2
The murmurs that crackle through the room this time suggest I’m a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but the idea gathers speed so fast that I forget I’m in front of a microphone and barrel onwards. ‘Think about it – we’ve got a Santa without a grotto and we need to do something big for Mistletoe Gardens, even if it’s only a final goodbye. No one’s going to talk about a few events, but people are going to talk about a real-life full-size gingerbread house. People are going to visit Santa if his grotto is inside a gingerbread house. It’ll be a nod to what my great-great-grandmother did for the opening day – gingerbread, but modernised. And hopefully it will attract the kind of crowds that Mistletoe Gardens attracted back in the day because we could do with even a fraction of the people shown in those old photographs!’
‘Is a life-size gingerbread house even possible?’ Mum side-eyes me.
Maybe I should be worried that my mum who – when she’s not busy terrorising council leaders and trying to set me up on dates – is head baker at Dancing Cinnamon bakery doesn’t think it’s possible.
It must be possible… right? ‘We make gingerbread houses all the time. Why can’t we work on a slightly bigger scale? A really, really big scale?’
The thought makes me feel like a child again. I can imagine the wonder of staring up at a life-size fully edible house towering above me, peaks of bright-white royal icing and twinkling gumdrops of giant proportions.
But when standing on a stage in front of a crowd and getting overexcited about something, deathly silence is not generally the desired response.
‘Oh, come on. Where’s your imagination? We need something that’s going to get people talking about Mistletoe Gardens – something that people are going to come to see. If there’s nothing we can do to save Mistletoe Gardens, then we can at least send it out with a bang.’
‘That bang might be our ovens exploding, Ess,’ Mum whispers. ‘Do you have any idea how much gingerbread that’s going to take? How much time it will take to put it together – if it’s even possible to get a structure of that size to stand up?’
Well, no, because I haven’t thought about the logistics yet, but I’m a firm believer in ideas coming at exactly the right moment and things working out when you need them to. I’m fizzing inside at the idea of building a gingerbread house to such a large scale. ‘Can you imagine how magical it would be for a child to go to visit Santa in a real gingerbread house? The smell, the look, the taste. It would be like something from a fairytale. A part of a winter wonderland that no one will ever forget.’
‘Wouldn’t it get wet in the rain?’ Edna, the retired librarian, calls. ‘This is South Wales, we’re not known for our dry and sunny winters.’
Oh, snowdrops , I hadn’t thought of that. You can’t leave gingerbread outside, it would melt in the first shower, and she’s right, we’re not short of rain in this valley. There has to be a way around it… ‘The old bandstand! It’s more than big enough to fit a house in, and it’s got a roof, so the gingerbread would be protected.’
‘And what about that sleety, driving rain that comes down sideways with howling wind?’
‘We could put something around the edges… a circus tent or something. I don’t know. It’s a spur of the moment idea, obviously it needs some planning first, but it’s the best plan we’ve got so far…’ As usual, I do not excel at having confidence in myself and my ideas. I was hoping for a slightly better response than the indifferent mutterings that sweep through the audience.
‘Ess, who’s going to do this?’ Mum sidles closer and whispers from the side of her mouth while projecting a bright smile outwards. ‘You?’
‘Of course. I’d love to. What an amazing way to spend December and honour our family and the tradition our grandmother started. She sowed the first mistletoe – it’s brought a lot of joy to Folkhornton over the years. If it’s going to be the last time, people should remember her.’
‘I can help,’ my best friend and co-worker, Saffie, says from her seat in the front row.
‘You can’t both do it! What am I supposed to do for staff at the bakery? There’s only the three of us and you know how often I have to dash out for my resident committee duties.’ Mum’s face contorts in distress. ‘Do you have any idea how long this is going to take? Do you even know how to build a life-size house out of biscuits?’
‘No, I haven’t got a clue, I’m going to need help on that front, a builder or someth?—’
‘Right, attention, folks!’ Mum claps her hands in front of the microphone, so loud that it attracts the attention of not just this room, but probably a fair half of the rest of Wales too. ‘Essie’s volunteering to build the gingerbread house, but there’s the small issue that she doesn’t know how. Anyone out there have experience of building houses?’
In slow motion, every eye in the room swivels to a corner at the back. Slouched in a chair at the furthest edge of the room is Joseph Hallissey Junior, owner of Hallissey Construction, a building company well known around this area. Joseph, who always attends these town meetings but never speaks or offers any input whatsoever, has a black baseball cap pulled so far down that I doubt he can see out, a black scarf pulled so far up that it covers most of his face, and he seems to be shrinking in his chair under the weight of so many gazes.
No one speaks. The entire town hall is waiting for him to volunteer his services, but his arms fold and his cap sinks lower.
The silence stretches out, and my mum isn’t one for patience. ‘Mr Hallissey! You are a builder, are you not? In fact, you’re the only builder in Folkhornton. Would you be so kind as to offer some advice?’
No response.
‘Maybe he’s asleep,’ someone murmurs.
My mum does the deafening crack of a clap again, loud enough to wake ancient mummies in the Egyptian pyramids, never mind any napping builders in the vicinity. And he’s definitely not asleep. His arms have pulled his black coat even further around his body and he’s sunken so low in his chair that he might be trying to slide off it and crawl away unseen.
Nothing.
‘Mr Hallissey!’ Mum barks again.
‘No.’ The cloud of blackness in the corner finally speaks, muffled from under the baseball cap and scarf. Just the one word, which to be fair, is more than he’s ever spoken before.
Mum gasps into the microphone. ‘No?’
