Page 50 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
Bella nodded. ‘Yes. I’m not telling you though. If it’s positive, I have to tell Adam first.’
‘That’s fine,’ Jill reassured her.
Jodie glanced around the room. Flinty and Veronica looked decidedly like the idea of anyone knowing anything before them was an anathema.
Bella made it as far as the door. ‘I don’t think I can…’ She looked around the room. ‘Gemma, I know this is really outside of your job description, but can you?’ She nodded towards the door. ‘Moral support.’
‘Oh!’ Jodie pulled herself out of the sagging sofa and followed Bella into the hallway. ‘Are you sure? I mean, Veronica’s family and Darcy and Jill’s…’
‘That’s why. I can’t… I mean, I do not have time to be pregnant. I need someone who isn’t going to gush.’
‘I don’t think Veronica would gush,’ Jodie pointed out.
Bella’s tense face cracked a smile. ‘No. But… you’re not a gusher, are you?’
Jodie thought she might well be a gusher, but that was Jodie. Gemma was much more contained.
They’d reached the door to what turned out to be a bathroom. ‘Now stand there and don’t let Poppy come in.’
‘What?’
‘I mean, not that you can stop her.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Realisation crept over Bella’s face. ‘You haven’t had taps randomly turn themselves on, or stuff turn up somewhere completely different from where you put it?’
Well, yes, actually she had. Just yesterday the pen Jodie had been using had completely vanished from the arm of her chair and reappeared an hour later on the floor next to the main hall coat stand. Not knowing where she’d left things was an entirely normal part of Jodie’s day though. ‘Maybe.’
‘That’s Poppy. Castle ghost.’
‘Ghost?’
‘She’s harmless. I think she gets bored and…’ She stopped talking and stared at the pregnancy test in her hand. ‘I’m putting this off, aren’t I?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you want to take it for me?’
Jodie shook her head.
‘Right.’ She ripped the cellophane off the box and read the instructions. ‘One minute then.’
‘Good luck. You know, for whichever you’re hoping for.’
Bella took a deep breath in. ‘Right.’
Jodie waited in the hallway. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen seconds before Darcy joined her. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t wait.’
Jill was only a second after her. And then Flinty. Finally Veronica. ‘Well, if everyone else is out here.’
Only Pavel had stayed in his place on the other side of the door. Jodie made her way back to where he was waiting. ‘Everyone’s on tenterhooks.’
He shrugged. ‘Bella said to wait here.’
‘Do you always do what you’re told?’
He considered for a second, more seriously than Jodie’s tone deserved. ‘I try to do what’s right,’ he finally responded.
