Tamara said firmly. ‘I’m fine, Toby, honestly.’ She reached for her son with one hand, and Gage with the other. ‘We’re going to leave Rocky in Judy’s tender care and get on with Christmas. Toby, love, you should head back home to sleep because I know you’ve only just got off work. We’ll put our brains together and see how to still pull off the Spirit of Christmas meal.’
Gage wasn’t daft enough to tell her that was ridiculous. If she could wave a magic wand over a crusty ex-serviceman like him and transform his life, rustling up a festive meal for thirty people from the wreckage of the pub should be child’s play. He met her gaze and nodded. His way of saying he was all in.
‘Sleep’s overrated,’ Toby said with a shrug. ‘I’ll text Chloe and get her down here too. She’ll want in on this.’ He angled a faint smile at Gage. ‘My partner is like yours. Stubborn. Hates to miss out on anything.’
Gage seized the olive branch and grinned back. Maybe Tamara was right and they could pull off a Christmas miracle.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
If she’d eaten breakfast, it would’ve been splattered over her shoes by now. It was only after she’d finished playing Superwoman and put on a blasé act in front of her son and Gage that she realised how reckless they’d been. But would she do it again? Hell, yes. Seeing Rocky’s white-faced wife, clutching their baby son in his elf pyjamas and hovering over her husband while Judy checked him over, confirmed they’d done the right thing.
‘It always hits afterwards,’ Gage murmured in her ear. ‘Sometimes it’s right away, but it can be days or weeks later. Something triggers it and there you are again. I still have nightmares and probably always will.’ His voice broke. ‘I would never have forgiven myself if—’
‘That’s enough, okay?’ She blinked back tears. ‘The lunch.’ Tamara begged Gage to go along with her. ‘The venue is obvious. The—’
‘Bookshop.’ He chipped in to finish her sentence. ‘We need to borrow a few more tables and chairs to go with the ones we’ve got for the café. That’s the easy part.’
Her mind raced. There was no hope of salvaging any food from the pub. Would it be the end of the world if they celebrated with sandwiches and crisps rather than turkey? Wasn’t the companionship of gathering together the important part?
‘Is this the village-lunch-rescue committee?’ Chloe joined them, her blonde ponytail swinging. She looked stunning in a sparkly red jumpsuit.
‘I suppose it might be.’
‘What can we do to help?’ Evelyn appeared, followed closely by Quinten and Ophelia, who looked worryingly frail. ‘The rest of the girls who are free are on the way.’
‘I’ll open up the shop and we can gather there to make plans,’ Gage offered. ‘Toby, do you want to come shift furniture with me?’
‘No problem. Lead the way.’
It warmed her heart to see the two go off together.
‘We need to start spreading the word and asking for contributions,’ Evelyn suggested. ‘Everyone overbuys food. The only challenge might be the meat, but we’ll make do with whatever we can get.’
‘We heard the news.’ Paul arrived now. ‘We’re all here to help. Except Daniel. We left him home to keep an eye on the turkey and he’ll bring it down for you when it’s cooked. The kids fussed a bit when Becky told them, but taking care of neighbours who’d be on their own or whatever — that’s Christmas, isn’t it?’
Paul would be mortified if she hugged him, so Tamara made do with a smile and a nod.
Half an hour later, the bookshop kitchen was organised chaos, and Chloe and Evelyn had taken charge of coordinating the donations that were pouring in. They certainly wouldn’t be short of mince pies, Christmas puddings, fancy biscuits and chocolates because Vernon had arrived, with his wife in tow, having stripped his shop of everything he’d planned to put on sale tomorrow at half-price.
The hum of conversation grew louder as the piles of cut-up vegetables grew. Gage had laughingly rolled his eyes at the sight of yet more carrots and parsnips that needed peeling. The mouth-watering spicy aroma of Christmas puddings steaming away filled the kitchen.
‘How does that look?’ Emily held out the chalkboard they normally used to highlight their bestselling books, adapted to display today’s menu.
They were up to four turkeys now, along with a spectacular joint of beef brought in a few minutes ago by Monica, who’dheard about the news from Wilf Buckingham. Wilf and Karen had been among the first to turn up, bringing with them their seven-kilo turkey. They insisted that, on their own, they would’ve been eating turkey until they were sick of it. Tamara persuaded Monica to ring her husband to tell him to get down here and join the party. All the helpers were intent on staying, in addition to the original list of people who had signed up.
‘That’s awesome, Ems.’ Gage beamed at his niece. ‘Are the tables—’
‘All done and decorated. Ollie and Lily didn’t do a bad job on them.’ High praise for the siblings she usually referred to as useless wastes of space.
Evelyn poked her head around the kitchen door. ‘Our first guests have arrived.’
‘The buffet is ready for people to come through and serve themselves,’ Monica said proudly. The woman was someone who could be relied on to do a job well and was an asset to the village. They needed more like her.
‘I’ll tell them.’ Tamara stepped back into the shop, but couldn’t make her announcement straight away because the sight of everyone happily gathered took her breath away. In addition to the tables in what would soon be her café, others were squeezed between the bookshelves. People weren’t necessarily sitting with their own families or friends, either, but had fitted in wherever there was space. Wilf and Pixie were taking orders at the impromptu bar they’d set up, and it was a relief to see her friend looking less stressed now that she had something to focus on, other than her wrecked pub. The Spirit of Christmas name couldn’t be more appropriate today.
Quinten’s precise, professorial tones silenced the room. ‘Before we eat, I think a round of applause is in order for the wonderful people who stepped in to pull off this meal underchallenging circumstances. As Tiny Tim said inA Christmas Carol, “God bless us every one.”’
‘This is all down to you,’ Gage whispered.
