The Christmas Cake Cafe: A Brilliantly Funny Feel Good Christmas Read Kindle Edition

by Sue Watson

  ‘So… when you come in every – single – morning, turn on the hot water and put at least six croissants in the oven. This is imperative – have you written it down so far?’

  I nodded, pen poised, waiting for more instructions.

  ‘Then, take a cafetière, fill with this freshly ground coffee,’ she said, holding up the jar of Italian blend like she was holding the life jacket when giving instructions on a plane. ‘Pour hot water over the coffee and allow to percolate for about four minutes… got that?’

  I nodded, writing down ‘four minutes’. I kept glancing up from my notes, expecting her to start waving her arms around, pulling on lifebelt cords and explaining where the exits were in the unlikely event of an emergency.

  ‘Then take two large cups and have them both filled with coffee, with the croissants warmed and ready, by exactly nine forty-five – so as soon as I get in we can sit down to breakfast!’ She smiled at her own punchline while I sighed another big sigh of relief. And twenty minutes later, as we sat on the terrace in the chilly white morning sharing our life stories, and eating warm, buttery croissants and strong coffee before the day started, I thought, this will do.

  Later in the morning I could see why Maxine’s coffee/croissant regime was so important – the coffee shop became so busy you didn’t have five minutes for a break. Despite the cold outside the coffee shop was warm and my cow suit was disgustingly sweaty – but Maxine was right, the children loved it and I was in many photographs that morning. Those little kids were relentless, and as I ran the perimeter of the coffee bar with the kids and their phones in hot pursuit, I could almost imagine what it was like to be a Kardashian, chased by eager paparazzi.

  Later, Maxine and I were enjoying a little post-lunch peace behind the counter when I looked up to see Jon standing in front of me. We said a slightly awkward hello because I wasn’t sure whether he was there simply so he could claim the free coffee that I’d promised him – or if he had genuinely popped in to see me.

  ‘Ah, so glad to see you took my advice on the “sensible clothing”?’ He smiled as I placed his hot drink on the counter. I liked this gentle teasing – it reminded me of the previous evening when he’d tugged at my scarf, pretending to make me go on the dreaded luge.

  ‘Yes, I decided to wear something more restrained – after all, I am at work and like to be professional at all times,’ I said, matching his sarcasm and waggling the udders.

  ‘You are making me laugh always.’ He smiled as he wandered outside with his coffee, disappearing into the whiteness. I was disappointed – I’d hoped he might stay a while and sip his coffee and we could chat a little. Then again, I couldn’t blame him. Not only was I a huge pink and white cow, I was also being followed round the area like the bloody Pied Piper as more and more children decided I was ‘the chosen one’.

  After work I met up with the girls at the ski shop where Lola was working. She was rocking her purple glittery shorts and tight top, and she’d met a ‘gorgeous guy’ again that day, so all was good in Lola’s world.

  Jody had promised me that the ski class was for beginners and that I would be fine. I was feeling positive about embracing this brave new world of winter sports, and I wandered with the others to the ski lodge where we were fitted with skis. Here everyone was wearing onesies, from Scooby-Doo to plum puddings, so my udders finally felt acceptable.

  Once we’d been fitted with skis we were given a very basic talk involving instructions I didn’t understand, which included words like ‘A frame’, ‘camber’ and ‘linking turns’. I so wanted to do this, but a little voice on my shoulder was telling me I had to be careful because people died while skiing. I wasn’t sure if this was my mother’s insecurities coming through – she’d barely let me out after my dad had left and saw even a bicycle ridden on the path as a dangerous vehicle of death. Or maybe it was Tim’s influence. He would often tell me I was ‘too old’, ‘unfit’ or even ‘too dangerous’ to take on any kind of physical challenge.

  I felt slightly sick as we all trooped out into the snow on what felt to me like long planks of wood attached to my ankles. How the hell did anyone get anywhere on these, I thought as a giant pig whizzed past me down a very steep slope, followed quickly by a cartoon bear.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ I hissed to my sister, who was dressed as a fat Father Christmas, as she wobbled onto a chair lift.

  ‘Shut up, get in, sit down and hang on,’ she said, holding out her hands to help me on. Kate pushed me under the bum, and I landed rather inelegantly in the chair, soon to be joined by a leopard and a gingerbread man. Once we were all aboard we were approached by a ski instructor called Hans, who had more on his mind than showing women how to ski. As he helped us to climb on the ski lift, he was all hands. Yes, they may have been gloved, but they still had intentions, and he came to be known as ‘Hands-on Hans’.

