Page 60 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘OK.’ He scanned the room. If you really tried to get into Gemma’s mindset there was a sort of system. The mounds were broken down into furniture, textiles, smaller household items. He moved to the biggest pile of all. This one didn’t seem to have an obvious theme. ‘What about this lot?’
The determined expression on Gemma’s face faltered slightly. ‘That’s things that didn’t fit into any other category.’
‘Right.’ Despite the surface chaos, she’d clearly done loads. ‘What time did you start on this?’
She shrugged. ‘Couldn’t sleep. What time is it now?’
‘Seven-ish.’
‘Shit.’
‘Have you been up all night?’
She ran a slightly grimy hand through her hair. ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe?’
‘Definitely.’ She folded her arms. ‘I… sometimes I get something in my head and it like itches away at me and I can’t sleep until I’ve dealt with it, so…’
‘And the messy ballroom was itching away at you?’
She nodded. ‘You don’t get that?’
Pavel shook his head. ‘I sleep like a baby.’
‘That’s a stupid phrase. Babies are terrible sleepers.’ She laughed. ‘You don’t have any younger brothers or sisters?’
‘No. How many have you got?’
‘One… two.’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘About two.’
‘About two?’
About two? The incredulity in Pavel’s face was entirely understandable. Who didn’t know how many brothers and sisters they had? Well, someone who had one and who had remembered halfway through the word that Gemma had a sister and a brother, and panicked that that might somehow have come up in her job interview. So now Pavel thought she had an uncertain number of brothers and sisters. She shook her head. ‘Exactly two. I have been up all night.’
He flipped one of the non-broken chairs over and sat down. ‘So I told Bella I’d help in here. What do you want doing?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s fine. You’re busy with the coach house.’
‘It’s fine. Strach’s over later.’ He looked around. ‘Do you think we need a skip?’
Jodie had no idea. She’d never cleared out a ballroom before. ‘I guess. It’s not my stuff though. Shouldn’t we check with Bella before we get rid of things?’
Pavel nodded. ‘Should check with Adam probably. Some of this could be stupidly valuable.’
‘Really?’ Jodie hadn’t even thought of that. She’d just been chucking stuff around. ‘I broke a side table.’
She clambered over the pile in front of her and pulled the tabletop from the ‘broken furniture – probably not fixable’ area. Pavel took it from her hand. ‘I think you’re all right. Not a lot of chipboard in a genuine Chippendale, I don’t think.’
Doubt was rushing through Jodie’s head now though. This was what she did. She waded in, didn’t think and messed things up. ‘We need to put it all back.’
‘What?’
‘Put it all back.’ It was the only option. Put everything back exactly where she’d found it and resume her previous plan of just slipping away. She grabbed the broken tabletop back off Pavel.
‘Gemma!’
She could feel the panic rising. She had to get ahead of it before the bright fizziness turned black and started to close around her. ‘It’ll be fine. We’ll put it all back and then Bella or Darcy or Adam, or whoever, can come and look at it and they won’t know I did all this and…’
