Page 40 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)

‘You bought a hat for me and Jill? We barely went on one date.’ Pavel looked to the other two women for moral support but none was forthcoming.

‘You don’t want Netty to waste a good hat, do you?’ Flinty asked.

Pavel shook his head.

‘It’s in poor taste though. How would you feel if you were the bride and you knew people had bought their outfits for his previous paramour?’ Anna folded her arms.

‘That’s my worry,’ Netty replied. ‘It’s like wearing his ex’s wedding dress.’

‘I don’t think it is,’ Pavel tried.

‘So you’ll get her her own dress?’

‘I don’t think the groom gets a say in the dress,’ Anna pointed out.

‘Well good, if he’s going to make her wear some other woman’s frock.’

‘I’m not going to make her…’ Pavel desperately floundered for a way out of this conversation. There didn’t seem to be one. ‘She can choose her own…’

Suddenly he felt a small hand slip into his. ‘Ladies.’ Gemma smiled brightly. ‘I hope you’re not haranguing my fella?’

‘Not at all. Just making sure he’s being a gentleman,’ Flinty explained.

‘Fair enough. Shall I leave you to it then?’

Pavel tightened his grip on her hand.

‘Or maybe I should remind you that this,’ she pointed from herself to Pavel, ‘is very new. And we’re very happy but nobody is going to be buying anyone a wedding dress any time soon. OK?’

Anna shook her head. ‘Young people. They don’t think ahead.’

‘I only wondered about my hat,’ Netty added.

Eventually the three of them trundled off, presumably to interrogate another innocent villager about their personal life. He kissed the top of Gemma’s head. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome…’ She hesitated. ‘My darling.’

‘Is that our thing now?’

She shrugged. ‘I love it. I don’t like babe and sweetie and things like that. Sounds like a fourteen-year-old on TikTok.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘“My darling” is classy. A bit more Mr Darcy. If Mr Darcy claimed he could bench-press Lizzie Bennet.’

Nina came over. ‘You two having a good day?’

Pavel nodded. ‘The yule log was great.’

‘Would have been even better if someone hadn’t eaten half the icing before I’d finished making it.’

‘Jodie.’ There was a stranger bearing down on them.

‘I’m called Jodie,’ Gemma whispered urgently.

‘What?’ His mum looked utterly confused.

‘Jodie, I didn’t think I was going to catch you again.’

‘Diane.’ Gemma let go of Pavel’s hand and kissed the woman on each cheek. ‘This is Pavel. He’s my…’ Pavel caught the gulp she gave. ‘My boyfriend. And this is Nina, his mum.’

His mum was still frowning.

‘Diane’s staying at the McKenzie estate,’ Gemma explained. ‘Where I work.’

He glanced at his mum. The penny hadn’t quite dropped yet. ‘The estate over the way. Where Jodie got a job,’ he added as casually as he could manage.

He saw understanding dawn. ‘Of course, Jodie .’ She all but winked.

Pavel winced. Play it cool, Mum. Play it cool.

Diane didn’t seem to have noticed any weirdness.

But why would she? Why would you think that two people you’d only just met were conspiring with an admin assistant from your holiday destination to convince you she had a fake name?

‘This whole day was lovely. And I was talking to the chap who runs this place. Apparently they’re having a whole big do for Hogmanay.

’ She sighed. ‘It’s so far to travel but honestly I’m tempted.

I love this part of the world. Always have. ’

‘Oh, you should come. It’s going to be so much fun.’ Gemma beamed. ‘And staying in an actual castle. Can you imagine?’

Diane laughed. ‘You need to be careful. Aren’t you supposed to work for the opposition?’

Gemma froze.

‘Oh, we’re all one big happy family around here,’ Nina reassured her.

Diane made her farewells. ‘It was so good to run into you,’ she told Gemma. ‘You look well. I’m pleased.’ She smiled. ‘I shall tell your mother I saw you.’

Gemma nodded. ‘OK.’

‘She misses you.’

‘Are you going to see your parents for Christmas?’ Nina asked.

Gemma shook her head. ‘I think we’ll be too busy here.’

‘Hopefully you’ll make it back in the new year?’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’

Nina turned away. ‘I’d best go make myself useful.’

‘There’s a lot of making yourself useful around here,’ Gemma laughed.

‘Tell me about it. Mum and Anna were born to run the world, I think, but the universe landed them with a tiny Scottish village instead.’ Pavel paused. He didn’t want to ask any more about her family. Not right now. She’d tell him when she was ready. He wasn’t going to push. ‘Today was really nice.’

‘I don’t know. I thought yesterday had a certain something.’ She looked up at him to catch his eye.

