7

November 21st is National Gingerbread Day in the UK.

In the past few days, we’ve made over seven hundred bricks, and that’s not an exaggeration. It’s Wednesday afternoon and the house is coming on fast, thanks to Joss’s master brick-laying skills. It’s quiet in the bakery, so Saff’s on the shop floor and I’m in the kitchen, getting to grips with another batch of bricks. I’m up to my wrists in sticky gingerbread dough when she calls me from out front.

I look down at my brown-covered hands. It isn’t a pretty sight, but a customer probably won’t appreciate being kept waiting while I scrub it off.

Saff’s behind the counter as usual, but the shop is empty, apart from Joss, hovering inside the door.

He grins when I emerge from the kitchen. ‘They have plumbers for that, you know.’

I laugh because it does look like I’ve been unblocking the toilet. ‘You know full well it’s gingerbread dough, although you’re hilarious, as always. It’s unusual to see you at this time of day…’

‘Yeah, I just came to say I won’t be there tonight. I have… um… a thing. That I can’t get out of. I wanted to let you know that I can’t… work on the gingerbread house tonight.’

‘That’s okay,’ I say, intrigued by his stumbled explanation. Joss doesn’t usually stutter or second-guess what he’s going to say – he says exactly what he thinks, whether you want him to or not.

He looks different this afternoon. His jeans are smart and non-paint-stained, his black T-shirt is plain and ironed, and he’s shaved for the first time in a few days and is wearing a different aftershave, a crisp and cool spearmint one that I’ve not smelt before. His thick hair has got more product in it than usual and he’s made more of an effort with styling it.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t get out of the… thing…’ He looks uneasy. ‘I’ll shirk off work tomorrow and put in extra time to make up for it.’

‘You’re not obligated to work on it every day, Joss, you’re allowed to have other… things.’

‘Okay, so I’ll see you tomorrow then?’ His hand reaches out, hovering for a moment, and then he cups my elbow and gives it a squeeze, avoiding the dough-covered hands.

I’m sure it’s just a friendly gesture, but a tingle goes down my spine, and I’d really like him to never move his hand, ever. Well, not unless he was going to move it to somewhere more interesting than my elbow.

His cheeks take on a red tinge too, and he quickly lets go. He pats his hands on his thighs like he’s trying to rally himself. ‘See you tomorrow.’

‘See you tomorrow,’ I repeat, trying to stamp down the disappointment as he opens the door and hesitates like he wants to say something else, his eyes lingering on mine, but eventually all that comes out is yet another ‘See you tomorrow,’ as he leaves.

We’ve been doing a few hours’ work on the gingerbread house every evening after work, using Joss’s industrial floodlights to make up for the lack of daylight. Every night, I take something unsold and Joss brings coffee, and little Rob joins us, chirping and hopping along the bandstand wall like a manager overseeing the project. It’s only been a few days, but those evenings in Mistletoe Gardens have become something I look forward to.

‘Duw, duw, anyone would think he’d see you tomorrow,’ Saff says. ‘If he’d have said it any more times, he’d have been seeing you a week next Friday.’

His van’s outside and I can’t take my eyes off him as he gets back in and starts up. I don’t realise Saff’s speaking until the white van has pulled away and disappeared from view. That was one of the strangest encounters we’ve had so far. From the elbow touch to Joss seeming so unsure of himself.

‘He didn’t want me to worry when he didn’t turn up. It was nice of him to tell me.’

‘Note how he had to tell you in person when a text would’ve sufficed.’

‘He’s being a gentleman. It’s polite.’

‘Essie Browne, I’ve known you since we were six, I know when you’re deflecting.’ She taps a finger on the counter. ‘Come here.’

I go over, holding my dough-covered hands out of the way.

Saff takes my chin between her thumb and forefinger and tilts my head from side to side, examining my face, and I’m blushing from the thought of what she might see there. Other than flour, which I’m liberally coated in, and probably some stray nutmeg too.

‘Oh, you have got it bad. You really like him, don’t you?’

‘No, of course not. Not in that way. He’s a nice enough guy, misunderstood…’ I trail off.

‘Did you see the way he smiled when you came out? I’ve never even seen him smile before, and that one almost blinded me. It’s been a while since you lit up like that too.’

‘Don’t be daft, it was relief at not having to face a customer in this state.’ I wiggle my fingers towards her.

‘Do you know what the thing is? Why was he so cagey about it?’

‘No idea, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘Maybe he’s got a date.’

I look out the window, like the empty space where his van was will somehow give us the answer. ‘I don’t think he’s the dating type, Saff.’

I ignore how uneasy I feel at the prospect of Joss having a date. It would be nothing to do with me if he did. He’s obviously been hurt and is protecting himself so hard that it doesn’t seem like he’ll ever let anyone in again, plus he’s leaving. There’s no point in entertaining anything more than… maybe even friendship is pushing it, but we can certainly tolerate each other until the gingerbread house is done, and then things will go back to normal. I’ll be here, and he’s selling up and shipping out. ‘Did you know he was married?’

