Page 51 of A Winter in Wonderland
‘No,’ Esteri said with that bluntness I kinda liked.
‘No?’
‘That looks like one of the children did it. It looks like a very sad, melted snowflake.’
‘Oh.’
Around me, my colleagues were wandering in and out of the kitchen, nibbling the gingerbread dough, pulling up a chair and a piping bag to join in, making a drink and watchingmyattempt, which seemed a little unfair. Somebody turned on some Christmas music, and dammit, this was never supposed to be an impromptu Christmas party.
I splodged some more icing onto one of the hearts, trying to write my name just to get the hang of handling the piping bag.
‘Mujoee?’ Esteri read over my shoulder.
‘I think it says Myla,’ Angelique said, coming over.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
The door from the boot room into the chalet opened and out of the corner of my eye I spotted Josh walk in with a couple of the other elves. He had his hat in his hand, his hair a bit wet and messy, and he was laughing at something one of the others said. I looked away quickly as he started to turn towards the kitchen, so he didn’t spot me staring.
‘All right,’ Esteri was saying. ‘The next batch of cookies are nearly done so I need you to watch the oven for me to make sure they don’t burn.’
‘On it.’ I nodded, one eye on Josh as he entered the opposite end of the kitchen and shuffled past the hoards to grab himself a beer from the fridge, checking out the cookie decorating station we’d set up over the large table on the way. I cringed seeing him studying my ‘Myla’ cookie with an amused smile on his face.
Esteri appeared at my side again, a bowl with bright green icing in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other. She sniffed at the air around the oven, and all of a sudden shoved me aside.
‘Myla, they’re burning!’
‘Oh, shit, I’m so sorry.’
Esteri pulled the tray from the oven, and they looked fine to me, perhaps more of an auburn than a ginger, but close enough. I waved a little plume of smoke away from the air.
‘I told you to watch them,’ she said.
‘I did. I was. I was just—’ My eyes flicked involuntarily over towards Josh who was still hovering in the kitchen, chatting to others.
Esteri stood in my line of vision and put her hands on her hips. She whispered to me, ‘Do you like Elf Josh?’
‘What?No, not atall,’ I spluttered. I looked around her at his elf costume. ‘Believe me, he’s completelynotmy type.’
She just smirked and drew my attention back to her. ‘Yeah, when is a good-looking ray of sunshine anybody’s type?’
‘Well, he’s not mine.’
Esteri shrugged and started loading the cookies onto a baking tray just as Josh looked over and met my eye.
‘Oh, hey, Josh.’ I waved across the room like a lunatic.Oh, Myla.
He raised his beer bottle in return and then one of the reps stepped in between my view of him, picking up my Myla heart and chomping down into it. Esteri side-eyed me. ‘What? I was just saying hi. I barely see him out of his elf character now, that’s all.’ Apart from the other night, when we got to talking …
‘Sure,’ she replied, and handed me the icing bowl. ‘But anyway, are you ready for round two?’
By the time I’d finished scooping the icing into a new piping bag, dropping only one great dollop on my foot, I looked up to see Josh leaving the kitchen. I saw he had icing on the back of the hand he held his beer in, and looked back at the table to see he’d left one there, decorated.
‘Let’s be careful this time, OK?’ Esteri said, holding her hands over mine like we were in a romantic movie scene and she was teaching me how to play golf.
Over the next thirty minutes, Esteri, bless her heart, helped turn me into someone that looked like their gingerbread cookies had fallen face-first into a vat of icing, to someone whose gingerbread cookies resembled that of only a mildly intoxicated contestant onBake Off. Well, if I was being incredibly generous with myself. Either way though, it was a vast improvement, and I felt more confident going into tomorrow’s gingerbread decorating workshop than I would have before.
Most of our colleagues had scarpered with their own creations as cleaning up time loomed, and the least I could do was to now release Esteri to enjoy her evening.