‘I meant this was a nice event for the whole community.’ He looked around to where Flinty was now roping anyone she passed into helping out. Absolutely anyone. ‘The whole community and Jay from Redd Level.’

Jodie leaned into Pavel’s body. He was right. Apart from the scare with Diane and Fiona the day had gone well. Really well. ‘So do you want to stay tonight?’ she asked. ‘You don’t have to. I mean, if you feel like we’re rushing into things a bit. We could take it slow, or…’

‘Do you want me to?’

More than she could put into words. She didn’t really want to let him out of her sight. He was a solid point of reality in this web of confusion she was creating around her. ‘Yeah.’

‘OK then.’

‘The Dower House is quite…’ She searched for the word. ‘Feminine. And chintzy.’ She tried to picture Pavel’s tall, broad frame in amongst the florals and the doilies.

‘I’m not really coming for the décor.’

‘They did say I could redecorate, but I never got around to it.’

‘I can help if you want to decorate the place.’

‘Oooh,’ she sighed. ‘And you’ll do it all properly, won’t you? With straight edges and no splashes of wall colour on the woodwork.’

‘Absolutely.’

Now she could picture Pavel very easily in the great-aunt’s-knicker-drawer aesthetic of the Dower House – paintbrush in hand, pencil behind his ear, and, for reasons that had nothing at all to do with his decorating skills, stripped to the waist.

‘Are you all right there?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘You were in a world of your own for a moment.’

‘Thinking about what we might do tonight.’ Which suddenly didn’t involve a can of summer-white emulsion at all.

‘Miss Bryant.’ Veronica interrupted what was about to be a very detailed and quite explicit explanation of how little sleep Pavel Stone was going to get that night. ‘Could I have a word?’

‘OK.’ Jodie dropped Pavel’s hand. ‘I’ll see you back at the Dower House? It’s not locked if you’re there before me.’

She followed Veronica out of the courtyard and into the lane outside the coach house. Veronica looked to each side as if to confirm that they were alone.

‘My dear.’ There was something in Veronica’s tone that set Jodie’s nerves on edge already. ‘I’ll come straight to the point. I overheard your conversation with Miss MacCellan and the lady who was visiting from Reading earlier.’

‘Right.’ Jodie didn’t respond straight away. What had Veronica heard? Maybe she hadn’t got the whole story.

‘Just when I feared you were exposed and Miss MacCellan was going to realise that you were, literally, working for the enemy, you were saved.’

‘Yes.’

‘By someone who knew you long before you came here.’

So she’d heard enough. More than enough. ‘Yes.’

‘Who thought you really were Jodie Simpson.’

‘Yes.’

‘Which should make no sense at all.’

Should?

‘But actually a lot of things slipped into place.’

Now Jodie was confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The lack of National Insurance number.’

‘I just couldn’t find…’ she started.

Veronica held up a hand. ‘Don’t. When we interviewed you… sorry. When we interviewed Gemma Bryant, I wasn’t convinced she was the right fit for Lowbridge.’

That was ridiculous. Gemma was the perfect fit everywhere she went.

‘But, even if it pains me, this is not my estate any more. I must let my grandson and his fiancée have their heads. And they were quite taken with her…’ Veronica paused. ‘Shall we say her poise? So imagine my confusion when you turned up.’

‘Are you saying I’m not poised?’

‘You, young lady, are a walking chaos engine.’ Veronica’s face cracked ever so slightly into a hint of a smile. ‘Much more our sort of person, I would say.’

Was that another lifeline being thrown her way? ‘You’re not cross.’

The smile vanished. ‘I am furious. With myself for not nipping this in the bud much earlier. I knew something was wrong, but I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting old but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.’ She looked Jodie squarely in the eye. ‘You are, I take it, not Gemma Bryant?’

She could try to lie her way out of things. She could probably buy herself a little more time, but a little more time was all it would be. Veronica was clever and she knew, in her gut, that she was right. She’d squirrel out the evidence whether Jodie came clean or not. ‘I’m not.’

It was almost a relief.

‘Presumably there is a real Gemma somewhere?’

‘My ex. That’s who you interviewed. She deserved all this.’

Veronica tilted her head a little sadly.

‘We don’t always get what we deserve. I’m sure you had your reasons and I don’t discredit your commitment since you arrived, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that you have lied to my grandson and to Bella, both of whom I care for very deeply, since the moment you got here.

You understand that that cannot continue? ’

Of course it couldn’t. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘So am I.’ The older woman nodded. ‘You have done good work here. I don’t know why you did this but everything you’ve done here, even today, was down to you. Not this Gemma woman. You.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I’m going to come with you.’ Veronica rubbed her hands together. ‘People are starting to head off. I imagine Bella’s back in the kitchen already. Shall we?’

‘Right now?’

‘I think so, don’t you?’