The world’s biggest gingerbread man was made by IKEA in Oslo and weighed 650 kg.
‘Are you… singing?’ I ask as I walk up to the bandstand. It’s 11 a.m. and we had a morning rush at Dancing Cinnamon, so I’m later than I should be.
‘Nope. Just happy to be here. Helping to bake Christmas merry and bright.’
He’s certainly making something merry and bright, all right. ‘How can you be so chirpy when you must’ve got even less sleep than I did last night?’
Joss and I spent most of yesterday evening making gingerbread roof tiles, and now he’s up on the scaffolding, setting out the first line along the bottom edge of the roof.
‘Just glad to be baking spirits bright again.’ He laughs. ‘Sorry, the tiredness is making me punchy. Pun-chy, get it?’
I think of the miserable guy I met three weeks ago. You wouldn’t think they were the same person.
He bites the corner off another tile and grins down at me before he starts singing to the tune of ‘O Christmas Tree’. ‘Oh gingerbread, oh gingerbread, how lovely are thy spices. We ice your head, we bite your limbs, we make scarves out of your body parts… Oh gingerbread, oh gingerbread, oh bara sinsir, most lovely.’
He even manages to substitute the ‘o tannenbaum’ line with the Welsh word for gingerbread.
I have to bite into my fist to stop laughing, and when that fails, I laugh so hard that I give myself hiccups. ‘What did they put in your coffee this morning? Because I’m fairly sure they need a licence to serve it at this time of day.’
He leans over the scaffolding and grins down at me. ‘I realised how happy I am to be here. A father and his kids walked past on their way to school this morning and they stood staring at it in awe. It put a massive smile on their faces, and it felt really good. Every day when I get in the van, I hesitate at the door and feel weighed down by the day ahead, but as I was getting in the van this morning, I realised I haven’t had a single moment of dread since I met you. I’d forgotten what it’s like to enjoy a job. It’s been a long while since I cared about my work, but this is something totally different. It feels important. Like I’m part of something that really matters.’
He’s lying across the scaffold board to position the tiles, covering the back of them in a thick zigzag of royal icing, and leaning down to hold each one in place for a few seconds before the icing takes its grip. ‘And I got another job offer this morning. A summer house. A lady showed me a photo of her cottage garden full of gnomes and mushrooms and lights, and she wants something magical looking to fit in with the fairytale theme.’
‘Are you going to do it?’
‘I said I’d let her know. I don’t know. It’s the sort of thing I’d like to do, but one or two small jobs won’t cover expenses. Maybe it’s something I could do on my own, after the company’s sold, before I…’
Leave. I mentally finish the sentence he can’t seem to complete. I can’t quite comprehend how much I’m going to miss him. It’s a truly unreal amount for someone who wasn’t even on my radar last month.
Mr Arkins is around the other side of the bandstand, setting up an area for children to have their pictures taken with the festive dino, and he’s not only managed to get a Santa hat on top of the dino head, but he’s also been able to get a festive jumper on, so now his dino costume is wearing a knitted jumper depicting a Christmassy tyrannosaurus sitting in front of a Christmas tree, with the words ‘Tree-rex’ underneath, and the star on top of the Christmas tree actually flashes.
Mr Arkins truly is a joy to the world.
‘Mr Hallissey!’ Edna comes across the gardens waving something in her hand.
‘You all right, Edna?’ Joss climbs off the scaffolding and heads towards his workbench, which is outside on the path today. With the walls built and the scaffolding up, there’s no room for it in the bandstand.
‘I could do with some advice and I thought you’d be the ideal person to ask.’ She fans herself with the paint brochures she’s holding. ‘I want to give my shed a lick of paint, but there’s all this jargon about textured or smooth or breathable, and acrylic or latex or oil-based. I’ve got overwhelmed by it all.’
Edna spreads her collection of paint samples across the workbench, and Joss leans on his elbows and looks them over. He listens to her garbled worries and explains in simple detail what each word means and why she would or wouldn’t want each one. He talks through options with endless patience, and she’s looking a lot less flustered after a few minutes, especially when he offers to use his trade discount and get it cheaper for her.
‘You don’t want to do the job, do you?’ she asks as he pushes himself up to stand at full height again.
‘Well, I…’ Joss is suddenly tongue-tied.
