In Germany, Lebkuchen was once used as a currency to pay taxes.
‘No, no, I won’t hear another word about it, I don’t want you both getting cold.’ It’s the fifth of December and the gingerbread house walls are now so tall that I can’t see over them, the wooden roof is on, and Beryl has invited herself inside, arms laden with knitted material that turns out to be a pair of scarves. Mine is knitted in horizontal stripes of white and silver and Joss’s is in gold and green, and each end is adorned with half a felt gingerbread man – the head on one end, the body on the other.
Beryl drapes the scarf around my shoulders and demonstrates how it wraps around your neck twice and then the ends fit together with a sewn-in magnet so the gingerbread man’s head is reattached to its body.
‘You two are doing such a brilliant job here.’ Beryl bustles over to Joss, who bends to let her wrap the scarf around his neck. ‘I wanted to make you both a little something to say thank you. We all love Mistletoe Gardens and appreciate how hard you’re working to save it. Got to admit, a few of us thought you’d lost the plot when you first mentioned it, Essie, but seeing the two of you come together and make something so wonderful is truly inspirational.’
‘Never underestimate this girl,’ Joss says kindly. ‘Imagination and dedication are all it takes to make a real difference.’
‘It would be nothing without Joss,’ I say to Beryl as she loops the scarf over his head again and clicks his felt gingerbread man together.
‘Thank you.’ Joss has got a hand on his throat because she’s wrapped it so tightly that it might be cutting off his air supply, but he sounds remarkably touched.
‘Thank you both. I’d be devastated to see this place gone. My husband and I had our second date here – our very first kiss. He’d been too respectful for anything more than a peck on the cheek on the first date, but here, we had a right proper snog under the mistletoe.’
A seventy-something woman using the term ‘right proper snog’ makes it impossible not to giggle, and when I look over at Joss, he’s struggling to hold it together too.
‘We came here every December and repeated the kiss under the same tree.’ She points out one on the far side of the park. ‘We were happy for every year of our marriage. He’s been gone for six years now and I still come along every December and bring his urn with me, give it a little kiss for good luck under the same tree. I like to think he’s looking down on me from somewhere.’
I’ve gone from holding back giggles to holding back tears.
‘Mind you, he’s probably saying to himself, “Look at that silly old barnacle kissing a ceramic jar.”’
The withheld tears are replaced by withheld giggles again, and Beryl smiles to herself like that was her intention. ‘We met because of this park. He was homeless and sleeping on one of the benches, and we got talking, and I started knitting him socks, and scarves, and jumpers. I didn’t realise I’d fallen in love with him until the weather turned and I found myself out here in my dressing gown in the middle of the night during a snowstorm, forcibly persuading him to come home with me because I couldn’t bear the thought of him being outside in it. He stayed forever after that night.’ She blinks herself back from the memories of her lost love, and I can’t help looking over at Joss and the way he’s listening so intently.
‘I’ll leave you two to get on.’ Her eyes fall on a basket of roof tile practice pieces. ‘Ooh, don’t mind if I do. Thanks, Essie.’ She helps herself to a thin biscuit in a star shape and bites the corner off as she leaves.
‘No, don’t! That was my…’ I call after her.
‘Guess we won’t be using the star-shaped tiles then. Too untraditional anyway. Much like these frilly-edged ones.’ Joss helps himself to a different tile and scoffs it in a couple of bites. ‘Too fussy. We need something simple and easy to cut out, we’re going to have to make a lot of these.’
‘We?’
‘I can ice cookies now, I think I can be taught the basics of gingerbread making. Paul Hollywood, watch your back.’
Tiling the roof is our next project after the walls are completed. The gingerbread will have to be thin and strong enough to support the weight of other tiles scalloped above it, and I spent most of last night experimenting with different shapes and fancy edges, but Joss is right, we need a simple rounded edge and enough space for another tile to be layered above so it partially overlaps, and any fanciness can be added with icing and decoration later.
Beryl rearranges a few imperfectly spaced lights in a holly bush, and Joss stands next to me in the gingerbread doorway as we watch her go. ‘I didn’t think this place meant that much to people. She’s gone to all this trouble just because we’re trying to save it.’
