The Christmas Cake Cafe: A Brilliantly Funny Feel Good Christmas Read Kindle Edition Read online

  ‘But your pasta and your hair was probably fine, and the right guy would have told you that. And even if your pasta was a little soggy, you’d have laughed about it – but you couldn’t laugh about anything with that miserable sod.’

  ‘You say that, but he seems to have found someone else to put up with him. I’ve heard he’s met a young blonde who loves the gym.’

  ‘He’s still going for the same type then?’ she said and laughed, looking me up and down.

  ‘Very funny, Jody,’ I said, aware I wasn’t young, blonde or gym obsessed. ‘Tim had women chasing him all the time. We’d go to a dinner party and they’d be all over him… and sometimes, when I wondered if we should stay together, I’d think, “Someone else will have him if I don’t.”’

  ‘That’s not a reason to stay.’

  ‘I know that now. If I’m honest I was flattered that he let me share his life. We had some wonderful holidays, dined in lovely restaurants, and when things changed and he became irritated by me, I just wanted the good times back.’

  ‘No one should be “flattered” to be with another person. How dare he be “irritated” by you. He was the lucky one! You are pretty and intelligent and kind and…’

  ‘I wasn’t enough for him.’

  ‘No one would ever be enough for Tim. He encouraged you to move into his flat, lose touch with all your friends and become swallowed up in his life. You were living in his life – but he wasn’t living in yours, Jen – and the woman he left you for will be doing exactly the same now. Men like Tim are controlling. You may not have realised it at the time, but that’s what he looks for in a woman: someone with low self-esteem, someone needy he can manipulate.’

  ‘God it sounds awful, doesn’t it?’ I sighed. I’d known this deep in my heart, but hearing it spoken out loud made me feel stupid, and at the same time angry with myself for allowing it to happen.

  ‘If you two had married you’d have had the most amazing wedding and a beautiful home, but it wouldn’t have made him love you more or treat you any better.’

  ‘I know – you don’t have to tell me, Jody.’

  I was aware I had to move on, but Christmas was just round the corner and all I could think of was the devastation of the previous year. Everything reminded me of our Christmases together – and just walking down supermarket aisles I was bombarded with memories. Bottles of Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry in blue glass all lined up on shelves made me think how we always had a little glass when we decorated the tree. The first year together we’d almost drunk a whole bottle and we’d made love under the tree – but the pine needles were a nuisance and Tim was itching for days, so we didn’t do that again. Actually, thinking about it, Tim didn’t even decorate the tree again after that first year. I did it on my own, a solitary glass of sherry at my side, mince pies warming in the oven for when he came home late after work. Even my memories were fraudulent, it seemed.

  Talking to Jody was like therapy for me. But as great as Jody was for being there, her brand of consolation left much to be desired. ‘You can’t spend Christmas as a spinster’ and ‘He was a dick’ were her go-to lines of comfort. Her observation that ‘They have old people like you on Matchmaker.com too’, which was apparently meant to make me feel better, was typical. Oh yes, Jody was always very honest with me, but we don’t always want to hear the truth. I know I certainly didn’t. It wasn’t her fault – she was just trying to help me, but when she said I needed to start seriously looking for someone I laughed.

  ‘If only it were that easy. You’re twenty-eight – it’s okay for you to talk about finding someone else, but I’m older, less of a catch,’ I’d sighed.

  ‘Yes, I know you’re old and dried-up, but there are men who like that kind of thing, I saw it on a documentary once,’ she’d said, laughing. I think she was joking.

  ‘I feel like I have no future! I’m going to be that aunt who drinks vodka straight out of the bottle and ruins Christmas,’ I’d said.

  ‘No you aren’t, because you don’t drink vodka,’ was her response.

