Page 10 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
“Jeans and that sequined jumper I bought when I was out with you.”
“Jeans!” exclaimed Laura.
“It’s a couples’ cooking night, not a cocktail party, Laura.”
“Okay, okay. So who are you coupled with tonight?”
Kate pressed the fluted cutter in the pastry and gently pressed the bases into the muffin tin.
“His name’s Michael. He’s a vegan. Divorced. No children. Works for an art gallery in Soho,” said Kate, reeling off the scant details sent to her by the dating agency.
“Ooh, that sounds promising,” cooed Laura. “What does he look like?”
Kate dusted her hands off and picked up her phone, flicking through her emails until she found the one she wanted.
“Blond hair, kinda foppish, cute smile, crinkles around his eyes,” she said. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this; it feels like I’m shopping from a man catalog.”
“Because you need a little push,” said Laura. “You haven’t seen anyone properly since Dan. I’m not saying you’re going to meet Mr. Right at these things, but it’ll help you to get back into dating again. Andanyway, who’s to say that the man of your dreams won’t be at one of these events? It could be a Christmas miracle.”
Laura and Kate had been friends since primary school. They went to university together and shared a house for three years, until Kate went off to go traveling and Laura came back to Blexford to take up her position as trainee curator at Blexford Manor and marry her childhood sweetheart, Ben.
Kate laid pastry stars onto the mincemeat, brushed them with milk, sprinkled them liberally with granulated sugar, and put them in the oven to bake. The first batch were cooling on a wire rack and the whole house smelled of citrus and spice. She got cleaned up and changed while they cooked; she would have to go on her date smelling of mince pies, but there were worse things to smell of.
She boxed up the cooled pies and put the hot ones on the rack. While she waited for them to cool, she leafed through some of the brightly colored sketches that were scattered over the battered kitchen table. She’d emailed photographs of her latest designs to the printers and would pick up the resulting test fabrics from her London office—a dainty spring design of nodding daffodils and cerulean hyacinths—when they were ready.
She scooped the papers into a rough pile and rinsed out her brushes and the jam jar they’d been sitting in. Then she boxed up the last of the mince pies, zhooshed her hair quickly in the mirror, and set off for the café.
The Pear Tree Café was so named because of the giant pear tree in the garden. It wasn’t the only fruit tree in the garden, but it dwarfed the plum, cherry, and apple trees and made a mockery of the gooseberry bush.
Kate and Matt used to spend their summer holidays messing aboutin the garden, climbing the trees—when no one was watching to tell them not to—and making tents out of broken chairs and old curtains. Laura’s parents weren’t together, and so during the holidays she would go to her dad’s house in France.
Kate’s parents worked in the city, but her mum worked a three-day week during school holidays. With Matt’s mum working full time in the bakery and tearooms, it made sense for them to pool their childcare resources.
On the days when Kate’s mum was home, she would take them to the beach or rambling, or they’d spend the day in Fitzwilliam Park. And the rest of the time, Kate and Matt would stay at the bakery, with as much barley water and buns as they could manage from the tearooms at the front of the shop and free rein of the large garden at the back of the kitchen.
Come autumn, there were more pears than any one family could consume, even with Matt’s mum preserving them in brandy and selling them in the shop or making them into jam. So she would invite the villagers into the garden for a “pick your own” party. It became a tradition. Blexford’s very own harvest festival. And year after year it got bigger and bigger until it was an event in the village calendar; gazebos would be set up on the green for an American-style supper after the great pear harvest.
Patrick, from Old Blexford Farm, used to concoct a terrifying pear wine with his spoils. He’d dish it out at the Christmas caroling, hot and infused with cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla, guaranteed to keep you warm and give you a mild case of amnesia. Corinna would just happen to pass by with a tray of steaming glasses and leave them for her kid brother and his mates: the then fifteen-year-old Kate, Matt, Laura, and Ben, who would get merrily sozzled on the bench on the green.
When Matt’s mum and sister died, the pear parties stopped. Some people suggested they should continue: a good way to keep their memory alive. But Matt couldn’t face it; it was too soon, too raw, and nobody was going to argue with an orphan, especially one with Evelyn in his corner.
The Harrisons used to pile the windfalls into baskets and set them outside the front of the shop for people to help themselves. But the people after them didn’t bother, and once the place was boarded up, the pears would rot where they fell.
Kate had suggested to Matt that maybe he could consider inviting people back into the garden in autumn to pick the pears. It wouldn’t have to be a party, just a community get-together. So far, he’d been reluctant.
He had though, buckled under Kate’s persistence and made good on the garden the year before last. With her dad’s help, Patrick’s cultivator, and Barry’s muscle (Barry was landlord at the Duke’s Head), the five of them had stripped the wilderness back to its former glory.
They laid new turf and gave the fruit trees a mercy prune, and Evelyn helped shape and fill new flower beds. At the far end of the garden Kate’s dad built raised beds using the old boards that had been at the windows and then were left piled in the coal cellar. And Matt filled them with vegetables, herbs, and soft fruits.
The kitchen used to fill the whole back half of the building. But when Matt renovated the shop, he made the kitchen smaller and put in new customer toilets—previously the only toilet cubicle was the one in the garden next to the coal cellar—and a corridor that led from the café through to the garden.
Matt furnished the nearest end of the garden with sturdy wooden chairs and tables for customers. It was the first time the garden hadbeen used for anything other than Matt and Kate’s playground. It was a beautiful space, popular year-round, and increased Matt’s seating capacity by almost double.
It was closing time when Kate arrived at the café. The music was turned down low and some of the chairs were already upturned on the tables, ready for the floor to be mopped.
A couple of die-hard customers skulked in the corner on easy chairs: always the last to leave, savoring the dregs of their coffees, determined to finish their newspapers before Matt finally put out the lights and turfed them out. They nodded at Kate over the tops of their glasses.
Louder music came from the kitchen along with the smell of something meaty being cooked in red wine. Carla and her mum were cooking up a storm. Kate’s stomach growled and she made a mental note to check Evelyn’s freezer to pick up one of whatever they were making back there.
