‘Kill me now and the last beats of my heart can be your drumroll,’ Tom said. He was in quite the snipey mood tonight, Mattie noted, as Little Sophie and Sam obligingly stamped their feet.
‘I’m talking about a Mistletoe Photo Booth!’ Nina said with a flourish. ‘We’re going to hire a special photo booth and people, only on receipt of a Happy Ever After purchase, can go into the booth with the one they love and take a picture smooching under the mistletoe. They’ll also get a digital download of their picture, which they can upload to their social media accounts. How exciting!’
‘A photo booth? Won’t that take up a lot of space?’ Posy wondered.
‘Not if we’re going to take out two of the sofas anyway. Besides, photo booths don’t take up that much room.’
‘Sounds expensive.’ Verity looked pained at the prospect of extra expense.
‘Not that expensive. I’ve already spoken to the guy who handles the account and given him all the Happy Ever After artwork, because the booth and the pictures will all be heavily branded. Anyway, you have to spend money to make money, so I said that you’d send him the deposit by tomorrow, Very,’ Nina said briskly. ‘Lots of people want one of these booths but we decided that it works best with the Happy Ever After brand. Because mistletoe equals kissing and we’re a romantic fiction bookshop. Come on! Let’s get excited about this! Whoo!’ Nina punched the air.
‘Maybe whoo …’ Posy tapped her chin with her magic marker as she thought about the possible benefits of the Mistletoe Booth. ‘It’s quite sweet, really, isn’t it? We get all these men looking put upon as their partners browse our shelves, but they’d soon cheer up if they were pulled into a photo booth for a sudden kiss.’
As far as Mattie was concerned, the whole thing: mistletoe, public displays of affection, pulling people into a small dark enclosed space, was ghastly.
‘You do know that kissing someone without their consent, even if there is mistletoe involved, technically counts as an assault?’ she pointed out and watched in satisfaction as jaws dropped.
‘Oh no, we can’t have any assaults in the shop. Absolutely not,’ Posy said, aghast.
‘Unless … well, maybe we could get people to sign a consent form,’ Verity suggested, but Nina was flapping her hands and screwing up her face in protest.
‘Nobody likes a Scrooge, Mattie,’ she said censoriously. ‘Happy Ever After customers love romance, so obviously they’re going to love a passionate smooch under the mistletoe. Jesus, don’t be such a buzzkill.’
‘Well, I hate to be another voice of dissent,’ Tom said, though actually being the voice of dissent was one of his reasons for living. ‘But if this monstrosity comes to pass, I’m not having anything to do with it. I don’t want our older ladies getting ideas. You know, sometimes I think they ask me to climb up the rolling ladder to get books down from the top shelves solely so they can ogle me.’
Mattie couldn’t help snorting. ‘Ha! Who’d want to ogle you?’ It came out much harsher than she intended, and all those present turned to give her a hard-eyed stare.
‘We’ll move on from the Mistletoe Booth for now,’ Posy decided wisely. ‘Verity will need to see a full breakdown of the figures and I need to know exactly how it’s going to work, because it’s all sounding a bit complicated to me. Now, Tom, I can’t wait to hear about all the exciting things you have planned for the shop Twitter in the run-up to Christmas.’
‘I’ve reworked the Twelve Days of Christmas with a romance theme and I’ll tweet a line a day, starting on the thirteenth of December,’ he said in a bored voice. ‘Oh yes, there’ll be all manner of festive hi-jinks. Our favourite Christmas romance novels, one of those stupid Twitter hashtag games where we replace a word in a book title to make it more Christmassy. Like, Pride and Presents, To Thrill a Mockingbird, Me Before Yuletide, blah blah blah, we can give the best ones a prize. Then obviously we’ll have a new Twitter avatar, where the picture of the shop sign we currently have will be adorned with fat robins gaily cavorting. Et cetera and so on.’ He finished up with his weariest sigh yet.
‘Oh my God, Tom! That would all be fantastic,’ Posy said, struggling to write all Tom’s ideas down on her flipchart. ‘I don’t know why you sound like you’re being tortured beyond all measure.’
‘Because the stench of rampant commercialisation makes me sick to my stomach,’ Tom said, and Mattie could just tell that he was about to go into one of his rants about the dangers of capitalism or neo-liberalism or some otherism that he didn’t like. There’d also be lots of multi-syllable words that no one else understood.
‘Dude, if you don’t like rampant commercialisation then don’t work in retail,’ Nina drawled, but Tom wasn’t to be put off.
‘Christmas is just an excuse for people to spend money they don’t have on presents for people who don’t actually need them, all in the spurious name of Jesus,’ he pontificated. ‘And I think you’ll find that actually, according to Aramaic texts, Jesus wasn’t even born in December but on a date in the Hebrew calendar that actually corresponds to September. So, if we’re going to be picky about it …’
‘Oh yes, do let’s be picky about it,’ Little Sophie murmured to Sam, and they exchanged an eye roll so exaggerated and scathing that it could only have come from two sixteen-year-olds already tested way beyond their boredom threshold.
‘… I mean, really, is one Christmas-themed tweet, in all its banality, going to sell books or is it simply going to be part of the problem …?’
Mattie wriggled her right leg because her calf was cramping. Was anyone even listening to Tom? Judging from their glazed expressions, Nina scrutinising her fingernails for any signs of chipped polish, Posy shifting uncomfortably because she’d been on her feet for too long, Verity gazing into the middle distance, then no. Everyone had stopped listening. Had stopped caring. Had stopped having the will to live.
Someone needed to step up and rescue them and it looked like Mattie was going to be that person. ‘Please, I’m sorry to interrupt,’ she fibbed. ‘It’s just that I have some dough proving that I really need to get back to.’
‘I wasn’t finished,’ Tom snapped, but Mattie had delicious festive-themed snacks so she was going to win.
‘Anyway, let’s talk about my Christmas bakes,’ she said, leaning forward with her cake tiers aloft. It was quite gratifying the way that everyone perked up, except Tom, who shot her a look that was blacker than a coalmine in a power-cut. She held up the left-hand tier. ‘These are my savouries. Vegan friendly, individual red cabbage and Brussels sprout tarts, turkey and cranberry Scotch eggs and, instead of my usual sausage roll, for Christmas I’m doing a pig-in-blanket roll. A pork and sage sausage wrapped in home-cured bacon and encased in puff pastry. Here, help yourselves!’
‘Truly, we are living in miraculous times,’ Nina mumbled around the end of a pig-in-blanket roll. ‘This is one of the three best things I’ve ever put in my mouth.’
‘These Scotch eggs, I don’t care if they give me heartburn, it will all have been worth it,’ Posy said and Mattie smiled modestly, though her smile became very thin when she saw Tom taking one of her vegan tartlets and giving it a suspicious look.
‘Then for my sweet selection,’ she held the right-hand tier aloft, ‘I’m doing miniature salted caramel Yule logs, mince pies with a clementine-infused pastry and what look like little Christmas puddings but actually they’re red velvet cake balls,’ Mattie explained, sending her sweet treats round the sofas again. ‘Then throughout December, I’ll also have additional items. For instance, cranberry and orange flavoured shortbread and Christmas spiced buns.’
Again, there was lots of praise and moans of ecstasy and Verity declaring that she hated all mince pies except for Mattie’s mince pies.
‘Good, so glad was all sorted,’