Page 79 of A Recipe for Love
Veronica glanced at her rival. Obviously there was no way she was going to miss out if Darcy was involved. ‘As will I.’
Bella forced a smile onto her face as best she could. ‘Great.’
Whether it was the shortbread, the guilt of adding to Adam’s woes, or the excitement of the cookery school starting, Bella would never know, but something softened Darcy’s mood. ‘It’s not that I’m wedded to that bedroom. I don’t want to move to the coach house.’ She paused. ‘Or the dower house. It feels like being put out of my home.’
Veronica took a sharp breath in. ‘I was rather relieved to move over if truth be known. It drew a line under…’ She shook her head. ‘I suppose it’s not essential though. Perhaps another room in the main house.’
Was this progress?
‘I have always quite liked the Gardenia Room,’ Darcy volunteered.
Bella daren’t interrupt the apparent drift towards compromise.
‘If Lord Lowbridge is happy with that, I don’t see why not.’
Bella had no idea where the Gardenia Room was but she grabbed her victory nonetheless. ‘He would be happy with that.’
‘Very good.’ Veronica nodded. ‘We shall organise that straight away.’
Bella rushed from the summit with the Ladies Lowbridge and ran into the kitchen to find Flinty pacing and glancing at the clock. ‘All your stuff’s in the cool box love. Are you ready?’
As she ever would be.
They arrived at Anna’s for the Ladies’ Group dummy cooking demo with three minutes to spare and were greeted by a large balloon arch in front of Anna and Hugh’s patio doors. ‘What’s that doing here?’
Anna shook her head. ‘Jill offloaded it onto Hugh. He’s a soft touch. What do we want with a balloon arch?’
‘We’re going to use it for Netty’s pictures,’ Nina yelled through from inside the house. ‘Netty’s sponsored silence finishes at eleven. We’re doing pictures of her first words for the Facebook page.’
‘Wouldn’t video be better?’
‘How do you mean?’ Nina came out into the garden.
‘Well you can’t really see that someone’s not silent any more in a picture can you?’ Bella pointed out.
‘I don’t know how to put a video in the facebooks,’ said Anna. ‘You’ll have to film that.’ She thrust Nina’s phone into Bella’s free hand. Bella passed the cool bag along the line to Flinty.
‘OK. So you want to be under the balloon arch then?’
Nina pulled Netty out through the door, positioned her under the balloon arch. ‘Two minutes!’ she shouted.
‘What?’ Bella waved the phone. ‘Do you want to go live then?’
‘Go what dear?’ Nina frowned at her.
‘Live. On Facebook? Like stream the end of the silence live?’
Netty shook her head vigorously.
‘Oh well, if we can,’ Nina said. ‘How exciting!’ She checked the time again. ‘One minute! Everyone in position!’
Everyone in position seemed to mean Netty standing shaking like a leaf under the balloon arch with Nina alongside her bouncing like a hyped-up cheerleader. Bella clutched Nina’s phone in front of them, while Flinty and Anna stood to one side chuntering about not having any truck with the modern instaface malarkey, like the women knitting in front of the guillotine.
Bella tapped to start a live video on the Lowbridge community appeal page and pointed the camera at Nina and Netty.
‘Are we starting?’ asked Nina.
‘Yes!’
