Page 45 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘Yeah. It’s not a lake loch though. It’s a sea loch. Like an inlet.’
Jodie understood. ‘I love being by the coast.’
‘Me too.’ Bella turned towards the village, pointing out the pub as they walked by. ‘And then up there is the community hall. It’s pretty run-down though. We keep talking about fundraising to reopen it, but so much goes on at the castle now. I think it feels less urgent than it did.’ The pub nestled next to a row of tiny stone cottages. As they continued along the seashore, the row of older houses thinned out and were replaced by a small estate of newer builds. Behind the houses the hill rose up into the mountains. It was spectacular.
At the end of the estate Bella stopped and crossed the road towards the buildings. ‘Village shop.’
Jodie stopped. ‘Where?’
Bella laughed. ‘Oh. Yeah. I’ve been here too long. I’ve sort of forgotten what regular shops look like. Come on. You’ll get used to it.’
Jodie remembered very well what normal shops looked like. They had aisles and shopping trolleys and car parks. They weren’t what seemed like the entire contents of a big Tesco crammed into a domestic garage. There was fresh fruit and veg at the front, and then shelves on shelves on shelves of tins and packets. ‘They’ve got everything in here.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly, love.’ Anna popped up from behind a display cabinet. ‘We couldn’t fit everything in here. Non-food stuff’s out the back.’
‘Out the back’ didn’t mean in some unseen storeroom. Following Bella through Anna’s back garden they found tinfoil, bin bags, toiletries and stationery stacked up in the garden shed.
‘This is bonkers.’
‘Needs must, love,’ Anna explained. ‘There used to be a post office and a greengrocer and everything up by the pub but one by one they all went.’ She shrugged. ‘And then the community hall had to close so we couldn’t even have the tea room there any more.’
‘So you opened this?’
‘Well, someone had to. Otherwise the whole place was going to die a death. People can’t drive to Lochcarron every time they need milk.’ She smiled. ‘It wasn’t my retirement plan.’
‘Like you were ever going to retire.’ Flinty’s deadpan voice carried across the garden. ‘Is Bella back there?’
‘Aye.’
‘Came to give her and her shopping a ride back over.’
Jodie followed the other women back into the garage shop.
‘While you’re here, Margaret,’ Anna addressed Flinty. Logically, Flinty couldn’t be her actual name, but she definitely gave off strongerFlintyenergy thanMargaret. ‘We need to talk about Christmas decorations.’
‘We’ve already had our instructions from Nina. White, gold and silver.’
‘White.’ Anna shook her head.
Flinty shrugged. ‘It’ll be a change.’
‘Exactly.’ Anna offered this single word with the same intonation as a witness in the final scene of a courtroom drama declaring thatthatwas the man who killed their father.
‘White is pretty,’ Jodie suggested. ‘Classy?’
‘White is all very well,’ Anna muttered. ‘But we’ve done red and green for Christmas for the last ten years. People already have the lights.’
Flinty pursed her lips. ‘And at the last meeting we agreed on something different.’
‘We didn’t all agree,’ muttered Anna. ‘And she wants to switch on on twenty-second November.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s too soon. We’re not some big shopping mall that plays Christmas tunes from the middle of September. Decorations go up at the start of December. They always have done.’ Anna folded her arms.
‘I think the earlier switch-on sounds good.’ Bella beamed. ‘We can be festive for longer.’
‘First December is quite long enough.’
