Page 103 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘I know, mate.’ He shook his head. ‘She told us last night. I told her she had to tell you. I thought she would.’
Pavel thought back to last night at the cottage. Had she started trying to tell him something? And then what? Fear, he guessed. Fear of how he’d react. ‘I wish she had.’
‘What would you have done if she had?’
‘I don’t know.’ Was that true? ‘Asked her to stay.’
Adam nodded. ‘That’s what I was going to do too.’
‘What?’
‘Me and Bel talked about it. I mean we’re furious obviously, but she’s done good stuff since she got here, and Bel’s fond of her. And Darcy’s incapable of turning away a lost soul, so yeah. I was going to check if you were OK with it and then ask her to stay. And then Bella was going to make her wash up after every cookery school session for the next six months.’
Too late for that. Gemma – no, Jodie – had made the decision for all of them. And that wasn’t OK. Suddenly Pavel wasn’t sad any more. He was angry. ‘How dare she?’
‘What?’
‘Run away. Decide for us. Did she tell you where she’d gone?’
Adam shook his head. ‘Six o’clock on a Monday morning? And none of us drove her anywhere.’
‘School bus to Lochcarron?’
Adam nodded. ‘That’d be my guess.’
Pavel was out of the door and jumping into his van before Adam had finished the sentence. School bus to Lochcarron probably meant regular bus from there to the station. He could go straight there without going round the houses to all the tiny hamlets and farmsteads like the bus did. He could still catch her. He could still make things right.
And so Jodie’s Highland adventure was going to end where it started, at the tiny station in Strathcarron, looking forward to hours and hours of travelling. Twelve hours ago she’d been happy, or at least as close to happy as she ever managed to come. Twelve hours ago before Veronica had called her to one side and blown up the gossamer web of lies she’d constructed. And she’d been kind about it.
That was the thing Jodie’s brain kept coming back to. Veronica hadn’t called her names or shouted or humiliated her. She’d been kind. Jodie didn’t deserve kind.
She checked the information board again. Her first train would take her to Inverness and from there she could change for Edinburgh, Newcastle, even London. She could be far away from here by lunchtime. But then what? She was starting again. Again. The money she had in the bank wouldn’t last more than a few weeks and she had nowhere to stay and no job to go to.
At least the station was quiet. There was nobody around to witness her failure. It also meant that as soon as another person stepped onto the platform she was aware of their presence, as if she wouldn’t have been aware of his presence in any place on any day. She didn’t turn her head as he got closer. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘That’s what I was going to ask you.’
She slid along the bench to make room for him to sit down next to her. Pavel remained standing. He pulled her phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. ‘You left this.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re running away?’
So he hadn’t come all this way just to bring her phone back. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘Why?’
Wasn’t it obvious why? Bella and Adam must have told him. For him to turn up here he must have known she was leaving, and if they’d told him that they must have told him why. Surely? She finally looked up to face him. And then she knew. His face was blank, cold and, worse than that, closed. Pavel Stone was an open book. Easy, kind, generous. Now he was guarded and she’d done that. She’d taken something beautiful and she’d broken it all over again. ‘I lied.’
‘I know.’ He blew out a long breath. ‘I didn’t ask about that. I asked why you’re running away.’
‘You don’t want to ask about the lies?’
He looked up at the display board. ‘You’re getting the Inverness train?’
She nodded.
‘Then we’ve only got ten minutes. I thought if we dealt with the running away first then we might have time for the proper conversation.’