He looks down at his scarf and then over at mine, the felt gingerbread man’s head joined to its body in the centre of both our chests. ‘This really is remarkably macabre. I’m not sure if it’s a gift or a death threat. The line of blood she’s used to join it doesn’t exactly scream “Christmas”, does it? It screams something more along the lines of “help me” or “I’m a psychopath”. And it will certainly cause some screams if any small children catch sight of it.’
‘It’s supposed to be frosting.’ I can barely speak because he makes me laugh so hard.
‘Why is it red? And these bits here are definitely meant to be blood drips.’ He points out two drop-shaped bits of red felt at the point where the gingerbread man’s neck is cut off.
‘It’s icing, how you’d repair any broken gingerbread man.’
‘Hell of a sense of humour to do it in red.’ He holds the end of his out, so the top half of his gingerbread man matches with the bottom half of mine. ‘We could clip them together and be chained to each other for the rest of the day, at risk of strangulation if we stray too far.’
While the idea of being knitted to Joss isn’t a bad one, we have walls to insert the very last bricks in to, and roof tiles to fathom out.
I glance over at him, his head resting against the wooden doorframe, the scarf hiding half his face. ‘You’re going to wear it every day, aren’t you?’
‘I’m never taking it off. I’m going to become like Mr Arkins and be known as “the man in the decapitated gingerbread man scarf”. I will fuse with the scarf until I embody the spirit of a decapitated gingerbread man, much like I’m fairly sure Mr Arkins thinks he really is a dino now.’
‘No one’s ever seen under the costume. Maybe he is.’
Joss laughs as he fiddles with the felt gingerbread man, flicking its head and body together and then apart again, and I’m struck by how happy he looks. Smiling eyes, crinkles at the edges that show he’s smiling behind the scarf too, the green and gold stripes are the lightest thing I’ve ever seen Joss wear, everything else he wears is black. There’s simply a lightness about him that wasn’t there before.
We’re still smiling at each other when Mr Chalke from the shoe shop huffs his way to the bottom of the bandstand steps. ‘Goodness me, doesn’t it look magical? Hallissey, do you do these for real?’
‘For real?’ Joss sounds confused.
‘Not with gingerbread. I’ve got a space at the end of my garden and one of these would suit it perfectly. For the grandkids to play in and the wife to potter about in when I want to watch the rugby. Or maybe a bachelor pad where I can watch the rugby while the wife potters about in the house.’
‘A garden shed?’
‘Aye, s’pose so, but one that looks like this. A real little gingerbread house, but one that won’t fall apart in the rain. With all the bricks and decorations and stuff.’ He waves an all-encompassing hand towards the house.
‘I… um…’ Joss looks surprised and sounds stuttery. ‘I guess I could fit one in before I go.’
Mr Chalke’s ears physically prick up. ‘Go?’
I realise what’s happened at the exact moment Joss does, and I don’t know which one of us is more surprised that Joss dropped his guard enough to say something without thinking.
‘Off for the Christmas holidays.’ He saves the sentence quickly, clearly not willing to share that much with the neighbours yet. ‘But it would take a bit of working out. Size, logistics, exactly what you want the exterior to look like…’
‘A gingerbread house is a bit seasonal,’ I say. ‘It might look daft in the summer. Maybe you could do more neutral decorations… like green leaves instead of Christmas trees around the edges, and daisy flowers instead of peppermint swirls, and… Oh, maybe we could do interchangeable decorations! Think of how much your grandchildren would love it if they got to take off the decorations in the autumn and turn it into a Christmas house and then in the spring, they could change it back into a summery house, and—’
Behind me, Joss is laughing good-naturedly, but Mr Chalke listens intently. ‘The grandkids would be landed with that. Can you do that, Hallissey?’
‘Honestly, I’ve got no idea. I think my baker friend is getting carried away and imagining things you could do with fondant icing, not actual building materials, but…’ He meets my eyes and his mouth tips up at one corner. ‘But I love a challenge. We’ll give it some thought.’
‘Consider yourself hired. I’ll tell the missus as a Christmas present, she’ll be delighted. She’s been on at me for a summerhouse for ages now.’
He shakes both our hands in turn and shoots one more admiring look towards the gingerbread house.
I make an excited noise through my teeth once he’s out of earshot.
Joss smiles at my smile and shakes his head. ‘Removable decorations. These things can’t be made of gingerbread. They’d need to be stone or concrete.’
