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Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Annie Darling 2018
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover illustration © Carrie May
Annie Darling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008275679
Ebook Edition © November 2018 ISBN: 9780008275686
Version: 2018-10-24
Dedication
Dedicated to Mr Mackenzie,
the most splendid specimen of felinity in the world.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1: 30 days until Christmas
Chapter 2: 29 days until Christmas
Chapter 3: 28 days until Christmas
Chapter 4: 27 days until Christmas
Chapter 5: 27 days until Christmas
Chapter 6: 26 days until Christmas
Chapter 7: 25 days until Christmas
Chapter 8: 25 days until Christmas
Chapter 9: 24 days until Christmas
Chapter 10: 23 days until Christmas
Chapter 11: 23 days until Christmas
Chapter 12: 20 days until Christmas
Chapter 13: 19 days until Christmas
Chapter 14: 19 days until Christmas
Chapter 15: 18 days until Christmas
Chapter 16: 18 days until Christmas
Chapter 17: 15 days until Christmas
Chapter 18: 14 days until Christmas
Chapter 19: 14 days until Christmas
Chapter 20: 14 days until Christmas
Chapter 21: 14 days until Christmas
Chapter 22: 13 days until Christmas
Chapter 23: 11 days until Christmas
Chapter 24: 10 days until Christmas
Chapter 25: 9 days until Christmas
Chapter 26: 8 days until Christmas
Chapter 27: 8 days until Christmas
Chapter 28: 7 days until Christmas
Chapter 29: 6 days until Christmas
Chapter 30: 5 days until Christmas
Chapter 31: 3 days until Christmas
Chapter 32: 3 days until Christmas
Chapter 33: 2 days until Christmas
Chapter 34: 1 day until Christmas
Chapter 35: Christmas Day
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Annie Darling
About the Publisher
‘Goodbye! Do come again!’ With a bright smile, Matilda Smith ushered her last customer of the day out of the door of the Happy Ever After tearooms and hurried to lock it behind them. Her mobile phone, in the pocket of her apron, had been buzzing like a furious bee with incoming text messages for the last five minutes.
Mattie pulled out her still vibrating and flashing phone to read her messages; all of them from one person.
EMERGENCY MEETING!!!!!
The urgent capital letters left Mattie unmoved. She’d been on her feet since seven that morning and her feet were about to go on strike, so this so-called emergency meeting could do without her.
‘I thought Beige Anorak would never go,’ Mattie remarked of their most frequent customer. ‘I’ve a good mind to tell him that he can only hog a table of four for a maximum of one hour.’
‘At least he shared the table this time,’ Cuthbert pointed out as he slowly and lovingly wiped down Jezebel the coffee machine. Her old barista, Paloma, had left to go travelling and Mattie had despaired that she’d ever find someone who could handle the very temperamental Jezebel, until she’d met seventy-two-year-old Cuthbert Lewis.
Mattie’s phone vibrated again. Another message from a person who really needed to stop using shouty capslock and, instead, get to the point.
THIS IS NOT A DRILL, THIS IS A GENUINE EMERGENCY!!!!!
‘I bet it’s not a genuine emergency,’ Mattie exclaimed out loud.
‘Trouble at t’mill?’ Cuthbert asked.
‘Just the usual flapping from next door.’
Cuthbert cocked his head in the direction of the set of glass-panelled double doors to the left of the counter. ‘They are rather prone to flapping, it’s true. Whereas you and I are of a calmer disposition.’
Now that Beige Anorak was finally gone, Mattie could get on with washing the floor. She plunged her mop into the bucket of soapy hot water that she’d filled earlier. ‘We are a flap-free zone. Not like them.’
Mattie and Cuthbert were their own little fiefdom within the wider territory of Happy Ever After, the bookshop that lay beyond the glass-panelled double doors. The tearooms had their own traditions, their own way of doing things, their own set of rules, but they co-existed quite peacefully alongside the bookshop. They made sure that no customers brought books they hadn’t already paid for into the tearooms to spill food and drink all over them. They checked daily that Strumpet, the portly, gluttonous cat who belonged to Verity, Happy Ever After’s manager, was safely locked in the flat above the shop. There had been several incidents when Strumpet had staged a prison break and headed straight for the tearooms and the lap of anyone who had cake.
