Chapter Thirty-Four
The café was a warm, cosy, ginger-scented haven.
Jen sat in the children’s area, George on her knee, Amy and Lottie on chairs next to her.
She’d offered to bring them to give the adults a break, and everyone had taken her up on it enthusiastically.
The girls drank hot chocolates laden with marshmallows while George sucked on a chocolate crispy wreath, managing to cover his whole face, hair, hands and a good section of Jen’s jumper, in smears.
Technically, it was Julia’s jumper. But even if it had been her own, her best, Jen wouldn’t have cared.
She watched snowflakes drift gently outside the window and sipped on her cappuccino, a much-needed hum of caffeine slipping through her.
The gingerbread village glowed with the lights that Marnie had placed in the houses, and the little train shunted quietly around the track.
There was something truly magical about this Christmassy depiction of the village, and Jen had to admit that this mini winter wonderland wasn’t so far from the truth.
Babblebrook was a comforting combination of chocolate-box charm and quirky warmth, and Jen caught herself wishing she could stay.
‘Auntie Jen,’ Amy said. ‘Do you think my Christmas wreath needs more glitter?’
She turned hopeful eyes towards Jen. The girls were making wreaths from paper plates that Jen had helped them cut into the right shape, and were now busy gluing every kind of decoration imaginable onto them.
Amy’s wreath wilted under the weight of little pompoms, sequin stars and shiny beads.
It looked like it couldn’t take another thing.
‘Definitely,’ Jen said, bouncing George on her knee, and Amy beamed in response.
‘I did think so,’ she said, nodding.
Lottie was too busy concentrating to consult Jen, her tongue sticking out between her chocolate-stained lips as she carefully placed foam holly leaves evenly around the wreath; her approach was a lot more measured than Amy’s, Jen noted.
Jen bit into the bacon-wrapped date stuffed with brie that she’d ordered. The tang and crunch of bacon combined with the sweet date and melting cheese was delicious, the creamy coffee was doing its work and her head was finally clearing.
George waved his snack in her face, offering her a bite. ‘Num-nums,’ he said.
She laughed, pretending to nibble on the soggy treat. ‘Yum, thank you!’
‘Don’t eat Georgie’s food,’ Amy said, without looking up from her task. ‘He gets dribble on actually everything.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Jen said. ‘How’re your decorations coming?’
The girls held up their wreaths proudly, Lottie’s neat and symmetrical, Amy’s a sparkly cacophony of colour.
‘Wow,’ Jen said. ‘Beautiful!’
It hadn’t taken much for the children to forgive her.
She had listened as Amy told her all about how they’d chosen decorations and been lifted ‘as high as high’ to place them on the tree, and how there had been bacon rolls and they’d sung Christmas songs.
Jen had apologised for missing it, and said she wished she’d been there.
And at last the promise of treats and crafting won them over.
Jen hugged George to her, and talked softly to Amy and Lottie as they worked.
She was still reeling from the terrible discovery that Anthony had just been using her.
She felt so humiliated that, once again, she’d been taken in by a man who didn’t care about her.
Without the children to get up for, she wouldn’t have been able to drag herself out of bed.
She would have been lying in the dark, weeping into a soggy pillow and comfort eating, wondering what it was about her that made her so easy to betray, so easy to leave.
George stuck his chocolate-covered fist into her face, narrowly missing her eye with the small piece of crispy that remained, and smiled his sweet, gummy grin. She laughed, and pretended to eat again, and sighed with something like contentment.
Because she wasn’t in bed. She was in the café, with the children, because they needed her. And she loved them. And they were worth forcing herself to carry on for.
Listening to the soft chatter of Amy and Lottie, Jen felt more solid in her skin than she had for a long time. More steady, despite her rawness over Anthony.
For the first time in years, she felt that she was needed, that she had something to offer.
The realisation that she had a sister who cared for her and respected her, who she could count on and confide in, felt like reaching calm shores after years battling stormy seas. She was hurt. But she wasn’t alone.
Watching the colourful fairy lights that adorned the café window reflected in the snow outside, Jen was reminded of a snow globe, and immediately began thinking of how she could plan an activity for the children to make one.
It wouldn’t take much to organise, and she was sure they would love it.
Perhaps it was something she could help Ted do with his class, too.
She had so many ideas, and not just for festive crafts. She found that she was thinking of number games and reading activities, knowing that she could find a myriad ways to engage and inspire small children, making their learning fun and confidence-building.
This had been going through her mind more and more, until she couldn’t shake the thoughts.
She had pages and pages filled in the notes app on her phone, idea after idea.
Everything she would need, the resources, the planning, the displays that could be made with the finished work.
Something fizzed through her, something that had once been familiar and was now all but forgotten – excitement.
She was so filled with enthusiasm that she needed to share it, she had to talk to someone about this, someone who would understand. Someone who knew her well enough to feel the significance of this evolution in her.
She picked up her phone.