‘Married? Him?’

‘So you didn’t know either…’ I say, more to myself than to her. Saff’s been here all along. Even if I’d missed the gossip while I was living in Paris, she would’ve heard it.

‘Is he behaving himself when you’re doing the house together?’

‘Yeah, of course. He’s surprisingly lovely. Kind, thoughtful, unexpectedly funny. A friend to little birds everywhere. He’s working so hard and he’s brilliant at his job…’ I watch her raised eyebrow getting higher as I speak. ‘Why d’you ask?’

She twists her fingers together awkwardly. ‘Have you read his reviews on the trade comparison website? They’re pretty awful.’

‘No,’ I say, my voice going up in surprise. I hadn’t even thought of doing that. And now I wish I had.

Saff can’t get her phone out quick enough as she opens the browser and brings up a page she’s previously been looking at. ‘They’re not good, Ess. Sloppy, slapdash, doesn’t care. Lazy. One says he turned up drunk!’

She holds her phone out but I wiggle my fingers again, so she leans over the counter and scrolls through the customer comments so I can see the screen too. I catch words like ‘always late’ and ‘slacking off’.

‘That might be his lads, not him personally. They’re all quite young and could’ve still been learning.’

Saff’s eyebrow rises again.

‘Joss takes pride in what he does. He’s careful but efficient. His lads have needed extra help this week, so he’s there during the day and in Mistletoe Gardens every evening. He must be knackered, but he never complains.’ I keep my eyes on the phone screen as she scrolls slowly. ‘These are all from a couple of years ago. And there are a few good ones…’

‘Yes. There’s one from a little old lady who, although she makes no mention of his workmanship, gave him five stars because, and I quote, he has very nice buttocks!’

‘Well, he does!’

We look at each other and burst out laughing.

‘Just be careful, okay? I don’t think you should get too close to someone who “sat in the van nursing a hangover while young lads did all the work”, no matter how nice his buttocks are.’

* * *

‘Essie, I’m out for the evening.’ Mum bustles into the bakery kitchen at six o’clock that night. ‘I’ve got to meet Mervyn about Mrs Allen and Mr Selman’s shared driveway. He’s parked his car an inch over her boundary line and she’s got her dog to pee on it.’

Saff cashed up so I didn’t have to stop, and Mum’s coming in early tomorrow to do the morning rush, and I’m still up to my elbows in gingerbread dough as I make the eleventh batch of bricks this afternoon, grateful for the multiple bakery ovens and ample fridge space to chill the dough.

‘More bricks?’ She rolls her eyes, taking in the crates of fresh gingerbread bricks stacked up on the counter. ‘I’m going to need you to pick up the slack on an order I haven’t had time for.’

‘No problem.’ My chilled dough is rolled out to three inches thick, and my hand is a blur as I flick the knife along each edge of the brick template, cutting around it, again and again. ‘What and when?’

‘Three hundred snowflake sugar cookies by tomorrow morning.’

‘Three hundred biscuits? Tonight?’ I say in shock. ‘Are you joking?’

‘Argoel Accountants are expecting them at nine o’clock tomorrow morning for their staff Christmas party.’

‘Mum! You can’t dump three hundred snowflake cookies on me at six o’clock in the evening and tell me they’ve got to be delivered by morning.’

‘We’re covering for you all the time so you can work on this gingerbread house nonsense. I just need you to do this one little thing for me.’

‘What’s “little” about three hundred biscuits? That’s hours of work and I’ve still got two batches of brick dough chilling in the fridge. When am I supposed to get all this done?’

‘Sometimes, Essie, your real job has to take priority over playing with edible Lego.’

‘I’m trying to save our family legacy. I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘It’s a lot of work for something that might not help.’

‘Exactly. We have to do something outstanding. Something that captures people’s imagination. We’ve already increased followers on social media. Our first picture has been “pinned” 275 times. Saff’s posting something every day. When we’ve got more of the house completed, we’re going to send photos to the newspapers, and…’ I trail off. Her eyes have glazed over and she stopped listening at least three sentences ago. I sigh. ‘I’ll get them done.’

I look forlornly at the fridge door. The bricks will have to wait. Again.

I feel inexplicably like I’m about to well up. All I wanted was some support. For Mum to hear my plan and say, ‘Yes! That’ll work! Good job, Essie!’ I wanted her to believe in me. Everything I’ve tried since I got back has been a failure. Every idea I’ve had has been shut down, and I’m starting to feel that there’s no point in continuing to try. I tried to do something big in Paris, and it went horribly wrong, and no one is ever going to let me forget that. The only thing I could do that my mum would approve of is go on dates with random men.

‘Good good. Tatty-bye, see you tomorrow.’

‘Mum, wait,’ I call as she’s about to flounce out the door. ‘Did you know about Joss’s wife?’

She sighs. ‘I had a feeling you were going to ask that.’

So he was right. They must’ve known because I didn’t need to specify what she knew. ‘You did?’

‘Of course we did – that spiky bit of holly wasn’t subtle about it. She didn’t even try to hide what she was up to.’

