with genuine annoyance.
‘And I can do the website orders,’ Sam offered. Usually he didn’t offer to do anything but had to be cajoled, bribed and finally threatened in order to perform the duties he was being paid for. ‘Especially if we’re quiet because of the snow, I can easily get them done.’
‘You can have Little Sophie too,’ Mattie said.
‘That’s all very well, but it’s meant to stop snowing tomorrow,’ Posy complained. ‘Then we’ll be busy again and I need a grown-up in charge. No offence, Tom.’
‘So much offence taken,’ Tom said, flaring his nostrils. ‘I am a grown-up. I’m actually a doctor …’
‘Yeah, but a doctor of boring academic stuff, not a proper doctor,’ Nina reminded him: she was obviously feeling better by the second. ‘Besides, you’ve never once cashed up.’
‘Only because Verity won’t let me,’ Tom pointed out. ‘I’m confident that I could cash up. I could absolutely crush cashing up.’
‘Posy Morland-Thorndyke, what did I tell you about your blood pressure only a couple of days ago?’ Cynthia demanded of Posy.
‘My blood pressure isfine! I’m lying down!’
If the snow was going to cease its infernal falling, that meant that the tearooms would be packed to capacity again and Mattie had enough to do as it was, but for the sake of Posy’s blood pressure and the health of her unborn child …
‘I can do the cashing up,’ Mattie offered. ‘And I will help Tom, who really is a perfectly capable grown-up, if and when he needs it.’
‘I’m more than perfectly capable,’ Tom said. ‘I think you’ll find that I’m an exemplary grown-up.’
‘A genuine grown-up wouldn’t keep banging on about what a great grown-up they were,’ Posy hissed but she sounded happier. ‘Very well. Mattie, I’m counting on you. And Nina, get better soon. Very soon.’
Posy rung off just as they heard an ambulance siren in the distance. ‘I hope they give me something for the pain because this all hurts even worse than getting tattooed,’ Nina said sadly from underneath Mattie’s quilt. ‘And when I’m not in huge amounts of agony, I’m going to be really cross with Posy for taking the attention away from me and making it all about her and her profit margins.’
It stopped snowing at lunchtime the next day and by three o’clock, it was elbow room only in both Happy Ever After and the tearooms.
Lulled into a fugue state by the snow, people had suddenly realised that they’d lost serious Christmas-shopping time and it felt like half of Greater London had descended on Rochester Mews in a blind panic.
Now that Mattie had volunteered to be the designated adult in the shop, she was grateful that the tearooms were a well-oiled machine. Cuthbert could be relied upon to maintain law and order. When Sophie wasn’t covering in the shop she was perfectly able to wait and clear tables and take orders all in one perimeter sweep, and Meena and her friend Geoffrey were on a generous hourly rate that made them happy to flit between tearoom kitchen and upstairs kitchen with a minimum of grumbling. Mattie didn’t even care that every day there seemed to be yet more Christmas decorations in the tearooms. If a few strands of tinsel and some Christmas-pudding fairy lights (which at least were on brand) were what it took for her staff to be happy, then so be it.
Yes, Mattie liked to think that she ran a tight ship in the tearooms but the shop, without Verity, was not a tight ship. It was absolute chaos.
When Tom had claimed to be an exemplary grown-up, what he really meant was that he was as slow and as methodical as an OAP counting out their daily pills. Five years he’d worked in the shop, yet he still stabbed uncertainly at Bertha’s keys as if he was seeing them for the first time, in a way that made Mattie grit her teeth and want to scream.
Sam, on the other hand, was so quick and slapdash that someone (Tom) had to doublecheck the website orders after he’d done them, while Sam had a mid-level hissy fit that he was being treated like a child.
Only Little Sophie was a time-efficient, effective member of staff, when she wasn’t needed in the tearooms and when she wasn’t sloping off to smooch Sam. Mattie had caught them at it again in the back office, only to discover that Tom had already caught them at it in the corridor by the stairs.
