Christmas at the Marshmallow Cafe (Delightful Christmas Book 4) Read online

  Christmas at the Marshmallow Cafe

  CP Ward

  Contents

  Books by CP WARD

  Christmas at the Marshmallow Cafe

  I. Special Leftovers

  1. Boredom among the Aisles

  2. An Unexpected Letter

  3. A Treasured Memory

  4. Elopement Plans

  5. On the Road

  6. Stuck in the Muck

  7. Quimbeck

  8. First Impressions

  9. Around the Park

  10. The Marshmallow Café

  11. New Friends

  12. Staff Quarters

  13. Decisions and Dilemmas

  14. Jingle Bells

  15. Coming Around

  16. Gene

  17. Love Rites

  18. Marshmallow Marshes

  19. Culinary Adventures

  20. Down to Business

  21. The Tree

  22. Letters

  II. A Magical Awakening

  23. Golden Tickets

  24. Snow

  25. Coaster

  26. The Mystery

  27. Paper Trail

  28. Family Blues

  29. Grand Reopening

  30. Weddings and Possibilities

  31. Investigations

  32. Mysteries Unearthed

  33. Trusting Fate

  34. Stuck in the Snow

  35. Happy Endings

  Merry Christmas

  Acknowledgments

  Contact

  “Christmas at the Marshmallow Cafe”

  Copyright © CP Ward 2020

  The right of Chris Ward to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author.

  This story is a work of fiction and is a product of the Author’s imagination. All resemblances to actual locations or to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  Books by CP WARD

  I’m Glad I Found You This Christmas

  We’ll have a Wonderful Cornish Christmas

  Coming Home to Me This Christmas

  Christmas at the Marshmallow Cafe

  For John,

  never one to turn down a marshmallow

  Christmas at the Marshmallow Cafe

  Part I

  Special Leftovers

  1

  Boredom among the Aisles

  A human being in outer appearance only, the manager of the Weston super Mare branch of Morrico was rumoured to be everything from a devil in human clothing to a closet politician.

  Bonnie Green looked up as the Old Ragtag bore down on her out of the colorful, brightly lit tea and coffee aisle, his bad leg scraping at the floor as he dragged it after him, his unruly hair leaping like poorly synchronized swimmers with each laborious step. His face, rather in keeping with his appearance, suggested some deep insult had been inflicted on his very being, and that someone needed to be punished.

  Cyril Reeves looked down at the clipboard he always carried, even though no one in living memory could ever remember him writing anything down, and then back up at Bonnie, eyes narrowing behind the 1950s horn-rimmed spectacles he wore. Crouched beneath the checkout on a chair set too low—supermarket policy; Cyril claimed it made the customers feel more important—Bonnie tried to force a smile.

  ‘Yes, Cyril?’

  The Old Ragtag leaned on the counter then idly picked at a blemish on the stainless steel as though ordering the composites of metal and their imperfections was Bonnie’s personal responsibility.

  ‘I hear you were in the backroom when the music was changed. It’s November the fourth. Why did you put on the Christmas songs CD? You know store policy. Christmas songs cannot be played until November 6th. November 5th inclusive is too close to Halloween.’

  Bonnie groaned inwardly, but outwardly maintained a plastic smile. ‘I do apologise, Cyril. I mistook the date.’

  ‘See that it doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘Of course.’ She gave him her best smile, the one she usually reserved for handsome young shoppers.

  ‘Good. And by the way, I prefer Mr. Reeves while we’re at work. Let’s keep things formal, shall we? I wouldn’t want to hit you with a disciplinary.’ Then, in a moment which made Bonnie wish she hadn’t eaten tuna sandwiches for lunch, Cyril winked. ‘Cyril is fine at the staff Christmas party.’

  As soon as his back was turned, Bonnie looked at Jean on the adjacent till and rolled her eyes. Jean covered her mouth to suppress a laugh as the Old Ragtag stumped off into the aisles, no doubt to terrorise some of the younger staff who were actually afraid of him, as though he were store manager by day, serial killer by night.

  ‘Big ugly fish in a small, dirty pond,’ Jean said.

  ‘That we also happen to be stuck in,’ Bonnie said. ‘God forbid we allow any joy into our work lives.’

  ‘You know,’ Jean said, ‘I picked up a job paper on the way out yesterday. Thought I might have a look.’

  ‘Anything catch your fancy?’

  Jean laughed. ‘At my age? I’d be jumping out of one fishbowl into another. Sometimes wish I’d made better decisions earlier in life.’

  Bonnie nodded, understanding only too well. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Oh well, at least you’re off in a few. I’m stuck with him until nine. You know he does double shifts almost every day?’

  Bonnie nodded. She craned her head to see into the nearest aisle, where the Old Ragtag was berating some poor school kid for not properly lining up the biscuit packets. ‘I’m pretty sure he’d doing a fiddle there. He just likes to terrorise us.’

  Jean smiled, then turned away as a customer approached. Bonnie settled back into the position she had taken for granted for the last ten years, smiling as a lady with two sulky teenagers in tow approached.