‘Why didn’t you tell him?’

‘Because he was dealing with so much else. Joseph Senior made no secret that his business was in trouble, and we were all devastated when we heard about his cancer diagnosis. Joss moved here to dig the company out of the doldrums and care for his father. How could we add to that misery, Essie? It’s not an easy thing to say, is it? Walk up to a man we didn’t know and casually drop it into the conversation? Sorry your father’s dying, your mother’s disappeared, your family business is going under, oh, and by the way, your missus is having it off with the personal trainer.’

‘Her personal trainer?’ I chew my lip. Joss deserves less of a cliché than that.

‘We knew he had a lot on, and she was flaunting it, he was going to find out sooner or later, and at that time, we thought it would be better if it was the “later” option.’

‘That makes it sound like you had a town meeting about his life.’

‘Not at all. It came up at an outdoor yoga class and a few of us expressed that when someone’s dealing with all that, you don’t want to pile even more on top of them.’

‘Oh, great. You chewed over Joss’s life between downward facing dogs and lotus positions.’

‘He was a stranger, Ess. Joss and his wife only moved here when Joseph Senior was dying. If it had been someone we knew well, maybe it would have been different, but we didn’t know him. We didn’t know how he’d react. If he’d believe us. If he’d think we were meddling old busybodies. And it wasn’t like we had any proof. You can’t throw that particular cat amongst those particular pigeons without being certain. We did what we thought was best at the time. We were going to tell him once things calmed down, but he found out himself before then. And quite frankly, with his horrible attitude, maybe he deserved it.’

‘Mum! You can’t say that. He was hurt. His attitude is because no one told him. He doesn’t trust anyone because none of you told him that… Wait, Hallissey Construction was in trouble before Joseph died?’

She nods.

‘But Joss said that he’d run it into the ground…’

‘Joseph Senior didn’t say much. He was a paradox of a man – both an oversharer and intensely private. He’d talk at length about some things but not others, like the wife who’d disappeared. He was trying to drum up business, but he told us about the jobs he’d lost because of his illness, how he’d had to miss so many days because of hospital appointments, treatment, operations, and being too weak to do his usual work. He was waiting for Joss to come back and take over – young blood in the company is what he said it needed.’

‘So, Joss was supposed to reinvigorate his father’s company…’

‘Hasn’t he?’

I go to answer, but stop myself because anything I say will not remain in this room. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

She looks at me like she knows I clearly know. ‘Oh well, mustn’t hang around gossiping all night. Three hundred snowflake sugar cookies for Argoel Accountants by 9 a.m. No slacking, okay?’

Slacking? Who does she think she is? If only I was brave enough to say what I was thinking. Instead, I look around at the gingerbread debris covering 90 per cent of the surfaces in the kitchen. Maybe she’s right. I do have a real job to do, and as much as I’d like to work on the gingerbread house twenty-four hours a day, I have to do the sensible thing that pays the bills.

I cut the final bricks from the dough I was already using, transfer each brick onto oven trays and slide them into the fridge to chill again. The colder gingerbread is when it goes into the oven, the more likely it is to keep its shape, and I sigh while I clean up. I’d been looking forward to a night of gingerbread making, hoping to get enough of a headstart that we could feel like we were actually getting somewhere.

* * *

Eventually I get into the swing of things. Huge batches of dough, rolled out to uniform thickness, a snowflake cookie cutter to stamp out snowflake after snowflake, chill them, bake them, and transfer them onto wire racks to cool before decorating.

I’ve got the Christmas carol playlist going on my phone and I’m belting them out, safe in the knowledge that no one can hear me. I’ve got to a particularly Mariah Carey-esque warble on the chorus of ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ when there’s a knock on the door.

I stop singing instantly and coldness floods my veins. It’s after ten o’clock at night, and I’m alone, not just in the bakery, but in the town itself. No other shops nearby have a flat above them, so there are no neighbours to scream to for help.

‘It’s me, Ess.’ Joss’s voice filters through from outside, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

I run through to open the door, and something inside me that’s been feeling down since Mum left rapidly brightens up.

‘Hello!’ I’m so eager that I nearly drop the keys as I fumble with suddenly shaking fingers and yank the door open, letting in a whoosh of cold air. ‘I didn’t expect to see you tonight!’

I sound so upbeat that I might have swallowed a jingle bell, and my smile is wide enough to power a wind farm off the coast of Scotland. What’s wrong with me? I’m so glad to see him. Ridiculously glad to see him.

Joss has got his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders hunched like he’s freezing, and although he smiles, his smile is muted and he looks a bit lost.

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Yeah, of course. I just… needed a walk. Clear my head. I saw your light on and thought I’d say hi.’

‘Hi.’ The urge to wrap my arms around him and pull him inside is almost impossible to ignore.

‘Are you making gingerbread bricks?’

‘No.’ I glance at the empty shop behind me, like the kitchen will somehow explain itself. ‘I’ve got an order of three hundred snowflake cookies to be delivered by morning. Mum dumped it on me before she left.’

