The day was stretching into that time of the afternoon when retired folk started thinking of napping before dinner. A gentle lull settled on The Chocolate Apothecary. Christmas put her newest chocolate creations on a polished silver plate in the glass display cabinet and picked up the phone to call Val. The jealousy she’d felt when she heard the news about the wedding had long gone. She was happy for Val and Archie, and excited about the wedding.
‘Ahoy.’
‘Hi, Archie, it’s Christmas. How are you?’
‘Well, my back’s still playing up and the council is saying I need to move at least two of the cars in the front yard, but I’m fighting for my rights. Is a man’s own yard not his kingdom?’ he asked rhetorically.
‘Yes, indeed. I wish you luck with that. Keep me posted, okay? Is Val around at all?’
‘Val!’ Archie roared, only inches from the phone. ‘Christmas is on the line!’
There was the usual array of shouting and thumping noises in the background—the normal sounds of three mid-sized boys on a Saturday afternoon—and Val’s screeching orders to them to Get off your brother and Say you’re sorry, now!
‘Hi, Massy,’ Val said, her calmness at total odds with the shouting she’d been doing just a few seconds ago.
‘Hi. How are things? How are the wedding plans going?’
‘Good. The Leaning Church is booked for the ceremony, and Archie’s mum is finishing up her cake-making course this weekend so she’s bringing around some photos and we’ll choose a design for her to do a test bake. Do you think Cheyenne could line me up with some flowers?’
‘I’m sure she’d be thrilled. Leave it with me to organise. I’ll find out what’s best at that time of year.’ Christmas wrote herself a note and slipped the diary back into her apron pocket. ‘And just so you know, I’m working on some gorgeous wee wedding chocolates at the moment. I’d like to gift you bonbonnieres for everyone at the reception.’
‘Oh, Massy, that would be great. Thanks!’
‘And please, let me give you the flowers too. I’ll work something out with Cheyenne once you’ve chosen what you’d like.’
‘No, it’s too much.’
‘Don’t be silly. My baby sister’s only getting married once.’
‘We hope.’
‘Stop it,’ Christmas said, though she knew Val was joking. Her sister was cheerful by nature, having inherited Joseph’s robust mental strength. And she’d need it, living with all those boys.
‘Dad was talking about you the other day,’ Val said. ‘He was saying how proud he was of everything you’ve done in your life and he said he remembered you as a seven-year-old making tea for Mum when she was having a bad day and how you would sprinkle hundreds-and-thousands in it and tell her it was magic healing dust.’
Christmas was stunned. ‘I’d completely forgotten that.’
‘He said he had too. But he read the article in the in-flight magazine and it all came back to him and he realised you were doing exactly what you’d wanted to do when you were young.’
A lump the size of a small country lodged in Christmas’s throat and she blinked through blurry tears. Seven years old. The year Val was born. The year of her mother’s worst episode that Christmas could remember. The year Darla stared blankly through her eldest daughter’s eyes when Christmas tried to tell her about her day at school. The year Christmas had learned to pick out clothes every morning for her mother, rather than the other way around.
‘What was he doing on a plane?’ she said, needing to change the subject before emotion overwhelmed her. ‘And are you allowed to keep those magazines? I’m never sure.’
‘I’m not sure either. He’d been sent up to Melbourne for some sort of principals’ conference. It was over a weekend. How mean is that? You couldn’t pay me enough to be a teacher.’
‘No, nor me. But that’s Joseph, isn’t it, always conscientious, always trying to do the right thing. You’re a very lucky girl to have him,’ Christmas said, barely a whisper, but still, Val heard.
‘I’m sorry, Massy. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’ve made peace with it. I’m happy for you. Now, has Mum RSVP’d?’
‘Not yet,’ said Val. ‘I suppose she’ll just turn up on the day wearing something outrageous.’
‘Animal skins, probably, given her current occupation.’
‘Don’t even joke about it.’
The ship’s bell over the shop door rang, heralding customers. Christmas smiled and gave them a wave. It was Cynthia Heather Who Liked to Wear Leather, with her two sons and daughter, all come for their weekly hot chocolate—Christmas’s own recipe of melted Belgian chocolate and cream. It was so thick it had to be eaten. She served it in small, painted Turkish tea glasses with wooden spoons.
‘Val, I’ve got to go. Give those boys a big hug for me. Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
•
By the time he’d reached Western Junction and pulled into the driveway of Elsa’s house, Lincoln realised he was definitely feeling a strong pull of affection and responsibility towards Caesar. The dog had been cast to the elements to fend for himself. The people who’d done this to him, including Tom, who had ignored his suffering, had decided he wasn’t worthy of protection, love or commitment. Well, that ended, right now.
