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“What happened to the mince pies which were in the tin?” Adam called out. There was a pause, and then he added, “And the chocolate log looks more like a chocolate stump now.”
Lucas and Wes looked guiltily at each other.
“Honestly, you two,” Adam continued, “I go to work yesterday and leave you at home alone and you eat everything in sight. Ros has organised a pre-Christmas get together and I promised to provide something sweet. Now the only way I can do it is by taking you two along and saying my offering is already inside you.”
“We could not go,” Lucas suggested.
“You’re not getting out of it that easily,” Adam said. Then his expression softened a little. “I know you don’t like this sort of event, but I promise we won’t stay too long; we can say we need to get Wes home.”
“I know,” Lucas replied. He tried to look enthusiastic, but failed.
“In the meantime, what are we going to take? I really don’t fancy battling the shops again,” Adam said.
“We could make some biscuits and ice them,” Wes said. “We’ve got lots of cutters.”
“Have we got sufficient ingredients?” Adam asked.
Lucas looked in the cupboard. “Flour, caster sugar, icing sugar, lots of sprinkly things, food colouring. We’ve got plenty left over from when we made Wes’ birthday cake. And there’s marge and eggs in the fridge.”
“Excellent,” Adam said. “Finally buying enough ingredients to make three cakes has paid off.”
“You know as well as I do, we had to have enough so that if the first cake went wrong we could make a second one.”
Adam laughed. “True. And now, due to the magic of the internet, I have a basic biscuit recipe.”
They decided to share the ingredients out so they could all make a batch of dough, with the end result there were sixty biscuits ready for baking. It seemed a little excessive to Adam, but he reasoned whatever they didn’t take would get eaten at home anyway.
Whilst Adam and Wes were putting the biscuit shapes onto the baking trays Lucas had been looking at the web. So when Wes asked what they were going to do whilst the biscuits cooked and then cooled, Lucas answered ‘melting snowmen’.
“What?” Adam asked.
“It can be my contribution,” Lucas replied. “Don’t look so worried. We can use the packet of marshmallows and the boring plain biscuits. We ice the biscuit, put a marshmallow at one side and add a couple of mini chocolate drops for eyes to make the head. Then we put some small coloured sweets for the buttons on the melted body and, hey presto, melted snowmen.”
Lucas showed Adam and Wes the pictures he’d found. Adam had to admit they looked reasonable, but said he would be happy to leave the construction to the other two.
Once the biscuits had cooled they set to work icing them. Adam carefully picked out the outline of the stars and snowflakes with silver balls. Wes gave the snowmen colourful scarves and hats using the multi-coloured sprinkles. And Lucas made up a batch of green icing for the Christmas trees and added coloured sugar shapes as decorations.
When all the biscuits were iced Adam looked at them critically. “They look rather good,” he said, “I’m amazed.”
Lucas said, “We ought to really, um, you know …”
“One each,” Adam said, “and no more. But I agree we need to try them.”
Having satisfied themselves the biscuits were edible, Adam packed them into a tin and Lucas found a box for the melting snowmen.
On their arrival at Ros’ flat Adam presented her with the biscuits. “How pretty,” she said and made space for them at one end of the table. Lucas then gave her the melting snowmen and she indicated a gap at the back where he could put them.
Adam circulated amongst the other guests, while Lucas and Wes stayed to one side. After a while Malcolm came over to talk to them. He offered to keep Wes company while Lucas spoke to some of the others, but Lucas thanked him and declined the offer, and Malcolm didn’t push him.
As promised, after an hour, Adam said he needed to take Wes home and they found their coats. While waiting to say goodbye to Ros, Lucas had the satisfaction of hearing Jo and one of the others telling Ros how sweet the melting snowmen were. He looked at Adam, who grinned back at him.
They said their farewells and walked back to where they’d parked the car. To Wes’ delight it was just starting to snow. Fortunately there wasn’t enough to disrupt the traffic, but by the time they reached home it was snowing more heavily. Adam opened the front door, and sent Wes to get ready for bed, with the promise of hot chocolate when he’d done so.
As soon as Wes had started up the stairs, Adam moved out of the front doorway, where he’d been blocking Lucas’ entrance and reached up to brush the snow from Lucas’ hair, before leaning in to kiss him. Lucas responded and they stood pressed together savouring each other’s warmth.