The world’s most expensive gingerbread house costs £49,750. It is made with Meridian Black Strap molasses, Ceylon cinnamon, Echire Butter, Suma raw cane sugar, Duchy eggs, rubies, and pearls.
‘Your hair smells of gingerbread.’
I’m on my knees in the bandstand, and Joss is showing me how to build a wall with the gingerbread bricks. He’s already done a side wall, so we’re doing the back one. I look over my shoulder at him where he’s kneeling right behind me. ‘Saff and I have baked four hundred gingerbread bricks today, there are worse things it could smell of.’
He laughs. ‘It wasn’t an insult.’
So Joss Hallissey is complimenting me? Blue moons and flying pigs spring to mind. I didn’t think Joss Hallissey complimented anyone or anything.
He’s set up a string line, taut across the front of the frame, and he digs out trowelfuls of royal icing and splats it in a line, from one edge of the frame to the other, and then uses the tip of his trowel to feather along the centre of it.
‘Speaking of not-insults, I have a question.’ He slathers icing onto the front end of the brick like he’s buttering it, and then places it into the icing along the bottom of the frame. ‘Those things you made me in the basket… Why were they so different to everything I’ve bought from the shop since?’
‘I made those ones.’ I hadn’t realised building a wall would come with such close proximity, and Joss’s cinnamon aftershave at such close range is making it difficult to follow the conversation. ‘Everything in the bakery is from my great-great-grandmother’s recipes, passed down for generations, but the things I made for you were my own recipe.’
He taps the brick down with the handle of his trowel, holds a gauge rod against the side of it, and then balances a spirit level on top. ‘They were better.’
‘Thanks.’ It makes me smile, and his head tilts enough that I know he’s watching my smile.
‘You should sell those ones in the shop.’
‘Tell my mum that,’ I mutter, and then backpedal quickly. ‘Except for the love of mistletoe, don’t tell my mum that. She’ll kill me if she knows I changed anything.’
He takes another brick and holds it up so I can see what he’s doing as he slaps another trowel of icing onto one end of it. ‘So you want to make changes and she doesn’t?’
He lines that brick up to the last one and presses it down, and then swipes the trowel along the bricks with a well-practised flick, removing the mortar that has splurged out and leaving a neat white line of icing between them. He sits back to do another one, clearly waiting for an answer.
‘I think there’s room to modernise,’ I say as he butters another brick end and adds it to the rapidly growing base of the wall. ‘Times have changed. People want different things these days. Things like vegan options, or gluten-free, or nut-free. There are so many different products now, some of which are better than the originals, but my mum won’t hear of it, she thinks Folkhornton people are old-fashioned and only want the traditional stuff.’
‘Most people in Folkhornton are about eighty, on a good day.’
‘People of any age like to try new things. My mum shuts down all my ideas without giving them any thought, and there’s nothing I can do about it. She’s the boss – I just work there.’
‘Line it up, push it down, swipe off the excess.’ Joss repeats the process with another couple of bricks, and then pushes the trowel into my hand. ‘Your turn.’
Does he seriously think I’ve been concentrating on brick-laying? I pick up a brick nervously and copy what he’s been doing. Icing on the end, spread to the edges, push it into the bed of mortar and cwtch it up to the brick already there, tap it level to the string line. Swipe off the excess that squishes out.
He holds up a hand to give me a high five, and his fingers curl ever so slightly around my hand. ‘There you go, you’re officially a bricklayer.’
His patience surprises me. I thought he’d have no time for showing me stuff like this – that he’d be irritable and intolerant and say it would be quicker if he did it himself, but he seems surprisingly happy for me to have a go.
I do a couple more before he squeezes a brick he cut earlier into a small space at the end, checks it again with his spirit level and then moves the string line up to the next marker he’s put on the frame.
‘You ever done anything like this before?’ He dumps trowels of royal icing along the top of that row of bricks, feathers a line through it, and then starts off with a small brick, so the mortar lines don’t match up and make it look exactly like a brick wall should.
‘No. Not to this scale.’ I take the trowel when he hands it to me, butter the end of another brick with icing, push it against the first one, and swipe off the excess white goo that splurges out. ‘I’d like to do more display pieces, but Mum says it’s pointless. In a place like Folkhornton, we’re too small to attract new customers. Dancing Cinnamon has stood there for the better part of two centuries – everyone who wants to come there already does. If I spend hours making window display pieces, all it’s going to achieve is making our regular customers come in and say “ooh, that’s nice” and then buy what they were going to buy anyway. It won’t bring in droves of new cake lovers. And she’s right. Whenever I put a big fancy cake in the window, people admire it, but don’t rush in to order one for themselves.’
I’ve carried on laying the next row of bricks, getting into the rhythm of it, and Joss leans back to eye it against the string line and make sure it’s level. ‘What about social media?’
‘Saff runs the accounts. We post everything we make, but we’re a tiny town and most of our followers don’t live nearby.’
He uses the spirit level and then shifts the string line up again for the next row of bricks, and hands me a full-size one to start with this time. ‘Online sales?’