‘Oh, right.’ He makes a pained face. ‘Do you want any help?’

‘Can you bake?’

‘No.’ He looks down at the ground and the word sounds surprisingly disappointed, and then he looks up again. ‘But I’m guessing snowflake cookies need icing, and I’ve got a steady hand.’

He pulls a hand out of his pocket and holds it out to prove it. His hand is shaking, and he frowns like it’s a personal betrayal by his own bodyparts and rams it quickly back into his pocket. ‘At least, I do when I’m not outside and it’s two degrees.’

‘Ever used a piping bag before?’

‘No, but I can learn.’

I go to answer him, but the timer starts bleeping from the kitchen. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to get those out the oven. The difference between perfectly baked and coal is about ten seconds. Come in, make yourself at home. Lock the door behind you, will you?’

I dash through the shop and yank the oven door open and jump back instinctively to avoid the inevitable blast of steam, and pull the tray out with an oven glove.

‘Wow.’ Joss appears in the doorway, looking around in awe. ‘I feel like Dorothy seeing behind the wizard’s curtain but I’m not disappointed.’

‘You need tea to warm up.’ I flap a teatowel over the top of the oven tray. I can’t leave them on it while I make a cuppa or the bottoms will go hard, but he holds a hand up to stop me.

‘You’re busy. Let me make the tea. A kettle might be the only thing in this room that I don’t need to be taught how to use.’ He shrugs his coat off his shoulders and lets it slip down, revealing gorgeous arms that I can all too well imagine being tanned in the summer… I mean, no, not gorgeous arms. Muscular arms. No, not muscular either. He’s a builder, he’s got to be able to carry stuff, hasn’t he? Practical arms – that’s it! Useful arms for his line of work. That is the only thing that’s interesting about his arms.

‘Essie?’

I’ve got so carried away by thoughts of his arms that I’m staring into space and that’s definitely not the first time he’s tried to get my attention. He’s holding his coat up like he’s wordlessly asking me what to do with it. I point him towards the hallway between the bakery and the stairs up to my flat and turn my attention back to the snowflakes with such vigour that I accidentally break two while trying to gently persuade them onto the cooling rack.

Joss comes back in, washes his hands, and sets about making two cups of tea like he belongs here. In one corner of the kitchen, there’s a kettle and in a tiny cupboard above it, there are tea bags and mugs, ostensibly for emergencies, but mainly so Mum doesn’t have the excuse of using my kitchen to go upstairs and have a poke around the flat.

Christmas carols are still playing quietly from my phone on the unit, and although I’ve devolumed, I’m not turning them off just because Mr Grinch is here. If anyone needs Christmas carols, it’s Joss. While that batch of sugar cookies is cooling, I slide another two trays out of the fridge and load them into the oven and set the timer again, trying not to focus on him moving around on the other side of the kitchen.

He puts a steaming mug down in front of me. ‘Tell me you have some of those going spare.’

I can sense his height behind me, peering over my shoulder, like I’ve done to him many times while he’s laying gingerbread bricks, looking suspiciously like he might be about to steal one.

I direct him to an oven tray on the other side of the unit, piled high with all the biscuits that have gone wrong so far tonight. ‘Unuseables. Broken or slightly burnt – help yourself.’

The way his eyes light up is positively childlike. I’ve never seen anyone look so pleased to see a tray of substandard biscuits before, and it makes something inside me feel a bit giddy.

He takes his mug of tea and crosses the kitchen, picks up a broken snowflake biscuit and pops it into his mouth.

‘Oh my God.’ He lets out such a moan of pleasure that it makes me blush for very much non-food related reasons. ‘Do you have any idea how good that is?’

‘They’re just sugar cookies. Slightly burnt sugar cookies.’

‘They’re incredible.’ He eats another one. ‘I regret never coming here before. To think I’ve been missing out on food like this all along.’

‘I thought you “didn’t like baked goods”?’ I quote him non-verbatim from the first day I met him.

‘What I meant was I don’t like being bribed.’

‘I wasn’t trying to bribe you.’

His eyebrow rises so sharply that it practically makes a pinging noise.

‘I was trying to apologise via the medium of baked goods. And ask for your advice, and I had maybe hoped that your advice might be given more freely if you felt a teeny bit guilty for accepting a large basket of baked goods.’

‘I’m glad you did,’ he says quietly, all hint of teasing gone from his voice.

Something feels different tonight. He doesn’t seem like himself. ‘Me too.’

He holds my gaze across the kitchen and his mouth tips into a gentle smile – one that’s so genuine, it makes my heart melt.

I sip my tea between rolling out the next batch of chilled dough. Joss’s eyes are on me as I stamp out another round of snowflakes and slide them onto a baking tray, and within a few seconds, the timer goes off, and I smoothly remove one batch from the oven and replace it with the next tray from the fridge and reset the timer.

‘You’re like a machine. A bright carol-singing machine.’

