Page 14 of Christmas Ever After
Are you kidding? It’s gone viral! 15,000 people have now had eyes on Ever After Street who had probably never heard of it before. I’ve always wanted a viral video. I’m trying to get the news sites to run it! You and Raff are hilarious! This is the best thing to happen to Christmas Ever After in years!
‘It’s theworstthing to happen to me in years,’ I say aloud to the empty house with a sigh.
Before long, I get fed up of the self-pity party. This isn’t me. I don’t expect anything from other people and I push away anyone who expects anything from me. I don’t need anyone to comfort me. I’m perfectly capable of getting on with things one-handed. Growing up while being shunted between battling parents made me learn to stand on my own two feet early on. I don’t need anyone’s help and I don’t need anyone to care about me. I don’t know why I keep thinking I want that. Life is complicated enough without adding people who care.
I haul myself off the sofa and go to make something for dinner. Cleo offered to make me something to bring home, but I refused. I don’t want her thinking I can’t manage.
It takes me a while, but even making a sandwich can be accomplished one-handed, and I make a cup of hot chocolate in my favourite Christmas mug.
It’s a huge red mug with a hinged lid that keeps the drink warm, but the lid is shaped like a domed swirl of cream with sprinkles and peppermints and a ceramic gingerbread man on top. I got it years ago, at a Christmas market when I was visiting Mum in Scotland, and I only ever use it during December. It’s one of those mugs that makes every drink taste better just because they’re in it.
But as I lift it off the unit with my left hand and go to carry it across the kitchen, the handle slips from my fingers and the mug crashes onto the kitchen floor tiles. It smashes into a million pieces and covers the kitchen in a wave of boiling chocolate liquid and shards of red china.
‘Noooooo!’ Not my favourite mug. I can cope with my fingers being broken, but not the mug. Please not the mug. It’s been with me for so many years and I’ve never found another one like it. It’s not Christmas until I get that mug out of the cupboard.
I feel helpless as I look around the devastation of my kitchen. The mess. Oh God, the mess. The hot chocolate has sploshed so far that it was surely a bucket full and not just a mug. It’s goneeverywhere, all the way across the floor, it’s splashed up the walls, all over the cupboards, up the radiator, all over me, and my mug… My beautiful, special Christmas mug is dead.
Of all the things that have happened since yesterday, it’s the last straw, and I let out a wail and sink down onto the floor. Warm hot chocolate seeps through my trousers but I don’t care. It’s all too much and the misery overwhelms me and the tears fall, and I let every bit of frustration and anger and annoyance and pain be released in a flood.
I know it’s just a mug, but Ilovedthat mug, and my own inability to do something as simple as carrying a mug across the kitchen presses down on me. I feel utterly useless. Even the most basic of tasks are too much for me. I want to hibernate. It will be the end of January before my fingers will be healed enough to take the splint off – why can’t I just sleep until then like a bear or a squirrel? This is the worst December ever and it’s only the second day of it. How am I going to get through another two months of this?
Something else becomes clear too – this is the end of The Nutcracker Shop. I can’t make nutcrackers in this state. I can’t operate my lathe. Even if I could, I can’t carve anything withonly one hand. And there’s no way I can paint left-handed. When I get to work tomorrow, I’ll start cancelling the orders and refunding my customers’ deposits, and… hand the win to Raff on a silver platter with a neatly arranged sprig of mint. Customers who don’t get what they order leave bad reviews. Never mind the costs of running the shop and the money I’ll lose – none of that will matter because the council are expecting to see happy customers and people talking about nutcrackers, and what they’re going to end up talking about is the nutcrackers theydidn’tget. Raff has inadvertently eliminated his competition. He’ll match his five couples easily, but there’s no way I can get customer engagement and excitement about nutcrackers when I can’t make a single one.
It’s over. Love Is All A-Round has won, and I can’t see a way to fight back.
5
I’m wearing a knitted hat pulled down to my eyebrows, dark glasses, and a scarf pulled up over my nose when I get the bus to work the next morning, and as I walk down Ever After Street towards the festive cul-de-sac at the end, I can feel eyes burning into me, and not just because Ilooklike I’m trying to go incognito. It’s a relief to get inside my shop and hide away from curious gazes, and my fear of how many more people have seen the video and might recognise me.
It’s just after 10a.m. when the door opens for the first time, but instead of a customer, Raff pokes his head round it. ‘Good morning!’
I glare at him for his cheerfulness. I go to snap that there’s nothing good about it, but I can’t help the little flutter at seeing him. In an otherwise dark morning, it’s like the sun peeks its head out from behind the clouds. Of everything that’s happened in the past forty-eight hours, the absolute highlight was laughing with him yesterday, and I realise I washopinghe’d come by again today.
‘Just came to return your revolutionary mouse-catching gear.’ The door closes behind him as he comes in. He’s got mycotton bud container in one hand, and a Tale As Old As Time tote bag from Marnie’s bookshop over his arm. He might be a con-artist, but at least he’s a con-artist who reads.
It’s such a bizarre sight that I can’t stop myself laughing. ‘I never expected to see that again. You could’ve just thrown it away. I’ve got another couple at home.’
‘Toss out such high-tech innovative equipment? Unthinkable!’ He holds it out to me as he comes over to the counter and my fingers brush against his when I take it with my good hand. ‘And I thought you might want to know that Minnie is safely released and happily residing in a park six miles away. I found a hollowed-out tree trunk and let her go in there with a handful of peanuts to keep her busy. She’ll never darken your doors again.’ He’s got a playful tone to his voice, like he’s poking fun at me, but not in an unkind way.
‘Th-Thanks for doing that.’ Why is my voice stuttering? Why am I suddenly nervous and… excited? No, definitely not excited. And whatever’s going on in my belly, it’snotbutterflies. ‘I didn’t have you down as someone who would be kind to mice.’
‘I don’t think you know me well enough to have me down as anything, do you? I mean, what do we know about each other? I know your name and the fact you’re scared of mice, and you know… my name. What judgement can either of us form based on that?’
‘Well…’ When he makes it sound so reasonable and sensible like that, it’s hard to come up with an answer. ‘My judgement is based on what you do – and what your grandfather did – to customers.’
‘What, try to make them happy? Bring a little magic into their lives? Truly unforgivable crimes and heinous offences, yes?’
‘Yes!’ I snap, wondering why I was glad to see him just now. He has this way of turning things around and making my totally justified hatred of his shop seem utterly irrational.
Instead of replying, he pokes the snow globe he brought me yesterday where it’s still on the counter. ‘You didn’t throw it out.’
‘I wouldn’t. I might not like what you do there, but your craftsmanship is undeniable.’
He grins. ‘Good, because I’ve bought you another gift.’
From the totebag, he pulls out… a long tunnel made of transparent plastic with a grid on one end and a gate on the other. ‘A humane mouse trap. Just in case Minnie makes her way back or her loved ones come looking for her. Put a bit of peanut butter in this end. Micelovepeanut butter.’ He taps the grid and then runs his long fingers along the length of it. ‘Mouse goes in, sits here to eat, triggers the gate to close, mouse can’t get back out, but has got plenty of room to run around and plenty of food until you’re ready to release it, miles away. You’ll never have to worry about being mauled by delinquent mice again.’ Even his sarcasm sounds so good-natured and teasing that it’s impossible to fire anything back at him, and I’m quite touched by his thoughtfulness and dedication to protecting all mice.
‘I don’t have any?—’
