Page 18 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
Jodie took a second to take them in. The visuals absolutely matched the voices. The first woman, Flinty, according to Adam’s greeting, was shorter, solidly built with greying red hair. Her companion was tall, slim, neat silver hair pulled back into a bun and spectacles suspended on a thin gold chain at her neck.
‘I brought you some Brussels. First crop from Hugh’s garden. I don’t know why he grows them. Anna can’t stand the things. I thought “Bella’ll be able to do something with ’em”, so here you are. I left ’em on the stalk so they’ll keep better.’ She handed the massive stalk of sprouts over and looked around. ‘Well, hello.’
‘Grandmother, Flinty, this is Gemma. She’s starting work here tomorrow.’
Flinty slapped her cheerfully on the arm. ‘Welcome, love. Are they looking after you? Was the Dower House cleaned properly?’ Did she cast a sideways look at Adam and Darcy as she asked that?
‘It’s lovely. Thank you.’
‘And you’re the girl from London then?’ The second woman, Adam’s grandmother, said London in a tone that suggested some weakness of character.
‘No. Reading.’ Wait. Gemma was from London, wasn’t she? Originally. Would she have told them that? ‘I’m from London, but I was living in Reading is what I mean. Like most recently. Not now. Obviously. But before. Yesterday. Reading. Yeah.’ Stop talking, Jodie.
The woman was definitely looking at her more intently now. ‘Whereabouts in London are you from?’
Gemma was from Hounslow but she said Richmond when she was trying to sound fancy. ‘Richmond?’
The woman tilted her head. ‘Are you asking me?’
‘No?’
‘Don’t interrogate the poor girl, Veronica,’ Darcy cut in. ‘You’ll have her doubting her own name.’
Almost everyone laughed.
Veronica was still gazing directly at Jodie, inspecting her, assessing her. Jodie plastered on a smile. She’d almost slipped up there. She couldn’t let that happen again.
Chapter Five
Jodie barely slept, and when she did she dreamt fitfully of Gemma rising up from the stream next to the castle, like a troll under the bridge and decrying Jodie for her failure as both a girlfriend and a human. Finally, she dragged herself from bed, through to the tiny bathroom, turned the shower up as hot as it would go, which turned out to be alternately scalding and freezing, and let the cycle of hot and cold shock her back into her body and out of the rolling wave of anxiety.
She was not about to be unmasked. Jodie was far away from anyone who knew her. The only danger was that she would slip up and give herself away. To avoid that she needed to be the best possible person that she could be. And that meant the person least like Jodie. Jodie was – she ran through the bank of quotes from her family, from her exes and from her former employers in her mind – unreliable, easily distracted, prone to making impulsive decisions and deeply disorganised. In short, Jodie was a mess.
As she got dressed, Jodie resolved that Gemma would not be like that at all. Gemma would be punctual. She would listen to instructions. She would think before she acted. She would have all her work perfectly organised in colour-coded binders. Jodie picked up her phone.
What felt like three or four minutes later at most, Jodie checked the time. She’d been looking at pastel-coloured binders on the internet for nearly forty minutes, which meant she was now officially late for work. Late for her first day in the job she desperately needed to not mess up, in a place that was literally four minutes’ walk from her front door. Gemma would never have let that happen. Gemma would be over at the castle already, notebook open, pens neatly laid out, bright, professional smile plastered on her face.
And now Jodie had wasted another three minutes thinking about what Gemma would do. She shoved her feet into her trainers, which didn’t go at all with the one pair of non-jeans trousers that she owned, grabbed her jacket and set off at a run down the path to the castle. She hurtled into the kitchen. ‘Sorry. I…’
She stopped. Her only audience was the dopey-looking chocolate Lab she’d met the previous afternoon. She hauled the gorgeous doggy’s name from memory. ‘Hello, Dipper.’
Dipper wandered over and sniffed Jodie’s hand.
‘Where is everybody?’
The dog didn’t reply.
Jodie made her way tentatively further into the castle, through the grand hallway Darcy had brought her into the previous day. ‘Hello!’
‘In here!’
The voice came from somewhere in front of her but beyond that Jodie wasn’t sure. She carried on into a corridor lined with doorways. She stared at the row of closed doors, paralysed by indecision. What would Gemma do? Gemma would knock politely on each one and open them until she found where she was supposed to be. Jodie couldn’t entirely see that option working out. What if she picked the wrong door and there was someone in there and they weren’t the right someone, or it was a bedroom or something and the person was still asleep and then she’d have woken them up and she’d have to explain who she was and…?
‘She’s in there.’ Adam came out of the door three along from where Jodie was standing. ‘Sorry. She meant to come over to the Dower House rather than force you to hunt for her, but when she gets her head into work everything else sort of goes out of her brain.’
Jodie knew how that could be. ‘It’s fine. My fault. I’m late.’
Adam shrugged. ‘Barely. Go on through.’ He pointed at the door again. ‘She’s in the yellow room.’