He doesn’t respond, but he looks like he’s hoping to make himself so small that he’ll simply disappear.
‘But Mr Hallissey,’ Mum booms into the microphone, but she’s making things worse. This is obviously not a man who wants to be the centre of attention. I can sense the discomfort pouring off him in waves. ‘Your father would’ve loved a project like this. Won’t you at least consider it?’
He gets to his feet, pulls his cap up and his scarf down, and looks around the room. ‘It’s impossible. You’re insane.’ His gaze falls on me and lingers for a moment. ‘No. No, no, and no. And in case it wasn’t clear the first time – no .’ He sits back down with a clunk, refolds his arms, pulls his scarf up and his cap back down.
A man of few words. Joseph Hallissey has always been an odd one. His father, Joseph Senior, was the life and soul of town meetings, always throwing around ideas and meeting challenges with spark and enthusiasm, but he died a couple of years ago, and Joseph Junior moved into town and took over Hallissey Construction. He comes to every meeting, like his father used to, but he sits silently in the back corner and offers no input or opinion. He never even bothers with the free tea and biscuits.
The room is silent, like everyone’s unsure what to make of having heard him speak for the first time, and I realise my mouth has gone dry from having his attention on me .
‘Okay, well, we can’t win ’em all,’ I stutter, trying to get everyone’s focus back to the task at hand. ‘I’m sure there are plenty of builders who’ll be willin?—’
‘Your father would be ashamed of you!’ Mum bellows into the microphone.
The whole room turns to look at Joseph again.
‘Mum! You can’t say tha?—’
‘No, I will say it. We all knew Joseph Senior, much-loved friend and neighbour that he was. He’d be mortified to see such rudeness from his son. You are an embarrassment to your father’s good name!’
‘Mum!’ I try to cover the mic with my hand. My cheeks have gone red on Joseph’s behalf.
She’s still wrestling the mic away from me when Lynette pipes up. ‘Hear, hear!’
‘Joseph Senior was the kindest man,’ Mr Chalke from the shoe shop says. ‘Would’ve done anything for anyone. He loved this town and he loved Mistletoe Gardens.’
Joseph’s father was the kind of loud and overbearing Welshman who made himself a friend of everyone. There was no one who didn’t know him. A nice man, of course, and quite clearly the opposite of the one currently looking like he wishes the ground would swallow him whole.
‘Look, no one has to help us,’ I say loudly into the mic, sending whistling feedback reverberating through the room. ‘People are busy at this time of year. I can find someone else, it’s no bother.’
‘You shouldn’t have to! Not when there’s a builder right here who doesn’t even have the decency to offer advice.’
‘Oh, I’ll offer some advice all right.’ Joseph Hallissey gets to his feet again. ‘You can’t build a house out of gingerbread and you definitely can’t do it in three weeks. Don’t be so stupid.’ His eyes fall on me again, and then he turns around, jams his cap so far down that it looks painful and stalks out. The room is stunned into a silence punctuated only by the loud swinging of the door behind him.
‘Well, I never…’ Mum says. ‘No wonder he doesn’t speak to anyone if that’s how rude he’s going to be.’
‘You were rude to him! You can’t use someone’s dead father to shame them into doing something they don’t want to do. He isn’t obligated to help with this – no one is. That was unfair.’ I’m half-tempted to run after him and apologise, but what would I say?
‘We can find someone else,’ I say instead, but it falls on deaf ears as they all start muttering about Joseph. My mum has never had much of a filter with words, but even she must’ve been able to see that someone crossed a line there, and it wasn’t him.
‘If I may?’ Mervyn Prichard rises from his seat next to Santa. ‘You’re all missing a fairly important point here. You can’t build a life-size gingerbread house.’
I turn to him, glad of someone getting the conversation away from the unpleasantness with Joseph. ‘Do you mean that from a legal standpoint or because you believe it’s impossible?’
‘I don’t believe it’s impossible, Miss Browne – it is impossible.’
‘Nothing’s impossible at Christmas.’ I give him a grin. ‘Do we have your permission to use the bandstand in the park?’
He ums and ahs, twisting his fingers together, but he eventually answers. ‘If you want to waste your time, effort, and presumably a great deal of money on ingredients, then the council will have no legal objections to your project. Mistletoe Gardens will be razed to the ground in January. What you do with it in the meantime is up to you.’
‘Hurrah!’ Santa cheers and stands up too. ‘The only thing we need is a little belief in Christmas magic!’
‘We can do this,’ I tell everyone. ‘I just need a couple of days to work out a plan and find a builder. Hallissey Construction are not the only builders in the universe. As soon as I get home, I’m going straight online to find a whole slew of builders who will jump at the chance to do something so fun. There will be millions of them. We’ll be holding builder auditions by the end of tomorrow. It’ll be like a Bob the Builder set around here!’ Let’s hope none of them know Bob the Builder is an animated programme most favoured by those under three years of age.
I smile broadly at the sea of faces looking back at me, hoping the doubts don’t show on my face, because internally, I’m wondering what I’ve got into here. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but Joseph Hallissey’s reaction and Mervyn’s ‘impossible’ comments have left me feeling overwhelmed and like I’m grasping at straws.
I can bake gingerbread until the cows come home, but I don’t know where to begin when it comes to building a house with it. There’s a good possibility I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, in more ways than one, and this cannot be another ‘big idea’ that turns out to be a big mistake.
We hope you enjoyed this exclusive extract. The Gingerbread House in Mistletoe Gardens is available to buy now by clicking on the image below: