Page 2 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)

Pavel Stone grabbed the barbell Anna Flint was unsuccessfully trying to lift from the chest-press stand. ‘I think this is maybe a wee bit heavy for you, pet.’

‘Nonsense.’ The woman lying on the bench was seventy-five if she was a day.

‘I’m lugging boxes in that shop morning, noon and night.

And Darcy did a talk at Ladies’ Group about how important strength training is if you’ve been through…

the change .’ She mouthed the last two words theatrically as if saying them aloud might summon dark forces.

‘Fine.’

‘Good. So next time we can pop some more weight on.’

‘I should think so. I didn’t come here to just twirl that wee stick about.’

Pavel laughed.

‘It’s very good of you to open this place up,’ Anna added as she pulled herself up to standing. ‘It’s a long way to Lochcarron for them Zumba classes and whatnot. Although…’ She dropped her voice. ‘You know they’ve got a gym and pool up at McKenzie’s place now.’

Pavel nodded. The McKenzie estate was a forty-minute drive from the village and was, according to their own publicity, the epitome of modern Highland aspirational eco-tourism.

He was supposed to go over there with a mate from Strathcarron to bid for the contract to build their all-new spa complex, and from the brief he’d read he didn’t think there was anything very eco or aspirational about the way McKenzie did business.

But it was a mate asking and he needed Pavel’s help, so he’d agreed.

It wasn’t a decision that sat quite right with him.

He took Anna through the rest of her workout – keeping things suitably simple. ‘So what does your mother lift?’ she asked.

Between them, Anna and Pavel’s mum, Nina, pretty much ran Lowbridge village. They were great friends and also engaged in a long and hard-fought competition for the position of top dog. ‘No. She’s a Pilates woman.’

Anna frowned. ‘Should I be doing Pilates? I’d probably be great at Pilates.’

Pavel knew better than to get into the middle of this argument. ‘Maybe focus on one thing at a time. I mean, you’re already lifting way more than her.’

Anna nodded, apparently satisfied – for the time being at least – with this conclusion.

He waved her off, pulled the shutter on his garage gym half closed – closed enough that anyone unfamiliar with the set-up wouldn’t feel like they could just wander in, but not so closed that his regulars would be discouraged from their workout.

It wasn’t as though anything was likely to be stolen.

His weight set was, by definition, heavy to move, and the last time anything had been nicked in Lowbridge was a cauliflower from the front of the village shop, and after much Miss Marple-ing by Anna and Pavel’s mum the conclusion had been that Queen Latifah – Anna’s husband’s West Highland terrier, not the global music and movie star – had been the culprit.

He strolled along the main road through the village, past the string of houses on one side and the shallow gravel beach that went down to the loch on the other.

He paused, as always, to check his granddad’s boat, beached on the shallow strip of shingle.

There were plenty in the village who called it Pavel’s boat now. That didn’t quite sit right either.

Pavel stopped outside the Weatheralls’ house. Gareth was standing at the bottom of a stepladder eyeing the guttering above him. ‘You all right there, mate?’ Pavel called.

‘Aye. Gutter’s overflowing. Probably just leaves, but it needs clearing out.’

Pavel was expected over at the castle but ‘a friend in need…’ had been one of his granddad’s favourite sayings.

‘Let me give you a hand with that.’ It was no bother and jobs like this were always quicker with two.

Afterwards he got cleaned up at the Weatheralls’ kitchen sink, refused the offer of a cup of tea for his trouble and went back on his way.

By the time he reached the Low Bridge that connected the village to its namesake castle, he’d also offered to walk Mrs Timberley’s dachshund later, run a couple who were staying at the pub over to Skye on his boat the next morning, and reassured Mrs Taggart that he’d be back in plenty of time to open the pub up before lunch.

He paused on the Low Bridge and let the sound of the running water wash over his senses, breathing in deeply, just for a second, before continuing over the bridge, and turning left towards the castle coach house.

Adam Lowbridge was standing outside, staring up at the grey stonework in front of them.

Pavel faux bowed to his old friend. ‘M’lord.’

‘Piss off.’

They did this routine every time. He was never going to stop calling Adam by his official title as Baron Lowbridge and Adam was never going to stop hating it. ‘So this is the job?’

