The Christmas Spirit (3 page)

2nd December - REBECCA

How could Ethan do this to her? Rebecca didn’t even bother
trying to stem the tears. And what was all that rubbish about it being nothing
she had done, they just wanted different things? She wanted the same things as
him, didn’t she? Three years wasted. Theirs was the first long-term
relationship she’d been in, and now she had to sort through the rubble. He’d
moved out until they could work out if they needed to sell the flat, or if she
could afford to buy him out. He said no-one else was involved, but she didn’t
know if she believed him.

Men were rubbish at being on their own. Women took breakups
far harder at the time, but got over them more easily in the long run. She had
several male friends who had met someone else before breaking up with their
current girlfriend, as they couldn’t be without a girlfriend, or at least had
to have a successor in mind. Rebecca began to question the late nights he had
worked, the football matches he’d played at, but then she’d found his clean kit
in the hall. When quizzed on it, Ethan had said he’d had a spare in his locker.
Really? So where was it? Hadn’t he brought it home to be washed? All the signs
were there. She just hadn’t been looking for them or perhaps, on some
subliminal level, she’d been ignoring them. And what a time to get dumped. Now
she’d have to go to Christmas parties on her own, no romantic Christmas Eve
meal out, no lovely Christmas presents on Christmas morning curled up in bed,
pulling the duvet off each other and refusing to get up. Instead she’d have to
go to her parents in Oxfordshire. Why had they moved? Now she’d have a seven
hour train journey, if the trains were running. You could never tell in this country
with the snow. If it snowed, chaos reigned; no-one knew how to drive, already
two leaves on the track meant a cancelled train, so snowfall could mean having
to stay home for days. She could imagine herself stuck on a railway siding near
Preston as the passengers in the carriage sang Slade’s
Merry
Christmas Everybody
, and girls wore sexy Santa dresses and
tinsel-covered deely boppers, whilst she sat po-faced, like Ebenezer Scrooge.
Wonderful.

Wiping the tears from her face, Rebecca drew a pen and pad towards
her and started trying to work out if she would be able to keep her lovely
flat.

3rd December

The next day at nine o’clock sharp Natalie opened up the
bakery. The aroma of the delicacies she had baked wafted through the shop and
out into the street. The morning was bright again, but crisp and cool. Natalie
didn’t feel the cold at all, as she had been baking in the kitchen since six
thirty and the ovens emitted plenty of heat.

At five past nine, the doorbell chimed. Jacob.

‘Hi there, sorry if I’m a bit keen, but I just wondered if
you’d heard anything yet.’

Natalie relayed to him the conversation she had had with Mrs
Williams and Jacob promised to get references to her within the hour. He had
written references at home.

‘Good,’ said Natalie, ‘And when you bring them, can you come
in ready to work, too?’

‘Absolutely,’ he said, with a huge grin on his face. Things
were looking up.

Over the next hour Natalie got to meet a few more of Sugar
and Spice’s regulars and she chatted with the customers, making them want to
stay and natter, so they ended up ordering another cup of tea, or having a cake
when they hadn’t intended to have one. By the time Jacob returned there was a
queue almost out the door, and all the tables were filled.

‘Just take the customers’ orders for now and we’ll grab a
few minutes to go through the formalities when it’s less busy,’ Natalie
advised, as she handed him a uniform to put on. ‘For now, all you need to know
is
wash your hands
.’

Jacob nodded, washed his hands in the sink behind the
counter and immediately began serving customers, asking them to help him out
when he didn’t know the names of the cakes, managing not to infuriate them with
his inexperience, by his lovely manner. Old ladies left the bakery full of
praise for the young man who had been flung in at the deep end, and alongside a
temporary new manager, too. The regulars were quietly happy.

When the rush was over, Natalie turned to Jacob and said,
‘Thanks for that. Right, let’s have a look at those references, shall we?’ and,
business-like, she put on her glasses and took from Jacob the envelopes he had
retrieved from his jacket pocket.

‘Well, that all seems in order,’ Natalie said, after a few
minutes of perusing the pages of A4 she had withdrawn from the envelopes. ‘So,
let me fill you in on what we do and what I need help with. It’ll be a work in
progress, as I’m still learning. This is only my second day.’

Jacob awaited further instructions.

‘OK, can you bake?’

‘No,’ Jacob said flatly.

‘Right, let’s leave the baking to me, then. We can start
with you serving customers and clearing tables. I’ll show you how to use the
coffee machine, for latte, mocha, espresso and the like, as that’ll be a big
help, as making coffee can be quite time-consuming. I’d also like you to tell
me when we’re running low on any particular cakes, so I can try and make more,
depending on what time of day it is. Make sense?’

‘Yep, sounds good.’

‘You can count, can’t you? Without a calculator, I mean.’
Natalie wanted to check.

‘Yes, no problem.’