Oops. I hadn’t even realised I was still singing along. Usually I’d be self-conscious, but there’s something about Joss that makes me feel like I don’t have to hide. Maybe it’s because he’s leaving. It doesn’t matter what he thinks of me because once the gingerbread house is done, I’m never going to see him again.

The thought makes me freeze and I drop the cookie I was peeling off the baking paper onto the unit where it breaks in two.

Joss is over in a flash to grab it. He makes that orgasmic noise again. ‘Oh my God, that hint of almond, that melt-in-your-mouth texture. They’re even better when they’re still warm.’

That thought of never seeing him again is hovering at the edge of my mind, and I can’t quite reach it to give it a good kick away and tell myself to stop being so silly. I cannot miss someone I’ve only known for a week and a half.

He goes back to the opposite unit and takes another biscuit, and I can feel him watching me again.

‘Will you stop a minute?’ He finally speaks. ‘If you don’t eat some of these biscuits, I’m going to devour the entire lot. Stop and drink your tea, please?’

‘I can’t fail at this, Joss. My mum’s already annoyed with me for wasting time on the gingerbread house. I can’t show her I’m incapable of fulfilling the most basic orders too.’ I take a biscuit and lean against the unit opposite him.

‘What’s basic about three hundred snowflake cookies? That’s a lot to put on anyone. It would be a lot to expect from a factory, never mind just one woman.’

‘And my mum could manage it in stiletto heels with one hand tied behind her back and a Bluetooth headset in her ear while negotiating resident decoration disputes and inflatable-Santa carnage.’

‘It must be nice to be a robot powered by Christmas spirit. Or an elf. You know those elves in Elf who can make a thousand Etch-A-Sketches a day?’

I can’t help the grin. ‘You’re giving away your Christmas movie tastes again.’

He beams. ‘Just trying to make you smile.’

My heart feels all warm and squishy in my chest. He’s the sweetest, most thoughtful guy, and yet I seem to be the only one who sees it.

‘It’s not that. It’s… before. In Paris. She knew I’d fail and I did. She told me I couldn’t expect to waltz back in and get my job back when it all went wrong, and then it all went wrong, and I had to beg for my job back, and she’s my mum so she couldn’t refuse, and I haven’t earned her trust back yet. She keeps giving me these little tests, last-minute things dumped on me to prove I’m… I don’t know. Dedicated or capable or not going to run away when the going gets tough or something.’

‘You’re the most dedicated person I’ve ever met. You came up with an idea to build a life-size gingerbread house, and you refused to give up. The buzz is building in town. People are talking about it. And look at these.’ He walks over to the stack of crates and lifts a gingerbread brick out. ‘By my calculations, there’s roughly four hundred bricks here. You’ve made all these today?’

I do a small nod. ‘Saff helped.’

‘You’re incredible, Ess. And you don’t give yourself enough credit or take enough breaks.’

‘Does anyone?’ I mutter as he goes back and sits against the unit.

He closes his eyes, bringing the cup of tea to his mouth and letting the steam rising from it warm his nose, which is still red from the cold. He tilts his head like he’s listening to the song playing quietly from my phone. ‘That’s really nice. What is that?’

‘“Candlelight Carol” by Aled Jones. He’s Welsh. It’s a crime for a Welsh person not to listen to Aled Jones at Christmas time.’

He smiles without opening his eyes.

‘This is my Christmas carol playlist. I like listening to them. While Taylor Swift singing about Christmas tree farms and an Ed and Elton duet have their place, listening to the older Christmas songs reminds me of Christmas when I was young because we had to sing them in school. It feels like reconnecting with the past, back in the times when Christmas was fun and exciting and not buried under orders of eleventy billion snowflake cookies and thousands of batches of mince pies.’

‘I like this. I feel like I know it even though I’ve never heard it before. It’s like being back at the school nativity.’

‘Did Joss Hallissey just admit to liking a Christmas song?’ I do a pretend gasp of shock, and he smiles but it’s a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Aled Jones changes to ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ and he hums along, but there’s something wrong. He downs the rest of his tea, but keeps both hands wrapped around the empty mug like it’s still capable of warming him.

‘How was your thing tonight?’

‘It was… a thing. It was fine.’ He swallows and doesn’t lift his eyes from the floor.

Whatever that thing was, it was not fine.

‘Icing?’ he says quickly, like he’s trying to change the subject before I ask about it again.

I go over and make him hold his hand in a loose fist, snip the end off a piping bag and slide a nozzle in. He holds the empty bag, and I roll the top down over his hand, creating a well in the centre for the icing. I hold the outside of his hand while I steady the bag and spoon blue royal icing in.

His eyes are fixated on the spot where our hands are touching, and my fingers are tingling from the touch. I have to wet my lips and swallow to make words work. ‘You don’t have to squeeze it too hard. Hold the tip above the biscuit so you’re directing the line of icing, not dragging it along the surface…’

It’s a good job I can ice cookies in my sleep because I have no idea if I’m talking gibberish or not, and Joss’s eyes are so focused on our hands that they’ve gone glassy, and I’m not sure if he’s heard a word I’ve said.