‘Saff’s looked into it, but it’s a minefield with couriers and stuff. You’re going to get damaged orders and have to refund or scramble to make emergency replacements, and someone’s going to have to cover the time for making online orders and we don’t have enough staff. I’d like to be able to send things far and wide, but Mum thinks it’s more trouble than it’s worth, and she’s undoubtedly right again.’
‘What if she’s not?’
‘She is, Joss.’
He shrugs as I line the bricks up one by one, scraping and slathering. ‘Well, fifteen minutes ago, you didn’t think you could build a brick wall, and now look. You have.’
I sit back on my knees and my shoulder accidentally bumps into his arm, but he doesn’t move away. ‘Are you trying to build my confidence?’
‘No.’ He checks the level and moves the line up for the next row. ‘You’re very good at what you do, and more people should know that.’
I blush. ‘Well, with a bit of luck, pretty soon a lot of people will know about our gingerbread house. We need to get people talking online. We need the world to know about Mistletoe Gardens and what Mervyn Prichard and his cronies plan on doing to it.’
‘Speaking of the world…’ Joss swipes a stray bit of mortar off with his finger and sucks it clean. ‘Why would anyone move away from Folkhornton and then voluntarily return?’
I give him an analytical look. ‘Let me get this straight, you refuse to talk about your life, but you’re fine with questioning me about mine?’
‘Yeah, because if we’re talking about you, we’re not talking about me, and it’s always better that way. I’m intrigued. I only came back because of my father – why does anyone come back if they don’t have to?’
‘Because it’s my home? Because all my friends and family are here?’
He slaps on the base line of icing and waits for me to start laying the bricks again.
I sigh. ‘I was dating a French guy who decided to move back to Paris and asked me to go with him. Paris was my dream city – it was the chance of a lifetime. And I thought that what French people really needed was a good, hearty, old-fashioned, traditional English bakery that specialises in the sort of bakes your grandmother would’ve made.’ I glance at him, his head tilted as he listens intently. ‘But it turned out that what French people want is the finest French patisserie, and Welsh Cakes are, in fact, not the next pastry craze on the continent. So that failed spectacularly and took all of my savings with it, and when the relationship also ended, I was stuck in France, homesick and alone, with no money and nowhere to go. My mum had to pay for the train ticket home. She let me have my job back and move into the flat above the bakery which was being used for storage. I still find flour under the bed to this day.’
He laughs. ‘At least you tried?’
‘I felt like a huge failure. My mum said it would never work, but I thought I knew better. I believed in myself too much. I thought I’d spread my wings and become a chic Parisian, but all I did was amass a collection of striped tops and berets.’
‘No string of onions around your neck?’
‘I draw the line at strapping root veg to my person.’
We both laugh. Apart from Mum and Saff, I’ve never told anyone that, and it doesn’t feel as exposing as I thought it would. There’s something safe about Joss, something trustworthy, something that makes it easy to talk to someone who’s such a good listener, even if he doesn’t share anything in return.
‘Is that why you don’t believe in yourself now? And why your mum doesn’t take you seriously?’
‘I don’t know. Both. Either. Neither.’
It’s like he can tell how uncomfortable that question has made me, because he uses his trowel to tap the icing and it clicks in response. We’ve stopped working while I’ve been talking and it’s already starting to set, and we both start buttering bricks and laying them to complete the row.
‘The way I see it is that if you can build a giant gingerbread house, you can do anything. Maybe by the time we’re done here, you’ll believe in yourself again.’ He gives me a knowing look, and I’m a certain he can hear the ‘I wouldn’t bet on it’ that plays in my head.
I dye my hair bright red so I look more confident than I am, and Joss Hallissey is the last person I expected to understand that.
* * *
‘Are you really building a life-size gingerbread house?’ A little girl, probably about six years old, with a doll in one hand, drags her grandfather across Mistletoe Gardens at a pace he clearly wasn’t expecting. They stand at the foot of the bandstand steps and she looks up in awe, her mouth formed into a ‘o’ shape, even though there’s only a couple of walls up so far.
‘We certainly are,’ I say. I’m not very good with kids, I never know what to say to them and whatever I choose comes across as patronising even though it’s not intended to. ‘Do you like gingerbread houses?’
She nods excitedly.
‘Do you know who else likes gingerbread houses?’ Joss says, surprising me. I had not pegged him for someone who’d voluntarily engage with a child. Or a human in general, really.
The little girl gasps like she knows what he’s going to say. The hand her granddad was holding flies to her mouth, and Granddad hooks onto the hood of her coat instead. ‘Is it Santa?’ she whispers, looking around like the man himself might be listening.
‘It is!’ Joss matches her excitable tone. ‘When this house is done, Santa’s going to live here over Christmas. Santa’s so excited because, although he’s eaten lots of gingerbread houses, he’s never lived in one before.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Of course we know him. Santa hired us to build this house for him.’
She gasps again like Joss is the most magical person on earth.
