Chapter Nine
Christopher
Christopher wakes with a start as an enormous crash resounds through the bakery below him.
What on earth was that?
He leaps to his feet, or at least, he tries to and spectacularly fails. Clearly, the part of him automatically reacting was operating on the presumption that he was in his bed. He’s so tangled in blankets that he sprawls over the coffee table and bangs his knees hard.
‘Christ!’ he yells, kicking his feet free.
It’s still dark outside, and he has no idea if it’s the middle of the night or morning. Who would be breaking in on 22nd December? Did he even lock the front door after Nash arrived?
His mind races as fast as his pounding feet, as he whirls down the stairs and into the bakery kitchen.
Nothing could have prepared him for the sight before him.
First of all, everything is white.
Like, everything.
For a brief, horrifying moment, he imagines the café windows have smashed, letting in all the snow. But the white doesn’t seep through his socks. It’s not cold. And neither is the air . . . well, no more than usual.
He scoops some up in his hand, and with a very different, rather confused kind of horror, he discovers it’s flour.
Why is there flour everywhere?
‘Christ,’ he mutters.
A rustle sounds across the kitchen, as if in response.
‘Who is there?’ he barks, arming himself with a very big pair of tongs. He advances towards the noise, which seems to be coming from the other side of the huge work table that runs down the middle of the kitchen, makeshift weapon thrust forward. ‘Show yourself.’
In reply, he hears a groan. ‘A little help?’ calls a familiar voice.
He rounds the corner of the table and finds Nash on the floor, flour-drenched.
‘What in the bloody hell are you doing in here in the middle of the night?’
‘It’s morning.’
‘All right, what are you doing in my bakery – which, if you remember the terms of your stay, is off-limits – in the morning?’
Nash groans again. ‘Can you just help me up?’
‘Not until you tell me what you’re doing in here, and why you’ve covered the place in flour. And why can’t you get up yourself?’
The man on the floor has the grace to at least look ashamed. ‘I’m stuck.’
‘You’re stuck?’
‘That’s what I said. Also, there’s flour in my eye and I can’t see, and my arm is pinned under something. Just help me.’ His tone softens pathetically. ‘Please.’
Adrenalin dissipating and fury calming (just a little), Christopher finally takes a moment to step back and assess the bizarre scene in front of him.
Nash lies under one of the massive wholesale sacks of flour that are so heavy Christopher has to wheel them in on a trolley.
And, for some reason, there’s what looks like the stick of his broom snapped over Nash in an arch, half of which appears to be wedged under one of the ovens.
And over his legs is a second massive sack of flour, though it’s lost all structural integrity and has burst open – probably the source of the avalanche all over the room.
What the hell was he doing?
It takes him a few goes but Christopher manages to drag the two sacks away, and as he does, the broom handle simply falls apart.
Freed from the prison of his own creation, Nash wipes the flour out of his eyes and sits up. With an offered hand, Christopher yanks Nash to his feet. Flour plumes into the air around them.
‘Now talk,’ Christopher says, dusting flour from his pyjama top.
Except . . .
A memory sparks of sometime around 3am when he’d got too hot under his lasagne of blankets, and so had thrown off his pyjamas rather than disturb the integrity of the layers. Pyjamas that he hadn’t put back on when he ran downstairs, too desperate to find out what the hell was going on.
And so, instead, he simply wipes flour off his right nipple.
At least he still has his underwear on. If only they weren’t the novelty Love Hearts-sweets-patterned ones that Haf bought him for fake Valentine’s last year.
Oh God, and he’s wearing socks too. Novelty pants and socks.
And he just wiped his nipple.
This is absolutely mortifying.
‘I was . . .’ Nash trails off and looks up at the ceiling, evidently also realising that Christopher is mostly naked.
Except, because Christopher is taller than him, it looks as if Nash is staring intently at his hairline, which he’s not sure is much better.
Nash’s gaze hops about, settling on a chart about handwashing hygiene above the sink.
‘I woke up really early and you were asleep, and I really needed to get some exercise done as I was going mad, and I didn’t want to disturb you so I came down here and figured I’d just construct a barbell out of some sacks of flour and this broom, except the broom didn’t hold—’
It all rushes out in one enormous hurried and embarrassed sentence.
At least they are as embarrassed as each other.
‘Hang on. Let’s walk that back a moment. You tried to weight-lift flour?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘It seemed like a good idea at the time and was the only thing that wasn’t sharp,’ he says, eyeing the tongs in Christopher’s hand. ‘Hang on. Why didn’t you grab a knife? What if I had been an intruder? You’re going to select me to death?’
