Page 112 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
Adam had the look of a slightly grizzled pop star. He was handsome in a sort of Alaskan pioneer way; Kate could very well imagine him living in a log cabin and chopping his own wood for the fire. His long hair curled at the ends where the snow had gotten to it, and the knitted stag’s head on his chunky sweater did nothing to dampen the image Kate had formed of him.
When everyone who was likely to arrive was seated and furnished with a goblet of mulled wine, the reps explained the fairly self-explanatory challenge. Each couple had two and a half hours to build their gingerbread house and decorate it, and the winners would win an all-expenses-paid meal out in London.
Kate had built enough gingerbread houses in her time to feel confident that she had this challenge in the bag. What she hadn’t reckoned on was an architect with a highly competitive nature and a hatred for all things conformist.
“But a gingerbread house is a fairly traditional build,” reasoned Kate. “And they have only provided us with a traditional gingerbread template.”
This held no water with Adam. He insisted on leaving the back wall of the house off the structure, as this would be a glass feature wall. When Kate flagged up that they didn’t have any glass for the glass feature wall, Adam produced a piece of clear Perspex and a craft knife from his satchel and proceeded to cut it to the house dimensions.
Kate pointed out that the structure was supposed to be entirely edible, but Adam only laughed and said, “Did no one ever teach you to stretch the boundaries of your imagination? Call yourself an artist?”
“They did actually,” said Kate. “And I do call myself an artist. Working to brief is part of my job, and this brief says that a gingerbread house should be edible.”
It made no difference. Extra windows were cut into the front wall, and a balcony—fashioned from part of the redundant back wall—was fixed beneath them and ran the length of the house.
Kate looked round and caught the eye of the couple next to her. They opened their eyes wide and pulledeekfaces toward Adam. The couple opposite did the same. On the other side a woman with close-cropped pink hair gave her a sympathetic smile.
The front door was made bigger and a Velux window was chiseled out of one of the roof panels and filled in with more Perspex. The chimney pot was discarded and used to make a chiminea, which sat on the decking at the back of the house, formed from the remnants of the back wall, after the balcony was constructed.
Annoyingly, it did look good. When Kate voiced an idea or suggestion, based on her long history of gingerbread-house-making experience, she was met with terse rebuttals.
At one point Kate took matters into her own hands; she built agable for the oversized front door and was about to stick it on with white icing when Adam saw what she was doing and slapped her hand away.
“Did you actually just do that?” Kate was astounded.
“Gables are last century,” Adam said by means of explanation.
“Are you overly competitive or a just a maniacal control freak?”
Adam looked at her straight on.
“Both,” he said. And added: “I don’t like to lose, and I abhor the ordinary.”
“People like tradition,” said Kate. “If they didn’t they wouldn’t keep doing it.”
“People are stupid,” said Adam. “They don’t know what they want until you give it to them.”
In addition to the Velux window in the roof, four mirrored rectangles were attached. These, Kate was informed, were to serve as the solar panels.
By this time Kate had pretty much given up on the construction side of things and busied herself with sorting through the array of sweets provided for decoration. She looked around the room to find all the other couples having more fun than she was.
The girl with pink hair offered for Kate to come and work with them. They were having an absolute scream trying to get their house to stay upright. Every time it collapsed, they were helpless with laughter. Kate had the feeling those two would be seeing each other again. Kate was grateful but declined their offer.
The gingerbread houses around the hall ranged from fairly secure to subsidence and in some cases total destruction. The noise levels had grown now that the initial shyness had been overcome and the atmosphere was relaxed. It made the concentrated silence between Kate and Adam conspicuous.
“I’m going to start decorating,” said Kate, blobbing a globule of icing onto the front wall.
Adam reared back in horror as if she had vomited on the veranda.
“We haven’t discussed décor yet!” he said.
“We didn’t discuss the design of the house, but it happened anyway,” said Kate.
“But I have a vision,” he said.
“I thought you might,” said Kate.
“I want only white sweets on it,” he said. “And the front of the house is to be cladded,” he added, as if this were a perfectly normal state for a gingerbread house. “We can use cocktail sticks to create the woodgrain effect.”
