Page 23 of Christmas Ever After
‘Nice to see your shop busy.’ He stops the lathe as I sit beside him on the bench again, feeling aimless at not being able to do anything.
‘Areyoubusy?’ I ask, going back to wheedling for more info about his shop because after last night, I’m certain there’s something going on there.
‘What, in my terribly named shop that must put customers off with its terrible name and suggestion that round things aren’t round?’ He laughs a sarcastic laugh before answering. ‘Not bad. It’s quieter than usual, which I’ve put down to my bad reviews finally catching up with me. I know it reflects badly on the rest of the street and leads to a lower rating for everyone. I don’t blame you for complaining.’
‘You do have some good reviews.’ I lay my phone on my lap and scroll through it, trying not to get frustrated at how long even simple tasks take me left-handed, intending to find some good ones to read out, but it’s hard to ignore all the blazing red one stars.
‘I had a great one from a husband and wife who were already matched – by my granddad, thirty years ago. They came to see if the magic of the snow globes was still alive, and whatever they saw convinced them it was, but…’
When he trails off, I nudge my shoulder against his and repeat his own words from the other day. ‘Please tell me. Honestly. No fronts, no pretending. No “that’s Franca Andrews andshecouldn’t possibly care”. Just tell me.’
He glances down at me, obviously getting the reference, and a smile tips up his lips. He lets out a sigh and goes to push a hand through his hair, but the face shield is in the way and my hand darts out to wrap around his wrist before he dislodges it.He blinks at my fingers on his skin for a few moments before I pull back quickly.
‘Every match I try to make has been a disaster. My granddad had an instinct. He could look at two people and know they’d enrich each other’s lives if they met, but I’m missing that. I’ve tried, so hard, but… I ask people to tell me about themselves, scribble down notes to try to find a match, but the words blur in front of my eyes, and I… don’t care. I don’t believe in love. Or, at least, I believe in loving. I love my family. I love what I do. I love Christmas. But the concept of soulmates? The idea that you’re going to run into someone one day and your whole world is going to stop and your life is going to turn upside down and magically become better because you’ve met “the one”? No. That’s what my granddad always swore happened to him when he met my grandma. They justknew, instantly. I don’t believe that happens, and that’s what I’m trying tomakehappen in my shop. The love thing is supposed to be our legacy. It’s supposed to be what sets us apart. I’m failing because I don’t believe in what I’m trying to do.’
‘And your granddad did?’
‘After he met Granny Biddy, yes. Before then, he was just a struggling snow globe craftsman who couldn’t make ends meet. They met over a snow globe – she dropped it and he picked it up for her at the same time as she bent down to retrieve it, and he came up with the idea that snow globes could bring people together. He built his entire business around it. He was hugely successful. His shop was featured on the news. His snow globes have been used as props in Hollywood films. He had a huge following online.’
I can’t help noticing that Raff doesn’t include himself in those accolades. ‘And you?’
He shakes his head. ‘I love making snow globes. I was twelve when I made my first one and I haven’t stopped since. But mygranddad was the matchmaker and I handled the creative side. I got the business on the internet. I planted the stories and gained traction and followers and customers, and it was great, back in the days when I could hide in the workshop and let him send those customers away with their perfect match. But now he’s gone and it’s just me, and it’s becomeallwe’re known for. No one cares about the craftsmanship of the finished product – only about the legend. It’s taken on a life of its own and it’s taken overmylife, but I can never live up to him. He had a unique ability to see what would make people happy, and?—’
‘No, he didn’t!’
‘What?’ He looks at me and I look away.
I had no intention of telling him, but like most things with Raff, what I intend or don’t intend have very little to do with what actually happens, and I hate how hard he’s being on himself when I know he’s got an idealistic view of his grandfather and is holding himself up to impossibly unrealistic standards. ‘Your grandfather was a fraud. He certainly had no matchmaking ability. His only criteria for matches was being single, and any that worked out were surely just coincidences driven by greed.’