  ‘Now, girls, you must put on your seat belts. A seat belt in a ski lift is like a condom on a one-night stand,’ was his opening line as he leered at Lola’s ample leopard-spotted chest.

  Sensing danger, we all lifted off our various creature heads and caught each other’s eyes as he waxed lyrical about the amazing G-force of the slopes. I was petrified. Too high in the sky and clinging to Jody, I was feeling sicker and sicker as we rode higher and higher. Meanwhile Hans was going on and on about ramp angles and rise lines, which at the time I suspected were merely euphemisms for something unsavoury and was surprised to discover later were actually ski terms.

  On arrival we all clambered quickly off the chair lift, the others to escape the lecherous Hans and me to simply kiss the ground and be grateful I’d survived the slopes so far. I was on all fours doing just this while trying not to scream and vomit when I heard a man’s voice, ‘You shouldn’t be eating snow…’

  ‘I’m not…’ I said, looking up and seeing the familiar cobalt blue of lecherous Hans’s ski suit.

  I’d had enough of his cheap, lecherous comments and wasn’t waiting for him to make an inappropriate remark about me being on all fours so I gave it to him with both barrels. ‘Look, I don’t want your sleazy jokes about one-night stands and no, before you ask, I don’t want you to take me up the piste or put a condom on anything, so just bugger off and leave me to die here,’ I hissed from my prone position.

  ‘I am surprised to hear you say this,’ came a different voice to the one from the chair lift. It was familiar, but it wasn’t Hans. I felt my blood freeze as I looked up slowly, beyond the knees to the waist area and higher still, which slowly revealed the familiar gorgeous blue eyes of Jon.

  ‘Oh God… I’m so sorry, I thought you were someone else… I hope you don’t think I was saying anything about sex… or anything?’

  I thought I detected vague amusement in his eyes, but it could have been the sun.

  I tried to explain, but he just smiled and skied on past me with a quick wave.

  I felt so stupid as I joined my friends Gingerbread, Panther and fat Father Christmas, who told me to put my head between my legs if I felt sick and to ‘stop whingeing’. We must have looked quite a sight huddled together on the snow, waiting for our ski class to start, and I almost threw up there and then when Mr Blue Eyes whizzed back up, doing a rather dramatic turn on his skis and causing a flurry of snow in our faces.

  ‘I’m Jon and I’m your ski instructor for today’s beginners class,’ he announced. I saw him look at me and attempted a coquettish stare, then realised I still had my cow head on so the effect would be minimal. I could see his eyes smiling at me though as he began giving out instructions on how to stand and how to gently propel ourselves forward. I have never been strong on coordination and my balance is dodgy, but the nausea had passed and this was the new Jen, the one who would tackle anything. I wasn’t tied to my past – I was forging into the future, so I pushed myself through the snow with confidence, telling myself I could do this. But while everyone else was doing as instructed and ‘propelling slowly forward’, my legs were slowly parting in
voluntarily, and I didn’t have the thigh strength to bring them together. And as my legs moved apart, I gathered speed, my udders now waving as I set off rapidly downhill.

  As I whizzed past, I’d noticed that, unaware of my spreadeagled departure, Jon was busy helping some of the ‘newer’ skiers. Assuming I was a ski bum (serves me right for telling lies), he obviously didn’t see the need to help me and prevent me taking the slope at a hundred miles an hour and becoming a serious danger to myself and others.

  So, as he gently escorted a new skier down a very flat slope, I was hurtling towards my death on a very steep one. ‘Turn, turn,’ someone shouted. (I think it was Jody. She had no idea about skiing, but because she’d once been to the bloody snow dome, she thought she knew it all.)

  ‘Jen, TURN,’ she repeated, more anxious and louder this time.

  ‘Turn what?’ was all I could manage as speed overtook me, my legs now completely apart, udders swaying in the wind, my heart in my mouth. Unable to turn or break in any way, I headed for a mound of white that, when my skis hit, didn’t slow me down but lifted me high up into the air. Mid-flight I recall seeing other skiers like ants scattering in all directions from my cannonball cow now eating up the slopes. I screamed in fear for myself and for those I was about to mow down, and after several heart attacks and several kilometres where I had no control of my body, I finally landed hard on my backside – so hard that I bounced into the air. My left ski detached with such velocity that it shot down to the end of the jump and landed in a group of Christmas puddings with legs, all hauling themselves back up the slope. The last thing I remember is shouting ‘Sorry’ before waking up in a hospital where my bum hurt and no one spoke English.