  We were worlds apart, Jody and I, and until my mum died four years previously, we had barely known each other. To Jody’s credit, she’d reached out after Mum’s death, coming to the funeral and trying to offer an olive branch. As our father and her own mother were both now dead, we realised we were the only family either of us had and so had begun a very basic, very vague friendship based on the odd phone call, a rare coffee or a drink after work. Now we stayed over at each other’s homes and spoke most days on the phone. And when it all kicked off with Tim, Jody looked after me, and as annoying and childish and drunk as she sometimes gets, I don’t know what I’d do without her.

  Now, over a bottle of wine, she began telling me all about her planned trip to Switzerland. Having heard about this since she first considered a working holiday ‘on the piste’, as she put it, I felt I already knew everything. I’d seen the photos of the ski resort and seen most of the younger ski instructors’ profiles on her phone, along with pictures of every outfit she was planning to wear.

  ‘But you don’t need cropped tops in Switzerland. Apart from the fact you’ll be freezing, you’re going out there to work,’ I’d said. ‘Not to party.’

  ‘Ooh that’s cruel, Jen.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I am so going to party! You see everything in little boxes – just because you’re at work, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself too. Anyway, I now have this delicious hiatus between finishing my nursing degree and finding a job in hospital making beds and washing old men’s bits – so I’m going to have one last fling.’

  I had to laugh at the phrase. ‘Last fling? At your age I don’t think I’d even had my first fling,’ I said, shaking my head and smiling.

  ‘Jen, you so need a fling. You’ve worked in that dusty old library since you were about twelve…’

  ‘Twenty-one actually – I was one of the first graduates on my course to walk straight into a job,’ I said.

  ‘Oh whoopee doo! So while everyone else was travelling the world, drinking too much and sleeping with everyone in sight you were stamping books in the local library. Wow, your mates must have been dead jealous.’

  This stung a little, and I think she saw the look on my face because she backtracked slightly.

  ‘Look, Jen, I’m not putting you down, or the fact that you’ve reached the lofty heights of Head Librarian at South Manchester Libraries. I just think it’s a shame you haven’t experienced anything other than here.’

  Then she did something she often did, which was extremely annoying – she said, ‘OH MY GOD!’ and did a sort of collapse on the sofa that often accompanied these proclamations for dramatic effect.

  ‘What?’ I asked in a monotone. I wasn’t buying in to her drama.

  ‘I just had an AMAZING idea.’

  ‘Oh, I assumed you’d just been shot.’

  ‘You know how you’ve been thinking of going on a six-month sabbatical?’

  ‘Yes, to take a course in cataloguing history books.’

  ‘Ooh cataloguing history books, that’s a wild ride, you really must spend six precious months of your life face down in old tomes – said no one EVER! Sod that – come with me to Switzerland!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, it would so do you good, Jen. All that fresh air, exercise, hunky ski instructors. The resort I’m going to is looking for more staff for the season… Jen, we’d be there for Christmas. Together. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Yes, I can, and I’m not wasting my sabbatical, my sanity or my Christmas snowbound in a ski lodge with you.’

  ‘Think about it – really, really think about it. You love Christmas and you’ll just be on your own here, moping around, thinking about that dickhead.’

  ‘You mean Tim, the man who broke my heart into a million pieces.’

  ‘Yes – but forget about Tim the tosser – just think about that sparkly white Christmas in Switzerland. The girls would love you to come along. There are three of us so you’
d round it off nicely.’

  Jody was good. She could often make me see things differently, and this sounded like a way for me to forget about last Christmas, forge new festive memories and move on.

  I’d always longed for the perfect Christmas, and Jody was right – I’d never quite managed it. It always seemed as though obstacles got in the way. It could have been something as simple as overcooked sprouts, or the wrong shade of bauble, but I was a perfectionist and had to have everything just so – especially at Christmas. But I realised now that, despite all this effort trying to attain perfection, I wasn’t happy.

