Page 49 of Christmas Ever After
‘I don’t know whether to be scared or impressed by how seriously your family takes this.’
‘All’s fair in love, war, and Maltesers.’ He gives me a wink and we make our run for the kitchen island. Raff gathers up royal icing and piping bags with his one hand, while I reach over for the chocolate reindeer and manage to snag a packet of white and milk chocolate buttons because I have a vision of using them for roof tiles.
We take our loot back to our station by the kitchen door and huddle together. Raff uses his teeth to tear into the pack ofpiping bags, and I hold one while he spoons royal icing into it, twists the end and snips the tip off. Between us we lay out the gingerbread pieces in the order they should be assembled, and I hold the back wall upright while Raff tries to manage the piping bag one-handed, splurging a big spurt of royal icing along one side. He puts the piping bag down and fits the side wall against it, and we both stand there holding it, and I can’t stop smiling. We’re so close, every time his head turns for a glimpse of what the others are doing, his hair catches against mine, and the heat of his body is pressed against my side, and he can’t stop smiling either.
The others are shrieking and squealing at each other, but Raff and I have done a lot together over the past few weeks. We’ve got into a rhythm of me passing him wooden blanks and taking completed nutcracker parts away. We’ve got a routine of him painting and me handing him different parts, brushes, or colours, and this is no different. He’s so careful that I can tell he’s hyperaware of having my injured arm strapped to his, but we methodically work our way through. I spin the cake board and hold each wall up; Raff keeps the top of the piping bag held between his teeth and uses his hand to guide the icing out, and I stick each wall to the next and hold it while the icing sets hard enough to glue it in place. His head leans against mine as we stand and wait, listening to the shrieks and cries of the other teams.
It’s not long before we’ve got our four gingerbread house walls standing. We’ve used enough royal icing to prop up the leaning tower of Pisa, never mind a gingerbread house, and our walls stand firm when we attach first one side of the roof, and then the other.
‘Back to the island,’ Raff declares. ‘Every man for himself. Grab anything you can! Have no mercy! Take no prisoners!’
He grabs at flying saucers and candy canes. I spy a bag of Jelly Tots and lunge for them so hard that I nearly yank Raff off his feet and yelp in pain when it pulls my hand, but it was worth it for the Jelly Tots. We go back to our part of the kitchen unit with armfuls of our winnings, mostly chosen because I want to eat them now, not decorate a gingerbread house with them.
‘Your shop feels like being in the middle of “Waltz of the Snowflakes”, and this feels like entering the Land of Sweets.’ I hold out a bag of strawberry laces with my left hand so he can take hold of the other side with his right hand and between us, we pull it open.
‘And you thought you wouldn’t be part ofThe Nutcrackerballet this year.’
‘A more enjoyable way.’ I glance up and catch his eyes, and then pop a flying saucer in my mouth for good measure.
‘Good.’ He opens his mouth so I can pop one in for him too.
‘With a real-life Mouse-King-slaying nutcracker prince,’ I say around a mouthful of sherbet.
‘Awww.’ He holds my gaze with a smile, and it’s only when I notice everyone else’s eyes on us that I realise we’ve stopped decorating to grin at each other. With Raff this close and my injured hand literally tied to him, it makes it hard to concentrate on anything else.
‘I can see you trying to copy our work!’ Raff shouts, making me breathe a sigh of relief at the distraction.
We fill another piping bag with royal icing, and this time, I guide the tip while he squeezes, and we manage to get a neat line of icing along the centre of the roof. We open the Jelly Tots and place the little gummy sweets one by one in a rainbow pattern along the line, and do the same along each eave of the roof until we run out, a situation which is not helped by both of us eating more Jelly Tots than we’re using.
‘Could do this all night,’ he murmurs, his chin rubbing against my forehead.
‘Me too. I never knew it was possible to have this much fun building a gingerbread house.’
‘Me neither.’
‘You do this every year!’ I nudge my elbow against his.
‘Not with you.’
‘Awww.’ How many times in one night can one person need to make that noise?
Next we tile the roof. He squiggles royal icing across the gingerbread and we lay out milk and white buttons like roof tiles, and then splodge some more icing around the outer edges of the cake board and stick candy canes into it so they stand up like trees, and with careful cooperation, we manage to run thin lines of icing around the door and window frames, and when Biddy announces there’s only a couple of minutes left, Raff sticks the chocolate reindeer on the front, right at the highest point of the roof, like a figurehead on the bow of a ship, and I’m still holding it steady when the stopwatch starts beeping.
Everyone has to turn around and unveil their creations, and it’s a joy to behold. Trisha and Sofia’s house has collapsed completely and consists of six gingerbread panels lying in a haphazard heap. ‘We tried decorating the panels first before we stuck them together. It did not go well. We’d have been all right if a certain member of our team hadn’t been too busy eating the decorations!’
‘You ate more than I did, Granny!’ Sofia cries in indignation.
Raff’s laughing so hard that it’s shaking both of us, his head leaning against mine as we hold our creation in front of us, one hand on each side of the cake board because we’ve used so much royal icing that it’s surprisingly heavy.
Considering we’ve managed to make it with only two arms between us, it actually looks quite good. A bit messy, with waytoo much icing, but like a traditional little gingerbread house with Jelly Tots instead of gumdrops.
‘Ours has got a, um, fully intentional skylight.’ Quentin points to the section of their effort where half the roof has caved in. ‘And we tried to make a working door but it broke off. We deserve extra credit for trying.’
Biddy hobbles around the kitchen to inspect each one, and stops at ours. ‘And you two haven’t tried anything clever at all, and look at the results. Simple and traditional. Proof of what happens when two people are enough for each other just as they are.’ She gives us a pointed look. ‘You’re a great team. I declare Franca and Raff the winners!’
‘Unfair advantage!’ Erin heckles. ‘Franca’s had too much practise with her left hand!’
‘I’ve never won anything before,’ I start like I’m about to give a winner’s speech at an awards ceremony. ‘This is my proudest achievement.’
