Page 3 of Christmas Ever After
‘Shut up!’ Mitch suddenly yells. In the four years I’ve worked here, I’veneverheard Mitch speak at that volume before, but Raphael Dardenne could try the patience of Ol’ Saint Nick himself, never mind a man who plays him.
‘We’ve got a situation on our hands! That camera is going to start rolling in thirty seconds. I need two people to kiss under the mistletoenow! It can be on the cheek, if you must.’
‘God only knows what would happen if those two touched lips,’ Mrs Bloom, the owner of Coming Gnome For Christmas, says. ‘Something apocalyptic, I wouldn’t wonder.’
‘I’m not getting involved in this. I don’t even know how I got here. I thought Jorge was the man of choice this year.’ Raphael looks around until his eyes fall on Jorge, standing at the edge of the crowd, looking satisfied with this turn of events. ‘Oh, let me guess, Franca offended him in some way, like she offends everyone else.’
‘With good reason!’ I snap. Raphael really is the most infuriating person to ever exist. ‘I can hang the mistletoe by myself this year, in solidarity with single people everywhere. Not everyone has a handsome man to kiss under the mistletoe and Christmas Ever After should be inclusive to all relationship statuses.’
Mitch interrupts before I can get any further. ‘Look, I know you pair are locked in this “war of words, may the best man win” thing, but only one of you is going to be evicted in January, and the rest of us whoaren’tgoing to be evicted need this to be a Christmas to remember. We all need a good December to survive, and you both owe us that much for putting up with your constant bickering and nitpicking! There are nowfourhundred viewers tuned in, waiting for our livestream to start, which it’s going to in’ – he checks his watch – ‘twenty bloody seconds! All you have to do is hang the mistletoe Mrs Bloom is going to bring over, smile, and give each other a peck on the cheek, and for thelove of all things Christmas, be civil to each other for the few minutes it will take to get some decent pictures, or so help me, I will petition the council to have thepairof you evicted!’
After his outburst, Mitch starts the countdown like a seasoned film director. He’s organised this whole thing every year for the past decade or so, since before anyone had even heard the word ‘livestream’ and TikTok was nothing but a twinkle in the internet’s eye, and it’s never gone this wrong before. ‘Five hundred viewers now! This is going to be our biggest Christmas yet! And if it isn’t, I’m holding you two personally responsible!’
A cymbal clatters and the band strikes up with ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’, and there’s the telltale bleep-bleep of the camera recording. I’m shaking with… well, earlier it was nerves, but now it’s just annoyance at being shoved together with Raphael Dardenne of all people.
I don’t want to getnearthis man, never mind let him kiss my cheek, and no doubt he feels the same about me, but I can tell how agitated Mitch is, and Raphael and Ihavecaused everyone some trouble with our constant goading of each other. Surely we can tolerate each other for a few minutes?
I meet his dark eyes and then look away quickly. I know he blames me for the snow-globes-versus-nutcrackers position the council have put us in. We’ve been pitted against each other for years anyway, but now we are literally pitted against each other. His shop or mine. One of us has to go in January, and it’s absolutelynotgoing to be me.
And itiskind of my fault. At the last council meeting in November, Raphael and I were criticising each other – because that’s what wedoat council meetings. We find something the other has done wrong and we complain about it. We talkabouteach other orateach other, but nevertoeach other. I delighted in the fact he’s got some bad reviews lately. Customerscomplaining about how his snow globes have lost their ‘magic’ matchmaking ability and how bad his matches are, and he complained that the giant nutcrackers outside my shop were blocking the display of other shops, and the leader of the local council in charge of Ever After Street lost his rag. He snapped that customers had commented on the rivalry between us, our fellow shopkeepers were fed up with it, and something had to give. He said that Herefordshire Council wouldn’t be putting up with another year of our nonsense, and that one of us would have to go. They set a challenge – Raphael has to help five couples find love with his ‘magical’ snow globes and disprove his terrible reviews, and I have to prove that nutcrackers are still popular by getting five genuine posts on social media from customers who love my nutcrackers, and we both have to do it before Christmas.
