Page 69 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘OK. I’ll text her and check it’s OK, but put it for now.’
Jodie typed in the address Darcy dictated to her. ‘Why would I be staying there?’
‘I dunno.’ Bella shrugged. ‘Maybe you’re shagging Pav.’
Darcy giggled. ‘Someone ought to. It’s a damn waste.’
‘I thought he was with Jill,’ Jodie asked as casually as she could.
Bella and Darcy exchanged a look. ‘I don’t think he’s withwithher.’
‘Not yet anyway.’
Noted.
‘I think we should keep your work experience as close to the truth as possible,’ Bella suggested. ‘Less chance of you slipping up that way.’
That was sensible. Only an idiot or a sociopath would get a job based on a CV they weren’t familiar with.
Gemma’s first listed job was asVisitor Hostat Reading Abbey during her degree. Jodie paused. Gemma had never mentioned that. She’d mentioned volunteering to pick up litter there a couple of weekends.
Jodie read on.Retail Supervision Associate. She’d been a shop assistant, hadn’t she? She scanned down to the most recent employment.Marketing Executivefor Pizza Now. Jodie cursed herself again for not paying more attention to Gemma’s work, but Jodie could have sworn that Gemma’s boss – a slightly too flash chap called Evan – had been the executive.
The penny that was dangling in the air of her brain started to drop. Had Gemma padded her CV a little? Jodie looked through the employment history again. Not a little. Quite a lot. That was Gemma though, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t a lie, not in the way Jodie had lied. It was confidence. It was Gemma giving herself credit for the work she’d actually done. She’d always said her boss was useless and she carried him. Surely she deserved the rewards.
‘I’m wondering if we should change marketing exec in your last job to assistant?’ Bella asked. ‘So it looks less weird that you’re applying to be an assistant now? If that’s OK. I mean I don’t want to do you down.’
‘I agree.’ Always better, like Darcy said, to keep your lies as close to the truth as possible.
She got an interview. Or rather Gemma pretending to be Jodie got an interview. Of course she did. Gemma was the perfect candidate, just made slightly less high-flying by Jodie’s interventions. Which created a new problem. Jodie’s lack of corporate executive clothes had gone unnoticed so far in the laid-back atmosphere at Lowbridge Castle. Now she had to explain having nothing to wear that was interview appropriate.
‘I lost a lot of weight, you see,’ she offered. ‘So I didn’t bring any of my old work suits cos they didn’t really fit any more, and I haven’t really needed anything like that here.’
‘That’s fine, sweetie. I have all the clothes.’ Darcy beamed. ‘We’ll find something perfect.’ She looked down at Jodie from her impressively model-esque height. ‘And then we’ll ask Flinty to take it up.’
Darcy really did have all the clothes. Jodie pulled a black suit from the wardrobe. ‘What about this?’
Darcy’s usually irrepressible smile faltered for a second.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. It’s a nice suit. I wore it for Alexander – my husband’s – memorial. I haven’t…’ She shook her head. ‘I haven’t since.’
Jodie cursed herself in her head, and slid the suit awkwardly back into the wardrobe. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘What was he like?’ Was it rude to ask that? Darcy hadn’t seemed to mind before. Maybe it was ruder not to ask and look like you didn’t care.
‘Oh. Gosh. Nobody ever asks me that any more. He was just the laird to people here. They all knew what he was.’
‘Butwhowas he?’
‘Oh, bless you.’ Darcy sat down on the end of the bed. ‘He was my Alexander. We were something of an odd couple to most people. He was very studious. Quiet. A little bit obsessive even. Always said he got on better with nature than people. Sometimes I think I was as much his interpreter as his wife.’
‘You make him sound difficult?’ Jodie wished she could swallow the comment back. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’
‘No. You’re right. I think lots of people did find him difficult. Even Adam sometimes. But not me. For me he was the easiest person in the world.’ She dabbed her eye delicately with a fingertip. ‘I wonder if that’s what love does. Makes the most complicated things in the world utterly simple.’ She took a deep breath in. ‘Thank you for asking, Gemma. Normally people don’t. I get it. They’re embarrassed and they don’t want to upset me, but it means I never get to talk about him. And I loved him so much. I think it’s good to remember him with someone.’
