Page 66 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘I wouldn’t put it past them.’ Anna sucked the air in. ‘That boy was a terror even as a child. Once shot his catapult right at Edward Woofwoof.’ She turned to Jodie. ‘My Hugh’s previous dog.’
‘OK. Well, he’s moved past catapults now,’ Jodie explained.
‘Of course. You can’t sabotage a castle with a catapult.’ Anna explained this as if to a particularly slow child.
‘You can if it’s a big enough catapult,’ Nina pointed out.
‘If it’s that big it’s not a catapult any more, is it? It’s a trebuchet.’
Jill’s eyes widened. ‘The McKenzie estate have bought a trebuchet?’
‘No.’ Jodie glanced at her employer for moral support but Bella was busy stifling giggles into her sleeve.
‘Perhaps Miss Bryant would like to tell us what is going on.’ Veronica once again brought things back to the point.
‘So we’re trying to put on this Hogmanay event, as a sort of unveiling of our event space and big publicity boost for the whole estate.’
‘Oh, I love Hogmanay,’ Nina murmured.
‘I can’t be doing with it. Me and my Hugh like to be in bed by nine thirty.’
‘Oh, I bet you do,’ Darcy smirked.
‘I beg your pardon, young lady.’
Darcy’s face was all innocence. ‘I thought you’d already bought tickets though?’
‘I don’t want to miss anything, do I?’
Jodie’s brain was reeling. How did anyone follow a conversation here? Things jumped from one place to another with nothing to grab hold of. She tried again to anchor them back in the issue with the McKenzie estate. ‘They’ve definitely stolen our band, and we’ve had two different sets of people cancel their bookings.’
‘That could be coincidence,’ Jill suggested.
Jodie shook her head. ‘The people who cancelled said they’d heard about problems at Lowbridge. Someone must have told them that.’
‘Someone who’d got access to our bookings list,’ Bella added.
‘So like maybe they hacked into it, or…’ Jodie looked at Darcy and Bella. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think any of us has left their laptop on a train or anything?’
The other women both shook their heads.
‘We’d announced the band online so it would be easy to find out who we’d booked for the ceilidh,’ Darcy pointed out.
The scale of the task of getting everything ready for Hogmanay had already been too much for Jodie. Starting again whilst also trying to uncover a mole was impossible. ‘I don’t know. Maybe we should cancel the whole thing. Cut our losses?’ She looked at Bella, who had been so kind to her and so welcoming and given her not only a job but a home and a sense that this was a place she might find some sort of peace. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve let you down.’
‘You didn’t tell McKenzie our plans. You haven’t let anyone down.’
The rest of the eyes of the group were suddenly all turned towards her. ‘Why are you so sure she didn’t?’ Anna asked.
What? ‘I didn’t…’ Jodie started to protest. ‘I wouldn’t. I…’ What could she say? She was pulled back into a million different childhood moments, all the times her exuberance had got the better of her, all the times she’d tried to do something nice but forgotten some tiny detail and messed the whole thing up. Sometimes it felt like her whole life was explaining and apologising and pleading innocence. Maybe it didn’t matter any more whether it was her fault or not. Things fell apart around Jodie Simpson. ‘I didn’t,’ she spluttered. She stared at Bella. ‘I promise.’
‘Of course you didn’t.’ Bella gave Anna a hard look. ‘I would never even have imagined that you might. You’re part of Lowbridge.’
Jodie already had a mouth open to defend herself before she’d registered Bella’s reply. ‘You believe me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Oh. OK.’ Jodie leaned back into the sofa, her body tingling with fight-or-flight energy with nowhere to go.
