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‘I thought you were working for her in exchange for board?’ He raised his eyebrows.
She shrugged. ‘I am, but she’s so lovely and working at the bakery feels more like hanging out with friends than actual working.’
‘You’re being spoilt after having Mrs Hatton as a boss.’
‘Haha, exactly.’ She sat back on her stool. ‘I mean I deserve a break so I’m making the most of it, but I did want to give it to her, but the only place this deserves to go is the bin at the moment.’
Standing up, Joe shook his head and stepped across to her. ‘That’s not so bad. What’s wrong with it?’
‘This.’ Lifting her wreath, Holly watched the ivy fall to the tabletop, leaving the wreath ring bare except for the moss.
‘Oh.’ Joe chuckled as he picked up the fallen ivy. ‘Look, you just need to wind it around the ring and secure it.’
Holly laughed. ‘I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes trying to do just that. You make it look so easy.’
‘It is. You just need to know how.’ Sitting back down, Joe began working on his wreath again.
‘And when exactly did you learn how to do it?’ Picking up a length of ivy again, she wound it around the wreath ring, securing it as Joe had shown her. She gingerly picked it up. That was it. It was holding now.
He nodded towards the woman helping the couple at the tables next to them. ‘We’ve just been shown.’
‘Oh no, you don’t. Don’t fob me off with that.’ Holly twisted on her stall and looked at him. ‘You’ve done this before.’
He shrugged; his eyes fixed on the fir cone he was attaching to his wreath with wire. ‘I might have had a wreath making lesson before.’
She knew it! ‘When?’
Joe shifted on his stool, still wrapping the wire around his wreath. ‘A couple of weeks ago.’
Holly opened and closed her mouth. ‘And you didn’t ask me? You, Susie and Lara made wreaths, and you didn’t ask me.’ She frowned. Of course, they wouldn’t have asked her. She’d avoided anything to do with the festive season over the last few years. Why would they have asked her? It had only been a week ago that she’d made the decision that things had to change, that she had to face up to the one thing she had been using all her energy to avoid. ‘Sorry, of course you didn’t ask me.’
Pausing, fir cone in hand, Joe swivelled on his stool and turned to her. ‘I didn’t ask you because I didn’t go with Susie and Lara. We always ask you to things, you know that.’
‘True.’ She nodded. They did. They had never left her out of any plans they made, they’d always given her the opportunity to come along and even if, at the time, she’d hated them asking her, she was grateful and she was also grateful they had never pushed her either. So who had he gone with then? Apart from the group from his old job, he sometimes went to the local snooker club with, he only ever hung around with her, Susie and Lara. She frowned. ‘Who did you go with?’
Joe dropped the fir cone before bending to pick it up again, avoiding eye contact.
‘You’re hiding something, aren’t you? Was it a date? Did you go on a date? And you didn’t tell us?’
With his fir cone in hand, Joe turned his attention back to his wreath. ‘Maybe.’
‘Joe!’ Feeling as though she were back at secondary school, Holly scooted her stool across to him and placed her elbows on his table. ‘Who did you go on a date with? And more importantly, why didn’t you tell us? You, me, Susie and Lara everything.’
Sighing, Joe placed the fir cone down and turned to her, holding his hands up, palms forward. ‘Okay, you got me. Yes, it was a date. I went on a date.’
Holly leaned her chin in her hands. ‘Who with?’
‘My neighbour.’
Holly opened and closed her mouth. ‘Your neighbour? You went on a date with your neighbour? The one you’ve been talking about for... oh, I don’t know... the past seven months since she moved in? The one you’d told us you’d never ever ever ask on a date because if it didn’t work out it would be super awkward being as she your neighbour and lives right next door?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘So?’
‘So?’
Holly rolled her eyes. He really didn’t want to talk about it did he? ‘How did it go?’