  ‘Gavin, can you please give me a hand with this?’ she snapped at the boy, who was leaning over a handheld video game. Then, turning to the girl, she huffed, ‘Eliza? Can you help me unload the trolley?’

  With a sigh as loud as a departing steam train, the girl stomped over and began dumping food onto the conveyor with far more aggression than necessary. As Bonnie began to run up the items on the scanner, the woman gave her a smile.

  ‘I suppose they’re not teenagers for long,’ she said. ‘Once they hit their twenties I expect they’ll turn back into normal human beings.’

  Bonnie gave her a sympathetic smile and muttered a generic reply. Sure, they will, she thought. And they’ll go off and get on with their own lives and leave you behind.

  As she finished ringing up the woman’s shopping, she couldn’t help but notice the clock. Five to five. She was almost done. It was so nice to be on the day shift, to get to eat dinner at a reasonable time. She had nothing planned: perhaps she’d stop by the chip shop on the way home, or even live it up a little and get a Chinese. The Peeking Duck takeaway on the high street did a great chow mein.

  Both the chip shop and the Chinese were shut. There was another Chinese a fifteen minute drive away, but with her little Metro and its misfiring heating system stuck in traffic, Bonnie gave up. With roadworks contributing to the rush hour mess, she didn’t get home until six-thirty. As she stumbled in through the door of her little terrace on Westing Road, she wasn’t sure she could be bothered to eat at all.

  She kicked away some circulars from the mat, took off her coat, and went i
nto the living room. It was chilly even this early in November, so she turned on the heating and then slumped into an armchair without even taking off her shoes. She had already ditched her uniform at the supermarket—at one point Cyril had tried to distribute t-shirts with the company logo to be worn outside of work as a form of passive advertising, but the plan had fallen flat on its face—but she still liked to get out of the clothes she had worn underneath. They always smelled of the disinfectant everything was sprayed with, and mingled with her sweat, they were like wearing a bad memory.

  Without moving, she tried to remember what food she had in the house. Some pasta. A jar of pickles Debbie had brought round and left. Perhaps there was a frozen pizza, but it was months old. Working in a supermarket gave Bonnie a particular dislike for the places, and without anyone to cook for, she rarely felt the need to stock up. Perhaps she could wander down the street to the greasy spoon and gorge on a plate of deep-fried heart attack. She was almost tempted until she remembered the last time she had gone down there. Sat in the window, a lonely fifty-something woman eating fried bread and sausages, a middle-aged man in a coat far more expensive than Bonnie could ever afford had come in off the street to ask her for a going rate.

  She had been almost flattered before telling him where to go.

  Since then she had always preferred to eat at home.

  The TV remote was poking out of a crack in the corner of the sofa. It required at least three steps to reach it, then the additional effort of pressing the button to switch it on. And what for? It was Tuesday. Some glossy fly-on-the-wall show where everyone was young and beautiful? At least Eastenders was so miserable it made her happy about her own nothing of a life.

  Perhaps it would be easier to just sit in the chair and wait until she decomposed. It had been months since Steve or Claire had so much as included her on an email circular, and even then it had probably been by mistake. They blamed her for their father’s leaving, she knew. They always had, and over the years she had begun to believe them.

  Fall asleep here in the armchair and never wake up. It would be months before anyone found her, years perhaps. She would be nothing more than a skeleton, or ideally, dust, so a simple vacuuming would erase her from existence. Her kids could throw her furniture out with the rubbish, and her landlord could rent out the property again.

  Over. Gone. Done with.

  BURRRRINNNGGGG—

  Bonnie jumped as the door bell rang. Sometimes she forgot she even had one.

  2

  An Unexpected Letter

  Bonnie opened the door to find Debbie standing on the doorstep.

  ‘Good, I’m glad you’re home,’ Debbie said. ‘I need a heart-to-heart. I got dumped again.’ She held up a plastic bag as though it would convince Bonnie. ‘Did you eat yet? No? Good. I got a filthy vindaloo. Figured I was going to cry anyway. And I picked up a DVD from Save the Children. Hachi, with Richard Gere. Don’t worry, he doesn’t last long. It’s all about the dog, which gets old and dies a sad, lonely death. Never cried so much. Might need to again. That work?’

  Bonnie smiled. ‘Sometimes I think you’re my guardian angel.’

  ‘Huh? You know there’s no such thing. There might be a hell, but there’s certainly no heaven. Hell, definitely. My whole life is in it.’

  ‘Well, let’s see what we can do.’ Bonnie stepped back to allow her next-door neighbour’s black-clad, greasy-haired niece into the house.

  ‘Take the gear,’ Debbie said, handing over the bag. ‘Go and heat up the naan a minute. They always go cold. Yours is the plain. Mine’s the turmeric and ginger. I needed something to clear out the sniffles.’

  Debbie gave a dramatic sniff as if to emphasise the point. Bonnie took the bag and headed for the kitchen, aware it would take Debbie a couple of minutes to unlace the knee-length boots she wore.

