Page 33 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)

‘It’s what my…’ There was a fraction of a hesitation, but only a fraction. ‘My partner brings me in bed if I’m ill. Food made with love, that’s the best thing, I think.’ She turned to Gemma. ‘Is that enough?’

Flinty nodded. ‘Even better than Old Man Strachan’s bin bit.’

‘That was perfect. Thank you.’ Gemma took the phone from Flinty. ‘I should go and…’ She rushed back out of the kitchen towards the courtyard.

Pavel followed. ‘Gemma!’

She’d stopped in the courtyard. He jogged over to her. ‘Are you OK?’

She nodded. ‘I’m fine. Just, I don’t know…

I made Ge… my girlfriend breakfast in bed not very long before she moved out.

I’d really made an effort, you know. Scrambled eggs, and I knew they weren’t quite right cos they were runnier than I thought they were supposed to be, and our toaster was weird so one side of the bread was a bit darker than it should have been, but I really tried. ’

She was talking too quickly, words tumbling over each other.

‘It wasn’t good enough though.’ Gemma was tapping her hand against her leg.

Pavel’s heart went out to her. ‘Why did you break up?’ he asked.

‘She got a job in Cornwall. She worked in hospitality for a restaurant and then she got another job…’

‘Is that where you met?’

‘What?’

‘Working for restaurants?’

For a second Gemma’s face was blank and then it was like someone had hit reboot. ‘Yeah. Yeah. I worked for Pizza Now. That’s how we met. And then she moved. And now I’m here.’ She folded her arms across her body.

Pavel felt like he’d done something wrong.

She’d been upset before but she’d been open.

Now she’d closed down. He couldn’t piece her together.

He’d seen her panic the first day she’d arrived.

He’d seen her desperate to run away. He’d seen her charming everyone at Lowbridge with her impulsiveness and sense of fun.

He’d seen her covered in dust in the ballroom, just on the brink, he thought, of kissing him.

But then there was another Gemma. A Gemma who watched every word she said, a Gemma he caught in the corner of his eye watching and thinking, a Gemma who seemed terrified of making a wrong move.

He couldn’t place the two Gemmas together. The second Gemma was here now. ‘I’d best get back,’ she said.

By the next morning’s meeting with John, Jodie’s murderous fantasies were becoming more elaborate.

Maybe she could feed his tie into the shredder and just watch as it slowly pulled his whole body after it.

Maybe it was possible to suffocate someone by laminating them.

He was, she was sure, only saved by the brevity of the meeting.

As soon as he was out of the door Jodie set about finding an excuse to get out of Fiona’s immediate eyeline for a while.

Her interrogation from Veronica on the way home the previous day had really pressed home that she needed to get on with some actual spying as soon as possible.

‘So you’ve got checking on the spa team on the list for today? I could do that?’

Despite Fiona being adamant that John took the lead on the physical maintenance and development of the estate, overseeing the builders still seemed to be on Fiona’s to-do list.

‘Would you mind?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Great. If you could make sure they’ve got everything they need that would be so helpful. I’m overrun with things for New Year.’

‘I can help with that too?’ Jodie offered.

Fiona nodded. ‘It’s fine. It’s in hand.’

‘Whatever needs doing when I’m back.’ Damn. She’d engineered a pass out from the office right when she needed to be here looking over Fiona’s shoulder. ‘Whatever you need.’

The short walk over to the spa site took Jodie past the whisky experience area and beyond the bird feeders, which were sadly devoid of birds.

Actually the whole estate was eerily quiet.

At Lowbridge there was the constant sound of the sea, and the gulls overhead, and of people coming and going, kids playing in the courtyard on parents and toddlers days, students arriving for the cookery school, pots bubbling on the stove.

And birdsong. When you stepped outside and walked up the path towards Adam’s garden and the top of the headland there was birdsong.

The building site was fully up and running. She scoured around for Tom, the lead contractor, and tried not to look disappointed when she saw him. ‘Jodie.’ He waved in greeting.

‘Just checking in. Fiona wanted to make sure you’ve got everything you need.’ She gestured to the roadway behind them. ‘Access is OK?’

‘Aye. If you could guarantee the weather for us we’d be golden.’

‘In Scotland? In November?’

He grinned. ‘Worth asking at least.’

A van pulled up alongside them. Jodie recognised that van. Stone and Son. Pavel jumped out. ‘All right, Tom.’ And then he stopped. ‘Ge—’

‘Pavel, hi.’ Jodie spoke quickly to cover his mistake. She was getting too adept at this.

