I notice Patrick watching me as I move amongst the pairs helping to wipe away spills from overzealous shaking. He’s looking at me with admiration. He’s never seen me in my Home Ec teaching comfort zone, and it turns out it’s like riding a bike. I remember how much I enjoyed this. I wish there was more of this in my life.
Izz, meanwhile, shows the adults how to fill the gaps between the roof panels with twists and wisps of piped icing to resemble gathered drifts of snow, and Lucy, getting into her art teacher stride, suggests new ways of achieving brick effects and pretty gates and ivy-clad gables, and the icing team soon falls into deep concentration, working away.
Fern and Shell roll up their sleeves and muck in with setting up a stall to sell the gingerbread hearts we made yesterday – wrapping biscuits in cellophane bags, again courtesy of Sully – and decorating each with a red ribbon tie.
Very soon there’s a happy assembly line bringing together our village in miniature, the children’s happy chatter punctuated by the crunch of Patrick and Bobbie’s staple guns as they transform the gym into a black box backdrop.
By noon the kids have left their wonderfully decorated gingerbread men to set and are led back to their classrooms, all beyond excited to see the finished exhibit with their handiwork on display, and it’s grown so dark in the gym with the drapes across the walls we need to have the ceiling lights on and, if you don’t look up at the standard issue school ceiling tiles, you could be forgiven for mistaking this place for a rather theatrical Bedouin tent in the Sahara.
Every now and then we hear the bell ring or the sound of children making their way around the school. There are bursts of giggly laughter and excitement beyond the hall doors as well as a few words of calm from teachers when things get too lairy, all accompanied by the rising aroma of Christmas lunch drifting in from the dining room.
‘Turkey and all the trimmings for the volunteers?’ Leo – or should I say Mr Bold since he’s in head teacher mode – announces at half-one after the bell has rung for afternoon classes. ‘I’ve asked the kitchens to keep you some.’
Downing tools, the whole team follow him out of the hall. Only Patrick and I hang back to look at the completed builds ready to be lifted into place. They look wonderful, far better than our usual efforts. It just shows what a big creative team can do when it’s all just a jolly novelty and not an annual slog to the finish line for a few weary volunteers.
‘How many’s that left to do?’ Patrick asks.
‘There’s still the schoolhouse and church to put together.’
‘It feels like it was a lot longer than a couple of weeks ago we were making them the first time round,’ Patrick says. ‘A lot’s changed since then.’
He’s not just talking about the hall roof falling in. He sees me struggling, not knowing what to say.
‘It’s OK,’ he tells me. ‘Let’s just go eat. I don’t want you feeling uncomfortable around me. Come on.’ He walks away, heading for the door, and I follow.
Everything has changed, Patrick’s right. I’ll never be able to go back to being the person I was before we kissed, and I know now that I can’t just switch off this feeling of wanting more and how difficult it is, knowing I can’t have him.
After the crackers have been cracked and the terrible jokes told, and the roast turkey, pigs in blankets and delicious roasties washed down with orange squash, we’re back in the gym and everyone is standing around me peering at the images I printed out at home eleven months ago when I was first planning this year’s event. I’d pasted them into a notebook for inspiration.
‘It’s possible I was being a teeny bit too ambitious, trying to emulate the famous Pepperkakebyen,’ I say. ‘But this was what I was thinking.’
Tommy Brash and one of the mums had to get back to work, but everyone else is inspecting the images. Patrick and Izz hang back. They’ve already seen them.
‘Pepper-coke-u-bee-in?’ Shell echoes back at me.
‘That’s the one,’ I say. ‘The Pepperkakebyen is a historic Norwegian gingerbread exhibit in Bergen. All the locals help out and it’s a huge deal every winter. They have loads of bakers contributing, a true community event.’
‘It’s magical,’ Fern coos, bending closer to the images of the many hundreds of buildings and landmarks all laid out amidst train tracks and working Ferris wheels and cruise ships.
‘Impressive,’ says Lolla. ‘It’s the lighting that makes it,’ she adds.
Everything in the images is softly washed with a blue wintry glow reminiscent of the northern lights. It makes the glittery icing shimmery. It sets a cool, otherworldly mood.
My mind’s ticking over, and when I look to Patrick, I see he’s thinking hard too, absently rubbing his fingers over his chin.
‘You weren’tin lovewith the electric lighting on this year’s first exhibit, were you, Margi?’ he asks me.
I don’t like to admit it, not when he worked so hard to make all the buildings glow.
I pull a hidden-lipped smile of apology. ‘It’s not that it wasn’t beautiful,’ I reply, aware everyone’s listening. ‘It wassobeautiful!’
‘But it didn’t have the right feel?’ he coaxes.
‘No,’ I admit. ‘Something didn’t feel quite right.’
‘And all the dry ice and whirring motors and hydraulics?’ he adds. It’s not really a question. He draws a deep breath and exhales. ‘I reckon… our new venue’s gingerbread grotto would feel cosier by candlelight,’ he says, now addressing the helpers. ‘The way Margi’s mum always did it.’
I want to gasp and say,That’s it. That’s what was wrong the other night at the hall. All the lights and smoke and hydraulics weren’t necessary. I want to hug him, the relief is so strong, but I don’t.