‘Good. Well, I would suggest familiarising yourself with the
price list. I’ll talk you through the cakes we have here, as I gathered earlier
you don’t know the names of all of them.’

‘About half,’ Jacob admitted.

‘No problem. By the end of the day, you’ll know your way
around a piece of pecan pie,’ Natalie assured him.

As she ran through the cakes from left to right: angel cake,
banana cake, bran muffins, banoffee pie, Battenberg cake, she realised Mrs
Williams had alphabetised her layout! Natalie had no idea if it was intentional
or not, but it made her giggle. Jacob looked at her oddly and she said, ‘It’s
nothing,’ then told him, since it would be easier for him to remember the names
if he knew they were in alphabetical order. Plus, if he was to display the
cakes in the glass cabinets, it would assist him in remembering what went
where.

Just then another customer arrived, so their training
session was cut short. Jacob chatted with the elderly gent, who was in for some
Battenberg cake. After he left, Jacob laughed and said, ‘Thank God he didn’t
ask for
zabaglione
!’

‘Yes, we’ve got quite a bit of this alphabet to get through
yet, and just so you know we don’t have any
zabaglione
,’
said Natalie.

‘Well, that’s easy enough to remember. So where were we?’

‘C,’ Natalie continued, ‘Carrot cake, chocolate cake,’ she
said, indicating each with a wave of her hand. ‘D - date and walnut loaf and
Dundee cake. E- Eccles cake, F - fondant fancy and fruitcake.’ Natalie drew
breath and stopped to ask Jacob which one was Eccles cake. He got it right. She
continued, ‘Genoa cake, gingerbread. No H, I, J or K and we go straight to L
for lemon cake.’

‘Straight to hell, did you say?’ Jacob made an effort at
humour.

‘I hope your jokes improve,’ Natalie said bluntly, but with
a smile in her voice.

They got through discussing the rest of the cakes without
mishap, stopping twice to serve customers. By the time the lunchtime rush
arrived, Jacob was able to distinguish his Madeira cake from his upside-down
cake.

He was a hit with the elderly ladies, charming them with his
cornflower blue eyes and dirty blond hair, even if it was a little long for
their tastes. Some of the regulars kept him busy asking for more tea, and he
cleared tables whilst Natalie prepared new batches of cakes that were running
low. Mrs Gardiner, an elderly lady who they later discovered had never married,
came in to meet Mrs Seymour once a week, to share a piece of cake, a pot of tea
and a chinwag. Mrs Gardiner’s guide dog, Sam, a seven-year-old golden Labrador
with a gentle personality, lay at his owner’s feet but remained always on the
alert and pre-empted his owner’s every move.

Natalie stood back for a moment and admired how the bakery
café was filling up. Jacob was chatting with the latest customer, a young mum
with a baby in a sling. She guessed the baby to be around four months old. The
baby girl was trying to grab Jacob’s finger, although her attention appeared to
be temporarily distracted by the pink iced cakes he was packing into a bag for
her mum.

The bakery’s five tables were occupied. At table one were
Mrs Gardiner and Mrs Seymour, table two had been nabbed by the young mum who
had just come in; a changing bag sat atop it, a muslin cloth draped carelessly
over the chair. At table three were three teenagers - Natalie didn’t mind
teenagers coming in, as long as they bought something and didn’t cause any
disruption. These kids were genuine, each scoffing a different type of muffin
whilst simultaneously texting on their phones. Every so often they would giggle
at something and hold their phones up to each other, laugh some more and then
resume texting. Natalie had always thought she was pretty open-minded. She had
seen a lot in her time, but this variant on conversation went against everything
she had ever learned. But progress was progress, for good or for bad. Two young
women, presumably in their late twenties, sat at table four. They were deep in
conversation and only picked at their slices of carrot cake and sponge cake
occasionally. At the final table sat a man with his laptop, who had been polite
enough to ask if Natalie minded if he charged his laptop on the bakery’s
socket. ‘As long as you’re a paying customer, you can hoover up the
electricity,’ she’d said.

The man’s relief was apparent and thanking Natalie, he said,
‘I left my charger at home and I need to send my boss this report as soon as I
finish it. It was due this morning. I’ve been typing faster, trying to finish
it before my battery dies on me.’

‘No problem. Now, what can I get you?’ Natalie had said,
waving her hand towards the bakery’s offerings.

Everything was going OK so far, both the bakery and her
project in general. Natalie had made contact with two of the four and had
already been instrumental in Jacob getting a job, so things were going in the
right direction. He seemed a nice boy, too. She had chosen well. He was already
proving to be a hard worker and a definite asset to the bakery. He’d upsold
several customers who had only come in for a cup of tea, to tea and cake,
commenting on the great opportunity to sit and enjoy the view from the bakery
café.

