Page 46 of Welcome to Pennycress Inn

After saying goodbye once again, Laura walked back along the garden path, feeling a lot lighter than she had been on the walk up.

Jackson held his hand up enquiringly, first showing the thumbs down signal and then the thumbs up. She replied by giving him the thumbs up.

As she neared the car, Jackson leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door for her. ‘How did it go?’

‘Great. Really good, actually! I’m glad you suggested me visiting. It’s cleared up a lot of questions for me and I’ve learned a lot about Pennycress as well.’

‘That sounds positive.’ Jackson started the ignition.

‘Yes, it was.’ She grinned. She needed to process everything Vivienne had told her, about the extra functions being offered at Pennycress through to the way Evie Taunton had behaved. She didn’t really understand why Evie would do what she had, but she was determined to find out.

‘Did Vivienne shine any light on the reason why people are treating you as they are?’ Jackson glanced at her as he drew away from the kerb.

‘Yes, and no. The people in the village love her and respect her just as you’d said, and she said some of it could be the fact that the local residents just don’t like change. But she also mentioned that Evie Taunton had told her that I was renting the inn from the previous landlord.’

‘Renting it?’

‘Yes. And so, Vivienne suspects that people probably figure that if they can encourage me to leave, then Mr Yates will have to start the process of finding a tenant again and lose out on the rent money in the meantime. I guess they want to prove a point to him.’

‘Okay… that makes sense about people wanting Mr Yates to lose money. From a few things I’ve heard in the pub, I don’t think he had many fans here when he moved out himself decades ago and then fewer fans when he failed again and again to help Vivienne with the upkeep of the property, so I can kind of see the logic in that, although it still seems harsh to behave the way they have to a complete stranger.’

‘Yes, I guess it does.’

‘But Evie? I can’t imagine her telling people you were renting from Mr Yates on purpose. What would she stand to gain from it?’

Laura shrugged. ‘I really don’t have a clue. Not much makes sense to me at the moment. I mean, it makes more sense thanwhen I walked in there to see Vivienne, but I still don’t feel I understand all of what’s going on.’

‘No.’

Laura looked out of the window as they drove back to Wisteria Lane. She could do with an early night. She felt so emotionally drained after her conversation with Vivienne.

22

Stretching her arms above her head, Laura tried to inch her back taller. It hadn’t done her any good to move the furniture around in the owners’ suite by herself, but she’d been too impatient to wait until Jackson finished work to ask him. Still, it looked better now after her reshuffle. And it felt more like hers. As though she was putting her stamp on the place a little.

Her mobile phone rang, and she picked it up. ‘Hi.’

‘Hey, Laura.’ Jackson’s voice wafted through the phone, filling the room. He sounded cheerful. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Right now?’ She looked around at the pile of clothes she had taken out of the drawers to make the furniture lighter to shift, at the clumps of dust on the floor from where she’d pushed the wardrobe along and the cobwebs she’d unearthed from behind the curtains. All the stuff that could wait if it meant she could spend some more time with Jackson. ‘Nothing.’

‘Great. I was hoping you’d say that. I have a favour to ask you.’

‘Go on.’

‘Will you come down to the pub for a bit, please?’

Laura sank onto the edge of the bed, disturbing the pile of clothes. Leaning down, she plucked a T-shirt from the floor and replaced it in the now untidy heap on the bed. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’ Yes, Vivienne had explained why people might be treating her the way they had been but Laura hadn’t yet had the opportunity, or mustered up the courage to do anything, to speak to anyone, in an attempt to dispel the myths Evie had been spreading.

‘Please? I have a new menu I’m testing and I’m in need of an impartial opinion.’

‘I’m not sure. I don’t know how impartial I can be, anyway.’ She wasn’t impartial at all, not when it came to anything to do with Jackson. She was falling for him, and fast. Maybe it was because of their history, because they knew each other so well, or maybe it was because she’d always harboured feelings for him ever since that teenage crush. She wasn’t sure, but one thing she did know was that she was completely incapable of being impartial.

‘Please? Just for a bit?’ Jackson pleaded down the line.

How could she say no to that voice, to him? She exhaled heavily. ‘Okay, okay, but I’m legging it right out of there the moment anyone gives me a dirty look.’

‘Deal.’

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