  I thought now about how I would have felt if, instead of finishing our relationship, Tim had asked me to marry him, and it occurred to me with a jolt that I’d never wanted to marry Tim. I’d wanted marriage and children and the perfect home, but in truth, I didn’t want it with Tim, which was why everything else around us had to be perfect – because we weren’t. I was overcompensating, framing the picture of our relationship, always adding flowers and candles and twinkly lights. I had to dress it up to make it pretty and acceptable, because deep down perhaps I knew it wasn’t. I recalled a moment even before Tim announced his departure from my life when I’d been sitting at my dressing table applying the most perfect red Chanel lipstick, and it hadn’t mattered how many times I’d layered on that classy shine, I hadn’t been able to cover the emptiness I felt inside. Being me, I’d pretended it was all good and just kept on painting pictures over the truth, adding pretty accessories, creating a beautiful setting. And now it just made me very sad to realise that I’d wasted ten years lying to myself.

  I hadn’t realised this properly until now. There were niggles in the back of my mind – there always had been with Tim – but I’d been scared of losing everything and being left alone. And during this time I didn’t look too closely – I couldn’t take our relationship apart and look at it – because deep down I knew it might not fit back together again.

  Jody’s plans for a perfect and snow-filled Christmas in Switzerland, without a hint of Tim, suddenly began to feel like the cure I needed.

  ‘Switzerland sounds lovely, but you and me… we’re so different,’ I sighed, trying to be realistic about this wonderful idea of a Christmas of glittering snow and crackling log fires.

  ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun. And besides, this is about a six-month rehab. You can forget about Tim, the dusty old library, that crazy woman who’s obsessed with ghosts…’

  ‘Storm. My gifted colleague, who penetrates the sixth dimension, is called Storm,’ I said.

  ‘She can penetrate whatever she likes, but the fact is, you need a bloody break from everyone and everything. Go on, why not just run away with me, Jen?’

  ‘Because it’s Christmas. I’ve always been at home for Christmas.’

  ‘Just because you’ve always done it this way, doesn’t make it right.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘So try something different this year. Jen, think of the snow-covered mountains, the steaming hot chocolate… we have to spend Christmas together. We’re family – we’re sisters.’

  ‘I know, and I really appreciate what you’re saying and – a few years ago I might have taken you up on it.’

  ‘And in a few years you’ll say the same. You always say it: “When I was younger I’d have done that… if I was twenty-five I’d do that.” No you wouldn’t and you won’t and you’ll go to your bloody grave saying it. In fact I’ll have it written on your grave. “Here lies Jennifer Barker. She would have done such a lot if she’d been younger.”’

  I stood up and went into the kitchen, her words ringing in my ears. She was right. I’d been talking about taking a six-month sabbatical for years, and I’d flirted with a course (as much as anyone can flirt with cataloguing history books), but I hadn’t really decided what I wanted to do. The library expected me to take an academic course, but I’d recently been thinking less about cataloguing books and more about doing something I enjoyed. There were several courses I could take, but the one I thought about most was a cake-baking course. I loved baking cakes and spending hours icing them – it was what had kept me sane over the years with Tim.

  When I was very young, my mum had given me a book called The Christmas Cake Café. about a girl who loves to bake. She meets the man of her dreams, gets married and opens a beautiful café serving fabulous cakes. It was a children’s book, and the illustrations were quite beautiful: sugar-spun cakes, falling white snow all around the cosy glow of the café. I showed it to Tim once and I recall him saying the whole narrative was ludicrous.

  He just didn’t seem to understand that this wasn’t about critiquing a child’s book – it was an idea, a concept that had stayed with me since childhood. I couldn’t let go of the café – I saw it so clearly in my head. It was always winter and frosty outside, but the café glowed on a dark, cobbled street, like a little star twinkling in the cold darkness. The cakes melted in your mouth and tasted of marzipan and cinnamon, the ceiling was covered in mistletoe and young couples sat holding each other’s hearts and hands in the warmth as snow tumbled past the little lead windows. I’d always longed to spend my days baking and creating. I once thought I’d run away to London and find work as a pastry chef in a top hotel. But I couldn’t leave Mum in Manchester on her own, so after finishing my degree I’d applied to the local library to become a librarian. ‘A dream job,’ my mum described it as on my first day – but I wasn’t convinced, and there were dark days when I could be found sobbing in the ‘Cakes and Bakery Books’ section, poring over recipes, dreaming of piped cream and rosettes of sugary icing instead of dusty books.