His mouth has fallen open in shock and he lifts the face shield up so he can look at me without the plastic barrier between us. ‘How can you…?’
‘He matched my parents.’
His face lights up. ‘Oh my God, that’s amaz?—’
‘Nota good thing, Raff.’
‘Oh… Oh… Ohh.’ He says the word in three different tones until understanding dawns on his face. ‘Wait, is thatit? Isthatwhat you’ve got against me? Is that why you’ve always had it in for my shop – my granddad matched your parents and, what, it didn’t work out?’
‘It didn’t just “not work out”,’ I snap. ‘It shattered my life. It shattered their lives. It made my childhood an absolute misery, and to be honest, it hasn’t done a lot for my adulthood either. They finally divorced when I was nine, after many, many years of fighting and shouting and trying to one-up each other and prove each was the “better” parent and trying to make me pick sides between them. After the divorce, I had to choose which one I wanted to live with, when by that point, the answer was “neither”. I stayed with Mum because she was keeping the house and I didn’t want to move schools and say goodbye to my friends, and my dad never forgave me for that decision. He thought it meant that she had “won” this unseen battle between them.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He brushes his gloves off and reaches over to press his palm to my knee again, and this time, he doesn’t take it away. ‘That’s a hugely unfair thing to put on a child.’
‘After that, Mum painted herself as the hard-done-by martyr of the piece, abandoned by her selfish husband and bolstered by her ladies-only post-divorce support group, “All Men Are the Spawn of Satan”. And for his part, Dad moved as far away as possible and decided to reduce the chances of a repeat divorce by dating approximately half the female population of Britain, and had a new girlfriend every time I saw him. Which was hardly ever because “I’d made my decision and I clearly didn’t care about him or want him to be part of my life”.’
His hand tightens on my knee and his upper arm presses harder against mine.
‘Even now, each one begrudges me having a relationship with the other. My dad has remarried more times than I can remember and now lives in France with his, I don’t know, sixty-third wife, and Mum moved to Scotland and filled her life with friendships and social activities because if she stops moving for even a minute, steam comes out of her ears and her faceboils red as she starts replaying all the ways he ruined her life. Christmases have been a nightmare since I was nine years old. The first Christmas after the divorce, they intended to put aside their differences and spend it together for my sake, and it lasted until midnight on Christmas Eve when the police had to be called for the third time!’ I didn’t mean to tell him any of that, and I’m suddenly short of breath from how fast I’ve been talking and my eyes are damp from reliving the long-buried memories of Christmases gone by.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeats. His hand is still on my knee, and now his thigh knocks gently against mine, and he shifts minutely closer. ‘But you can’t honestly?—’
I cut him off because he’s obviously about to defend Claude Dardenne. ‘Your grandfather was responsible for all of that. He threw two people together with one of his trickery-fuelled snow globes for no reason other than to make a sale. He had no way of telling if they were a match or not. He didn’t care. He was quite happy to set up two people who were toxic to each other and put their money in his till without a second thought for what would become of them. My parents should never have met, and a hell of a lot of lives would have been a lot better if they hadn’t.’
‘That’s not fair. He always truly cared about his customers’ happiness. There’snoway he could’ve known what would happen between your parents.’ He takes his hand off my knee and raises one of his dark eyebrows. ‘If you were nine when they divorced, they must’ve had some happy years.’
‘Some. Back when Dad could still have a conversation without referring to Mum as “ThatWoman”, and she still called him Jim rather than Toerag VIII – that’s like Henry the Eighth but with more wives.’
Raff bursts out laughing. ‘Oh, Franca, I’m sorry, I really am, but you can’t blame any of that on my granddad. At least they were happy for a while. Maybe that’s all any of us can hope for?A happy-for-now rather than a happily-ever-after? No one could have predicted how things would turn out. And my granddad’s gone now.’ He was sounding upbeat but he has to stop and swallow hard on those words. ‘You don’t have to dislikemebecause of something that happened so many decades ago. And he might have introduced them but he didn’t influence how your parents behaved when they were together. That was on them.’