  A few minutes later they sat across from each other at Bonnie’s kitchen table. Debbie, having removed her trenchcoat like a beetle shedding its shell, wore a leather tunic over an Iron Maiden t-shirt, along with black jeans. She shoveled vindaloo into her mouth with a tablespoon, her forehead beaded with sweat, occasionally swiping the braids of dyed black hair out of her way. Bonnie, picking slowly through a curry so hot the aroma alone burned her lips, watched her best friend with an unavoidable sense of amusement.

  ‘So, when do you want to tell me what happened with Ben?’

  ‘Colm. Ben was last month. I’ve blocked his Twitter and everything.’

  ‘Okay, Colm. Is that short for something?’

  Mark.’

  Bonnie lifted an eyebrow. ‘Is there a specific reason how Mark became Colm?’

  Debbie looked up, the tunic laced too tight across her chest creaking with the movement. ‘His name’s Mark Briscol. Briscol, M. Get it?’

  ‘What’s that, from his prison record?’

  Debbie scowled. ‘He only had an ASBO. And that was only because he got mad at his grandmother’s cat. It took a dump on his car windscreen.’

  ‘So he cleaned it with a chainsaw?’

  ‘Are you taking the Mickey?’

  Bonnie waited until Debbie turned to grab a handful of naan before she let herself smile. ‘Would I?’

  ‘Yeah, you would. You think I’m like some comedy show.’

  Bonnie shook her head. ‘I take every word you say with deadly seriousness. So, what happened?’

  Debbie finished off her last spoonful of vindaloo and let out a belch, catching herself with a pardon just in time.

  ‘That filled a hole,’ she said. ‘Right, I was talking about Colm?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He dumped me. Right in the middle of the dancefloor at Kevil’s.’

  ‘The rock club?’

  ‘Yeah. Sweat pit, that place is. Hell. You going to finish that?’

  Bonnie smiled and passed across the remains of her vindaloo, taking her plain naan before Debbie could lay claim to it too. ‘Go for it.’

  ‘Thanks. So, I’m on the dancefloor, and I’m getting into some Judas Priest, and you know, I’d put some ball bearings into my braids just to keep them straight. Colm reckoned I punched him but it was just the hair, you know?’

  ‘You got a little excited.’

  ‘Yeah. And so he said he wanted someone who was a little more of a lady. I mean, who does he think he is? That One Direction-liking pri—’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that,’ Bonnie interrupted.

  ‘I saw the CD in his car. He tried to pretend it was his little sister’s, like he’d had to put it on for her when he dropped her off at ballet class.’ Debbie loaded another heap of vindaloo into her mouth, then coughed, managing to hold her mouth closed but appearing for a few seconds to go into some kind of sudden seizure. Bonnie leaned across and patted her on the back until she had got herself under control.

  ‘Men are all scum,’ Debbie said at last, her face red. Sometimes I wish I batted for the other side. ‘Let’s open the wine.’

  ‘That sounds like a great idea,’ Bonnie said. ‘Did you bring any?’

  Debbie shook her head. ‘Nah. Just a couple of cans of Guinness. I was thinking about you. Fifty-odd and divorced, you must have wine. How else are you supposed to get through the evenings?’

  ‘That’s a good question. I’m afraid I must have finished it off drowning my sorrows last night.’

  Debbie shrugged. ‘Not to worry. I’ll spot you a can. If we need to carry on I’ll do a booze run down to the corner shop later. I know the kid who works nights. I got him some Cinderella tickets last summer.’

  ‘The musical?’

  Debbie shook her head. ‘The eighties hair-metal band. Reunion tour. They suck. Got them free with a magazine and would have thrown them away but we were talking and he said he’d never been to a concert. I figured it was best to start low.’

  ‘He didn’t like it?’

  Debbie scowled. ‘Have you seen his hair? Looks like he’s got a dead cat on his head. Thinks they’re the best band i
n the world. Fourteen and I’ve already ruined him.’ She shrugged. ‘Oh well, kid loves me now. Always knocks a couple of quid off.’

  They cleared away the plates and moved to the living room. Debbie loaded the DVD into the player and sat back on the sofa, pulling the coffee table over so she could put up her feet—black socks with red devil logos on the ankles. The casualness of her manner never ceased to make Bonnie laugh; she sometimes wished everyone could go through life with the same casual ignorance of social rules. Debbie was a walking stereotypical trainwreck, but since the night Bonnie had found Debbie banging drunkenly on her door—the girl having mistaken in which house she lived upon returning after a rock club bender—they had been best friends. Debbie and her endless dramas was a nostalgic reminder for Bonnie of the youth that somewhere along the line she had left far behind.

  The DVD had loaded up its start screen, a little dog icon hovering over START MOVIE. Debbie swigged from her can of Guinness and sighed.

  ‘Honestly, sometimes I’m envious of you,’ she said, swinging her head to look at Bonnie, who hadn’t yet opened her can. ‘I mean, you’re what? Fifty-five, single, a homeowner, your kids leave you alone—’