‘We could do that. You can pour concrete into moulds, right? We could mould our own giant gumdrops.’
‘You can’t put removable concrete gumdrops on a roof, Ess. Removable things made of concrete have a tendency to fall off and crush people.’ He laughs. ‘How is it that I can transfer your vision into gingerbread and now you’re transferring it back into concrete?’
‘We complement each other?’
‘We do something to each other all right,’ he mumbles. ‘You’ll have to help. Think you can pipe concrete out of a piping bag?’
‘I’ll give it a try.’ Anything to extend my time with Joss.
‘You really will, won’t you? You really believe it’s worth it?’
‘Yes. Because I can see the way your eyes have lit up.’ I don’t think he’s realised it, but his eyes are lighter than I’ve ever seen them, and he’s beaming with excitement, and trying – and failing – not to show it. ‘There’s so much we can do with this. Removable decorations. Letting people decorate their own sheds. Can you make coloured concrete?’
‘Yep, add powdered pigment to the water.’
‘Then that! People could choose their own colour swirls of iced concrete,’ I say, wondering if this really is a sentence I’ve just said aloud. ‘If removable concrete gumdrops won’t work, there are other things we can do. Plywood leaves and a dab of glue. Easter eggs made of exterior wood and cherry blossoms for spring. Those Velcro pads that you stick pictures up with. It would be so much fun to give grandkids a bag full of decorations and tell them to go wild. We coul—’
He envelops me in a bear hug so suddenly that I choke off the sentence. We’ve both got coats on and the scarf is padding out his chest so it feels like being hugged by a duvet, but Joss voluntarily going in for a hug is certainly a surprise of ‘Christmas miracle’ proportions.
‘You’re amazing, do you know that?’ His face is pressed against my hair, his mouth right above my ear. ‘You’re inspirational. You make me think about things I never would’ve thought possible. You’re unafraid to try anything. You remind me of what it’s like to be passionate about something. You make me feel like my whole life is stretching out ahead of me.’
The words take me by such surprise that I struggle to formulate a response. ‘Isn’t it? You’re not dying, are you?’
‘I’ve been metaphorically dying for the past few years. Every inch of joy was gone from my life – until you bounced into it. You make me feel like nothing is impossible.’
A hot flush sizzles through me. ‘You’re hazardous for anyone’s health, Joss Hallissey.’
‘Funnily enough, I think the opposite. I think not knowing you was hazardous for my health. You’re like Penicillin to all the crap.’
‘I can honestly say I’ve never been compared to an antibiotic before. Thanks, I think.’
But really, I’m melting inside. He gives the best compliments. The most unusual, sure, but also the best, because no matter what he says, he’s genuine with it, and it makes me feel like I’m about to cry.
Also, like I’m about to suffocate. I pat at his chest to get him to loosen his grip and allow me a few breaths.
Plump white berries grow in amongst masses of glossy green leaves in the high branches of the trees above us, the holly bushes are interspersed with red berry lights, and although the flowerbeds are empty at this time of year, the residents have filled them with artificial red-and-white roses.
With a bit of space between us, I watch him looking across the grounds. ‘This is what you enjoy doing? This creative side of building work?’
He makes a noise of agreement. ‘Yeah. This is what I wanted to do. Designing buildings as well as building them. I hate the position I’ve found myself in with Hallissey Construction. My dad was in a financial mess, and since I came back, I’ve had to take every job, no matter what. Jobs where there’s no room for creativity or enjoyment. Corporate repair work more than anything else. Soulless office blocks. Fixing roofs. Re-doing staff quarters in buildings that should have been condemned ages ago, stuff that no one but a few miserable employees will ever see. And don’t get me wrong, I’m lucky that Mervyn Prichard liked my father enough to keep me on a retainer, so we get first option on all the council’s construction work, but I’ve forgotten that I was young and creative once. I wanted to be an architect. Watching this come to life is a feeling I never thought I’d find again.’
‘You said you restore things?’ I say, thinking back to one of our earliest conversations. A couple of weeks ago that now feels like months. If anyone had suggested at the time that I’d be standing in a life-size gingerbread house with Joss Hallissey, I’d have laughed in their face.