EMERGENCY MEETING IN THE MIDNIGHT BELL NOW!!!!!! WHY ARE YOU IGNORING MY TEXTS? HAVE I MENTIONED THIS IS AN EMERGENCY?
‘Why she can’t just toddle fifty metres and tell me in person, I don’t know,’ Mattie murmured, as she paused mopping to read yet another panic-stricken text message.
‘A lady in her condition can’t be toddling here and there,’ Cuthbert noted as he gave Jezebel one last affectionate buffing.
Cuthbert was right. Cuthbert was usually right about all things.
Mattie swirled the mop in a hard-to-reach corner. ‘Yes, but … but … she’s managing to toddle all the way to The Midnight Bell for a so-called emergency meeting,’ she said. ‘Shall I make your apologies?’
‘If you will. My Cynthia will already have my dinner on,’ he said of the love of his life, his wife. ‘Now you get your beauty sleep, my darling,’ he ordered his sidechick, draping a special cover over Jezebel. ‘It’s another busy day tomorrow, so you need your rest.’
It was so tempting to ask Cuthbert if he and Jezebel would like some privacy. Mattie shook her head, patted Cuthbert on the shoulder as she squeezed past him (it was a tight fit behind the counter) to empty the bucket and finish tidying away. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then, Cuthbert.’
‘Indeed you will,’ Cuthbert agreed, shrugging on his coat and donning a nifty trilby hat for the five-minute walk home to a flat in the beautiful, Art Deco 1920s Housing Association estate just around the corner.
Mattie’s phone trembled again.
DON’T IGNORE ME, MATTIE! WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME?
It probably would be a good idea to reply to one of these so-called urgent text messages, Mattie decided.
I’m not ignoring you. I’m doing my next-day prep and I’ll see you in The Midnight Bell when I’m done. I hope you’ll have a large glass of white wine and a bowl of cheesy chips waiting for me. Mattie x
She didn’t even need to take one full step to enter the tiny kitchen shielded from public view by a curtain adorned with little teapots. So tiny was the kitchen that if Mattie stretched out her arms she could touch the walls.
But she didn’t stretch out her arms, instead she washed her hands, then set to work making the flaky pastry for tomorrow’s viennoiserie: croissants, pains au chocolat, pains aux raisins and several other buttery, melt-in-the-mouth delights. The dough needed to chill overnight, which was why Mattie wasn’t currently quaffing Chenin Blanc in the pub.
Before she took off her apron and retrieved her handbag from the one cupboard that she had room for in the kitchen, Mattie pulled out her compact to confirm what she already knew: her face – skin the colour of the lightest, most delicate caramel sauce with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose – needed a generous dusting of matte powder to tone down the effects of slaving over a hot stove all day. Adding a slick of tawny-pink lipstick, a re-application of mascara and a quick check that the two flicks of liquid eyeliner from this morning were still in place, all she needed to do was make sure that there weren’t any flour or grease stains on her black trousers and jumper, and Mattie was good to go.
It helped that she had a look and she stuck to it rigidly. Mattie had seen the film Funny Face at an impressionable age and even though she was now a very grown-up twenty-eight, she still wished that she was Audrey Hepburn, the bookshop clerk who jetted off to Paris with Fred Astaire and modelled for a fashion magazine when she wasn’t dancing to freeform jazz in seedy bars.
Not only did Mattie now work next door to a bookshop, she’d also been to Paris. In fact, she’d lived in Paris for three whole years and had danced to freeform jazz in seedy bars on several occasions. But that was long in the past and Paris was now dead to her, yet she still dressed like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face: long, dark-brown hair caught up in a ponytail with a blunt-cut thick fringe which was the perfect foil for her permanently arched eyebrows, above eyes which were the exact same shade as a mink coat her grandmother had once owned.