I put the lid back on the icing bowl, shimmy the bag back up, and physically unfurl his fingers from it. I squidge all the icing downwards, twist the top, and hold it out to him.

He swallows and blinks a few times like letting go of his hand has woken him up.

‘Hold the twist at the top here so it doesn’t all splurge back out, and then use your right hand here to direct it and keep up a gentle pressure, and twist to detach it at the end of each line.’ I demonstrate the way to hold it, and then grab a snowflake biscuit and draw a blue snowflake shape. ‘They need to be as uniform as possible.’

I pick up an icing pen and add tiny white dots at each tip of the snowflake, and he watches intently, leaning on one elbow on the unit so he can see everything I’m doing. I get another slightly burnt snowflake biscuit and hand him the piping bag. Our fingers brush again as he takes it and I’m sure I imagine the sparkle, but when I look up at him, he blushes and looks away.

The snowflake I iced is on the unit and he copies it perfectly. His hand is still unsteady, and I don’t think it has much to do with the temperature outside now. My entire body is zinging every time he gets close, making me feel unsteady too.

‘That’s really good.’ I give the biscuit a nod of approval.

Joss grins and eats it whole. I raise an eyebrow.

‘Quality control,’ he says with a mouthful. ‘Or destroying evidence.’

He takes another snowflake, ices it perfectly, and then eats that one too, and I can’t help smiling. It’s nice to see him enjoying something because I don’t think he enjoys much somehow. While it would be easy to watch him eat biscuits all night, thankfully the timer starts bleeping and I have to rush across the kitchen to rescue another batch from the oven.

The music changes to ‘Away in a Manger’ and Joss stops to listen to it, his lips mouthing the words to himself as he remembers a song he clearly hasn’t heard in a while.

Once I’ve transferred the snowflakes onto a cooling rack and got the next batch in the oven, I look over at his work.

‘I knew you’d be good at that.’ I nod to the intricately neat snowflake he’s icing. He’s done seven practice runs on the imperfect biscuits and only the first two look like practice at all. ‘You’re ready to move onto the real thing.’

‘I’m graduating already?’ He cheers. ‘And in secondary school, my home economics teacher told me I’d never amount to anything in the kitchen after a particularly bad exploding Pyrex incident in Year Seven.’

He makes me laugh so effortlessly, and yet it constantly surprises me when he does because he’s so serious in so many ways, but I can’t help feeling that he’s let his guard down lately.

When I’m standing next to him, he nudges his hip into mine so gently that I barely feel it. ‘Thanks for letting me help.’

‘Letting you…’ It’s such an odd sentence. I should be thanking him, and yet he’s acting like I’ve done him a favour by letting him decorate a few snowflakes.

‘Yeah,’ he says softly. ‘I needed… I don’t know. Needed to get out of my own head, I guess. I’m glad you were up.’

‘Me too.’ I echo our words from earlier.

He eats another practice biscuit, and I move them aside and place a cooling rack on the unit instead.

I should walk away, I know I should, but his words are so lost and he hasn’t even tried to hide the vulnerability in his eyes tonight, and his hand is right there, resting on the unit, and before I can second-guess myself, I slot my fingers around his and give it a soft squeeze. ‘You can talk if you want to. Biscuits are really good listeners. They never repeat anything.’

It’s pointed, trying to let him know that anything he says to me won’t become the next item on the town gossip agenda, but it’s easy to see how guarded he is. I doubt he’ll ever trust anyone enough to open up, let alone the daughter of the gossip committee’s leader.

He doesn’t say anything, and I wonder what else I expected. He’s never going to trust me. I pull my hand away and go back to rolling out another chilled ball of dough.

The song changes to ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’, and I hum along quietly to fill the silence, Joss icing snowflakes while I’m hopping between the cooling racks and the fridge for more dough.

I hear him inhale a couple of times, like he’s about to speak, but then he doesn’t, and ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’ cycles round.

‘My mum doesn’t know who I am.’

My entire body freezes and my breath stops in my throat. Of all the things I was expecting him to blurt out, that was not one of them. I turn to face him slowly, terrified that if he realises he’s talking, he’ll stop immediately.

‘I go every Wednesday evening.’ His voice is hoarse, tight, and barely above a whisper. ‘She doesn’t want to be alone with me because she thinks I’m a stranger, so I sit in the communal dining room and read aloud to her. Sometimes the other residents sit and listen too. My mum thinks I’m a member of staff who comes in to read to the nursing home residents every week. She remembers me in that context, but she doesn’t know I’m her son.’

My eyes have welled up and there’s a lump in my throat.

‘It was A Christmas Carol tonight. She and the lady in the room next door are excited about Santa coming. Patients with dementia never forget Santa. They forget their own families, they forget how to eat or walk, but Santa always inspires a childlike joy in their eyes. They never forget the feeling of Christmas.’

‘My God, Joss. I’m so sorry,’ I murmur, putting two and two together with what my mum said earlier. ‘She’s lived in a nursing home since before your father died?’

