‘How can I have avoided you when we were baking in the same room for two whole days? Well, until you had to leave for your Dunham shifts.’
‘You know what I mean,’ Patrick says, not slowing in his work, manoeuvring double desks into a big oval just like we’d set out the village hall tables. ‘Thirty enough?’
‘Should be.’ The school tables are smaller than the hall ones and lower too. ‘I’d say thirty’s a good guestimate. See how we get on?’
‘Can always add more,’ he says, and I’m relieved we’ve moved into safer territory until he says, ‘So, are we doing it again? Dinner, maybe? Indoors this time?’
‘Patrick, you have to let it go. I can’t…’
‘I heard you needed some muscle,’ interrupts a voice from the hall doors and in comes Bobbie, looking oddly overdressed (compared to their usual layer of Lycra) in white trainers and a pastel tracksuit with a ski jacket over it.
‘I didn’t recognise you for a second,’ I say. ‘You’re here to help?’
‘Certainly am.’ Bobbie grins. ‘After I saw that viral video about Izz and her boyfriend, I knew I wanted to help.’
Suddenly, there’s Izz in my mind’s eye at her cottage doorstep last night as I walked her home from the bakery, not a car on the road and all the lights on the high street long since out, the whole village asleep.
‘Check one more time,’ she’d asked me.
When I showed her the app there was nothing new from @carlie7bts2006 even in response to Fern’s request she message the Gingerbread Christmas Village page. A handful of comments below asked for more details too. Strangers wanting to know if it was true and had he been in touch.Has Alexi been found!!!!one user asked, their profile picture a greyed-out avatar and their handle just a stream of numbers.
‘People are looking for him,’ I said, not sure if that was going to comfort Izz or unsettle her even more. ‘Is that what you want? For him to be found?’
Izz lifted her eyes to the starry black sky and inhaled deeply.
‘It’s been a long time, not knowing,’ she told me. ‘Always wondering where he was, what he was feeling. Always missing him. If I knew, one way or the other… maybe it would help?’
She didn’t try to plaster on her usual smile as we said good night. I think we’re past pretending now. After nearly sixty years of smiling through pain, as Lucy put it, I reckon Izz should be allowed some respite.
‘Bobbie?’ I say gently. ‘We’re not going to mention Alexi to Izz today if that’s OK? It’s been a lot.’
Bobbie crosses their heart and says they get it.
‘Right, well, I’ve got forty metres of white cloth to fix over these tables and Patrick will be making a start on covering the windows, the walls and the gym equipment with black drape. Are you handy with a staple gun?’
Bobbie mimes lifting guns from invisible holsters and firing staples at me, so I take that as an enthusiastic yes. ‘There are other helpers waiting outside,’ says the boot camp teacher. ‘Mrs Slaughter’s getting them all signed in with school visitor badges.’
‘There are?’ I say, looking between Bobbie and Patrick, confused. ‘Who is it?’ I say, but before Bobbie can fill me in, the hall doors open and in spills Fern with her dad Tommy – thankfully, he’s left the farm mutts at home – some of The Salutation regulars and Lolla the landlady, Lucy and Izz, a few of the mums from the PTA, a school dinner lady on her day off, and two of Sully’s bakery delivery drivers, every one of them apparently keen to take part.
‘Don’t tell me, you’ve all seen Fern’s fundraising videos online?’ I ask, and there’s a murmur of agreement. Fern doesn’t know whether to be proud or sheepish. ‘Right! Well, let’s get started, shall we?’
I set up a construction station on the low stage where the bakery lads, the dinner lady and one of the mums set to work constructing cottages following Patrick’s template plans.
At another cluster of tables, Lucy and Izz direct Tommy Brash, Landlady Lolla, and the others who are roped in as decorators, putting the finishing touches to completed builds.
I spend a good hour mixing different colours of icing and loading them into piping bags – kindly supplied by Sully who’s back at the bakery completing the last of the village builds by himself – until there’s a pile of bags ready for the icers to wield, and no danger of them running out any time this morning.
That’s when one of the teachers brings the reception kids in and the noise increases by about a hundred decibels.
They’re delighted when I produce the spare tubs of dolly mixtures, gumdrops and candy canes that I picked up from the cash and carry back at the start of December when I had a very different image in my head of how this year’s exhibition would look.
I demonstrate the ‘flooding’ icing technique Mum showed me so long ago, perfect for gingerbread men. They all crowd round while I show them. I forgot how closely little kids can concentrate on things like this. They all watch my hands as I ice the outline around the edge of the gingerbread biscuit. ‘You’ll need to make sure there are no gaps in your outline,’ I tell them. ‘Like this. Then, get your coloured icing, these ones are runnier.’ They ooh and ahh as I let the pale yellow icing run into the middle of the biscuit. ‘Now you can drag the runny stuff right up to the edges of your outline if you want to, but I prefer to do this.’
I gently shake the gingerbread man, keeping him level, and the yellow icing spreads itself smoothly right up to the outline.
The kids react like I’ve done a magic trick.
‘Now it’s your turn,’ I say, setting them working in pairs, one responsible for the outline, their partner flooding the shape with icing.