And like Audrey, Mattie always wore black. Before Paris and especially after Paris, she wore black. In summer, a black cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and slim-fit black cropped cigarette pants, and the same pair of Birkenstocks she’d been wearing in summer for years. On winter days like today, she swapped the shirt for a jumper, the cropped trousers for a longer version and the Birks for a pair of black Chuck Taylors.
Wearing the same thing every day (Mattie had many black shirts, jumpers and trousers, both cropped and long – it wasn’t like she wore the same two pieces every day until they crawled to the wash basket of their own accord) was practical and quick. No agonising over a wardrobe full of different colours and styles. Which was just as well, because as Mattie stepped out onto the cobblestones of Rochester Mews and locked the front door behind her, she’d be unlocking it again at seven thirty the next morning. Such was the lot of someone who had a hell of a lot of breakfast pastries to bake before the tearooms opened at 9 a.m.
Mattie’s phone buzzed insistently.
WHERE ARE YOU? HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CHUCK TOGETHER SOME FLAKY PASTRY?
But that was tomorrow. And Mattie wasn’t going to think about tomorrow, especially the part where she had to get up at six, while it was still dark. She was going to think about the large glass of wine that she hoped was waiting for her.
Mattie wasn’t disappointed. As soon as she hefted open the heavy door of the pub around the corner from Happy Ever After, swapping the waft of fish and chips from There’s No Plaice Like Home opposite for the fug of beer, someone waved frantically at her.
‘Mattie! Over here!’ yelled Posy, the owner of Happy Ever After and sender of multiple, needlessly dramatic text messages, as if they hadn’t bagged their usual corner table and banquettes and Mattie might not know where they were. ‘Your wine is perfectly chilled.’
Mattie dropped gratefully onto an empty stool and picked up the glass of Chenin Blanc. ‘Thank you,’ she said fervently. ‘And cheers.’
As they all clinked glasses, Mattie checked for panic in the eyes of her co-workers. Posy, who was fairly heavy with child and drinking elderflower cordial and soda, the glass resting on the top of her bump, looked serene. Verity, the manager of the bookshop, was nursing a gin and tonic and a faintly harried expression, but then Verity always looked faintly harried. And then there was Tom, and Mattie didn’t really care what Tom’s mental state was because Tom was on her list.
Mattie’s list, as Tom well knew, was not a good list to be on, so she ignored him.
‘How are you?’ she asked Posy and Verity. ‘How was the world of bookselling today?’
‘Very, very busy,’ Posy noted with a quiet satisfaction. She rubbed her bump and then very gently and delicately burped. ‘Thank God for that. Have I mentioned that I have the worst indigestion?’
She had. Several times a day, ever since her three-month mark had passed and she was able to tell people that she was pregnant. Now she was almost at seven months and couldn’t even look at a tomato any more, much less eat one.
‘I read somewhere that if you have indigestion when you’re pregnant, you’ll give birth to a baby with a freakishly full head of hair,’ Verity said, which did little to cheer Posy up.
‘Sebastian has very thick hair, so it’s obviously all his fault,’ she said mournfully. ‘I wish I’d fallen in love with a bald man instead.’
Fascinating though this was, it didn’t really explain why Mattie had been summoned so urgently. ‘What was with all the emergency text messages?’ Mattie asked. ‘Is Rochester Mews earmarked for demolition or something?’
‘What? No! It’s much more serious than that.’ Posy gasped. She turned a suddenly anxious face to Mattie. ‘Have you any idea what the date is?’
Was it some kind of trick question or was it pregnancy brain? Mattie glanced over at Verity, who shook her head as if to say that she’d already had a similar enquiry from Posy. And then Mattie managed to catch Tom’s eye. She couldn’t help but recoil and Tom’s upper lip curled, which meant that he was about to make some dull observation, but before he could, Posy clapped her hands.