The door opened again and a harried-looking girl rushed in,
talking quickly into her mobile phone. ‘Yes, Meredith, I’ve got it. I know what
the order is. It’s always the same. I’m not likely to forget.’
Self-consciously, the girl brought her hand to her mouth in shock. Recovering
quickly, she said, ‘Sorry, the line’s breaking up. I’ll see you when I get
back,’ and hung up. ‘Phew!’ she said, almost to herself, but Jacob heard her.

‘Tough day?’ he asked.

‘Tough boss.’

‘Oh dear. I know what you mean,’ and he winked at Natalie.

‘Really?’ she asked, ‘I’ve always thought Mrs Williams
really nice.’

‘Oh, not Mrs Williams, this one here, battleaxe,’ he
confided in her.

Natalie turned away and stifled a laugh.

The girl studied Natalie, then said, ‘Appearances can be
deceiving. She seems...normal. My boss acts the part of superbitch. She makes
Cruella De Vil look like Bambi’s mother.’

Jacob burst out laughing. ‘You’re painting a great picture
of her. Does she ever come in here, then, so I can make sure I go into hiding
or take the day off?’

‘No, she’s ‘too busy’ to do menial stuff like fetch her own
cakes. That’s why she sends me, her gopher.’

‘Well, I’m glad she did send you. Sounds like I’ve had a
right lucky escape. She might have skinned me and made me into a coat!’

The girl laughed. ‘Sophie. And can I have a slice of carrot
cake and a chocolate éclair, please?’

‘Let me guess, the carrot cake is for your boss?’

‘Yep. How did you guess?’

‘Well, anyone who’s that much of a bitch hasn’t eaten our
chocolate éclairs before! Carrot cake is much more boring, don’t you think?’
Jacob sounded convincing, even though he hadn’t sampled any of the cakes
himself yet - a real charmer.

Sophie put her head on one side, pondered this for a second
and then said, ‘You know what? You’re so right. I can’t believe I just spoke to
Cruella like that. She’ll probably shoot me on sight when I get back.’

‘What did you say to her exactly?’ asked Jacob, pretending
he hadn’t overheard her conversation.

‘I was sarcastic to her, as she was her usual patronising
self. I don’t know what it is. She brings out the worst in me. I’m going to end
up turning into her, I spend so much time with her.’

‘God, I hope not,’ Jacob said, clutching his heart in mock
horror, ‘She sounds dreadful. Buy an extra chocolate éclair and bribe her with
that, if things get nasty,’ he advised.

‘You’re joking, aren’t you? Cruella, or rather, Meredith,
thinks cream is the devil, although she actually believes carrot cake is
healthy
.’

‘I don’t think she’s alone in that. Well, have a good day
and I hope Cruella isn’t too vicious to you,’ Jacob told Sophie. ‘I’m Jacob,’
he added, realising somewhat belatedly that she had given him her name earlier
but he hadn’t reciprocated.

‘Yes, you too. See you again,’ said Sophie, giving him a
little wave as she held open the door, allowing a lady in a wheelchair through.

Natalie spent the rest of the day weighing and measuring
ingredients and watching customers’ ordering habits, to see how many of each
cake she would need for the next day. Of course, it was only an indication, as
every day would see different customers. She’d seen the glint in the eyes of
not only the old ladies who she’d overheard thought Jacob a sweet boy, but also
several schoolgirls, who had just about swooned when they saw him. Jacob had no
idea he was such a hit, which was truly endearing.

The bakery closed at five thirty, having sold out of pretty
much everything and having provided sanctuary for a pleasingly high number of
customers in its café. Natalie had discussed takings and what the bakery
usually achieved each day with Mrs Williams, and she was quietly confident that
they were on target to match that. Not for the first time that day she wondered
how poor Mrs Williams’ operation had gone. It was never fun to be in hospital,
but particularly not at that age. She supposed in a way, although she wasn’t
one of Natalie’s chosen four, she was helping Mrs Williams by keeping her
bakery open.

‘Good first day?’ Natalie asked Jacob, as he took off his
uniform.

‘Yes, I really enjoyed it. I loved talking to the customers
and even though I haven’t worked in a bakery before, I think I’m going to like
it. I loved the buzz of all the people in the café, too.’

‘Yes, that’s something I’ve always really enjoyed; that and
people watching,’ Natalie agreed.

‘I want to thank you for giving me a chance,’ said Jacob. ‘I
don’t mean to sound superior, but after studying for four years, I didn’t
expect to end up in a shop, but work is just so hard to find.’

‘I know. I hear there are seventy applicants for every job
and in this sector as many as two hundred.’

‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ said Jacob, shaking his
head. ‘So, thanks again.’

‘You’re welcome. Now you get off, have a nice evening and
I’ll see you tomorrow. Do you think you could come in at eight thirty, help me
set up?’

‘No problem. Have a good one,’ and Jacob took his jacket
from the peg and left.

Natalie appraised the silent bakery, as she watched passersby
go about their business. It had been dark for over an hour now. Today had gone
well. The pieces were starting to fall into place.