Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Xander led Immy down the back stairs into the chocolate shop. Working in the shop involved a lot of standing around and being on your feet and he didn’t want Immy to have to do that. But he had an idea.
Immy was looking at all the shelves, picking up some of the novelty-shaped chocolates he made and sold.
Chocolate-shaped hedgehogs, penguins, cows, sheep, puppies and teddy bears sat alongside chocolate-shaped pints of beer, champagne glasses, hammers, screwdrivers, graduation caps and chocolate horseshoes.
Most of these were relatively easy to make and were massively popular so they made up the bulk of his income.
‘These are wonderful,’ Immy said. ‘You make everything in here by hand?’
‘Yes, those novelty chocolates are fairly easy. I have to temper the chocolate but I have machines that do that for me. They get the melted chocolate to the perfect temperature of thirty-two degrees, then I pour the liquid chocolate into moulds and let them set. The setting part is the hardest because if the room temperature is too high it just won’t go hard and you can’t just bung them in a fridge as you’ll then get condensation on top of the chocolate which will cause it to bloom.
But I have a cool room out the back that is set to a lower temperature and that makes things easier. ’
He walked over to the truffle cabinet. ‘These truffles are harder to make as there are lots of stages involved in those: making the ganache, making the flavours, adding the right consistency of those flavours to the ganache, letting that set. Sometimes there are multiple layers of different-flavoured ganaches and each one has to set before I add the next flavour, then I make the chocolate shell. Some chocolatiers buy the shells already made and then fill it with their own fillings, and I have done that before, especially in busy periods, but I like to make some of them by hand. The ganache in the middle is traditionally made with real cream but then they only last a few days so we have to have a lot of people to buy the truffles so we can sell them before they go off. So mainly I only make the truffles with cream in if I get a custom order.’
‘This is all very impressive,’ Immy said.
‘I make my own fudge but everything else is bought in. When people come to my sweet shop to get pick ’n’ mix they want the traditional stuff like fizzy cola bottles or the tiny jelly teddies.
And I can’t make them. I do make my own toffee apples around Halloween and chocolate-covered cinder toffee – or honeycomb, as most people call it.
But that’s as far as making things goes. Where do you find the time?’
‘Well that’s why I have Judy. When it’s quieter she mans the shop and I go out the back and make the chocolate.
Making twenty chocolate hedgehogs is something I can do relatively quickly.
The chocolate high-heel shoes take a hell of a lot longer because I have to keep oscillating the mould slowly to ensure the sides of the mould is evenly covered, not too thick and not too thin.
I don’t make too many of those. And making the chocolate is something I can do with Etta too, which she loves.
We obviously take it very seriously, wash our hands, wear clean overalls, we both wear hairnets, even though I don’t really need to, but she can see that hygiene around chocolate is important.
She knows not to eat any of the chocolate or lick her fingers, and I always make her a special tiny hedgehog or puppy or whatever that she can eat afterwards.
But it’s a nice way to spend time together. She loves helping in the shop too.’
‘I bet she does. Every kid used to roleplay working in a shop, taking the money from customers – Etta gets to do it for real. But is that what you want me to do today, serve the customers while you make the chocolate?’
‘Actually, I thought you could help me with the Easter eggs. It’s going to be busy in the shop and it’ll be quieter out the back, plus you can sit down in the cool room.
’ He opened the door and gestured for her to go in ahead of him.
She walked in and looked around at all the chocolate that was in various degrees of setting.
Although the chocolate solidified fairly quickly, it didn’t fully set for twelve hours in most cases, but some of the moulds took longer than that.
‘It is cooler in here,’ Immy said.
He grabbed one of his big jumpers from the hook on the back of the door and came back to her, rolling it up and pulling it over her head.
Her head popped through the hole, making her red curls fluff up, and she looked adorable.
He was so tempted to cup her face and kiss her but she had made it very clear she just wanted to be friends and he had to respect that.
‘You better put one of these protective jackets on too.’
He handed her a white overall jacket to protect her clothes and the chocolate and, after pulling her arms through the sleeves of the jumper, she put the jacket on too. He handed her a clean hairnet and she scooped her hair inside and stretched the net over her head.