‘It’s the twenty-fifth of November,’ she cried. ‘The twenty-fifth? Do you know what that means, Mattie?’
‘Is it one of those random national days that have been invented by advertisers or PRs? National Pie Day? No, I’d know about it if it were. National Hug A Puppy Day?’
‘I think it must be National Humour Pregnant Ladies Day,’ Tom murmured with the little smirk that someone needed to tell him was very unattractive.
‘No! More like National Annoy Pregnant Ladies Day,’ Posy snapped, digging Tom in the ribs with her elbow, which wiped the smirk off his face pretty sharpish. ‘It’s a month until Christmas! Worse! There are only thirty days in November so actually, it’s thirty days until Christmas. Thirty days!’
Her panicked statement was met with blank looks.
‘How is this news to you?’ Tom ventured, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses so he could peer sternly at Posy’s flushed face. ‘You can’t turn on a TV without falling over some cloying, sentimental Christmas ad featuring woodland animals. The supermarkets have been flogging mince pies and stuffing balls since August.’
Tom had a point. ‘Surely you noticed the streets of London are adorned with Christmas lights and decorations?’ Mattie asked.
Posy placed a hand on either side of her bump. ‘Forgive me for being a little preoccupied,’ she said huffily.
‘I have mentioned Christmas promotions and extended opening hours several times,’ Verity said in a more conciliatory tone. ‘We had a whole conversation about getting new Christmas lights for the trees in the mews.’
‘No. Nope, I have no memory of that,’ Posy insisted, her voice starting to tremble, which meant that soon she would be crying. When she wasn’t trying to burp, Posy was trying not to cry – pregnancy really didn’t agree with her. ‘And now I’ve had an email from the Rochester Street Traders’ Association demanding that I pay my share for our joint Christmas decorations, and all the other shops are doing extended opening …’
‘Yes, I did already mention this,’ Verity murmured as Mattie shot her a sympathetic look. ‘Quite a few times, as it goes.’
‘You should have mentioned it more forcefully,’ Posy said, shifting on the banquette to find a more comfortable position. ‘There’s so much to do. We haven’t put up any tinsel or even done a display of books that would make wonderful Christmas presents.’ She wrung her hands. ‘Mattie! Why haven’t you started selling mince pies? You’re normally much more organised than this.’
Mattie prided herself on her organisational skills but she refused to rise to the bait. She was not going to flap. ‘I already have my Christmas bakes planned, which will come into effect on December first and not a day before. Not everyone wants Christmas rammed down their throats as soon as the clocks go back.’
‘Pret A Manger have been selling their Christmas sandwiches for weeks, M&S too,’ Tom said, and he should know, because he never bought his lunch from the tearooms. If he had, he’d have found it particularly delicious and filling and he wouldn’t have to hog the cheesy chips like he was currently doing.
Mattie firmed her lips. She wasn’t going to flap. Nope. Even though Tom always made her want to flap and hiss like an angry cat.
‘Well, Waterstones have had their Christmas promotions in place for weeks,’ she countered. Tom lifted his glass of wine as if to say ‘Touché’ but it had a detrimental effect on Posy who moaned as if she was in pain and clutched her bump as if an alien were about to burst out of it.
‘We need to have a Christmas brainstorm. NOW,’ she proclaimed in a shrill voice.
‘I thought this was a Christmas brainstorm?’ Mattie said, because Posy loved a brainstorm almost as much as she loved Sebastian, tote bags with book quotes on them and romantic novels.
‘It’s more of a pre-Christmas-brainstorm brainstorm,’ Tom explained helpfully as he refused to relinquish his grip on the bowl of cheesy chips, moving it out of Mattie’s reach when she tried to make a grab for it. ‘Oi, get your own.’
‘December first is plenty of time to launch all our Christmas plans,’ Verity said firmly, prying the bowl from Tom’s hand and moving it back towards Mattie. ‘And I hate to play the vicar’s-daughter card, but technically you shouldn’t put up Christmas decorations until Christmas Eve, and also technically, we shouldn’t really have a Christmas brainstorm without Nina. Nina loves Christmas.’
