Christmas Wishes at Pudding Hall

by Kate Forster

  ‘You cannot tell your mom or Simon about this, okay? It’s now up to us to deal with it.’

  The boys nodded and Ethan looked downcast.

  ‘I wish Mom didn’t do it.’ His son’s words made Marc remember what it was like to be so disappointed in a parent. How many times he had hoped his own parents would step up and pull through, only to be let down again and again.

  ‘I know, buddy. I will talk to her – but later, okay? Let me find Christa first and then I can talk to your mom.’

  Ethan and Seth went to the door.

  ‘And can we finish the gingerbread house later?’

  ‘We sure can,’ Marc promised, meaning it, as the boys closed the door.

  ‘I’m going to text Paul and show him and then get him to take the boys out for the rest of the day. That okay with you?’ Adam asked.

  Marc nodded as he wondered what to do.

  Paul watched the video, his face shocked as the deception became apparent. ‘The audacity of those two. I am shook, as the young people say,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the boys far away today to the Viking Centre. There is an enormous fossilised Viking turd they can look at. That will entertain them. We could put Simon on display as real-life human shit but it might be harder to sell tickets.’

  Marc laughed despite himself as Paul left him and Adam.

  ‘Wow. I am shocked but not surprised,’ Adam stated.

  ‘Me neither. I knew Christa had cooked that soufflé. I could tell.’

  Adam looked at him. ‘What will you do about it then? And make sure it’s legal, okay?’

  Marc leaned back in his chair.

  ‘I need to tell Christa but I also need to deal with Simon and Avian. If I kick him out and Avian goes with him then that’s on her. I will tell her she can stay for the boys and then let her decide.’

  Adam nodded. ‘And Simon? Surely you’re not just going to give him the boot and then forget it happened?’

  Marc shook his head. ‘No, I am going to kick him right where it will hurt him most.’

  Adam made a face. ‘That sounds like a police charge.’

  ‘No, I’m going to kick him right in his ego,’ Marc said. ‘Make the deal with Cirrus TV, buy today.’

  ‘Are you sure? With Blind Baking going?’

  ‘Oh yes, buy it,’ Marc said feeling surer than ever. ‘I am going to make my own cooking show, one that will blow Blind Baking out of contention. Get me a time to speak to the guy from The Hollywood Reporter. I need him to write a story for me.’

  ‘On it,’ said Adam.

  He stood up and grabbed his phone.

  ‘And now I have to find Christa. Wish me luck.’

  ‘Ask Peggy,’ said Adam.

  ‘Peggy?’

  ‘She said she saw her this morning in York. Says she’s devastated.’

  Marc rushed to the door. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  And without waiting for an answer he rushed through the house calling Peggy’s name.

  Seth and Ethan’s Gingerbread House Recipe

  Ingredients

  250g/8¾oz unsalted butter

  200g/7oz dark muscovado sugar

  7 tbsp golden syrup

  600g/21oz plain (all-purpose) flour

  2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

  4 tsp ground ginger

  For the icing

  2 egg whites

  500g/18oz icing sugar

  Method

  Heat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan/gas 6. Melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan. Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger into a large bowl, then stir in the butter mixture to make a stiff dough. If it won’t quite come together, add a tiny splash of water.

  Cut out a template. You can find these free online. Put a sheet of baking paper on a work surface and roll about one-quarter of the dough to the thickness of two £1 coins. Cut out one of the sections, then slide the gingerbread, still on its baking paper, onto a baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, re-rolling the trimmings, until you have two side walls, a front and back wall and two roof panels. Any leftover dough can be cut into Christmas trees, or monkeys for the trees around your house.

  Bake all the sections for 12 minutes or until firm and just a little darker at the edges. Leave to cool for a few minutes to firm up, then trim around the templates again to give clean, sharp edges. Leave to cool completely.