‘Come on, boy,’ Lincoln said, pulling on the handbrake with difficulty, wedged as it was underneath Caesar’s long body. ‘Wakey, wakey. Time to get up.’
Caesar lifted his head and the bags under his eyes drooped, making him look decidedly hung-over. He gazed out through the bug-spattered windscreen and gave a small whine as though realising, either for the first time or with finality, that he’d left his old home for good.
‘You’ll be right, mate,’ Lincoln said, trying to cheer him up with more ear rubbing. ‘Just wait till you see the size of the guest bedroom. There’s a queen-sized bed in there that’s got your name written all over it.’
Caesar perked up at that and voluntarily moved off Lincoln’s lap. He shuffled to the passenger-side door, where he waited for his chauffeur to come and open it.
Inside the house, the dog trotted down the hallway, poking his head into every room, then came back to the lounge and lay down with a deep sigh in front of the fireplace.
‘Okay, we’ll make a fire, but first you need a bath,’ Lincoln said, rubbing Caesar’s belly with his foot. ‘Now, what should we bath you in? I haven’t had a dog since I was a kid, so you’ll have to forgive me while I work this out, but I know I can’t use human soap or shampoo on you.’ He checked his watch. It was late but he just had time to nip down to the corner shop and grab some pet shampoo before it shut. Oh, and he’d need dog food too. And a collar. And probably a leash.
‘Do you want to come for a walk?’ he asked Caesar.
Caesar stayed put.
‘Hmm. Okay. Rest up, old fellow, and I’ll be back pronto.’
At the corner store, he found himself standing in front of the pet section, a little overwhelmed. A barrage of accessories implored him to buy them: food bowls, water bowls, collars, leashes, shampoos, conditioners, odour neutralisers, worming tablets, flea products, nail clippers, squeaky toys, rope toys, liver treats, brushes, combs, heartworm tablets. He bought them all, just to be sure.
Back home again, he burst through the door with his arms weighed down by several plastic bags. Caesar, apparently rejuvenated from his nap, jumped to his feet and rushed to greet him, his nose jammed into the bags sooner than Lincoln could get the door closed. He snatched out a rawhide bone, his eyes wide with ecstasy, and began running in circles, looking for a place to lie down and chew it.
Lincoln battled on with the bags and dumped them on the kitchen bench. Taking out the first bottle of shampoo (he’d bought two different types in case Caesar didn’t like the smell of one), he considered his options. He’d never had to bath a dog this size before. The foxy they’d had when he was a small boy could be put into the laundry tub to be washed. That wouldn’t work with Caesar.
He went outside to find the hose, but less than a minute wandering around in the gale-force wind convinced him he couldn’t possibly put the old dog through that; he was skin and bone and the water would be ice-cold.
There was only one thing for it: he’d have to go in the bathtub.
He coaxed Caesar down the hallway and into the bathroom by taking the rawhide bone out of his mouth and getting him to follow it through the house. But as soon as Caesar saw the bathtub, he skidded to a halt and spun on his overgrown toenails.
‘No you don’t,’ Lincoln said, throwing his arms around the dog’s neck. With no collar, he was hard to get hold of, but somehow Lincoln pulled him back into the bathroom, then shut the door so he couldn’t escape.
Caesar cowered in a corner of the room while Lincoln filled the bath with warm water and poured in copious amounts of shampoo to form froth and bubble. The smell of tea tree rose gently on the steam. He opened the linen cupboard next to the vanity and pulled out as many old towels as he could identify—ones with faded colours or tattered edges. He whistled while he laid them on the floor, and spoke in a cheery, spirits-bolstering tone to the miserable-looking dog.
Once the water was sufficiently deep, Lincoln turned off the taps. ‘Okay, mate. Let’s get this done.’
He tried to move Caesar by lifting up his front end and placing his paws ahead of his body, hoping the rest of him would follow. Instead, Caesar went as floppy as a ragdoll and dropped to the brown tiles.
‘Caesar, come on, get up, buddy.’ But Caesar was limp and unresponsive.
Lincoln tried sliding him across the tiles, pushing from behind, but the more pressure he applied the more the dog rolled and seemed to spread across the floor. Every time Lincoln stopped one part of his body from escaping, another part took off in another direction.
‘Huh. Passive resistance. A remarkably effective tactic. Well played,’ Lincoln said, amused. ‘Perhaps I should rename you Gandhi.’
Puffing with exertion, he gave up and hauled the dog to the bath, then placed him gently in the water.
‘There you go,’ he soothed, sponging water over Caesar’s back and legs. He poured more shampoo down his spine and tail, rubbing and rubbing while the water quickly turned brown. Pieces of grass and dead insects and leaves floated on the surface. Lincoln poured more shampoo down Caesar’s legs, on his chest and the top of his head. The dog was soon covered in white foam.