Adam nodded. ‘Yeah. Well, that’s the idea, but money’s not on our side.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve probably wasted your time.’

‘Come on.’ Pavel led the way into the coach house that stood just outside the gate to the main part of Lowbridge Castle. ‘Let’s take a look at least.’

‘I guess I can add it to the list of things we can’t afford,’ Adam muttered. ‘Bella thinks it’ll be fine.’

‘Of course it will.’ Adam’s fiancée, Bella Smith, appeared behind them in the doorway to the coach house. ‘People pay silly money for shepherd’s huts and yurts and stuff, don’t they? At least this has walls.’

‘Not necessarily watertight walls,’ Adam pointed out.

‘We’re really stuck,’ Bella explained. ‘We can’t do residential cookery courses because there aren’t enough accommodation rooms that are up to scratch.’

‘And without that we’re not bringing enough money in.’

Bella leaned into her fiancé’s shoulder. ‘Which means Adam is still in Edinburgh half the time for work to keep everything together.’

Pavel’s heart went out to his friends. He knew that from the outside everyone assumed that if you were a laird and you lived in a castle you couldn’t possibly have any financial worries at all.

But he also knew that between a falling-down building and a looming inheritance-tax bill financial worries were a large part of his friends’ day.

He looked around the coach house. The work wasn’t complicated but it also wasn’t a small job. Pavel sucked the air through his teeth.

Adam winced. ‘Oh, it’s never good when builders make that noise.’

‘Sorry. I mean it’s not massive, but there’s quite a bit of plumbing and all the light fittings down here are making me anxious…’

‘So, expensive?’

‘It’d be mates’ rates…’ Pavel did some rough maths in his head and named a figure.

Adam’s face fell. ‘Yeah. That’s what I thought.’

‘Too much?’

Bella closed her eyes for a second. ‘It’s fine. Maybe we could put people up in the house.’

‘Where?’ Adam asked. ‘You, me and Darcy are living in the main wing and the rest of the rooms upstairs are worse than out here.’

‘I know.’

‘What about the Dower House?’ Pavel asked. There was a cottage at the far side of the castle.

‘Earmarked for our new starter.’

‘You’ve taken someone on?’

‘To do marketing and events. And to help with the cookery school a bit. Apparently she’s a dab hand in the kitchen.’ Bella glanced at her watch. ‘Speaking of which…’

‘What?’ Adam looked blank.

‘Isn’t it time you went to pick her up? Train gets in at eleven.’

Adam frowned. ‘I thought you were picking her up.’

‘I’ve got a class.’

‘I’ve got a Zoom with a client. Ravi’ll kill me if I miss it.’ He shook his head. ‘Can Darcy go?’

‘She’s out riding,’ Bella replied. That wasn’t unusual for Adam’s stepmother.

She’d taken to life in the Highlands after growing up in New York incredibly well, and that was – at least in part – down to the fact that living at Lowbridge meant she had space to keep horses.

‘I told her I didn’t need her back till the students turned up. ’

‘Flinty?’

Normally the estate’s former housekeeper, Maggie Flint, would be on hand to help out whether she was asked or not. Today Pavel shook his head. ‘I took her over to Portree first thing. Sorry.’

‘Shit.’ Adam closed his eyes for a second. ‘Pav… mate…’

Pavel laughed. ‘Sure. Who is she and where am I meeting her?’

Jodie’s first shock after deciding that all her problems would be fixed by moving to the Scottish Highlands was discovering that, in order to arrive at Strathcarron station at a sensible hour, she needed to set off the day before.

Staring at the map hadn’t in any way helped her understand this conundrum.

The UK was, in her mind, quite a small country.

There was London, the south coast, and there were the Home Counties and then there were…

she wasn’t sure… possibly dragons, but they were quite handy not-too-far-away dragons, weren’t they?

It turned out they were not. Making one’s way from west London to Strathcarron involved an actual sleeper train – something Jodie thought only existed in Poirot movies – and then another train from Inverness right across the Highlands to bring her to Strathcarron.

She’d expected to alight in some sort of cute Highland market town.

Diane, her now former boss, had told her about childhood holidays in the Highlands.

Jodie had got that it was off the beaten track, but she hadn’t imagined so far from the beaten track that there wouldn’t be at least a Costa and a Tesco Express.