Chapter Twenty-Three
Christopher
Christopher wakes early to get started on the busy day of cooking with an unmitigated glee. It’s Christmas. And, even if it’s not the Christmas he had in mind, he gets to spend it with his friends, feeding a lot of people who might have nowhere else to go. That feels right.
On one hand, it feels normal waking up before sunrise, but it’s the waking up in Nash’s arms part that feels strange and a little too comforting.
He decides to wake himself up with a hot shower, but before that, he opens the Spanks Squad chat, where he sees a few post-midnight messages he missed while he was asleep.
Kit: merry christmas dickheads x
Haf: HAPPY CRIMMUS
Haf: Is christmassssss
Haf: MERRY CRISIS
Laurel: Are you all right darling?
Kit: Haf discovered limoncello tonight. She’ll be fine.
Ambrose: merry chrysler!
Haf: see AMbrOSE gets it
Haf: ily all
Laurel: Merry Christmas darling. Take a paracetamol before bed x
Haf: where is christopher
Haf: why has he not wished us christmas yet
Ambrose: hopefully he’s celebrating in his own special way
Haf: making gingerbread???
This is followed by several lines of cry emojis from Haf.
Ambrose: if that’s what we’re calling it now
Ambrose: oi oiiiiiii
Kit: ????
Haf: wait are you doing an innuendo
Oh god. Trust Ambrose to have borderline psychic powers. Luckily no one has said anything for a good four hours, so it’s probably safe for him to drop a greeting and leave.
Christopher: Morning! Merry Christmas everyone. Love you all.
Ambrose: did you shag him
Ambrose: did you?????
Christopher: Why are you awake? It’s 6am.
Ambrose: thats a yes then
Ambrose: lads lads lads lads
Ambrose: and the answer is that i’m always perceiving you x
Christopher: Horrifying.
Christopher: I have to go make Christmas dinner for about twenty-five people.
Christopher: Speak to you all later. Have a nice day.
Ambrose: WAIT WHAT ABOUT THE SHAGGIN
As he’s finishing in the shower, Nash jumps in too, passing him with a quick peck on the cheek. It happens so fast that Christopher isn’t even sure it was real.
By the time they make it downstairs to the bakery, it’s getting worryingly close to seven.
‘It feels late to be starting the loaves,’ Christopher says, partly to himself. If they hadn’t been fooling around
last night, maybe he could have got them done. Or woken up earlier. A thick wad of guilt pools in his stomach. What if he fucks this up?
‘Do you have to get up really early?’ Nash says, already busying himself with chopping vegetables for the starter soup.
‘Yes. Usually four to get the dough proving.’
‘Gross. I hate it when I have a call-time that early, because it always happens on the days after I finish late.’ Nash yawns. ‘So, you’re just here all day then?’
‘It’s not just me. Tegan serves the customers.’
Nash gives him a look. ‘So it’s just you.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re implying.’
‘Oh nothing,’ Nash says airily. ‘Just that you’re a bit of a control freak.’
Before Christopher can reply and insist that actually he’s not a control freak, he just really likes things to be done in his own specific way, there’s a knock on the window in the café.
He walks through the bakery kitchen to find Tegan herself at the door, dressed head to toe in black.
The giant hat on her head is fluffy and has cat ears sticking out the top of it, but boy does it look warm.
The men are barely awake, and yet somehow Tegan has had the wherewithal to draw on the sharpest eyeliner he’s ever seen, presumably before caffeine. Oh, to be young again.
‘Morning,’ he says, which turns into a question as she walks past him, stomping the snow off her enormous platform boots. ‘We’re not open today you know?’
This is met with a blank stare.
‘And it’s Christmas?’
She rolls her eyes, and hands him a carrier bag. Inside are a couple of rolls of frozen pastry. ‘For the vegans,’ she says, by way of explanation.
Older people might find Tegan’s special brand of communication offensive or rude, but Christopher just accepts that she’s working on a different wavelength to him.
She does a really good job with the customers so what does it matter if she’s a bit blunt with him on a one-to-one basis?
Nash would definitely agree with Tegan that he’s a bit annoying, so he can hardly hold it against her.
Either way, this mostly non-verbal conversation seems to be the best he’s going to get for now, as she goes behind the counter and hangs her things up in their usual places.
‘Morning,’ Nash says, as he wanders in to start up the coffee machine, and he sees a flash of recognition cross Tegan’s face.