‘I like giving things a second chance at life. I love the creativity, the inventiveness, the challenge of coming up with some way to reuse each thing, to give it a new life, and then seeing people excited about it. It makes me feel the way building this gingerbread house has. I did a lot of it when I was living in Bristol, but I had free time then. I worked as an architect’s assistant – my job was nine-to-five so I could spend weekends doing stuff like that. Since I came back here, I’ve had to spend weekends doing overtime, trying to pull the company back from the brink and earn enough to keep the lads on.’
‘And you’ve done that. Mum told me the company was in trouble long before you took over. You’ve saved it. You’ve got a buyer lined up. You’ve fulfilled your duty, Joss, if that’s what it was about. Can’t you say no to some of the bigger jobs now and do the smaller things that bring you joy?’
He shakes his head. ‘That’s a hobby, not a real job.’
His voice is flat and if he sounded any more parrot-like, he’d be squawking and saying, ‘Polly want a cracker?’
‘Who told you that?’
He sighs. ‘My ex, if you must know. Multiple times and loudly. But she was right. One glorified garden shed isn’t going to pay the bills. The company has one last job in the new year and then I’m gone. That’s what I want.’
The chill that goes through me is nothing to do with the December day. ‘What will you do for work if you live on an uninhabited island?’
‘I don’t know. Something office-y. Something I can do remotely and never have to interact with another human. Something that involves a lot of spreadsheets.’
The bone-deep chill comes again. That’s the polar opposite of the creative, hands-on, architectural force of nature that Joss is.
‘How about you?’ he says before I can push him any further. ‘This is obviously bringing out your creative side?’
‘Doing this with you has been amazing. It’s let my imagination run wild. There’s no room for creativity at the bakery. Recipes have to be strictly adhered to because that’s what our long-time customers expect. Everything has to be uniform, and when I do custom cakes, every little detail is worked out with the customer beforehand. I’m loving this. The sky’s the limit. I love the way we have to think on our feet, adjust, come up with new ideas, and…’ You, Joss Hallissey. You are what’s made this project so special.
‘There has to be other big things you can do. Isn’t there such a thing as gingerbread competitions you could enter?’
I shake my head. ‘Who am I to compete against seasoned gingerbread masters? I started baking with my nan when I was two. My experience is just that – experience. I have nothing on the professional chefs who enter competitions like that…’
‘And you don’t believe in yourself.’
‘I did once, and I failed spectacularly.’
‘Exactly – once. Back then. That has no bearing on now. We haven’t failed. Town’s busier. You’ve gained hundreds of followers on social media and the town blog. No one knows how many kids are going to be queuing up to ring one of Santa’s sleigh bells or how many couples are going to turn up for a game of tonsil tennis under the mistletoe when we open. It’s going to be a chestnut-roasting success.’
His confidence in this never fails to surprise me. ‘The council said a deal has been agreed. No amount of followers is going to un-sign a signature on a jargon-filled contract between the council and some house-building contractor.’
‘I know Mervyn, all right? I suspect there’s still some wiggle room. In fact, I suspect he overstated that about the contract and nothing’s been signed at all yet…’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No.’ He sighs. ‘Of course I don’t. But I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Mervyn himself doesn’t want Mistletoe Gardens torn down. He’s got memories here too. He once told me he’d kissed the woman he loves under the mistletoe years ago, but it didn’t work out, and now he returns every year, trying to be brave enough to ask her again.’
‘Aww,’ I say, although I’m not sure if I’m aww-ing at Mervyn having a human side or Joss being an old romantic at heart. ‘This gingerbread house is turning you into a soppy old snowman.’
‘You say that like you’re not the greatest believer in magical mistletoe.’
I turn to face him. ‘It’s a nice story, but I’ve never actually kissed anyone under it. I don’t know if it works or not, I’d just like to think there’s still a bit of magic in the world because it doesn’t feel like there is sometimes.’
‘You’ve never kissed anyone under it?’ He pretends to do a double-take, but his face is sincere, and his eyes don’t leave mine.
‘It’s never been the right time.’ My mouth feels dry and I have to wet my lips. ‘I always seem to be single when December comes around and, well, perpetually single for the rest of the year too, and—’
‘The men in this town are really, really stupid.’
He says the loveliest things without meaning to. It should be a joke and I go to laugh, but something in his eyes makes my breath catch, and suddenly everything goes still and silent, and I’m hyperaware of every breath, and I can feel my pulse beating in my fingertips where they’ve curled into the sleeve of his coat.