  Put the egg whites in a large bowl, sift in the icing sugar, then stir to make a thick, smooth icing. Spoon into a piping bag with a medium nozzle. Pipe generous snakes of icing along the wall edges, one by one, to join the walls together. Use a small bowl to support the walls from the inside, then allow to dry, ideally for a few hours. Ask Christa to do this part as it’s really hard.

  Once dry, remove the supports and fix the roof panels on. The angle is steep so you may need to hold these on firmly for a few mins until the icing starts to dry. Dry completely, ideally overnight, and then decorate as you wish.

  31

  ‘You have to make the chicken house,’ said Seth to Ethan.

  ‘I can’t make the chickens,’ Ethan stated. ‘But I can make the eggs.’

  Seth considered it for a moment. ‘Eggs could work. We can pile them over by the trees.’

  ‘What are you doing, boys?’ asked Avian as she came into the kitchen.

  ‘Making a gingerbread house,’ said Seth.

  ‘Gross. Make sure you don’t eat it – it’s bad for you,’ she said, taking a bottle of water from the refrigerator and leaving again.

  Ethan said nothing as Avian left but Seth groaned.

  ‘I want Christa back,’ he said.

  ‘So do I,’ Ethan answered. ‘Mom said she’s going to make broccoli burgers. Disgusting.’

  Seth made a face. ‘What if we made a maze?’

  ‘We can’t cook any more gingerbread, not without Christa,’ said Ethan.

  ‘We could make it from cardboard?’ Seth suggested.

  They found cardboard in the recycling and used the kitchen scissors to cut it, even though they knew Christa wouldn’t like them using them.

  There was green paint from the arts and craft set they had never used and glue and sticky tape. It was quite a process as they worked, waiting for the paint to try and then sticking things down so they stood up.

  Ethan drew a shape and then cut it out.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Dad,’ he answered as he drew all the keys on the laptop. ‘He’s doing business.’

  Seth looked at it closely. ‘Where are you going to put him?’

  ‘In the maze,’ Ethan answered.

  Seth thought about it for a moment and then nodded.

  ‘You better make a Christa then. She can go in the maze with Dad.’

  Ethan finished the effigy of Marc and put it down on the table and started work on Christa.

  ‘I saw them holding hands,’ he said to Seth.

  Seth giggled. ‘They’re in love,’ he said in a singsong voice.

  He took his pen and wrote in fine writing on the face of his dad.

  Ethan looked at it and laughed and then wrote on Christa’s face and showed Seth.

  The roared with laughter at their own jokes as they finally stuck Marc and Christa in the centre of the maze.

  ‘Now we just have to make a spell to bring her back to us,’ said Seth. He was serious.

  Ethan laughed as he wiggled his fingers at the gingerbread house in what he hoped was a mysterious manner. ‘Come back to Pudding Hall and feed us,’ he said. ‘No more broccoli burgers.’

  ‘We need saving from the broccoli burger monster,’ Seth joined in and when they finished laughing they sat and looked at their work.

  ‘It’s finished,’ Ethan said. Seth adjusted the last monkey Marc had made that was hanging in a marzipan tree and Ethan made sure the antlers of a lopsided deer were stuck on securely.

  They sat glumly at the table looking at their handiwork.

  ‘I hope Dad can get her back,’ was all Ethan
said and Seth started to cry.

  Seth was always the ringleader and the instigator of trouble, so for Ethan to see his brother, older by a few minutes, so vulnerable was unnerving.

  ‘I just want her back because Dad did stuff with us, and talked to us more and we ate dinner together and now we won’t.’

  Ethan nodded and felt his own sadness well up and he wiped a tear away.

  ‘Wanna go to the maze?’ he asked Seth.

  ‘Nah,’ said Seth looking downcast and then, as though a bolt of lightning hit him, he looked up and smiled. ‘Wanna get some of Meredith’s dog poo and put it in Simon’s shoes?’

  Ethan gasped. ‘Yes, let’s go.’

  And the boys pulled on their coats and hats and, taking a plastic container and a pair of kitchen tongs, they went to seek their own form of revenge.