‘You know what it means when Santa lives in town, right?’ Joss is halfway up a ladder, filling the last corner of a wall with gingerbread bricks, but he’s got all the time in the world for her.
She does an exaggerated shake of her head, blonde curls whipping back and forth.
‘It means everyone in Folkhornton is going to get much bigger presents this year because Santa hasn’t got so far to carry them. Hauling things about on a sleigh gets super tiring, so the elves make the presents as small and lightweight as possible, but when Santa’s only got to pop up the road, it doesn’t matter how big and heavy things are, so everyone in a town with a life-size gingerbread house gets extra good presents.’
She bounces on the spot, unable to contain her excitement. ‘Which is your favourite reindeer?’
‘Hmm.’ Joss gives it serious consideration. ‘Have you seen The Santa Clause?’
She nods excitedly.
‘I like Comet because he’s got a bit of personality, you know? There’s too much focus on Rudolph and the glowing nose, no one appreciates the other reindeer, but Santa’s sleigh wouldn’t get off the ground without them. I think they deserve more gratitude, don’t you?’
I glance at the sky for some hint of UFOs or spacecraft because surely an alien abduction and replacement with a pod person is the only explanation for Joss’s complete personality change.
‘I’m going to make Blitzen my favourite reindeer from now on,’ the little girl says. ‘I bet no one else says Blitzen is their favourite reindeer.’
‘Don’t forget Donner,’ Joss adds. ‘Lots of people forget all about Donner and he deserves some love too.’
‘Donner can be my favourite reindeer,’ the granddad says to appease her sudden distress that these fictional reindeer will feel left out.
‘How about you, Essie?’ Joss looks over at me from his ladder. ‘Who’s your favourite reindeer?’
I nearly crumble like a gingerbread brick under the weight of their expectant gazes. I feel like a lot is riding on my answer.
I run through the poem in my head. On Dasher, on Dancer… nah, everyone knows those names. Donner, Blitzen, and Comet are already taken. Prancer’s had films made about him, he doesn’t need any extra attention. ‘Cupid?’ I say, sounding unsure about my answer.
‘And Vixen can be Barbie’s favourite!’ The little girl waves around the doll in her hand.
‘There we go, now all the reindeer are equal and won’t feel bad about the fact they don’t all have red noses.’
Split personality? Spontaneous lobotomy? My grouchy builder has morphed into Santa’s Little Helper in the face of a child with a Barbie doll, and there is no explanation for it.
‘What do you want for Christmas?’ Joss asks her.
‘I can’t tell you! You’re not Santa!’ She gasps in such horror that it makes him laugh.
‘Ahh, I was just testing you and you passed with flying colours. Santa will be very happy.’ He jumps off the ladder, picks up the basket of gingerbread stars I brought this morning, and holds it out for her to take one, and then offers it to Granddad too.
‘Thank yoooooou,’ she calls, the elongated ‘o’ echoing back to us long after they’ve gone out the gate.
‘Good God, you’re lovely.’ I stare at him in complete and utter shock. ‘Or ill. Are you ill? Have you got a temperature that’s frazzled your brain and turned you into a different person?’ I barely refrain from putting a hand to his forehead to check. ‘A twin brother! That’s it, right? You’re one of two and you’re winding me up by swapping around occasionally and you’re the nice one?’
He gives me a tight, sarcastic smile as he returns to his ladder.
‘Seriously, Joss. Where did that come from? You like children?’
‘What kind of monster doesn’t like children?’
‘You know what I mean. You’re kind to children.’
‘If I strike you as a person who would be unkind to children, something’s gone horribly wrong in my life.’
‘You know what I mean,’ I repeat. He’s deliberately avoiding the question. ‘You hate everything – I’m glad children have escaped your wrath.’
‘I like children because the world hasn’t yet turned them into cynical and selfish adults. Like me.’ He doesn’t look up from the brick he’s putting in, but I bite my lip because he sounds so sad.
He speaks after a few moments of silence. ‘Am I really so horrible to be around that you think I’d tell a child that Santa doesn’t exist? You must think I kick puppies and murder bees in my spare time too.’
‘No, of course n—’
‘Let children hold onto that childhood innocence for as long as possible. The world will snuff it out soon enough without my input.’
‘I know that. You’re not usually one for “visions of sugarplums”, that’s all.’
‘I don’t even know what a sugarplum is.’ The hint of teasing is back in his voice, serious conversation obviously closed.
‘I don’t know either, actually. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? You’d expect a baker to know.’
‘I’d expect any self-respecting Christmas lover to know.’
‘I’m guessing some kind of Victorian-era festive snack.’
‘From the times before they had Lindor and Pringles, obviously. Children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of… sentient Quality Street danced around their feet…’
I laugh. ‘Now that’s the Joss I know and lo— tolerate,’ I amend quickly. He might be okay but I certainly don’t love him.
He smiles at me across the gingerbread house, but it’s a smile that in no way, shape, or form reaches his eyes, and I can’t help wondering how many layers he’s hiding under there, and I haven’t even peeled back the surface yet.