He nods without looking at me. ‘It broke my father’s heart to make that decision, but it got to the point where he couldn’t cope. At his funeral, she spent half the time wailing uncontrollably, and half the time thinking we were at a big party because she couldn’t remember ever being married and thought she’d never seen the man in the photos before.’

He finally looks up and meets my eyes, and every bit of sadness in them is explained instantly. ‘I’m a wreck tonight because she told me that if she had a son, she’d want him to be just like me. It’s the nicest thing she’s ever said and I think it broke something inside me.’

His voice cracks and I don’t know what to do other than hug him.

‘Joss, I know you’re not a huggy person, but can I—’

‘Yes.’ He doesn’t even let me finish the sentence, leaving me wondering if he needs a hug as desperately as I need to hug him.

I don’t so much hug him as leap on him with such force that he lets out a soft laugh and backs up against the unit to hold us both upright.

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ My heart is breaking for him. No one has a clue he’s dealing with this, and I feel ridiculously humbled that he’s opened up to me. It’s something I never thought he’d do.

His arms tighten around me, curling around my back and pulling me tight against him. His chin rests on my shoulder and I can feel every breath shuddering as he tries to keep his emotions under control, and my arms slip around his shoulders, squeezing and rubbing, anything to make him feel less alone.

‘I always go, no matter how hard it is. I always think that if I don’t go, that will be the one day she has a moment of clarity and asks where I am. But it’s hopeless. It’s been over a year since she even remembered she had a son. She told me about him once. She was so proud of this lovely family he had, a wife who treated him like a king, fantasies of the grandchildren she’d have one day… It was right in the middle of my divorce, and I couldn’t tell her who I was, or that the family she was imagining I had was a distant memory. I asked if he ever came to visit and she said he’d taken her on a day out once, and described a date she’d gone on with my dad in their early years together.’

I squeeze him tighter. This man. The tight smiles, the sharp words, the sarcasm, the standoffishness that hides all of this. In the past couple of years, he’s lost his dad, his mum, and his wife in three different ways. That’s a lot of grief for anyone to handle.

I don’t know much about dementia, I have no idea what it’s like to lose a parent in this way, and I’m wholly inadequate in trying to find the right words. ‘She might not know you, but she can sense love. She can sense you’re someone who cares about her. She knows, in one way or another, that you’re one of “her people”, even if she can’t place exactly who you are. Don’t underestimate that, Joss.’

He mumbles something against my shoulder and curls even tighter around me, holding me closer than I’ve ever known it was possible to be held.

One of my arms is wrapped around the back of his neck and clinging onto his opposite shoulder, and my other palm is flat on his back, rubbing in circles, trying to speak without words. I lose track of time as we stand there, not speaking, just holding, until we’re blasted out of the reverie when the oven timer starts bleeping.

I groan into his shoulder. That timer has got the worst timing of any non-sentient device I’ve ever encountered.

I ignore it.

‘Ess,’ Joss whispers.

‘I can make more biscuits, but I don’t think you’ll ever let me hug you again. They can wait, you can’t.’

‘Go on.’ He laughs and puts his hands on my hips and pushes me away. ‘Yes, I will. I promise.’

I reluctantly disentangle myself from him and race over to yank the tray out of the oven, which lets me know of its disapproval by letting out a blast of steam, and my mind is so caught up that I’m lacking my usual dexterity to avoid it.

They’re slightly browner than the rest, but at this point, I don’t care. Talking to Joss is more important than a few lightly chargrilled snowflake biscuits.

He probably thinks he’s going to get out of saying any more, but as soon as the biscuits are on a cooling rack, I make another cup of tea without a word, because if he uses any words, it’ll probably be to object. I walk across the kitchen, slip my hand around his wrist, and pull him to a table in one corner of the large bakery kitchen. He lets me cajole him into a chair and plonk the mug in front of him. I go back to collect mine and sit down opposite him, and put the tray of damaged biscuits between us.

He takes one instead of talking.

‘I can’t believe this has been going on for so many years and no one knows.’

‘Dad never told anyone. You know what he was like – the outgoing life and soul of every party, he didn’t want well-meaning neighbours coming round to see if they could do anything. He was the person who did things for everyone else. He didn’t want pity or to let anyone see behind his cheerful façade. And when Mum was still lucid enough for self-awareness, she was embarrassed. She didn’t want anyone to see her like that. She didn’t want visitors who’d realise something wasn’t right.’

‘When did this start, Joss?’ I’m determined not to let him clam up again.

‘Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. Mum hid it for a long, long time, and I suspect there was a fair bit of denial on my dad’s part too. I think he’d noticed the signs and brushed them off, too afraid to face what they might mean. But then there was an incident and he was forced to face it. One day, he’d been out for the morning, and he came back in, said hello to Mum, and went into the kitchen to make his lunch. While he was eating, the police turned up. Mum had gone upstairs and hidden in the wardrobe to phone them because there was an intruder in the house. She hadn’t recognised him.’