‘Hiya,’ she says, giving him a Tegan’s top-customer-service-level smile. ‘I’m Tegan.’
‘Nash. Nice to meet you.’
‘Look at you trying to run an industrial coffee machine,’ Christopher smiles to Nash as he passes.
‘I’ll have you know I was a great little barista in my teens in between TV jobs, Calloway. When did you start working in customer service? Yesterday?’
This garners a smile from Tegan, and Christopher admittedly feels a little jealous as well as awkward.
Of course he’d never worked in a café before.
His first job when he was a teenager was doing data input for his dad.
All his professional kitchen experience was from the internships he did as part of his course. ‘I mean, yes, it was last year.’
‘Getting down with the plebs, aren’t you?’ laughs Nash.
‘I don’t think . . . plebs,’ he says, struggling to get the word out, ‘is a fixed category, and I think, Nash Nadeau, that as a man easily visible on all streaming services internationally, you might have transcended that class category.’
‘God, you lot really are obsessed with class, aren’t you?’
There are several tea towels within reach, and Christopher has a great desire to whip one into a rope and flick Nash with it.
‘Tegan, do you want a drink?’ Nash asks the empty space where Tegan was previously standing.
They find her on the café side, picking up one chair at a time and moving it carefully to the edge of the room.
‘What is she doing?’ whispers Nash.
‘I’m not sure,’ Christopher whispers back. Then, more loudly, he calls over to her, ‘Tegan, what are you doing?’
This garners a loud groan. ‘I’ve been sent to help, haven’t I? I’m going to clean the floor and then I’ll set up the tables. No point moving stuff around first if the floor is covered in muddy footprints.’
‘It’s not—’ protests Christopher, but he sees that it is. All the stomping through from him and Nash over the past few days has left a spatter of muddy marks all over the centre of the café. ‘Oh, it really is. And that would be a great help, Tegan. Thank you.’
She raises her eyebrows in a face that definitely means well yes obviously. ‘The floor will need to dry and stuff, and setting everything up won’t take me that long, so if you need some help in the kitchen, just say.’
Normally, when she offers the help, Christopher bats it away. But he thinks of what his mother was saying about trust and delegation. Tegan has quite literally turned up on Christmas morning to help them out. There couldn’t really be a greater show of dedication.
‘Well, we were just about to start the loaves. I know you usually miss that part. Would you like to learn how to first?’
‘You’re not going to make me start coming here at four to make them, are you?’ she asks warily.
‘No, I won’t,’ Christopher reassures her.
A beaming smile spreads across her face. ‘In that case, yes please!’
Armed with fresh coffees, Christopher sets out a number of proving baskets, and flour on the central kitchen work surface. It’ll be so much quicker with two hands, even if one is learning on the go.
‘Can we have some music on?’ Tegan asks.
‘I’ll be DJ,’ says Nash, pulling out his phone.
He starts up a playlist of Christmas songs, which opens with an upbeat song about being nice from a Christmas movie, a deeply ironic choice from Nash Nadeau, a man who Christopher would never describe as nice.
Charming, perhaps. Handsome, yes. But nice? Nice is too small a word.
‘Do you want to try, Nash?’
‘Sure. Three hands are quicker than two.’
Strange, he thinks, that they thought the same thing. Perhaps they’ve been spending too much time together.
His yeast starter has been a trusty tool of his for over a decade.
The original tiny jar came from one of his Baking Soc friends at university, who had got it from a witchy aunt known for her rustic bakes and myriad of possibly illegally grown plants.
The sourdough recipe is one he’s been using since he was a teenager, which he tweaked while at patisserie school when he learned all the ways he wasn’t making the best loaves he could.
Now they pretty much always turn out perfect.
Sourdough isn’t particularly fancy, in truth, but people love fresh bread.
Cakes and treats are shinier and easier to sell, especially on miserable days, but what makes a meal is a still-warm slice of softly pillowy bread with a thick crust, slathered in melting salty butter.
That’s what people need today. Some comfort, some nourishment.
He guides Nash and Tegan through mixing up the dough, and how to knead it consistently to develop the gluten, which will be important later, after it’s proved and filled with microbubbles that need to be incorporated back into the dough.
The more kneading, the tighter the crumb will be in the final loaf.
Naturally, Nash is very good at this part. Christopher tries very hard not to look at his toned arms working the dough, and it looks as if Tegan is doing the same.