His eyes slide slowly down towards my lips and back up again, his head lowers like he’s going to lean his forehead on mine, and I freeze because I’m certain he’s going to kiss me. His spiky hair has flopped forward and my hand trails up his arm, caressing his shoulder, tracing up his neck, and his eyes start to drift closed. I tuck his hair back, and he suddenly jolts back to full awareness. His face flares redder than my hair and his eyes widen in confusion, like he’s not sure what just happened either.
He goes to shove a hand through his hair and nearly pulls me over too, because our scarves have failed to part. The gingerbread men on either end have magnetised to each other in a rather unfortunate position. Their faces are smushed together so it looks very much like they’re kissing, and their legs are, ahem, inappropriately intertwined.
‘Oh, I say.’ Joss does a perfect impression of Dot Cotton. ‘Who knew gingerbread men could be so frisky?’
It breaks the weird tension that’s sprung up between us and we both burst out laughing as they re-enact the Kama Sutra of felt gingerbread men.
Joss stands up and comes nearer to me again so we can untangle them.
‘Sorry, Ess.’ His eyes are downcast. He clearly doesn’t mean the tangled gingerbread men. ‘I think there’s some sort of electrical forcefield in this park from all the Christmas lights and it’s making things go a bit funny.’
We both know the Christmas lights aren’t even on at this time of day, but there’s certainly something making me feel a bit funny whenever I’m with him too.
* * *
By 5 p.m. that evening, the gingerbread house walls are finished, Joss has erected freestanding scaffolding at either side of the house and put up a chimney. His floodlights are lighting up the darkness, and we’re both up on the scaffolding, trying to work out the best way to lay the gingerbread roof tiles.
‘Good evening, Mr Arkins.’ I climb down when I spot an approaching dinosaur.
Mr Arkins stands at the bottom of the bandstand steps and looks up. It’s like being a judge on The Masked Singer and there should be a crowd chanting, ‘Take it off, take it off.’ He’s carrying two dinosaurs in his… paw? Hoof? What would be the technical term for a dinosaur’s foot? Joss and I both go to the bottom of the steps and he hands us one each. It’s a keyring with a small plastic T-rex wearing a Santa hat hanging from it. Who doesn’t love a festive dino, right?
‘What have we done to deserve these?’ Joss looks touched.
‘I wanted to say how much I appreciate what you’re doing. I don’t know how the Folkhornton council can consider destroying Mistletoe Gardens. They know how much it means to us.’ His voice is as muffled as usual through the dino suit, but there’s passion in his words. ‘I’ve written a strongly worded letter, but the words of an old man are worthless compared to the money they’ll rake in by selling this land to some moral-free housing conglomerate. It’s just a little something to remember me by when this is all over.’
‘Are you going somewhere?’ My voice catches in my throat. We might take the mickey out of Mr Arkins and his never-removed dino suit, but he’s a huge part of Folkhornton. He’s raised many a smile when I glance out the bakery window and see a dinosaur toddling down the street, or when I hear children excitedly chattering about the dinosaur they just saw.
‘I don’t know. My wife and I have been talking since we heard the news, and we’re both wondering if it’s time to move on.’
Mr Arkins has a wife? Now that is something I did not know.
‘The shop isn’t doing as well as it once was,’ he continues. ‘And her business is struggling too. We’re both long past retirement age, and without Mistletoe Gardens… and the memories we have here… It’s been thirty-five years…’ He chokes up and stops talking.
‘What has?’ Joss’s face is full of concern and his question is gentle, leaving no doubt that it doesn’t have to be answered if Mr Arkins doesn’t want to.
‘You see that stone over there?’ Mr Arkins points out an area on the western side of the gardens where there’s a large, flat stone against a tree trunk. The grass in front of it is always neatly trimmed, and there’s a potted rose standing next to it that blooms into yellow flowers every summer. ‘That’s a memorial to our son.’
I can’t help the intake of breath. I had no idea that was a memorial or that Mr Arkins had ever had a child.
‘M. A.,’ Joss says slowly. ‘The initials chiselled into one corner.’
‘Mason Arkins. I did that myself. We wanted something natural, something that would stand there for generations to come but not look out of place. I wanted to make a mark in some way to show it wasn’t a random stone – that it meant something.’
