The Little Christmas Kitchen by Jenny Oliver

Author:Jenny Oliver [Oliver, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Holidays, Contemporary, General
ISBN: 9781474007795
Google: ZQupBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Carina
Published: 2014-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

MADDY

Maddy was woken by a shaft of light streaming through a gap in the curtains right into her eyes. She got up to yank the material closed, to stay in the cocoon of dark oblivion, to forget she had to go back to the bar tonight, that she was lonely, that she was exposed as naive and innocent, and to top it all, that she still didn’t have her suitcase, but her eye was caught by the sliver of view.

Outside the street was inches thick with white.

Jumping out of bed, Maddy stood with her hand holding the fabric of the curtain, looking out at the piles of snow teetering on the lip of the black railings, and branches that bowed under the weight of frosting. A spider’s web across a panel in the window shimmered with beads of ice like diamonds. On the window sill was a little trail of bird footprints, on the pavement a freshly built snowman, twigs for hair and sweet wrappers for eyes. A kid in red gloves was throwing snowballs at passing cars. Icicles hung like daggers along the eaves of the building opposite. All around it was like the world had been coated in marshmallow. The sun that had woken her was dazzling off ice crystals in the air and making the snow sparkle like the crest of the waves back home. Maddy was entranced. The glass in the window fogged as she pressed her nose against it to stare out at the wonderland of white. Never in her life had she seen anything quite like it. A world of silence where glitter danced in the air.

‘Maddy? Hello?’ The sound of Margery’s voice accompanied by a familiar sharp rap on the door made Maddy tear her eyes away from the scene.

She jogged over to the door and yawned. ‘Hi Margery.’

‘Are you not up?’ Margery said, glancing at her wrist.

She seemed to Maddy to be all dressed up in soft leather boots, and a woollen knee length navy dress. There were pearls looped around her neck and a broach in the shape of a basket of flowers pinned just above her right breast. Maddy fleetingly wondered if they were real rubies and sapphires as she ignored the comment about getting up late and said, ‘What can I do for you, Margery?’

‘Well you see–’ Margery said, turning her back to Maddy, ‘I wanted you to zip me up.’ She pointed to where the back of her dress was half open and did a little act to show how she couldn’t reach any further to do it up.

‘Yeah, no problem.’ Maddy leant forward and zippered the teeth together. ‘There you go.’

‘Oh thank you.’ Margery said, then smoothed the dress down with her hands. ‘That’s lovely. Thank you.’

Maddy waited but Margery didn’t say anything else, just ran her fingers down her sleeve, feeling the material and straightening the cuff.

‘You look very smart, Margery. Are you going somewhere nice?’

Margery glanced up, ‘Oh no. Nowhere. I just–’ she paused, smoothed down the material again.

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