‘You guys know each other?’

Pavel nodded. ‘Er, Jodie is…’

‘I’m his mum’s lodger.’

‘Yeah. That’s right. Lodger. So we know each other. Really well. Well, not really well.’

Jodie tried to shoot him a look that said ‘shut up, Pavel’. It didn’t work.

‘As well as you’d expect. She’s in the house with my mum. I’ve got the flat so we see each other but, I mean, we’re not seeing each other. We don’t. We haven’t. I…’

Jodie turned back to Tom. ‘So you’re fine here?’

He glanced at Pavel. ‘I’m fine. I’m not sure about him.’

‘What can I say? I send men loopy.’

‘I’m not. I didn’t…’

‘If you’re working here, you should car share,’ Tom suggested. ‘Isn’t the McKenzie way all about minimising environmental impact?’

That was what their website said, certainly. ‘That would be, I mean, depending what time you finish, that would be…’

‘He’ll finish about half five. We got the lights up yesterday and the generator running so we can keep going a bit after it gets dark,’ Tom explained. ‘You’ll give Jodie a ride, won’t you? In your big old van?’

Pavel was glaring at Tom now. ‘You can have a lift back. Of course you can.’

‘Thanks.’ Forty minutes in the van with Pavel twice a day for however long this took.

They’d have to talk in the van, wouldn’t they?

She’d been fine seeing him in the coach house while they both got on with their own work.

That was sort of comforting. In the van it would just be him and her and the silence, and in the silence next to Pavel she already knew there would only be one thing she could think about.

Back in the office Saira was leaning over the printer muttering under her breath.

‘What’s up?’

‘It reckons it’s got a paper jam. It lies.’ She shook her head. ‘If Miss Thing in there could send things to the right printer I wouldn’t have to deal with this anyway. She’s got one in her office.’

Jodie smiled her brightest Gemma-pretending-to-be-Jodie smile. ‘I can sort it.’

‘Fine.’ No ‘thank you’. Just ‘fine’.

Jodie had no relevant special skills with printers, so she did what she always did with any and all recalcitrant technology and turned it off and back on again.

The printer offered her a hopeful whirring noise in response and a moment later a single half-printed sheet of A4 slid out of the machine.

It was a printout from a spreadsheet, but it looked as though there were supposed to be more lines that the printer had refused to share.

Jodie read through what she could see. Hogmanay Ticket Sales .

Interesting. And then just a list of names.

Only eight rows before the technology let them down, but of those eight, two had been highlighted in yellow.

Jodie read along the rows. The only thing that seemed to set those two apart was the entry under ‘How did you hear about the event?’ Direct Sales Call.

Jodie folded the sheet of paper and slid it into her pocket, before she headed back to the office. Fiona was at her desk. ‘The printer out there’s playing up. Saira said to tell you your file didn’t print.’

Fiona nodded curtly. ‘That’s fine. It wasn’t anything important.’

By half past five Pavel had thought of a hundred and one topics of casual conversation for the drive back to Lowbridge.

Gemma or Jodie or whatever he was supposed to call her now shut them all down.

She agreed that the weather wasn’t bad for the time of year, that the McKenzie estate was a bit too corporate for her tastes and that Lowbridge was beautiful.

Pavel gave up. If she wanted to chat, let her think of something to say.

‘So were you going to kiss me in the ballroom?’

Pavel kept his eyes on the road and tried not to grip the steering wheel so tight it came away in his hands. ‘What?’

‘Just that it seemed like we were going to kiss and then we didn’t and you ran away.’

‘I didn’t run away.’

‘OK. Then you walked very briskly away.’

Pavel couldn’t stop himself laughing at that.

‘So, did you?’

‘Did I run away?’

‘Did you want to kiss me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe?’

Maybe was pathetic. Maybe was dishonest. Maybe wasn’t recognising a spark when one was in front of him. ‘Yes.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes. I wanted to kiss you.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘Not usually. Birds do it. Bees do it. I’m pretty sure beefy handymen have done it before.’ She opened her mouth in mock horror. ‘You have done it before? I mean no judgement but…’

‘Yes. I have done it before.’

‘So why not with me?’

‘I was sort of with Jill. I mean, not with Jill. But also not not with Jill.’

‘And you didn’t want to mess her around?’

‘I didn’t want to mess either of you around.’ That was true. Not the whole truth but a genuine part of it at least.

‘And are you with Jill now?’

‘No.’

‘OK.’