Lincoln pulled the plug and let out the grimy water so he could start afresh. Seeing his opportunity, Caesar leapt out of the tub.
‘Hold on!’ Lincoln shouted as the dog shook himself violently, spraying foam over every surface and Lincoln too.
In spite of Caesar’s vigorous efforts, white drifts still clung to him like snow, and soapy bubbles glistened on his coat. It was clear that the bathtub wasn’t going to cut it. What Lincoln needed was a hose attached to the tap. He rummaged around in the vanity cupboard looking for such an item while Caesar ran in circles, wagging his long tail and flinging more filthy suds around the room. A big splodge whipped across the back of Lincoln’s neck.
He wiped his brow. It was now quite warm in the bathroom. Steam condensed on the walls and mirror and the exertion of manhandling Caesar had made him sweat. He stripped off his shirt and stared at the empty, grubby bathtub, the muddy paw prints on the tiles, and the shower just behind where Caesar now stood, shaking himself from nose to tail.
‘Let’s try this again,’ Lincoln said. He pulled off his boots and socks, undid his belt, took off his jeans and underwear and stood naked in front of his charge. ‘You can’t win, Caesar.’
The dog’s ears flattened in defeat.
Lincoln turned on the shower, made sure the temperature was warm enough, picked up Caesar once more and placed him inside the glass cubicle. He let the water flow over them both, the skinny dog with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the rawhide bone near the door. Lincoln sang as he worked, the sight of the water rushing down the drain filling him with an unexpected and energising sense of triumph.
It was only afterwards, when Caesar sat wet and shivering, his ribs poking out at sharp angles, that Lincoln realised he needed help. He couldn’t leave Caesar like this to catch his death. He needed a hairdryer but didn’t own one himself. But who could he call?
He checked the time. Six o’clock on a Saturday night. Would she be home?
•
Christmas was indeed home, and had finished a meal of chicken soup, one of her staple foods she liked to cook in batches and freeze for the end of working days when she was simply too tired to do anything more than light the gas, pop a saucepan of soup on to heat, and slice off some crusty bread and slather it with butter.
After two bowls of soup she felt revived enough to sit at her desk and check her godmother emails. Mary Hauser had sent a message saying Christmas didn’t need to do anything because she’d managed to secure a washing machine for Veronika with just one phone call—Christmas’s ‘godmother fame’ was spreading, she’d said—and she was working on the newspaper article right now. Christmas smiled. Whenever a godmother gift came together like this it was as though every bad thing in the world was healed just a fraction.
But she’d begun to fall behind on some of her other fairy godmother projects, and had regretfully decided that she’d have to temporarily stop taking on any new requests. She figured it was better to do a smaller number properly, and complete them before she left for France, than a larger number poorly.
She’d just responded to Dennis Chamberlain, giving advice on the choice of engagement ring (he’d emailed her pictures of twelve options to get her opinion), when her mobile phone rang. She checked the caller ID.
‘Lincoln van Luc,’ she murmured, and automatically responded to herself with ‘Just a Little Bit Cute.’ She was due to see him in a couple of days. What could he want?
‘A hairdryer,’ he said. ‘Do you have one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would I be able to borrow it?’
‘Borrow it?’
‘Yes. Right now, actually. I have a . . . well, is there any chance you might be able to pop over with it?’
‘Now?’
‘It’s a hairdryer emergency, I’m afraid,’ he said, a smile in his tone.
A hairdryer emergency. Christmas felt a flutter of excitement and the whiff of mirth. She couldn’t resist seeing that for herself. ‘I’ll be right over.’ She scribbled down the directions to his house.
A five-minute drive later, Lincoln greeted her at the door with evident relief. ‘Thanks so much for coming,’ he said, ushering her in out of the wind.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, glancing around.
‘He’s this way,’ Lincoln said, leading her through the house.
He?
Lincoln’s grandmother’s house was a modest brick affair with a tiled roof, an ordinary (okay, somewhat scruffy) backyard and a plain but functional kitchen. It was typical of houses left behind by elderly owners, Christmas thought—solidly built, but untouched by any kind of facelift for at least twenty years. Floral-patterned furnishings throughout, dated green carpet, and framed photographs of family members from decades past: sideburns, flares, the muted colours of old photographic technology.
And then they were standing in a room with a green pastel synthetic bedspread covering a queen-sized bed, and lying on the carpet was a bedraggled, bony old golden retriever.
‘Goodness, is he alright?’ Christmas said, bending down to stroke his head. The dog looked up at her mournfully, his lower eyelids drooping down to show the pink insides. ‘What happened?’
‘This is Caesar. We only just met today. I found him at my father’s place. Apparently he’s been abandoned.’