  DESSERT

  32

  Christa helped tie the last of the Christmas ribbon on the fudge packets in Petey’s kitchen. She had been wrapping and cooking all morning but they were happy with the amount they had produced.

  ‘It will be a bumper market for us,’ said Petey happily. ‘I haven’t had this much to sell in a long time.’

  ‘And I can’t wait to sell it all for you. Peggy said the last market before Christmas is always so busy.’

  Peggy had called in to see them after Christa had texted stating she wouldn’t be at Pudding Hall. Peggy arrived early, before she went to work, to find them already up. Christa had barely slept, and Petey regularly rose with the first birdsong.

  ‘What do you mean you left?’ Peggy had said.

  ‘I can’t stay there with Simon,’ Christa replied then started to cry and Peggy tutted at her.

  ‘That mother of those boys has a thing or to work out,’ she said. ‘You can’t put a man before your children, I will tell you that much.’

  Christa had cried again at the thought of the twins.

  ‘I think maybe I am overreacting. I mean, Marc and I weren’t really anything. We sort of liked each other but I am probably reading too much into it,’ she had told them, but mostly she told herself. ‘It’s probably a rebound crush, the first one you get with a new person when your relationship ends.’

  Christa had noticed the glance between Petey and Peggy.

  ‘I don’t think it’s anything like that,’ Peggy had said. ‘I think there’s something there but it will be you two who have to work out if it’s worth pursuing knowing Avian and Simon will be a part of your lives.’

  Christa had groaned and put her head on the table.

  ‘No thanks,’ she had said and she’d meant it. Nowhere in her future was Simon included, especially not her personal life.

  Peggy had gone to work then and Christa and Petey had started to cook.

  ‘Let’s do a Christmas-themed line for the last market,’ Christa had suggested. They’d worked out what they needed for the ingredients and Christa had popped down to the shops and returned with beautiful Christmas ribbon in different colours.

  There was peppermint swirl, cranberry and walnut, almond and cherry, and candy cane fudge.

  Christa had bagged them all and tied them off with the pretty ribbons and had printed little cards inside listing the ingredients, using Petey’s state-of-the-art home printer.

  ‘You are remarkable for your age, Petey, which I know can be taken as a backhanded compliment but I mean it. You still work, you take of yourself, you can manage technology better than me – not that that’s hard but seriously, you’re a catch,’ she said as she put the last bags into a box and wrote the flavour on the side.

  Petey laughed. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said, ‘but I am interested in lots of things. I think that’s why I come across as interesting, but I’m just interested,’ he said.

  ‘What about Peggy?’ she prompted.

  He paused. ‘Peggy is a lovely woman, and very smart but I have only ever loved one woman in my life so I’m not sure I know how to love another. We are grand friends though.’

  Christa listened. ‘I wonder if your wife would have wanted you to be alone all these years though,’ she said gently.

  ‘Well I’m not alone now – you’re here. You’re like a lovely daughter to me,’ he said.

  The doorbell rang and Petey checked his wristwatch.

  ‘I’m not expecting anyone. You?’ he asked.

  Christa shook her head. ‘Only Peggy knows I’m here,’ she said. ‘Want me to go?’

  Petey was already leaving the kitchen so Christa finished tidying up as she heard the door open and she looked up and there was Marc.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. She felt her knees go and she sat at the table.

  ‘Hi,’ she answered.

  Petey was nowhere to be seen and Christa wished he would come back and make small talk so then she could run out the back and climb the fence and never let Marc see her shame again.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  She was silent for a moment.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you. It was stupid bet and one I thought I would win but I was arrogant and it showed me I have been kidding myself my whole life. It always was Simon who was the star and I hid behind him because I was too afraid to do anything myself.’

  Marc went to speak but she put her hand up to stop him.

  ‘And whatever we had, whatever attraction we had has gone since I made such an idiot of myself, but that was because of Simon, not because of you. I have some pretty serious thinking to do about myself and where I’m going in life.’

  Marc put his hands up now. ‘Sorry, I have to stop you there,’ he stated. ‘Here’s the thing, Christa. You won.’

