Page 41 of Christmas Ever After
What I’m thinking must show on my face because his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and then he pastes on a smile and comes over to drop an arm around my shoulders. ‘We’ll get through this together, I promise.’
What if we don’t? What if our plan fails? What if it really is me or him? I don’t know which would be the worst option. Love Is All A-Round deserves its place here, but so do I, and I just hope the council can see that we can work together and make Christmas Ever After better as a whole.
‘Yeah, we will,’ I echo, but it sounds hollow and I’m unable to hide the apprehension in my voice. ‘And next year, I’m going to make a nutcracker holding a snow globe and name him Raphael.’
He bursts out laughing so hard that it shakes me as well. ‘Now that, Ihaveto witness. You see? It’s non-negotiable that The Nutcracker Shop gets to stay, if for nothing more than that.’
I glance up into his expressive brown eyes and snuggle a bit closer into the weight of his arm around me.
Maybe for a few other reasons too.
13
Every time I step inside Love Is All A-Round, I wonder why I stayed away for so long. Apart from the whole arch-nemesis aspect, obviously. Everything’s bright and twinkly. Raff’s Christmas lights are all dazzling white, his display tables have fake snow piled on their surfaces, along with sprigs of holly and red berries, and twists of cinnamon sticks and pinecones wound around display plinths for each snow globe. One table display has a model train running in circles around each display stand, and each snow globe is themed after a place in Britain and has a tiny vintage travel poster on a stand beside it. The globes displayed on the tables are the bigger, fancier, more expensive ones, and then there are rustic wooden shelves wrapped with twinkling pine garlands and smaller snow globes are lined up along them. The whole shop smells of that Christmassy mix of cinnamon and pine, with a healthy dose of Raff’s orangey aftershave and the ever-present slight chemical undertone of the resin he uses in his work.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?’ Raff asks for the thousandth time. ‘Because I can close up for the afternoon, it doesn’t?—’
I interrupt him before he can finish a sentence he’s already said more than once. ‘I always cut off in mid-December because there’s not time to make any more nutcrackers before Christmas. Any that don’t sell from the shelves can be used to stock my stall at the Christmas market, andyou’redoingmea massive favour, so it’s no problem.’
Quentin is at a pregnancy scan with Erin this afternoon, and earlier on, I had a customer come in to buy one of my five-foot tall nutcrackers and she wanted it to be delivered today. That’s a hefty cash payment in the till, but before I could explain about having to get it packed up and collected by a courier, Raff stuck his head out of the workshop and offered to take it to her this afternoon. Between us, we’ve wrapped the handsome chap in bubble wrap and waddled it out to his car, where he’s had to flatten the seats to get it in, and now he’s going to deliver it. The least I can do is watch his shop while he’s gone.
He’s spinning his car keys around on his finger. ‘If you see any couples who look like a good match, give ’em a snow globe and tell them to come to the Christmas market, will ya?’
He sounds like he’s joking, but there’s an undertone to Raff’s voice whenever he ‘jokes’ about Love Is All A-Round that makes it sound like he’s really quite worried. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘Take your time. You can have the afternoon off if you want, you’ve been working like a fiend lately.’ The dark circles under his eyes are getting darker every day and he’s finding it harder to disguise the tiredness in his eyes, even if he thinks his smile covers it.
‘Like a little nutcracker-making fiend?’ He grins as he walks backwards towards the door and gives me a salute with the car keys as he leaves. Surely a sign of true confidence is taking the chance of walking backwards in a shop full of very, very breakable items.
The truth is that this December, I’ve been taking it easier than ever before. I can’t do a majority of the things I’d usually spend December doing. Usually I work day and night making nutcrackers, and if I’m not doing that, then I’m up until the early hours trying to catch up on online shopping for gifts, wrapping and packing up presents to send to my parents, writing Christmas cards, and ticking things off an endless festive to-do list that seems to get longer every year.
But this year, with Raff doing my usual work and everything else having to be cut out, I’m finding myself with afternoons free to wander around Ever After Street and evenings to spend curled up reading Christmas books that I never usually have time to read, and it’s been lovely. A welcome reminder of the Christmases that I used to love, before December became about nothing but work, work, work and stress, stress, stress.
There’s a bracing breeze and a nip in the air today, but I go over and hook the door open to let in the sound of the children’s choir singing from the Carollers’ Cabin and the strains of ‘Joy to the World’ filter in, making me feel like I’m encased in a Christmas snow globe, and I find myself humming along.
Opening the door doesn’t do much for getting shoppers to actually come in though. I see couples coming along, I see them glance up at the shop sign and the quick explanation of what Dardenne Snow Globes do, and they walk on. Theyallwalk on. This is what Raff meant about not getting the customers who don’t want to be matched up. People think there’s nothing here for them except that.
I’m still wandering around the shop when a middle-aged woman comes in. ‘Oh, my dear, itisyou from the video, isn’t it? Howareyou?’ She clasps her hands together and tries too hard to sound sincere.
I can’t escape that video. Wherever I go, one of thenowover 100,000 viewers will always find me.
‘I thought you were the nutcracker lady,’ she carries on without waiting for an answer to her previous question.
‘I am. I’m just helping out a friend.’
‘That awful man who knocked you over?’ She clicks her tongue.
Mrs Bloom has told me that Raff and I have both been ‘named and shamed’ in the comments section of the video, so anyone who didn’t already know who we are certainly does now, but still the back of my neck prickles with a sense of privacy invasion and I try to get her off the topic. ‘Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?’
‘I don’t want a match,’ she says quickly. ‘I just wanted to look around. My daughter loves snow globes and I’d love to get a handmade, local one for her, but I’m already married. I saw you on your own in here and thought you might be more approachable than that horrible man.’
‘He’s quite sweet really,’ I say, even as I wonder what parallel universe we’ve stepped into where someone insults Raphael Dardenne andIstick up for him.
Her comment about not wanting a match reinforces what Raff said though. His reputation precedes him, and peopledon’trealise that his shop is so much more than just a matchmaking station.
‘Is there anything in particular that your daughter likes?’ I prompt. Raff has done so much for me, it would be great if I could make a non-romantic sale for him.
‘She’s a real animal lover.’