Christmas gasped. ‘That’s awful!’
‘Agreed.’ Lincoln ran a hand through his own clipped mane. ‘I couldn’t leave him to starve out there in the cold so I brought him home.’
The dog gave a single lethargic thump of his tail as Christmas stroked his sides. ‘Is he sick?’
‘I think he’s fine, just depressed.’
‘Because he was abandoned?’
‘No. Because I bathed him. He really didn’t like that. I don’t think he likes the smell of tea tree. I think he prefers his original smell of eau de bouse de vache.’
Christmas looked up from where she was kneeling next to Caesar. ‘What’s that?’
‘Cow manure.’
‘Oh.’ She laughed. ‘Do you speak French?’
He sat on the corner of the bed with a sheepish grin and a scratch at his ear. ‘No. But I thought of it this afternoon and I just had to look up an online translator to find out how to say it in French.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m a bit of a geek, I guess.’
A totally gorgeous geek.
‘I can’t leave him all wet like this,’ he went on. ‘He might get pneumonia or something. Hence the emergency hairdryer.’
‘Yes, I see. Let’s get you dry, Caesar, and see if we can’t lift your spirits a bit.’
She plugged the dryer into a nearby socket and set it to a low, warm level, using her fingers to fluff up Caesar’s hair as she worked her way around his body. He twitched uneasily to begin with, then settled when he realised how lovely and warm it was, and started to relax. He had so much hair that it took a long time; Lincoln soon joined her on the ground and they passed the dryer back and forth to work each side of the dog, enjoying watching Caesar as he began to stretch and roll over onto his back so they could dry his belly.
At last his tail began to wag, his mouth split into a goofy grin and his droopy eyelids magically sprang upwards again. He half sat up, then threw himself into Christmas’s lap, knocking her backwards onto the floor. She squealed as he snuffled around her ears and neck, licking her with his hot tongue. She tried to push him off but he was surprisingly heavy for such a scrawny specimen.
‘You could help me,’ she gasped at Lincoln, who was leaning back against the end of the bed and laughing at her.
‘Not a chance. You’re on your own. He loves you. He probably hasn’t had so much joy in years.’
At last Christmas managed to pull herself back up to a sitting position and arrange Caesar so he was lying on the floor with just his shoulders and head in her lap, panting contentedly, his hair fluffed out so he looked at least twice the size. ‘Phew,’ she said, grinning at Lincoln. ‘That was hard work.’
‘You should see the bathroom.’ He raised his eyebrows in mock horror and reached out a hand to rub Caesar’s ears.
‘What are you going to do with him now?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I can’t keep him.’
‘Why not?’
‘I travel all the time for work. I can’t take on a commitment like that. It wouldn’t be fair to him.’
Or me, she reminded herself, just in case some small part of her was being seduced by this whole knight-in-shining-armour thing.
He looked at her. ‘What about you? Could you keep him?’
‘Me?’ She considered it for a moment as Caesar’s lovely grey muzzle sniffed around her jeans, looking for treats. ‘Unfortunately I can’t have a dog in the chocolate shop. It’s against health and safety rules.’ She thought guiltily of Mary Hauser and her schnauzer and all the other folk she let bring in their dogs to get a doggie choc. She didn’t let them stay inside for long, but she enjoyed their visits. It was a ridiculous rule, anyway. Heaps of places overseas allowed dogs in cafes. They couldn’t be any more dirty than some people’s children. That was a fact.
But her heart lurched for Caesar. ‘Who’ll take him?’
Lincoln shrugged. ‘Something will turn up. It always does. Life’s like that.’
‘Hmm.’ Christmas bit her lip. She didn’t trust life to take care of all the details. Rule number eight—Your destiny doesn’t happen to you; you make your destiny.
She was contemplating all the options that lay ahead for Caesar—the pound, euthanasia, a rescue organisation, a friend, a family . . . perhaps she could play fairy godmother and find him a home?—when she suddenly felt Lincoln watching her. She looked up and held his eyes with her own for a moment before turning away.
‘Well, it looks like Caesar is all okay. I guess I should get going.’
Lincoln made a noise in the back of his throat. ‘Yes. Thanks so much for bringing the hairdryer. I’m sure Caesar will get a much better night’s sleep now.’
Christmas stood up and packed the hairdryer into her bag. ‘So then, I guess I’ll see you Monday for our first working session.’ She affected a bright, professional air.
‘Looking forward to it,’ he said, leading her to the door, Caesar trotting happily behind them.
‘Goodnight,’ she said, patting Caesar, deliberately avoiding hovering in Lincoln’s doorway for too long. She straightened quickly. ‘See you Monday.’
‘See you then.’ He smiled, and her legs trembled.