Page 81 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
‘Nobody likes a gloater,’ Tom said, from where he was hemmed in by the baby reindeer with customers coming at him from all sides. ‘People, please! Can we form a queue?’
It was all very well having the shop staff roaming about with iPads in a freeform, organic kind of way, but not when there were only two shopping days left before Christmas. It was time for drastic action.
Mattie waded her way through the book-buying public until she reached the counter where absolutely no one was serving even though a huge, malcontent queue had formed. Mattie hoped that Posy wasn’t watching all of the badly organised retail madness on webcam, because if she was, then she was definitely going into early labour.
Mattie didn’t have the agility or the upper-body strength of Tom, but somehow she managed to climb up on the counter and clap her hands.
‘Enough!’ she said, and when no one paid her any attention, she increased her volume. ‘ENOUGH!’
Now, all eyes were on Mattie, which was what she wanted and yet, at the same time, how she longed to be back in her dear, familiar tearooms whose clientele were much more civilised than book buyers. Who’d have thought it?
Then she caught Tom’s gaze, not difficult when he was the tallest person in the shop, and he gave her a nod and an encouraging smile. And she was back to liking him. A lot. Maybe even more than a lot.
‘Right,’ Mattie called out decisively. ‘Tom and Sam, I want you behind the counter serving on your iPads. I will man the Mistletoe Booth and, ladies and gentlemen, there is now a ninety-second time limit on getting your picture taken. Sophie, you’re on the door. We’re at capacity. You don’t let anyone in, until you’ve let some people out.
‘So, if you’d like to pay, then please make your way to the counter. If you have paid and you have proof of purchase and you want to use the Mistletoe Booth, then please queue along this wall on the right, your right, not mine. We’d also like to thank you for your patience at this time and wish you all a very Merry Christmas,’ Mattie finished. Miracle of miracles, the seething mass of people shifted, with quite a bit of grumbling, into one long queue to pay and a not-so-long queue to avail themselves of the Mistletoe Booth.
Now, all she had to do was somehow get down from the counter and go and phone Verity to beg her to call the book distribution people and get to the bottom of whatever their beef was.
It had been much easier to get up than to get down, but then Tom was there, holding out his hand, which Mattie gratefully took. ‘I would jump, but it’s quite a tight squeeze behind the counter,’ she said.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Tom said gravely. Then his other hand took a firm grasp of Mattie’s waist and she sort of jumped as he sort ofliftedher off the counter so she came to land so close to him that not even a Happy Ever After bookmark could come between them. ‘Great crowd-wrangling skills, by the way.’
‘As a teenager I worked weekends in a burger van at Wembley Stadium for all the major sporting events,’ Mattie said, glancing up at Tom who looked predictably horrified at the mention of a burger van. ‘Gave me nerves of steel.’
‘I worked in a garden centre. It gave me an in-depth knowledge of when best to plant hardy perennials that I’ve never been able to shake,’ he said, smiling down at Mattie, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses, though admittedly that could have been the reflection of the fairy lights …
‘Oi! Romeo and Juliet! Can you save the lovey-dovey stuff for when you’ve knocked off?’ Mattie and Tom turned towards a red-faced man at the front of the queue who was waving a twenty-pound note and a copy ofThe Viscount Who Loved Meat them. ‘Some of us have still got to get to the bleeding Apple Store and Footlocker before the shops close.’
They sprang apart, Tom to serve Mr Buzzkill and Mattie so she could restore order to the Mistletoe Boothandphone Verity to ask her if there was literally a snowball in hell’s chance of her making it back to London for tomorrow. Unlike certain other people, Mattie was a champion at multi-tasking.
That evening, though technically it was past evening and actually very late, Tom and Mattie were back on the sofa, argument forgotten, as they leant against each other and shovelled pizza straight out of the takeaway box and into their mouths.
‘I hate Christmas,’ Tom sniped, as he tore off another slice of sourdough pizza with extra capers and no anchovies. ‘There was very little peace on earth and goodwill to all men in the shop today.’
‘Well, it was the Sunday before Christmas,’ Mattie pointed out. ‘And Christmas is on Wednesday – it was bound to get a bit hairy in places, but we’re still alive and mostly sane …’
‘No, Mattie, this is the bit where you say that you hate Christmas too,’ Tom said plaintively. ‘It’s our thing. That we both hate Christmas.’
‘Oh, yes! I do hate Christmas, don’t I?’ How had Mattie forgotten that she hated Christmas? ‘Well, working in a customer-facing environment over Christmas isn’t much fun, is it?’
‘Can’t you do any better than that?’ Tom asked. ‘Come on, Mattie! Brutal commercialisation of what was once a pagan festival. Knowing you’re going to get some really crappy presents and, no matter what you do to it, the turkey is always dry.’
‘Actually Sandrine is the best gift-giver,’ Mattie said apologetically. ‘And we’re not having turkey this year. We’re doing a goose and a ham and some Yotam Ottolenghi thing for Guy and his boyfriend Didier as they’re having another crack at being vegetarians. I mean, I haven’t said for definite that I’m going to Hackney for Christmas but, well, I’m thinking about it.’
‘You’re really letting the side down,’ Tom grumbled, sinking lower on the sofa so that they were shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. ‘My mother always gives me socks and her turkey is so dry that it leeches all the moisture from your body as you’re eating it. Why are you suddenly Christmas’s biggest fan?’
Mattie wasn’t Christmas’s biggest fan but she now had Christmas gingerbread cupcakes decorated with tiny fondant holly leaves on the tearoom cake rotation, and had even arranged the Christmas cards given to her by her regular customers on sparkly ribbon, and pinned them to the wall behind the counter.
‘The times they are a-changing. Before Steven, I loved Christmas.’ Mattie smiled slyly at Tom who shook his head in protest at her statement. ‘I used to start wearing novelty jumpers in November. I’d campaign to get the tree up by December the first and I loved Christmas shopping. Finding the perfect present for someone, picking out their card …’
‘You mean you got people individual cards instead of buying a charity selection box?’ Each new Yuletide-related revelation from Mattie had been greeted with a shudder but Tom had reached his tipping point.
‘Well, yeah! I mean, it’s fun. Itwasfun, and a way of showing my friends and the people I loved what they meant to me. It’s the thought that counts …’
‘No! Not another trite and sentimental word!’ Tom clapped his hands over his ears. ‘I can’t believe you’re abandoning me at a time like this.’
Mattie nudged him with her arm. ‘I’m afraid you might have to bah humbug all by yourself.’ Then she sighed and her expression grew more serious ‘Why should I let one bad man ruin all the things I love? It’s not Christmas’s fault that Steven reached the full peak of his evil powers at Christmas time. For too long, I’ve been depriving myself of things that give me pleasure, just because they reminded me of him, but I’m done with that now.’