  I opened the oven now, and a hot blast of fruity cinnamon hit me in the face. I placed the dark, rich cake onto the countertop and it was weighed down with Christmas goodness. I licked my lips – what a shame I had to wait until December. At this point I felt a soft, swishing around my legs as Mrs Christmas demanded supper, and after a cuddle and a packet of cat food she wandered off, her tail high.

  ‘I couldn’t leave Mrs Christmas for three months,’ I said, wandering back into the living room where Jody was now downloading pictures of the resort to tempt me with.

  ‘Oh someone will look after the cat – she’ll be fine. Stop looking for excuses to live your life,’ she said absently. Then, whooping at each picture, she kept thrusting her phone into my face, each shot white with snow, blue skies, hot men and dangerous sports.

  I loved the idea of all that snow, learning to ski, meeting new people. But there was still a part of me that longed to stay safe, stay working at the library and spend Christmas locked up in the house…

  ‘Come on, Jenny, it will be the picture-perfect setting… it’s what Christmas is all about. You can come out with us at the end of November, and if you don’t like it you could be home by Christmas… but I know you’ll LOVE it. Imagine it – a cabin in the Swiss Alps – a log fire, a hot tub and all the gorgeous ski instructors you can handle.’

  ‘I’ve given up on men, and… as for a hot tub, ew!’

  ‘Is that because Tim said they were full of germs?’

  ‘No,’ I lied.

  ‘So ski instructors, hunky, on ice, sliding all over you… don’t tell me you’re not interested in that?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Is that because Tim said you’d never get another man?’

  ‘No!’ Damn, I wish I’d never told her he’d said that – it was quite different in context. ‘He’d said it in the heat of the moment, in a fit of pique when we’d argued about the best way to flambé pork,’ I said, attempting a superior tone.

  ‘Flambé pork? I’d have flambéed his balls,’ she said, then whooped at the sight of another snow scene/dangerous sport/dangerous man on her phone. ‘So you’re rejecting my white winter-wonderland Christmas, casting me aside like I’m nothing to you…’ She was a complete drama queen.

  ‘No, I’m not rejecting your white Christmas or casting you aside. I j
ust happen to know that there’s a Downton Abbey special on TV on Christmas Day, and I will be watching it with a bottle of sherry.’

  ‘But you hate Downton Abbey.’

  ‘Exactly, which is why I will be drinking a bottle of sherry – it’s the only way I’ll get through it. Anyway, drunk Downton aside, I’d be no use working at a ski resort. For a start I can’t ski!’

  ‘Excuse after excuse.’

  ‘I’d have thought it was pretty fundamental to be able to ski in a ski resort.’

  ‘No, there are jobs in the coffee shop and the hotel. And you can learn to ski.’

  ‘I have to say I always fancied skiing, but hurling myself up and down slopes in clothes that make me look fatter than I am is another thing.’

  After a rather prolonged period of relationship mourning with Mr Krispy Kreme, where I’d periodically locked myself in the library toilets (with a half-dozen box on a bad day), I’d come through that early phase and moved on to loss of appetite. Consequently I was now looking slimmer than I had in years – I’d rejected sugar and carbs and embraced a life of lettuce and longing.

  ‘You look fab. It’s time to premiere that new body on the slopes – you’d look fantastic in a ski suit.’

  ‘Yeah after liposuction and a facelift. I’m not exactly Elle Macpherson.’

  ‘You’re not doing that weird doughnut thing again are you?’ She looked up from her phone a little concerned.

  ‘No, I’m fine now.’ I didn’t meet her eyes. I’d licked the window of the Krispy Kreme shop a couple of days ago – these things don’t go away overnight.

  ‘Think about it, Jen! Horse-drawn carriages through a winter landscape, glittering snow, Glühwein… Sachertorte…’ She was giving a running commentary while flicking through more pictures on her phone.