Your lack of enthusiasm has been noticedis what Mr Hastings said to me.We want to see social media engagement and excited customers. No one cares about nutcrackers. In our surveys, no one comes to Christmas Ever Aftertovisit your shop. We need to see customers who are engaged and interested in your products.
So if I don’t get alotof people talking about nutcrackers this month, I may lose. Tohim.
I glance at him again and this time, he looks away like he can tell what I’m thinking. He’s annoyingly handsome in the traditional tall and dark-haired way. It should be illegal for a man who is this much of a twit to also be this gorgeous.
Mrs Bloom is acting as Mitch’s assistant today. She’s dressed in a Mrs-Claus-style red robe with a fluffy white trim. The mistletoe is placed on an antique Christmas tray and she ceremoniously carries it over to us. It’s ordered fresh from a small town in Wales where there’s a legend that anyone who kisses underneath it will have another year of happinesstogether. It was cut by the park caretakers and shipped by twenty-four-hour courier, so it will stay fresh until Christmas is over.
The original plan was for me to take the mistletoe and hang it on the arch, smile, and turn to Jorge for my magical Christmas kiss, but no one’s had a chance to brief Raphael on that plan, because he reaches for the mistletoe at exactly the same moment as I do, and our hands knock together with a jolt as we both try to pick it up.
Hesnatchesit from the tray and holds it to his chest as though he’s trying to protect it from me. ‘What a surprise. Franca Andrews thinking she should always come first.’
‘I wassupposedto be first, you’ve come in and ruined that.’ I snatch the mistletoe back, and my fingernail catches the edge of his hand and scratches it unintentionally. If it had been intentional, I would havegougedit.
‘Not out of choice. Besides, no one can ruin anything if you’re here. With you involved, it’s already ruined.’
I yank the mistletoe out of his reach when he grabs at it again. ‘Why, you lousy?—’
‘Franca!’ Mitch hisses, gesticulating furiously at the camera, and I turn towards it and paste a smile over my gritted teeth.
‘Make the most of it.’ Raphael takes advantage of the shift in my concentration and snatches the mistletoe out of my hand. ‘It’ll be your last Christmas on Ever After Street, I’ll make sure of that!’
‘I’m not going to be evicted. You are. Our colleagues are all behind me. Everyone’s sick of your bad reviews dragging us all down. You couldn’t strike up a match if it was in a box and had a red incendiary head and a striking strip on the side!’
‘Hah!’ He scoff-laughs, waving the mistletoe around in front of him. ‘Who would choose your cheap and nasty nutcrackers that fall apart after a day over my handcrafted snow globes thatcome with their very own magic? And you’re getting bad reviews too! One says your nutcrackers are horrible quality and break easily!’
‘My nutcrackers are decorative! That reviewer tried to crack a macadamia with it! Only the hardest nut of them all and then she had the cheek to leave a bad review saying it was poor quality.’
‘Yes, imagine the irony of attempting to use a nutcracker to crack a nut.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘How utterly absurd!’
The mistletoe is looking worse for wear now, which is probably a bad omen for Christmas Ever After, and I try to grab it back but he’s annoyingly taller than me and keeps it out of my reach, and I can’t lean too far without the stool wobbling. ‘At least I’ll never be as childish as you are. You made a bogey out of Blu Tack and stuck it so it was hanging from the underside of my giant nutcracker’s nose!’
‘You have no idea whether that was me or a small child with an exquisite sense of humour.’ He does a chef’s kiss gesture.
There really is no talking to someone who’s so infuriatingly immature. ‘Oh, why don’t you just sod off? You’re going in January anyway, why not make everyone’s day better and go now? Let us all enjoy Christmas without your stupid snow globes bringing us all down?’
‘Fine,’ he growls, but instead of hanging the mistletoe on the arch, he tosses it at me, and I squeak in surprise and throw my hands up because it seems like it’s coming straight at my face, and he spins around and steps off his stool, except… he’s too near me, and the world goes into slow motion. I see what’s going to happen nanoseconds before it does, but there’s no time to stop it. Raphael’s leg connects with the stool I’m standing on, knocking it from the precarious position it was already in. I scream and flail, trying to keep my balance, but it’s no good. The stool is tipping.