‘Oh, would you, Mr Hallissey?’ Edna jumps in on his silence. ‘I was going to ask my son but he’s always too busy. I’ll pay, of course, and provide copious amounts of tea and biscuits. You’d be the answer to my prayers.’
He looks blindsided for a moment, and then a smile he’s trying to hide creeps onto his face. ‘Only on the condition that you stop calling me Mr Hallissey and start calling me Joss.’
Edna squeaks in delight. ‘I knew you were the right person to ask. Thank you so much, Mr Hal— Joss.’
He grabs a pen and marks up her best options in the brochures, pops his phone number on the bottom in case she has any more questions, and tells her he’ll be in touch to measure up.
Joy is pouring from her as she toddles back towards town, clutching her brochures tightly.
I knock my arm against his as we watch her go. ‘Look at you getting all the work today. All of it.’
He beams at me. ‘I like doing stuff like that. Stuff where you make someone’s life easier. Builders have a reputation for being rip-off merchants who are all too happy to take advantage of little old ladies who don’t understand jargon and inflate prices for people who won’t know any better, and I’ve always wanted to be the antithesis of that. To do small jobs, individual rather than corporate, to charge reasonable prices and take payment in instalments for anyone who can’t afford to pay it all at once. That’s what my father wanted when he started out, but things got off-track as his company grew. He ended up doing big jobs for big money that he couldn’t keep up with. I prefer the one-on-one stuff where you’re taking a weight off someone’s shoulders and—’
He’s cut off by my phone ringing and although I’m intending to ignore it, ‘Mum’ flashes up on the screen, and you can’t not answer a phone call from your mum.
‘Essie!’ she barks into the phone before I’ve even said hello. ‘I need you back here right now! I’ve just taken an order for two hundred mince pies by six o’clock tonight! Saffie and I can’t manage on our own. I know you’ve got better things to do, but I don’t employ you to play with gingerbread in Mistletoe Gardens all day!’
‘I’m not play—’ My protest is cut off before it’s begun.
‘Your real job has to take priority. We’ve been more than accommodating so far, but we need all hands on deck for this one. Get back to the bakery now!’
She hangs up before I can protest again. I feel horrible. I’ve been doing as much as I can in both the bakery and the gingerbread house, and she makes me feel like I’ve abandoned them in favour of something new and shiny, when the reality is that I spend every night working until the early hours of the morning to make sure I don’t let any of my responsibilities slide, and I don’t think Mum even realises.
Joss is back on the scaffolding, sticking gingerbread roof tiles on with royal icing, and I walk up the bandstand steps and look up at him. ‘Mum’s got a huge mince pie order,’ I start, turning my phone over in my hands. ‘They need—’
‘It’s fine, Ess. That’s your job. That should be your priority. Go. I’ll carry on here.’
‘But…’ I didn’t get here early enough this morning, and now it’s not even lunchtime and I’ve got to go again. I was looking forward to getting up on the scaffolding at the other side and doing the roof between us. I feel like I’m achieving something here, and I like working with someone who makes me feel like I can achieve something. At Dancing Cinnamon, I’m doing the same thing over and over again, and suggesting anything new is swiftly met with comments about getting ideas above my station, and there are reminders at every turn of what happened last time I got any big ideas.
My phone rings again before I have a chance to think up a counter-argument, and it’s Mum’s name on the screen. Clearly I haven’t moved fast enough.
‘I’ll come back to do some decorating later,’ I stutter to Joss eventually. ‘Make up for lost time once the mince pie crisis has been averted.’
‘A mince pie emergency waits for no man.’ He glances down at me and I smile at him, but a sadness has settled over both of us. He was so happy just now and I was skipping up the road and humming Christmas carols on my way here because I was looking forward to seeing him, but that phone call is a sharp reminder that this is only temporary, and when December ends, so does this… whatever this is between us. We’ve been spending too much time together, getting too close, and although he’s been having fun, he hasn’t said a single word about not leaving Folkhornton in the new year, and what I’m feeling for Joss isn’t something that can be switched off like Christmas lights in January.
I shove my hands into my pockets and force one foot in front of the other as I walk away, my decapitated gingerbread man scarf flapping over my shoulder as if the felt gingerbread man is reaching out for its other half.