Page 1

1

Holly took a step back and looked at the sweet platter in front of her. It was certainly impressive, with a whole host of customer favourites from peppermint patties to sherbet lemons and coconut mushrooms, all laid out meticulously on the silver tray. It looked good. But good wasn’t what she was after. She wanted perfection. With a slight groan, she picked up a handful of jellybeans before letting out a deep sigh.

‘I want to get all her favourites in,’ she said to Caroline, who was standing beside her weighing out a bag of cherry lips for one of their regulars. ‘But I feel like there needs to be a colour theme, right? It’s a wedding. There has to be a theme. But how can there be when she likes things like rosy apples, rhubarb and custard and coconut teacakes? It all looks so muddled.’

‘Can muddled be the colour theme?’ Caroline suggested, but Holly didn’t reply; after all, there was no sensible answer she could give. Besides, her mouth was currently full of jellybeans.

In just over two weeks, one of her best friends, Jamie was going to be tying the knot with Fin. Everything was arranged, with a beautiful venue in the Cotswolds that sorted everything, from the food to the music and even the accommodation toensure the entire day was as stress-free as possible. But there was one little extra that Jamie wanted. One that only Holly could provide. Sweets. Platters on all the tables.

Holly must have done at least a hundred sweet party platters since she took over Just One More, the picture-perfect sweet shop in the heart of the Cotswolds. But this one was different. This one had to be 100 per cent perfect. But with no directions from Jamie other than, ‘I trust you to do something awesome,’ Holly was panicking. She had tried three set-ups already, but none of them looked right. As the till opened and closed, and the customer trundled off chewing their cherry lips, Caroline sidled up next to Holly and studied the platter.

‘Do you know how many tables there are to be at the wedding?’ she asked.

Holly thought about it. Jamie and Fin had been talking about the wedding non-stop since they’d arrived back from France three weeks before, which wasn’t surprising, given how much there was to arrange. While the venue dealt with most of the stress, Fin and Jamie still had plenty to busy themselves with. Over a dozen members of Fin’s family were flying in from America, and another ten or so of his friends were coming in from various other places in the world. The entire wedding would host nearly a hundred people, so while Holly wasn’t exactly sure how many tables there were, it was going to be quite a few.

‘Probably about fifteen,’ she said, going back to the shelves and staring at the glass jars.

‘Well, why not make different themed ones then?’ Caroline said. ‘You can have a red table, a green table, a chocolate table, a fudge table.’

Holly thought about it. ‘But what about if people don’t like the sweets that are on their table? What if someone who hates chocolate is on the chocolate table?’

‘Well, for starters, if they don’t like chocolate, they’re insane and I’m not sure why Jamie would have invited them to her wedding in the first place,’ Caroline said unhelpfully. ‘But really, it’s not like anyone is going to be sitting in the same place the entire night. This is Jamie and Fin’s wedding, remember? Everyone is going to be up, moving around, dancing, socialising. Having different sweets in different places might be good. I mean, ask Jamie, but I think it’s a great idea.’

Holly pondered the suggestion a little longer. It would definitely be easier to make the trays look attractive like that. She could do a couple of rainbow ones too, using the different colours of bonbons. They were always a hit at children’s birthday parties, and there were several children attending.

‘You’re right. That’ll work. I’ll put some ideas together and run them past Jamie as soon as I get a chance. Though it might have to wait for a day or two.’

‘Oh really,’ Caroline said, a smirk twisting on her lips as she looked at Holly. ‘Why’s that? Do you have something important going on?’

She was winding her up, of course. Caroline was fully aware why Holly was going to be occupied for the next twenty-four hours and Holly couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. It was obviously a sign she’d talked about it way too much. She opened her mouth, ready to give Caroline a sarcastic reply, but before she could respond, her phone rang. She frowned at the unknown number before answering.

‘Now?’ she said down the line. ‘Yes, no, that’s fine, I’ll just be five minutes, is that okay?’

A second later, she hung up and looked at Caroline.

‘I’m really sorry, I’ve got to head home.’

Caroline was back across the shop, straightening the jars.

‘It’s fine, I thought you’d have left by now anyway. Don’t you have stuff to sort out for tonight?’

A series of butterflies took hold inside of Holly. ‘Probably,’ she said. ‘But by the sounds of it, I’ve got something else to deal with first.’

2

Back at home, Holly was struggling. So far, she’d tried moving her armchair, Hope’s playpen and the dining room table and chairs, but there was just not enough room in her tiny little cottage. She’d known when she’d moved into her and Hope’s first home on their own that it would be small. Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds may have had some lovely big manor houses, but they were a long way out of her budget. To be fair, the only reason she could afford the cottage was because the landlord seemed oblivious to modern-day rental rates and massively undercharged her. Still, the size of her home had never been that much of an issue. Until now.

She stepped back and looked from her mantlepiece to the dining-room table and then to the kitchen counter before she finally let out a sigh of defeat. With a sad groan, she called Jamie.

‘Do you want a bunch of flowers?’ she said the moment she picked up.

The phone call at the shop had been from a delivery company, saying they had a bunch of flowers waiting for her at the cottage and she needed to sign for them. A couple of weeks ago, Holly would never have expected to receive bunchesof flowers delivered to her door, and certainly not the type that were so large, they dominated her entire home, but recently it had become a familiar occurrence.

‘A really big bunch of flowers,’ she added.

A slight pause followed the question. ‘That’s not an offer I normally get at the start of a phone call, but sure,’ Jamie said.

‘Great, then can you come and get them? Now.’