Page 7 of Christmas Ever After
There’s also the small matter of the nutcrackers-versus-snow-globes thing with Raphael. He’s just tried, probably inadvertently, to eliminate his competition and I can’t let him win. If he manages to match those five couples, and I don’t manage to up my social media engagement, then I’ll be out, and I’m not going to let that happen.
I lost my career as a ballet dancer due to an injury, and I amnotgoing to lose another one. Especially not because of an injury caused byhim. One of us is going down this year, and it’s not going to be me. The gloves are coming off. I look down at my throbbing hand. Well, one glove, singular.
If he thinks this will make it easier for him to win, he’s got another thing coming.
3
Of all the things that have happened in the past twenty-four hours, the mouse is the last one I needed.
It’s the next morning, and after a struggle of a night where I ended up crying in pain while trying to have a shower, and then snatching a few broken hours of sleep in the living room armchair because it was impossible to get my arm comfortable in bed, I’ve caught the crowded bus to work and opened the shop, but it’s still early and customers have been few and far between. Maybe the council have got a point about customer engagement because things are never usually this quiet in December.
Usually I’d be out the back, carving wood or painting nutcrackers if the shop wasn’t busy, but I can’t do either of those things, so I’m just sitting at the counter, wishing the next eight weeks away, when the mouse runs across the shop floor.
I shriek and jump up onto my chair, although even that is an extra hard task one-handed. ‘Oh, comeon!’ I say to no one in particular. Maybe I’m addressing some god of mice or whoever it is that keeps tormenting me with the little blighters. ‘Weren’tthe three last week enough? How about the four the week before that? Why am I being invaded by mice?’
I shudder. Ihatemice. I can hear the mouse’s little feet scratching on the wooden floor as it putters around between my giant nutcrackers. Where do all these mice keep coming from? I’m getting to be quite an expert at catching them and I reluctantly put my feet back on the floor and grab my cotton bud container from under the counter – a surprisingly effective mouse trap – although God only knows how I’m going to use it one-handed.
I creep across the shop, holding the cardboard container in one hand. Usually I’d have the plastic lid ready in the other hand, but that’s a bridge I’m going to have to cross when I come to it, and I’ve left it on the counter for now. If I can just get the cardboard bit over the mouse, then I can worry about getting it tipped up and the lid put on. I just have to get it out of my shop. I’ve got enough problems without customers being attacked by invading mice.
It’s bold as brass and doesn’t even flinch at the sight of me approaching it. And it’s got right in between the base boards of the life-size nutcrackers, and there’s no way I can get my container over it with them in the way. I’m going to have to wait for it to come out.
I stand there for long minutes. My knees have started to lock up and my thighs are screaming at me. My hand is throbbing, the elbow braced on my thigh as I stand, poised with my cotton bud container, and lie in wait. Well, stand in wait. Finally, finally, whiskers twitch towards me and the mouse scurries out, not close enough, and I lean forwards and bring the container down over it. ‘Ah-ha! Gotch?—’
I groan as I miss completely and the mouse darts between my legs, but the sudden movement has unbalanced me and I flounder around to keep myself upright, but it’s no use. I’vegot no balance and there’s nothing to grab hold of, and I go careening face-first onto the floor with a crash.
Ow. It jars everything, from the broken fingers to the bruising that’s started to come out across the rest of my body, and it leaves me winded, gasping for breath on the shop floor, shocked by the unexpectedness of it.
I look up just in time to see the tail of the mouse disappear under a shelving unit on the other side of the shop. It has the audacity to turn around and look back in my direction.
If mice can laugh, this one is cackling at me.
I lie there for a minute, feeling shaky and shocked, and really,reallyhurting. I didn’t expect to fall over. I didn’t expect to nearly hurt myself so soon after hurting myself.
Tears of patheticness fill my eyes. I struggle to push myself upright, but my elbow slides on the smooth flooring and I slip down again. This is ridiculous. Never mind catching a mouse, I can’t even get up off the floor. How am I going to get through the next eight weeks like this? How am I even going to get up? Am I going to be stuck down here forever? Will I be found, weeks from now, when the mouse has started nibbling on my cold, dead corpse? Who will find me? Cleo, maybe. Or Mrs Bloom; she promised to look in on me. Maybe a customer will get fed up with waiting for their order and come to check on its whereabouts and find me, starved to death, eaten by mice, all alone.
I usually work so much that it doesn’t give me a chance to think about how alone I am, but the quietness and the lack of work this morning makes it hit home.
I’m completely and utterly alone. My dad emigrated to France with his approximately forty-second wife, and my mum lives in Scotland with her very active social life. After my last relationship that ended both my ballet career and the relationship itself in one awful moment, I well and truly learntthe lesson that I’m always better when I’m alone, but today… Today, I let a flash of weakness creep in. Ireallywish I had someone I could call and ask for help. Last night, I wished I had someone to put their arm around me and tell me it was going to be okay. I really, really wanted someone, anyone, to care. To worry about me. I’ve made good friends with Cleo since she opened The Wonderland Teapot, and she texted me last night to see how I was doing, but in the grand scheme of things… I don’t matter to anyone.
The thoughts of loneliness are making my tears fall harder, and of course – of bloody course – a customer choosesthatmoment to open the door.
‘We’re closed!’ I yell.
‘No, you’re not. The door’s unlocked.’ Raphael Dardenne appears in the doorway. Confusion crosses his face as he looks around the empty shop and then his eyes fall on me. ‘Oh God, what are you doing down there? Are you okay?’
I groan out loud. It’s almost like a jinx – the moment you think things can’t get any worse, Raphael bloody Dardenne turns up.
He’s carrying a box and he dumps it on the counter and skids to a halt on his knees at my side. ‘What’s happened? Are you hurt? Can I help?’
‘No!’ I snap. ‘You’ve caused enough trouble, thank you!’
His dark eyes land on my face and something flickers in them when he clocks the tears streaming down it. ‘What’s wrong?’
The kindness in his voice is unsettling. I’ve never heard Raphael speak so gently before, and when I’m in this much of a mess, it really is preposterously unfair that he can lookthatgood.
‘Besides the obvious?’ I wave my splint in front of him and then gasp when the movement hurts, which I doubt he notices because he’s too busy studying my stupid, traitorous, tearfulface and burning red cheeks. I’m so embarrassed at having been caught in a moment of weakness while stuck on the floor of my shop, by him ofallpeople.
‘I’m sor?—’