  She shook her head. ‘No I didn’t, you chose Simon’s soufflé.’

  Marc pulled out his phone and played with it. ‘Are you texting someone?’ she asked. ‘It’s considered rude to do that in the middle of a conversation.’

  He handed the phone to her and pressed play on a video.

  She saw herself leave the kitchen and then she saw Avian and Simon arguing and then him swap the soufflé from her oven to his and his to hers.

  ‘Oh. My. God,’ she said, replaying it and watching it several times.

  She looked up at him.

  ‘God, I knew it. I put everything I had into that soufflé for you.’ She started to cry. ‘I did everything right and he did everything wrong. I had the eggs at the right temperature and his were cold. Everyone knows you get stronger peaks with room temperature egg whites.’ She threw her hands up and then slammed them down on the table.

  ‘I didn’t know that but go on,’ he said.

  ‘And he didn’t cool the chocolate before putting the yolks in. It would have tasted too eggy.’

  She paused, trying to stop crying but she couldn’t stop now she had unbottled her pain.

  ‘I wanted it to be the best – the best chocolate, butter, eggs – everything was so carefully chosen…’ She hiccupped from crying. ‘And then when I stirred the chocolate as it melted I thought about you.’

  He took her hand. ‘What did you think?’ he asked softly.

  Christa sobbed, feeling every injustice Simon had ever put on her during their marriage. The gaslighting, the dismissive comments, the gloating when he got mentioned in a review, his teasing that was supposed to a joke about her weight, her clothes, her background.

  ‘I thought about love,’ she said, not self-censoring anymore. If she wanted to be brave in life, then she had to start right now.

  ‘I thought about the way you look at me sometimes, and the touch of your hand, and what it would be like to kiss you,’ she said. ‘And I know that probably won’t ever happen but I put love into that dish and I wanted you to know it, to taste it.’

  ‘To look at you like this?’ he asked and she lifted her eyes from the table to his.

  ‘And to touch you like this?’ he asked and swept her hair from her forehead.

  She sat very still.

  ‘And to kiss you like this?’ He paused and she
smiled a little at him, unsure if he was serious or not.

  The touch of his lips on hers showed his sincerity and as they melted into each other, sitting at Petey’s table, Christa wondered if she was dreaming until there was a knock at the kitchen door.

  ‘Come in, Petey.’ She laughed, wiping her eyes.

  ‘Just got to get my bits and bobs and pop down to the pub,’ he said.

  He looked embarrassed as he took his wallet and keys from the bench.

  Christa looked at Marc and she saw his eyes searching her face.

  ‘If you need me to pick you up, call me,’ she told Petey, and she felt Marc’s knee press against hers.

  Petey chuckled as he closed the door and Marc kissed her again, this time more insistent. Christa thought she had forgotten what desire felt like, but now she couldn’t stop grabbing his clothes, his hair, his face, his arms, his back.

  Finally she pulled away. ‘We cannot do this here,’ she said.

  ‘Come back to Pudding Hall,’ he said, his voice husky, his eyes sparkling.

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t go back while he is there,’ she said and she stood up and went to the sink and poured a glass of water.

  Turning to Marc she looked at him where he was sitting at the table of Petey’s humble home.

  He seemed entirely out of place in his fancy puffa jacket and expensive haircut.

  ‘Simon might seem silly and ineffectual to you but to me he was abusive. He made me doubt myself over and over instead of building me up. He was truly a horrible husband and even though I don’t like Avian, I worry he is a part of her life, because then he will be a part of the boys’ life.’

  Marc nodded. ‘I have thought about that with the boys. But I can’t tell Avian who to date – just as she can’t tell me.’

  They were silent for a moment.

  ‘I will sort it out,’ he said and he stood up. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Sort it out for the boys not for me,’ she said and Marc leaned in and left a lingering kiss on her lips.

  ‘What if I did both? Would you come back then?’

  Christa laughed in spite of herself. ‘If you can do that then you’d be performing a Christmas miracle.’