‘These are the Easter egg halves. I’ll fix them together later with a thin layer of tempered chocolate but all I want you to do is pipe some different-coloured flowers onto the eggs using these piping bags.’
He opened the fridge and pulled out four different piping bags that held pink, blue, yellow and purple royal icing. He removed the clips he’d put on to keep the icing fresh and added the right nozzle to create small little flowers.
‘I’m not sure I’m going to be any good at that,’ Immy said.
‘It’s very easy, I promise. Look, I’ll show you.
Each row of halves is a pair, you only need to ice the flowers on one half of a pair.
’ He removed one half and placed it down on the boards that he’d cleaned the night before.
He took the red piping bag and squirted a little onto the egg, forming a perfect tiny flower in the bottom left-hand corner.
He repeated the same in the top right-hand corner.
‘We use the eggs to write people’s names or very short messages on, so that will go between the flowers, but some people just buy the plain eggs without a message so we make it pretty for them too.
’ He grabbed the blue piping bag and added two blue flowers at the bottom and one at the top.
‘It doesn’t have to be symmetrical or matching.
Just four or five different-coloured flowers on the bottom and the same at the top. Here, you have a go.’
She took the yellow piping bag off him doubtfully. ‘What if I screw it up?’
‘Just scrape it off and try again before it sets. But these piping bags make it very easy.’
She chewed her lip as she nervously held the piping bag over the chocolate.
‘Just give it a bit of welly, don’t be too gentle.’
She squeezed the bag and out popped a perfect yellow flower.
‘There you go, easy.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t expecting it to look so good.’ She repeated it at the top and sat back and smiled. It warmed Xander’s heart that something so simple could make her happy. ‘Is that all you want me to do?’
‘Yes, a hundred times.’
Her face fell. ‘What?’
‘Just do as many as you want. I can pop in and help you during quiet moments. If you get bored you can come and help on the shop floor, or just go back upstairs and chill out and watch some TV.’
‘OK.’
‘Thank you, this is a big help.’
‘No problem, I might as well do something useful. And besides, I’m the one that should be thanking you. I know you want to shrug it off, but you did something wonderful last night.’
‘Ah, it was nothing, and I don’t expect free labour in return.’
‘Well, you’re going to get it.’
‘OK, I’ll check in on you in a bit.’
He walked back out into the main shop and, after a few minutes of preparation, he unlocked the door and flicked the sign to ‘OPEN’.
He looked back through the window separating the main shop and the cool room and smiled as he watched Immy concentrating on her work. He could definitely get used to having her here.
It had been a manic morning with people buying Easter eggs and other Easter chocolate but as the last customer, at least for now, left the shop, Xander thought he’d go and help Immy with icing the eggs.
He peered through the window and saw she was wobbling precariously in her chair as she was clearly fast asleep.
He quickly locked the shop door, turning the sign to ‘CLOSED’, and then went into the cool room and scooped her up into his arms.
She jolted awake, blinking at him blearily and automatically wrapping her arms round his neck to steady herself. ‘Oh my god, I fell asleep, I’m so sorry. First day on the job and I can’t even stay awake.’
‘It’s OK, I’ll dock your pay for negligence and dereliction of your duties. Come on, let me take you to bed.’ He glanced at the workbench where she had easily completed seventy or eighty eggs. She must have worked non-stop since he’d left her.
She pressed her nose against his neck, sleepily, her eyes closing. ‘Take me to bed, eh?’
He grinned. ‘To sleep.’
‘Spoilsport.’
He was surprised by that as she had been so firm about nothing happening, but he could feel the chemistry between them. He didn’t think it was one-sided. Although he knew this was probably just the sleepiness talking.
He moved to the stairs and carefully started carrying her up them.
‘I can walk,’ she muttered.
‘Really?’
‘Probably.’
‘Let me look after you.’
‘I’m an independent woman, I don’t need anyone to look after me,’ she mumbled against his skin.
‘Let me look after you for me then.’
She peered at him in confusion. ‘For you?’
‘I want to take care of you. Just this once.’
She closed her eyes again and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Very well.’