I think of Joseph Senior. Very loud, with a booming Welsh accent you could hear from three streets away. The kind of man who called everyone ‘butt’ or ‘boyo’, despite the fact they weren’t his buddy, or his boy, or, indeed, male. Very charming, always the first on hand to help with anything. Joss’s parents hadn’t lived here long when I left Folkhornton, but long enough for his gregarious father to make an impression. Before I realise I’ve done it, I’ve reached out and squeezed Joss’s hand. Instead of pulling away like I thought he would, his fingers close over mine.

‘By the time the police left, she was lucid again, she kept saying she’d done it as a joke or that one of the neighbours must’ve called them, but even my dad couldn’t deny what had happened. He swore he could cope, and she would have weeks, even months, of normality, of “being a bit forgetful” as my dad put it, but then something like that would happen again.’

He sips his tea and takes another biscuit, and I do the same, not wanting to push him but making it abundantly clear that he isn’t allowed to stop talking yet. My arm is still stretched across the table, his fingers clasped between mine, his thumb rubbing mindlessly back and forth over the backs of mine where they’re enclosed in his hand.

‘My ex and I came down to visit, and although Mum was her normal self, a few things set alarm bells ringing. She asked me if I liked bands that hadn’t been heard of since the eighties, and when I spoke, I had the feeling she was looking right through me, and when three o’clock rolled round, she got ready to go out and said she had to pick Joss up from school. It was like she’d gone back in time. She couldn’t comprehend that I was Joss because she couldn’t have a son who was older than she thought she was. We stopped overnight, and the next day, it was like nothing had happened. She had no memory of the day before and told me off for not visiting sooner. My dad was dealing with the cancer diagnosis by this point too, but he hadn’t told us. He’d been going through it all on his own. He was planning to beat it and was only going to tell us on the day he was declared cancer-free. But life doesn’t work out like you dream it will, does it? He had to tell us when he found out it was spreading and the treatment wasn’t helping.’

His voice breaks again and my grip on his hand grows painfully tight. ‘No wonder you want to live on a deserted island.’

‘I’ve had enough of life, Ess.’ It’s not the first time he’s used those words, but they make so much more sense now. ‘I can’t take any more. Even their cat died. They’d had this lovely little rescue cat for twelve years and she died six months after my dad, and Mum remembers her and still asks if she can see her, and every time, I have to explain that she’s gone, and every time it breaks Mum’s heart, and then she forgets and we have to go through it all again. Nothing good ever lasts. I need to be alone, no friends, no family, no pets, nothing to get attached to. It only hurts more in the end.’

‘What about seeing your mum? How will you go every week if you don’t live here?’

He grunts. ‘I haven’t quite squared that one up with myself yet. It’s soul-destroying every time I see her, it’s not doing her any good and it’s definitely not doing me any good. It kills another little bit of me every week. At some point, don’t I have to give up?’ He doesn’t sound like he believes the words either. ‘I can always come back for visits. Chuck a sleeping bag in the back of the van and stop overnight somewhere. And it won’t be for months yet, the business deal will take a while to go through, and…’ He trails off, looking exhausted by his own words.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say again, wishing I was better with words. I can’t think of what to say. I’ve always been a big believer in actions speaking louder than words, so I get to my feet and go around the table, pulling on his hand until he stands up and I can lean up and slide my arms around his neck again.

He breathes a long sigh as I hold him again. It feels like we’ve got all the time in the world. It takes a few long minutes for Joss to relax into it. He’s tense, upset, probably worried he’s said too much, and at first he’s stiff and awkward, but I refuse to give up.

I let my hand venture to the back of his neck and pull his head down to my shoulder, and his arms tentatively close around my waist, his hands are open like he’s trying to touch as much of me as possible, and eventually his body sags against mine, so much that he stumbles and has to brace a thigh against the table.

I think that sag is the physical weight of one of his walls breaking down, and it makes me squeeze him even tighter, trying to get across how much it means that he told me. That he came here tonight. That he’s trusted me with this. That he let me in just a little bit.

‘How long has it been since someone hugged you?’ I murmur.

‘There’s this old lady at the nursing home who hugs everyone she sees. Hasn’t got a clue who anyone is, mind, but—’

My fingers tighten on his shoulder. ‘You know what I meant. Since anyone hugged you, Joss?’

He shakes his head, unable to answer.

‘Get used to it,’ I say into his ear, and he buries his head further into my shoulder, wrapping around me and pulling me tight to him.

Just breathing. Holding. My fingers on his shoulders, his back, his hair. Stroking gently, and he lets me. He holds me, his fingers running softly up and down my back, his breath shuddering when he exhales against my neck. He’s going to have five crescent shapes from my nails in that sinewy bit of muscle between neck and shoulder.

‘Ess, can you not tel—’

‘I promise. Nothing you say to me will ever be repeated to anyone.’

He exhales and it sounds like a sigh of relief and his lips press against my hair when he speaks again. ‘Thank you.’

It’s not just for not telling anyone.

It’s because Joss Hallissey needed to talk, and he chose me to listen.