Read The Christmas Café for Free Online

luckily I mean it. You are one hot lady, even if you pretend to be a hundred and three.’
    ‘Hundred and four actually.’
    ‘What’s a hundred and four?’ Tait came in to collect the chalkboard with the day’s specials written on it. A delicious summer greens vegetable soup and homemade cashew, lentil and quinoa loaf with spicy yoghurt dressing on the side.
    ‘I was just... n-not... Bea’s letter, only... she...’ Kim blushed and waved the knife she was using in front of her face as though this might aid her speech.
    Tait stared at her for a second before leaving with the board in his hands.
    ‘Shit it!’ Kim yelled.
    ‘I may be a hundred and four, but I heard that okay!’ Bea tutted.
    During the mid-afternoon lull Bea took a deep breath, grabbed the box of Christmas decorations, gripped the sharp knife in her hand and sank to her knees. She ran the point around the tape that fastened the cardboard box, mindful that Peter had been the last one to seal it. She wound the tape around her fingers as she peeled it from the cardboard, thinking that it probably contained his fingerprints, a little bit of him still there in the place he’d loved. She was about to delve into the box when a sudden punch of sadness hit her stomach. Once these are out of their box, it will be me that puts them away again and that will mean that I’ll have been celebrating Christmas, properly celebrating it, without you. It didn’t even cross my mind to put the decorations up last year, so soon after you’d passed. At the moment, they are still connected to you...
    ‘Need a hand?’ Tait asked as he watched his boss contemplating the box labelled ‘Christmas Lights’ in black marker pen.
    She blinked. ‘I’m just wondering whether we should put these up?’
    ‘Yes! Let’s do it, let’s get the Christmas spirit flowing here!’ He clapped. ‘Sure you don’t want me to sort them? Kimmy’s okay for the minute.’
    ‘No, I’m good. I’ll just prep them and then you can help me string them up. We can have a grand switch-on.’
    Tait gave his ready smile. He was a good kid.
    Bea folded back the wide flaps of the box and paused before placing her hands into the neatly wound spools of green wire. Peter had always been meticulous about his packing and methodical in his organisation. He had even placed a square of blue tape on the ends: as ever, trying to make her life as easy as possible.
    Bea sorted the lights into two piles and stood, brushing the dust from her palms onto her apron. ‘Right, Tait, ready when you are!’
    She handed him the end of one of the strings of lights. He pulled out a chair and used it as a ladder, perching on the edge to hook the big fat bulb around the hook at the end of a girder, feeding the lights through his fingers. He dragged the chair across the floor and stood again in the middle of the room, securing the lights further along.
    ‘This is going to look splendid!’ Bea smiled as she reached for the next string. The two worked diligently for an hour, sorting the lights and fixing them in place, crisscrossing the strands until the whole ceiling was covered in a lattice of bulbs. She excitedly closed up the café, bolting the door and flipping the open sign. Then she called Kim for the big switch-on.
    ‘Right, this is the beginning of Christmas, for me, right here. As soon as these lights go on, I know it’s that special time of year. I think it appropriate we all make a wish, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes.’ Tait nodded, flashing his white teeth.
    Kim self-consciously wrapped her arms around her trunk, folded her lips under her teeth and looked at the floor.
    ‘Close your eyes,’ Bea instructed. ‘We’ll make our wishes and then open them after three, when it will officially be the start of the Reservoir Street Christmas!’
    She shut her own eyes and clicked the switch on the extension lead. She saw the flicker of light from behind her lids as she prepared to make her wish. She had decided to wish