Page 117 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘And a lot of it.’
‘Could you cook the stuff that was frozen right now? Would it keep if you did that?’
Bella rubbed her forehead. ‘Some of it maybe. We could cook it to prolong the life and then refreeze it. That won’t work for everything.’
‘But some stuff?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll work out what’s safe and won’t taste like dirt and start on that.’
‘Right. They lost the freezer in the shop too. I’ll call Hugh and ask what he’s got that you might be able to use.’
Bella closed her eyes. ‘I don’t think we can pay him.’
‘I think he’ll be chucking it if you don’t take it. I’m sure you can work something out.’
‘Thank you.’
They set to work on the food. Pavel drove back and forth from the shop bringing over whatever was salvageable. By early evening he was ferrying ingredients back to the village for Flinty and his mum to cook in their ovens or store in their freezers.
The whole community worked like a machine. Chopping, mixing, frying, roasting and repeating under Bella’s instruction.
It was close to midnight by the time he slumped onto a stool at the kitchen island, rubbing his eyes. Bella was wiping down the worktops, while Flinty made coffee and Adam, Veronica and Darcy organised the last few dishes into the remaining fridge and freezer space. Finally the group was still.
‘What else do we need to do?’ Pavel asked.
‘Sleep?’ Darcy suggested.
‘No time,’ Bella murmured. ‘We still don’t have a band, and three more people cancelled this morning.’
Pavel didn’t have a clue what to do about that.
The door swinging open behind him made him turn. He was tired enough that he could easily have believed the woman standing behind him was a hallucination, but there she was. Really here. ‘Maybe I can help?’ Jodie said.
Jodie had come straight to the castle when she’d arrived in Lowbridge. It had taken seventeen hours, with a break for a nap in the car and a detour around a closed road near Fort William, but she was here.
She’d known she’d see Pavel at some point. She hadn’t thought he’d be the very first person she walked into. He looked up to face her very slowly. ‘I’ll let you get on.’ He walked straight past her without meeting her eye. ‘Call me if I can help with anything, Bella.’
‘Well, that could have been worse,’ Jodie tried to joke. Nobody was laughing. And Pavel had been right there in front of her. The Gemma she’d spent weeks trying to be would have stayed calm and tried to focus on the work that needed doing. She wasn’t being Gemma any more. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
Jodie dashed out of the kitchen and into the courtyard, catching Pavel outside the coach house.
‘Pavel!’
He stopped and turned. ‘You came back.’
‘Yeah. I saw the storm. I was worried about…’ She nearly said ‘everything’, but no more lies. ‘About you.’
‘I’m fine.’
He didn’t sound fine.
‘They said on the news there’d been injuries.’
He shook his head. ‘Netty’s Gareth sprained his ankle trying to rescue the green bin.’
‘Right. Well, I wanted to say sorry too.’
‘Go on then.’
