Page 14 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
Inverness was Scotland, wasn’t it? This was Scotland. ‘It can’t be that far.’
‘Couple of hours. Longer at this time probably.’ He glanced upwards. ‘It’s nearly dark already.’
Two hours across the Highlands in the dark was a lot to ask. ‘I’m stuck here then?’
‘There are worse places to be stuck.’
Not for Jodie. Another layer of reality had pricked her resolve. She didn’t have any money, so even if there was a train she couldn’t buy a ticket, and there was no way she could pay for a cab to the station.
Could she hitchhike? Why on earth not? She could get herself to Inverness surely – with its sensible station that actually served a purpose – and then hop on a train and hide from the guard. That was a plan.
Pavel was still leaning on the bridge railing staring back at her. She couldn’t carry on past him. He’d make some sort of sensible point about practicalities and her fledgling new ‘hitchhike and hope for the best’ plan would get scuppered too. ‘I guess I’ll head back then,’ she said.
She made her way a little further back towards the castle, out of sight of her nemesis on the bridge, and stopped. Hitchhiking and fare dodging her way south by train was a perfectly good idea. If her way wasn’t blocked she’d be halfway to somewhere new by now.
Jodie’s palm itched. She rubbed it absent-mindedly. Once she had an idea, she wanted to crack on with it. Waiting made her feel like there was somehow too much blood in her body and it was running too warm. It made her want to step out of her skin and run away. When she wasn’t doing something there was nothing but the thoughts, and the thoughts got in the way. They overwhelmed her with practicalities and minutiae and often a thousand and one other things that didn’t even relate to the task at hand, but that somehow had to be dealt with before her mind would let her get on at all.
And right now it was Pavel’s disapproving face that was sitting at the front of her attention, pointing out all the flaws in her idea, without the man himself having to say a word. She could try to hitchhike, from this village in the middle of nowhere that probably saw about one car go through per day. And then what? Without this job she had no income, so she’d be in Inverness or Aberdeen or Edinburgh without a place to stay or a job to pay for one. She’d have no choice but to swallow her dignity, press the emergency button on her life and call her parents to bail her out. Again.
She’d avoided that after Gemma left. She wasn’t going to give in now. Right. Doing anything was better than standing here thinking about it all. Back to the Dower House. Back to spag bol with the family. Back to trying to be the best, and most convincing, version of Gemma that she could. She started to trundle her way back and then stopped at the sound of footsteps behind her. She turned to see Pavel jogging towards her. She flagged him down. ‘Do you mind not telling anyone you saw me here?’
He looked at her for a second before he answered. There was something she couldn’t quite fathom about his expression, like he felt let down by her. Jodie shivered and told herself it was just the autumn evening air. ‘You’re not going to make another bid for freedom tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘No.’ She wanted him to believe her. She wanted to believe it herself. What would Gemma say? Gemma was better than Jodie. Gemma would play it down. ‘A first day wobble.’
‘All right, but if you change your mind, tell them, for goodness’ sake.’ His instruction was softened by a smile. ‘At least then they’ll be able to tell you when the trains run.’
‘I won’t need to.’ She was aware that she was gripping the handle of her case so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. ‘It’s going to be absolutely fine.’
She managed to find her way back to the Dower House without – she hoped – anyone seeing her, and by the time she’d put her case into the biggest bedroom she’d almost convinced herself that her escape attempt was nothing more than first day nerves. Anyone could feel like that in the midst of such a big change.
This evening was dinner with the family. Another wave of panic hit. Jodie couldn’t do dinner with the family. People’s families never quite got Jodie. Gemma’s parents had hated her. She always felt like she was one step behind the conversation and whatever she said was never quite right.
Jodie’s parents, of course, had loved Gemma. Everyone loved Gemma. Gemma was polite and thoughtful and didn’t lumber in with whatever thought popped into her head. That was the new plan. Same as the original plan. The only way through was to be more Gemma.
Pavel watched Gemma Bryant drag herself and her worldly goods back through the castle archway. It was getting too dark to continue his run along the road. He could absolutely justify strolling back home from here, grabbing a shower and getting on with his evening. A new idea stopped him.
He made his way down the path to the coach house outside the castle gate. As he’d guessed, the door was unlocked. Inside there was a definite smell of damp, but his walk around with Adam earlier had left him relatively confident that was simply from a couple of leaks that could be fixed and a lack of habitation. The rest of the work, while time-consuming, wasn’t complex. He’d need to call in a few favours, and work some evenings, but it was doable. Adam and Bella needed the coach house available for guests to make Lowbridge a viable concern. That was a problem.
And where there was a problem Pavel wanted nothing more than to find a solution. What were a few more hours’ work and a few quid on materials when balanced against helping out a friend?
Jodie went over to the castle just before six. What time did posh people eat dinner? In her mind later seemed smarter. More cosmopolitan and continental, but Lowbridge didn’t scream cosmopolitan. Maybe dinner here was served promptly at five p.m. by an elderly cook who had no truck with flighty English lasses breezing in an hour late.
She made her way into the grand hallway and was greeted by a very bouncy chocolate Labrador. Jodie loved dogs. Of all the four-legged waifs and strays her mum had taken in, the dogs were always Jodie’s favourite. Dogs were simple. Waggy tail for happy. Downturned tail for sad. She bent down to pet her new friend. ‘Hello. Who are you?’
The dog rubbed its face happily against Jodie’s calf.
‘Dipper!’ The voice shouting from the other side of the door past the stairway was recognisably American. ‘Dipper!’ A second later Darcy appeared and shook her head at the Labrador at Jodie’s feet. ‘She likes you!’ Darcy narrowed her eyes. ‘You don’t have a pocket full of roast chicken, do you?’
Jodie shook her head. No. Obviously no.
‘Then she actually likes you.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s not saying much. Dipper has no discernment at all. She tries to run away with the postman most mornings.’ Darcy nodded at the large grandfather clock that was partly obscured by the suit of armour. ‘Wine o’clock, I think?’
Jodie glanced at the clock. It appeared to be stopped at ten past two.
‘Come on through.’ Darcy led the way down a substantially less grand corridor, and into the kitchen Pavel had marched her through earlier when they first arrived. That felt a very long time ago already.
Bella was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island with her laptop open in front of her. Adam was on his phone leaning on the worktop. He hung up the call as they came into the room. ‘Hey. Settled in OK?’