  Jody was standing worriedly by my bed explaining that I had concussion and a possible broken coccyx. I then fell into a deep sleep to be awoken by an alarming bodily intrusion involving an overeager doctor and a tube of cold lubricant.

  I was eventually discharged from the hospital in the early evening and we were delivered back to the chalet in a resort snowmobile. I felt okay – a little bruised and humiliated – but the pain and the cold thawed when I was greeted by the most beautiful bouquet of white flowers. I gasped reading the little card that said:

  So sorry, my fault again! Hope you feel better soon. Jon xxx

  ‘The poor guy will have a guilt complex,’ Jody said, laughing as we drank hot chocolate round the fire.

  ‘I know. He thinks he’s the reason for my almost hypothermia and my damaged coccyx – but if it means he’ll keep in touch, it’s a small price to pay,’ I said, and we all giggled.

  ‘It’s called emotional blackmail,’ Jody warned with a smile.

  ‘It’s called desperate librarian,’ I added.

  The girls enjoyed my retelling of my encounter on all fours with Jon and laughed loudly about my later encounter with the doctor and the lubricant. ‘He was humming Christmas carols as he “went in”,’ I squealed. ‘It was horrific. I just lay back and thought of Christmas.’

  The others screamed, but Jody took it in her stride, being a nurse. ‘Oh, you’d be surprised what goes up there,’ she sighed, almost admiringly. ‘I’ve retrieved Coke bottles, deodorant canisters… once I even found a—’

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘I’m recovering from an intimate examination of the worst kind, and you’re making my buttocks clench… again.’

  She screwed up her nose. ‘“Intimate examination” is the kind of phrase Tim would use. I can hear it now, all clenched teeth and sneering nostrils.’

  I nodded – she was right. ‘I think old Tim must be about due for a rectal examination,’ she said. ‘He’s so damn anal, I don’t know how you could have been with him for so long, Jen.’

  ‘It was those clenched teeth and sneering nostrils – turned me on,’ I monotoned, and everyone laughed. I was finally letting go of the last vestiges of hurt and pain – and anger too. Being in a different environment with new people was refreshing, I was beginning to laugh at my situation rather than becoming buried in it, and that was good for the soul. And the girls gave me a kind of respect that Tim never had, despite my spectacular fails at On the Piste, skiing, and Onesie Day – but the girls had all included me and had a kind of blind faith in me – now it was time for me to start believing in me too. I’d only been here a couple of days and yet already I was beginning to see my life objectively. The girls were so non-judgemental – they seemed to like me for who I was, and when I said something funny they laughed, and if I said something serious they listened – unlike Tim.

  Just being able to say things I thought without worrying about offending anyone or being corrected was a breath of fresh air, and I liked it.

  I looked around at the girls, laughing, sharing secrets, supporting each other and toasting the mallows Kate had found in a kitchen jar, and I suddenly realised what I’d never had. Here I was warm and safe among friends and I was saying stuff I would have filtered in front of Tim – I was a different person now he wasn’t around – and that wasn’t a bad thing. I began to relax. I hadn’t felt truly relaxed in years.

  I’d always kept things locked up inside. I suppose I was trying to please Tim. I was never scared of him, but I’d needed his approval, his validation of everything, from what I’d cooked to what I wore, to the person I was. Yet here I was regaling the girls with a story and I realised I had true freedom. I didn’t have to edit or censor anything – including myself. I had no need to look across a dinner table and ask with my eyes, ‘Is this okay for me to say? Do I look how you would like me to look?’ I was free to be whoever I wanted to be, and I loved this rediscovery of something I hadn’t even realised I’d lost. Sitting with the girls, chatting freely, finding myself again among the twinkly lights and the glitzy baubles, toasting marshmallows by the fire, I slowly began to see glimpses of my old self – the girl I had been in my twenties before I’d escaped my mother’s sadness and run straight into the arms of Tim.

