Kellie Hailes - The Little Bakery of Hopes and Dreams

Not that he should notice them. Or had any reason to.

Annoyed and embarrassed with himself, he set to unravelling another set of fairy lights.

‘Do you still go to church?’ Josie poked around in a box of Christmas decorations that he’d dragged down from the loft.

She hadn’t noticed him noticing her? Good. Callan breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t want her getting the wrong idea. It was bad enough that for a fleeting moment he’d found her attractive.

Not that he hadn’t noticed that she was pleasant on the eye. He had in a general manner. As you do when someone good-looking passes by. Just now was different though, because he’d noticed details. The kind of details you only see in someone special, or someone you hope will become special.

He didn’t want anyone to become that person. The only person who was special to him was the little girl who was sitting at the table out back watching grown-ups in bright outfits dance to silly songs on the tablet.

‘No, we don’t go to church. I was never all that much of a church-goer.’ He reached up and hung the lights on the hook. ‘Only went because my parents did.’

‘Do you spend much time with them now? Have they helped out much since …?’

‘Since Abigail passed away?’ Callan jumped in before Josie had the chance to feel awkward. ‘No. My parents didn’t approve of Abigail. She wasn’t from the same social class as the one I was born into. My falling in love with her, giving up a promising career in an accounting firm and moving to the middle of nowhere to do the accounts of people who earn in a year what my father made in a week … Well, if there’s a black sheep in every family, then I’m it.’

‘Wow.’ Josie twisted a gold bauble round in her fingers.

Callan waited for her to elaborate, but nothing more came.

‘Really? “Wow?” That’s all you’ve got?’ He grinned to show her he wasn’t offended.

‘Well, yeah.’ Josie hung the bauble off her finger and spun it round. ‘Where should this go?’

‘There’s a series of hooks under the counter.’

‘Great, thanks.’ Josie hoisted the box up, walked to the counter, sank down onto the ground cross-legged and began hanging the baubles in their place. ‘It’s just – and please don’t take this the wrong way – you seem so … straight. Black sheep of fancy families are meant to … I don’t know, have tattoos everywhere and piercings in places the majority of us don’t get to see. You wear clothing that could be on the cover of a men’s fashion magazine. You use your manners. You run a business. And you’re a great father. Not what I’d call black-sheep material.’

Callan shrugged. Same way he’d spent years shrugging off the lack of phone calls and visits. The stiff upper lip his family had cultivated came in handy in the face of his parents’ reticence to connect with their granddaughter, let alone their son. ‘That’s my family for you. I don’t regret what I did though. Marrying Abigail. Moving here. The seven years we were together brought me more happiness than all the years I spent at home.’

Josie took hold of the counter with both hands and heaved herself up with a quiet ‘oof’. ‘I can understand that. What’s next?’

The simultaneous sounds of something being dragged across a wooden floor and puffing exertion interrupted their conversation.

‘Tree next, Daddy. And I know Josie can help decorate this one because it’s downstairs, not upstairs.’ Mia dragged the rectangular cardboard box that contained the fake Christmas tree into the shop, around the counter, and released it with a dramatic swipe of her brow. ‘It’s heavy. I need a treat to get my energy back.’

‘Lucky your dad owns a cake shop.’ Josie plucked a miniature chocolate cupcake, replete with chocolate ganache and red, white and green Christmas tree-shaped sprinkles, out of the cabinet and passed it to Mia who quickly stuffed it in her mouth.

‘Thankshoo, Joshie.’ The words came out as mushed as her smile was wide.

Callan stopped himself from reprimanding Josie for giving Mia treats without checking with him first. She didn’t mean any harm, and it had made Mia happy. He’d have a chat about it later, when Mia was out of earshot and there was no danger of destroying the cheerful ambience.

‘Probably should have asked you if that was okay, right?’ Contrition was written all over Josie’s face.

‘Probably. There’s always next time. Especially, like you said, when your father owns a cake shop. It’s hard to resist temptation when it’s right in front of you all day long.’ Callan squatted down and began pulling out the pieces of fake tree, hoping Josie wouldn’t notice the hot spots burning high on his cheeks. His talk of temptation had sounded way too much like flirtation for his own liking. Not that it was, or that he’d meant it that way. Yet, if he really hadn’t meant it to sound like that, would he have thought it sounded like that?

He inserted the trunk of the tree into the base, then righted it, faking concentration as he gave himself a stern talking-to.

He was being silly. Overthinking an innocent statement. He wasn’t being flirtatious. Just nice. Allowing Josie to feel okay about jumping the gun with the cupcake rather than have the easy atmosphere between them disappear.

‘What’s with the fake tree?’

Callan gripped the tree’s plastic trunk as the closeness of the words took him by surprise, nearly causing him to lose his balance. He glanced over to see Josie hunkered down next to him, her inquisitive eyes just a few inches away. He caught her scent – a sweet, comforting mix of sugar, butter and vanilla. He shuffled away from the inviting aroma, grabbed the final part of the tree, stood and slotted it into the lower half, then began fluffing out the spiky, green fronds.

‘We made the mistake of getting a real tree for the shop for the first Christmas. Thought it would add to the festiveness. We may have also been bemused by the rest of the shops’ use of fake trees and wanted to one up them.’ The memory tugged at his lips and erased his previous unease. ‘We found a tree in the woods about ten minutes out of the village, and chopped her down in the middle of the night.’

‘Daddy, that’s stealing.’

Callan sucked his lips into his mouth at Mia’s outrage and forced himself not to laugh. ‘You’re right, Mia. It was. And I just need to talk to Josie about something grown up, so I’m going to mute your ears for a second, okay?’ Mia nodded her agreement, and he placed his hands over her ears. ‘Mia’s right, of course. It was stealing, but we were just starting out and figured what was one less tree in a populated forest if it meant spreading cheer to the rest of the village. Except what we spread were ants. All through the food.’

‘I thought ants nested underground and hibernated in winter?’

Callan shrugged. ‘So did we. Turns out Sunnycombe has many quirks, one being that these ants nest and hibernate in trees, and the warmth of the bakery woke them up. We were in catch-and-release mode for weeks, since Abigail refused to harm a hair on their heads. Not that ants have hair on their heads. Although, maybe they do in these parts. Who knows? It wouldn’t surprise me.’

Josie’s hands went over her mouth to hide her grin, but her amusement was evident in the silent shaking of her shoulders. Her chest rose and fell in a deep breath as she composed herself, then she dropped her hands to her hips, a serious look on her face.

Callan removed his hands from Mia’s ears.

‘That was very naughty of you, Callan. Did you get a gift from Santa that year?’

‘No. Absolutely not. But I was sure to be most well behaved and buy a fake tree the next year so that it would never happen again.’ He ruffled Mia’s hair. ‘So how about we decorate this?’