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They walked past the tree and down the hallway and into the kitchen and there on the table stood the gingerbread house.

It was a very wonky version of Pudding Hall, complete with garden at the back, on green icing and with paths and the maze, made from cardboard.

‘There’s Bill and Meredith,’ she said. ‘And some deer,’ she added. ‘The monkeys are in the trees.’ She laughed.

‘Look in the maze,’ Marc said and she moved closer to look over the top. There in middle were two cardboard figures facing each other, propped upright with sticky tape. A woman with short black hair and an apron on, holding a wooden spoon. And a man with sandy hair and a computer in his hand.

‘That’s us,’ Marc said.

‘Am I about to whack you with my spoon?’ she joked.

‘I don’t know that I’m not boring you to death, talking you through my next deal,’ he said. ‘I don’t always take my laptop to the maze but clearly I did this day.’

Marc gently lifted the figures from the maze.

‘Oh don’t break them,’ said Christa, looking out in case the boys where coming.

‘Look,’ said Marc and he showed her the faces of the figures. There were words written on Marc’s face in tiny writing, coming from his mouth.

‘I love you.’

She bit her lip. ‘Oh my God, that’s so cute. We clearly did a terrible job at hiding our feelings.’

She held the little Christa in her hands. She had ‘Are you hungry?’ written on her face and she burst into laughter and tears.

‘This is perfect, truly.’

Marc put the figures back into the maze and pulled her to him.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

‘Always.’

Two Years Later

‘I’m going to call you train tracks from now on,’ Christa gently teased one of the young students in her class.

‘Why?’ the older boy looked belligerently at her.

‘Because you haven’t cut all the way through the leeks.’ Christa picked up some leek that was still joined.

‘You have to cut all the way through,’ she said to the group of teens.

They came every Wednesday and she taught them how to cook basic meals. Today was potato and leek soup. A staple that was cheap and easy and nutritious.

‘You should now have your onion, potato and leek chopped,’ she said. ‘And one clove of garlic crushed and at the ready.’

The kitchen was quiet after the lunch rush, which is when the teens came in and cooked. Some had been in trouble with the courts, some had been recommended by social workers and others by Zane and the team at St William’s.

Hartley House, as the pub had been renamed, had become a place to meet, get help, give help, connect and learn.

While it wasn’t an easy process to create Hartley House, with the paperwork and permits and convincing the council, eventually Zane and Christa got it over the line and then more hard work began.

Paul had helped design a place that was both warm and comforting, but not over the top, under Christa’s guidance.

‘I don’t want people to feel they’re in McDonald’s but I also don’t want them to feel intimidated as though they’re at a wannabe Cliveden,’ she had said.