I’d never even noticed there was anything carved into it.
‘He was six years old. Killed by a drunk driver. It happened on the road out there.’ He points to the opposite side of Mistletoe Gardens. ‘We were waiting to cross at the lights and the car careened straight into us. Mason was killed outright. My injuries were minor in comparison to our grief, but they couldn’t be hidden. My silly costume hides a multitude of scars.’
‘It’s not silly.’ I hadn’t realised tears were building in my eyes until the movement lets them spill over.
‘I do it as a way of remembering him. That’s where the idea for the shop came from. Mason was dinosaur obsessed. He wanted dinosaur everything. He was upset when we went shopping and there wasn’t much dinosaur stuff around in those hazy pre-internet days. I lost my job because of my injuries and my grief. My wife too. I probably could’ve overcome the injuries, but the grief was insurmountable. We got to the point where our savings were running out and we had to work again, but I wanted to do something worthwhile. Something to bring smiles to children’s faces. Dinosaurs made Mason happy and a whole shop of them would make other kids happy too. But I had facial scarring, injuries that had required skin grafts and couldn’t be hidden. I thought coming face to face with children would scare them half to death. One of my wife’s cousins had a fancy dress shop and made me a dinosaur costume. Mason would’ve been overjoyed to see a dinosaur running a dinosaur shop, and it just stuck.’
‘It became easier to face the world from behind a mask.’ There’s a shiver in Joss’s voice that makes me look over at him.
The oversized dino head nods. ‘And now they’re going to tear down Mistletoe Gardens and take our last connection to him with it.’
‘No, they’re not.’ I can see the set of Joss’s jaw, the gritted teeth, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. ‘It’s not too late. I know that nothing’s been signed yet – we can turn it around.’
‘I hope you’re right, young man.’ The dino bows to us. ‘You’re doing a wonderful job. Even I’ll be stopping by to see Santa when it’s done.’
‘If you’ve got a Santa hat that will fit, maybe kids would like their photo taken with you too,’ I say as a joke.
‘Oh my God.’ Joss gasps and gestures towards a gap between benches in the path around the bandstand. ‘We could set up an area over here. Somewhere for you to sit, a bit of set building and some gingerbread dinosaurs to tie in with the theme… Kids can come and meet the prehistoric version of Santa! I would’ve loved that as a child. To be fair, I’m thirty-eight and I will still be first in the queue to sit on your knee. I think this place is causing me to regress or something.’
‘The magic of Christmas,’ Mr Arkins says. ‘Never is there any other time of year when it’s so easy to slip back into your childhood ideals and believe you’re young again. If Santa doesn’t mind sharing the spotlight, I’d be delighted to be part of it.’
‘Yes!’ Joss barely refrains from jumping for joy.
‘Thank you for giving an old man a listening ear.’ Mr Arkins starts to walk away.
‘Are you okay to get home?’ Joss calls after him. ‘I could give you a lift or walk with you?’
‘No, no, I’m fine, dear fellow. I’m only a couple of streets outside of town. Lovely of you to offer, though. Got yourself a real gentleman there, Essie.’
I glance at Joss too. I’m constantly surprised by this man. For all his bluster and as many times as he says he doesn’t care about this town or anyone in it, he really cares about Mr Arkins tonight. And the idea of kids who love dinos getting to share their Christmas with Mr Arkins too… Joss turned Mr Arkins’s sadness into something positive.
I don’t realise I’ve migrated across the steps until I touch his arm. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah.’ He looks as surprised by the touch as I am, then he blinks his eyes closed and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Just wasn’t expecting that. I never realised a place like this could mean that much. I had no idea about his son – I thought he was just a bit barmy.’
I let my hand trail up his arm until my fingers close around the curve of muscle between his neck and shoulder and pull him down to my level so he’s seeing the same thing. ‘As you stand here, wearing a decapitated gingerbread man scarf and watching a seventy-eight-year-old man dressed as a dinosaur waddling away from a park full of magical mistletoe, how can you even consider leaving this place?’
His arm slides around my waist, the weight of it resting on my lower back, and he leans his head to the side so it rests against mine for a brief moment. ‘One of life’s great mysteries.’
He doesn’t sound as convinced as the last time he said it.