‘Why are you obsessed with the knives in here?’
‘I’m just thinking practically!’
‘Clearly.’ Christopher rolls his eyes in annoyance and surveys the mess all around them. ‘Christ, man, you could have impaled yourself. And, if you had, that would have probably affected my insurance. You’re not even supposed to be down here. It was all in the welcome documents I sent Tessa.’
‘Oh. Yes, which I definitely read,’ Nash says flatly.
‘Why would you go somewhere without reading the pertinent information first?’
‘I don’t know, Christopher. Maybe because I’m a normal person who just wants to go somewhere and relax.’
‘Knowing what I’m doing and the rules of the place is relaxing.’
‘Maybe if you’re Type A.’
‘I am not Type A. Not least because that’s some kind of stereotyping nonsense.
’ Christopher folds his arms. There’s nothing wrong with being organised.
Yes, perhaps it would be good if he could be more of an impulsive person, but he used up all his impulsivity last year faking a relationship, quitting his career and buying a business on a whim.
Excuse him if he’s a bit tetchy about sticking to the details.
With one glance at the floured kitchen, he remembers what he’s actually supposed to be annoyed about. ‘Hang on, how did you spin this around to me?’
Nash laughs, his mouth a wolfish grin. ‘It’s just too easy.’
With a furious huff, Christopher hands him the other, non-broken, broom, and says, ‘Clean it up. All of it has to go in the bin.’
‘Even the stuff still in the bag?’
‘Yes, Nash, even that. It’s all contaminated. I can’t sell it.’
‘Well, now I feel bad,’ mutters Nash as he starts to brush flour into small piles.
‘Good.’
Working together, it doesn’t take too long to get most of the floor-flour into a neat pile.
The only problem is, it’s still everywhere else.
They dust it off the shelves and work surfaces onto the floor as there’s no saving any of it.
With a sigh, he realises he’s going to have to Ajax all the stainless steel later as it all looks dusty and ancient, rather than clean and well maintained like it had done yesterday.
He hates doing that stuff. But a job in the bakery kitchen gets him out of the tiny flat, so you win some, you lose some.
Kneeling on the now slightly cleaner floor, he brushes the mound of floor-and-flour-stuff into the dustpan with the little brush.
‘Wait, let me do that,’ says Nash, squatting down and reaching over to grab the dustpan.
‘No, I can do it.’
‘Yeah, but I made the mess. Let me fix it.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘I think, when said with that tone, things are specifically not fine,’ Nash says, tugging at the dustpan insistently.
‘You’re making it worse,’ growls Christopher, pulling back.
‘No, I’m not!’
And that’s when, in this final struggle, the dustpan flies up into the air, covering them both with floor-flour.
It’s such a shock that, for a long moment, Christopher says nothing.
He sits still as a statue, eyes shut and lips sealed so the flour doesn’t get in.
He then wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, which he can only hope is slightly less disgusting than the flour rapidly turning to a sticky paste from the sweat on his face.
Eyes clear, he fixes Nash with a glare.
‘Oh crap,’ groans Nash, picking clumps of flour out of his once-blond now-grey hair.
‘If you brush it off you and down into the dustpan—’ Christopher says, just as Nash enthusiastically shakes himself like a wet dog.
The flour that they had brushed off the entire kitchen is now back everywhere, just in different places.
Nash surveys the damage. ‘That didn’t work as well as I thought it would.’
‘This must be a nightmare,’ Christopher says, still carefully brushing the flour off himself. ‘That’s the only explanation for this. I’m being tortured. My brain has concocted the worst scenario it could possibly think of and now it’s playing out. Thank you very much, sleep paralysis demon.’
‘Round two?’ Nash says, and without another word, they clean up the kitchen. Again. This time, Nash doesn’t argue. They’re so caked in flour so there’s only so much cleaning they can do without shedding little squalls of white.
Once it’s as good as it’s going to get, Christopher decides it’s time to temporarily give up. ‘I am going for a shower. Go upstairs and wait for your turn. When we’re clean, we’ll work out what we’re going to do with you.’
As they ascend the stairs, Nash murmurs, ‘At your command. You know, when you’re bossing me about, it almost sounds exciting.’
A furious flush creeps all over Christopher’s body, and before he can give a second’s thought about his body turning the colour of a very ripe strawberry, he storms into the bathroom and slams the door.