‘Oh, I miss Nina!’ Posy exclaimed and the first tear began its slow descent down her right cheek.
‘Everyone misses Nina,’ Mattie said softly, because when Posy was having a maudlin moment it was best not to make any loud noises. ‘But she’ll be back soon, right? She was only meant to have been gone six months, and she left in May, and it’s almost the end of November.’
Nina was a dearly beloved but absent member of the Happy Ever After family because she was currently road-tripping across the United States with her boyfriend, Noah, while working on the shop’s marketing remotely. She was the perfect, exuberant foil for quiet Verity, panicky Posy and Tom. Dour, sarcastic, up-himself Tom.
‘Well, I hope she comes back before I give birth,’ Posy lamented. ‘I would like to go on maternity leave before I actually start my contractions. Ugh! Contractions! Honestly, this pregnancy lark is one catastrophe after another. Have I mentioned my swollen ankles? Anyway, what are we going to do about Christmas? There’s so much to sort out and no time at all! We’re screwed. So very screwed.’
‘Not screwed. Christmas bakes are locked down and ready to go,’ Mattie said a little desperately. She wasn’t a big fan of Christmas and all these histrionics about the run-up to December twenty-fifth were giving her a leaden feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘Anyway, how long does it take to pin up a bit of tinsel?’
‘We’re going to have to do a bit more than pin up tinsel,’ Posy said, the tears now a steady stream. Tom inched down the banquette to distance himself from a sobbing woman, a look of pure dread on his normally quite lofty-looking face.
‘Help!’ he mouthed at Mattie and Verity. Mattie shrugged and Verity sighed, then leaned forward.
‘I was going to wait … But, well, no time like the present, and there doesn’t seem any point in delaying the news, does there, not if we’re about to start opening late every night, and it’s not a big deal, really just a medium-sized deal.’ Verity’s ramble had stemmed Posy’s tears and she was now looking quite stricken. Even Tom seemed to realise that this warranted putting down the bowl of cheesy chips.
‘Oh my God, are you resigning?’ he asked, which was what Posy had suspected too, if the devastated expression on her face was anything to go by.
‘No! Don’t be silly. Why would I resign?’ Verity asked in bewilderment. ‘What a weird conclusion to come to. Although … I suppose in a way I am resigning.’
‘Please, Very, my blood pressure can’t take many shocks,’ Posy moaned.
‘Christ, spit it out, Very, or kill me now,’ Tom snapped and for once, Mattie found herself in agreement. Verity looked up to the heavens. ‘I’m resigning …’ She paused and there was a collective intake of breath which made Mattie suspect that Verity was enjoying this a little bit too much, ‘… from my tenancy of the flat above the shop. Though I do feel rather validated that you were all terrified I was leaving Happy Ever After. It’s nice to know I’m wanted.’
‘For one awful second I thought I’d have to do the VAT returns on my own and my whole life flashed before my eyes,’ Mattie said and Posy reached across the table, with some difficulty, to clink her glass in solidarity.
‘You and me both,’ she said, then turned her woeful face to Verity. ‘When are you moving out? The new year?’
‘Well, a bit sooner than that. If we start extended opening hours, which will mean opening on a Sunday, then I guess it will have to be … well, the day after tomorrow, if that’s OK,’ Verity said apologetically. ‘I could leave it until the new year, but Johnny has had one of those boiling-water taps installed so I can have instant tea, and he’s had a new window seat put in my favourite reading nook, it’s very comfy, and I spend all my time round his anyway … Oh! Yeah, I would be moving in with Johnny,’ she added, as though there had been any question.
Johnny was Verity’s beloved. A posh architect, who, much like Darcy in Verity’s favourite book Pride and Prejudice, with his ‘very fine grounds at Pemberley’, had a five-bedroom house in Canonbury and no one to share it with. Until now.