  Chapter 6

  Love, Lebkuchen and a New Year’s Resolution

  I hadn’t seen Jon since my accident on the slopes, and as it was a couple of days since I’d received the flowers, I was keen to see him and thank him. I soon went back to the coffee shop, where Maxine treated me gently and allowed me to sit and stand in strange positions to alleviate my back pain while serving. But Jon was never far from my mind – I’d be working the cappuccino machine or the squirty cream and see a blue ski suit through the window, and my heart would start to race. I’d think I’d seen him in the distance, skiing or trudging through the snow, and my heart would leap, then it would drop to the ground as I realised it was Hans or one of the other ski instructors. After about three days of this hell I decided to try and save myself – why come out of a horrible relationship only to start stressing about someone else? Someone I didn’t even know? The whole point of this trip was to be myself and to start to like myself, because it looked like I was going to be spending quite a lot of my life by myself. So I decided to embrace this freedom and the fact I had no shackles, no relationship and no one else to worry about, and do all the stuff I wanted to do in this lovely place.

  ‘I’m going to spend today just taking things easy,’ I said to the girls on my first day off. ‘I’ve been looking online, and as it’s almost Christmas, I really want to do something Christmassy…’

  ‘Yes, that’s why we’re off to On the Piste tonight… you’ll be back for that, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. But today I’m going on a Christmas-shopping excursion. I want to see some of the Switzerland I’ve come for, the snowy valleys and Christmassy scenes, the stuff you told me about in the brochure, Jody.’

  ‘You crazy bitch,’ she sighed, crunching on cornflakes and absently flicking the channels on the TV.

  ‘I know, I’m just bloody mad wanting to go out and look at stupid views from crappy mountains when I could be in a dark nightclub with you.’

  ‘I know. Like I said – crazy bitch,’ she said and laughed, acknowle
dging my sarcasm. ‘You knock yourself out wandering round old ladies’ tea shops and admiring piles of snow,’ she said.

  We were beginning to understand each other. Jody and I were very different people, wanting different things, but we shared the same values – we were both caring and wanted the best for each other.

  Meanwhile, with my suitcase still missing in transit, I’d returned the little boy’s suitcase to its rightful owner and was still making do with the girls’ clothes. Even if my case did turn up, I wasn’t sure I’d want to wear the clothes I’d brought with me – they seemed a bit frumpy now, and I wanted to buy something more fun to wear. I’d become used to the bright colours and fashionable styles, and although I’d thought I’d never be able to wear stuff like that, I’d discovered I could. I liked how it made me feel to wear younger clothes again.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own?’ Jody said before I left.

  ‘Not only will I be okay, I’ll welcome it.’ I smiled. ‘I’m really looking forward to discovering this place and having some thinking time alone.’ So after I’d promised faithfully to meet them at On the Piste for multiple Christmas Orgasms, they all headed off into the whiteness and the wandering hands of Hans and the chair lift.

  I’d worn the coffee-shop uniform every day, and as I hadn’t left the resort, I’d mostly worn the girls’ stuff supplemented by a couple of tops from the ski shop. But this was a day out, so I decided to plunder the girls’ ‘winter collection’ for my Christmas-shopping excursion.

  I rifled through the drawers. Kate and Jody’s wardrobes were all about tiny tops and skirts, not suitable for a day’s sightseeing, so I looked in Lola’s wardrobe of frills and faux leopard skin and there was, in my view, a fine line between ‘fun and flirty’ and ‘escort service’. I held up a bright purple lace bra which definitely had something of the lady of the night about it, but I had no choice and it was kind of Lola to give me free rein with her clothes so I stuffed it with tissues to fill the parts I couldn’t. It looked good. I think before this trip I’d have considered it a little racy for me, but I felt differently about myself now. I’d thought at the time I was reinventing myself, but as I dived back into the garish purples and sheer pinks of the girls’ suitcase, I remembered how I used to wear things like this. Obviously some of the feather boas and the cropped tops weren’t going to work on me, and I’d need to find something less pornographic than Jody’s logoed tops and Lola’s zipped leather trousers. (I won’t mention where the zips were, but they wouldn’t be appropriate for a touristy coach trip to a centuries-old Swiss village.) I was just about to give up when I came upon a red jersey. At first I thought it was too good to be true and, as it was in Lola’s case, probably had nipple tassels. But on further inspection it appeared to be a simple jersey dress, and as I was now running a little late I quickly slipped the dress on and threw Jody’s fake fur coat over it. Feeling exhilarated by the snow and the day ahead, I rushed off to The Ski Bunny, where the tour was meeting for the shopping excursion. I wasn’t sure exactly what the trip involved, but along with buying a few Christmas gifts and some emergency clothes, I was keen to take in the sights. So far, working at the coffee shop had sucked up much of my time, and I’d only seen the ski resort – and that was from the top of a mountain on all fours in a cow costume.