It’s all there on my screen; the promise of a new life. My burgeoning getaway plan. And why on earth not? I’m chilled to the bone by this year, and nothing will rekindle my enjoyment of Christmas or my faith that there’s a future for me in Wheaton.
It’s hard not to think that Don doing a runner was some kind of sign telling me to cut and run too. Starting over has never felt more appealing. There’d be no more pitying looks or gossipy whispers if I was in Birmingham. If I was miles away, I wouldn’t have to watch everything I’ve ever known going under. I’d be blissfully unaware. I carry my phone to the bedroom and lie down with it.
Chapter Two
Friday night: The Gingerbread Committee
‘How can you be glum when there’s gingerbread needs mixing? Just smell that spicy loveliness!’
Izz is trying to cheer me up about my school-run collection, and, to be fair, it’s working.
‘I just hate letting you down,’ I tell her, fixing her apron in a bow at her back. She’s holding her just-washed hands like a surgeon prepped for theatre.
‘Letting me down? You raised some money, didn’t you? That’s still cash in the pot; better than nothing.’
‘Hmm.’ Eight quid thirty-two pence isn’t going to stretch very far, is it? ‘How much have you made at the cafe?’ I ask her. She’s had a jar by her till point since September, though her regular crowd of local farmers and pensioners aren’t renowned for being big tippers; I’ve seen Mr and Mrs Saddler make a pot of tea and aDaily Maillast three hours sat in one of the booths (all while charging up a mobile on Izz’s energy bill, I should add), and they still won’t drop their coppers in Izz’s tips jar.
‘Umm… seven…ahum ahum.’ She fudges the rest in a fluttery cough directed into her crooked elbow.
‘Seventy pounds?’ I venture.
She shakes her head, making her way around my kitchen table to grab a bowl.
‘Seventeen?’
She fixes me with a look that says she’s tried her best. ‘Seven pounds twenty, but add it to yours and that covers our golden syrup and sugar costs for this first batch, so…’ Evenshe’sstruggling to sound positive. ‘Come on,’ she cajoles. ‘Weigh out the butter and let’s get started. Have you got your mum’s recipe out?’
It’s not as though we need the recipe; I know it by heart, but yes, I do. I prop it against the scales, her love song to gingerbread in green felt tip.
Mum started the whole gingerbread village thing the year she got married: just a shelf with a few prettily iced houses inside the porch of the church, when ‘It was just something nice for the kiddies’, before it all got a bit out of hand. Over the years her gingerbread display grew until it included nearby landmarks – Broadway Tower, Tewkesbury Abbey, a very ambitious attempt at Sudeley Castle and grounds, that sort of thing – until, by necessity, it had to be moved into the village hall where she could really let her imagination run wild.
‘Shall we listen toThe Archerswhile we bake?’ Izz interrupts my thoughts of missing Mum, thank goodness. I don’t want to get misty over the bread mix.
‘Must we?’ I say.
‘I’ve got an emergency Christmas hits CD?’ she offers instead. ‘Should I break it out?’
‘I’m not sure that’s any better, Izz,’ I tell her, but she’s already pulling it from her tote bag and, I’m delighted to say, that’s followed by a big bottle of red. ‘Now you’re talking!’
Within twenty minutes we’ve got a cosy red-wine glow on, we’re up to our elbows kneading sweet, spiced, bready cookie mixture in Mum’s huge old earthenware bowls in my lovely little cottage kitchen and Alexander O’Neal’s knocking out ‘My Gift to You’ from the stereo. It’s nice in here. Cheerful, even. Izz is doing a sort of soulful two-step as she works and I’ve gone for the traditional white-lady hip sway.
Wet ingredients combine with dry, and the familiar heady, spicy scent fills the room right up to the wonky beams above our heads. Everything about the process is easy and warm, and I’m eight years old again every time I watch the golden syrup stream off Mum’s old tablespoon, reserved especially for gingerbread nights. I can almost hear Old Widow Davies saying this looks a good batch, and I can see Mrs Cooper sifting the flour while toddlers chew at sneaked gingerbread stars and snowflakes. And I’m by Mum’s mixing arm once more; my hands are her hands. ‘A pinch more ginger,’ Mum says. ‘It wants to be fiery.’ This is my favourite place to be, and I let the lovely delusion linger as long as I can.
I meet Izz’s eyes, and she sends me a smiling wink. She knows I’m only half in the here and now, half back there in the rosy haze.
We’ve known each other long enough to be able to work in silent concentration and not feel awkward; this is, after all, our twelfth year running the grotto together. My twelfth Christmas without Mum here, and the eleventh after Lydia, my younger sister, took a nursing job in New Zealand and never looked back. I was suddenly the only Frost family member left in Wheaton to carry all of this on, and that was the year the council gave up subsidising the village hall, so the building’s been getting increasingly run-down since then, not that it hasn’t been well used, what with Bobbie’s ‘chairobics’ sessions for seniors, and there’s all manner of baby-group things, breastfeeding drop-ins double-booked with jumble sales and beetle drives, and that’s before all the local produce competitions and summer fetes. You can’t get moving in the hall come the end of July for officials with clipboards judging jams or pinning rosettes on offensively girthy courgettes.
Come Christmas, the hall’s less in demand: too chilly. I doubt the ‘A land fit for heroes’ blokes who built the place after the war could ever have foreseen it shut up for four months of the year except for the one fortnight when some lunatics fill it with confectionery.
The council let us have the keys early in December, and we open the grotto exhibit on the middle Friday of the month and run all the way up to Christmas Eve. Getting the place cobweb-free and set up before then is no mean feat. So, we’re women on a deadline. We’ve a whole village to rustle up.
‘Mine’s ready for the fridge,’ says Izz, bundling her gingerbread into a cloth to rest. Never cling film, as per Mum’s instructions. ‘You’re quiet tonight?’
‘I’m fine.’ I do a really convincing shrug, but at the back of my mind, I’m still distracted by those alerts on my phone.
Those properties in Birmingham have left me feeling seriously unsettled. One of them had a conservatory on the back and a little veg garden. The estate agent called it a ‘potagerie’, which is, for the West Midlands, I reckon, pushing it a bit. Still, it did look nice.
If I’d started thinking this way sooner and put some ‘For Sale’ signs up in the autumn, I could’ve been taking Lucy to Wagamama’s right now. It’s her favourite place, and I’ve always wanted to try it out. Maybe we’d be watchingThe Nutcrackerat the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Or we could be pottering round the Bullring doing our Christmas shopping together, happily sipping overpriced coffee in red cups like the rest of the world.
