Page 45 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm (Highland Cookery School #2)

The three weeks Jodie spent living out of her parents’ spare room was the longest she’d spent under their roof since she was seventeen.

And in many ways it was so easy. She could exist without having to think about who she was, or who she was supposed to be.

She could be herself without having to mask or hide.

In other ways, it was harder than being fake Gemma had ever been. She could feel her parents moving around her tentatively, cautiously – scared, she knew, that it was only a matter of time before she pulled a classic Jodie move and screwed something up.

It came to a head on a Saturday morning. Jodie came down from her room to find her mother sat at the kitchen table. ‘I’ve sent your dad out to play golf.’

‘Since when did Dad play golf?’

Her mum shrugged. ‘He doesn’t. But there’s a crazy golf on the seafront. He can try that.’

‘I think they call it adventure golf.’

Her mum rolled her eyes. ‘Well, those people need more adventure in their lives, don’t they?’ She grabbed two big slices of toast from the toaster, spread them with butter and honey and set them in front of Jodie. ‘Anyway, he’s not here so we can have a proper talk.’

Jodie knew what was coming. It was going to be a pep talk she’d heard a hundred times before. Jodie needed to pull herself together. She needed to take responsibility. She needed to get a grip and make something of her life.

Her mother sipped her tea across the table. ‘What’s really wrong, love?’

‘Nothing.’

‘There’s something. You’re not like you,’ her mum replied. ‘You’re all flat.’

She supposed she hadn’t had much get-up-and-go the last couple of weeks, but she was licking her wounds after Pavel. To be fair, her mum didn’t know that. ‘I’m fine. Just a rough few weeks.’

Her mother shook her head. ‘No. Not just the last couple of weeks.’ She took a deep breath in. ‘I sent your dad off because I know he wouldn’t want me saying this, but I’ve got to. You’ve not been yourself for the last few years.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Since you got together with Gemma.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Her mum had gone mad. Gemma had been great for Jodie. She’d been a calming influence, a maturing one and Jodie had messed everything up.

‘I didn’t say anything to start with because I hoped I was wrong, and then by the time I knew I should say something you’d stopped coming to see us.’

‘But that’s because we were in Reading and I’m a grown-up. You don’t want me coming back here all the time, do you?’

Her mother’s mouth gaped open. ‘When have we ever given you that impression?’ she asked.

‘Well…’ When? ‘You didn’t exactly but…’

‘But it’s what Gemma told you?’ her mum suggested.

Of course not. Gemma had tried to help Jodie. She’d tried to help Jodie do better and cause less chaos and make less mistakes – fewer mistakes, Jodie corrected herself automatically in her head. Gemma’s voice corrected her automatically in her head.

‘I just wonder if maybe being with her made you feel so bad about yourself that you lost sight of all the good parts of you.’

‘That’s not right. It’s not…’ Jodie couldn’t finish the denial. All of the pillars in her head that were holding up her understanding of the last few years, the last few weeks, of who she even was, had shaken slightly, and nothing felt certain any more. ‘I need to go,’ she said.

That afternoon Jodie stepped off her train in Newquay, after spending most of the journey googling and trying to remember where Gemma had said she was going when she walked out all those months ago.

She remembered Royal and she remembered Sea View and she remembered that it was a mini boutique hotel chain in the south-west. Unfortunately those sorts of words cropped up in hotel names like unwanted Bountys in a Celebrations box.

After a lot of research she’d narrowed it down to one chain that was headquartered in Plymouth, which had already denied any knowledge of a Gemma Bryant, and another whose biggest hotel outside Newquay was near a hamlet called Kestle Mill.

And that was where her taxi, which the meter told her was eating through her remaining cash at an alarming rate, was taking her now.

‘Don’t get so many tourists this time of year,’ the taxi driver commented.

‘I’m visiting a friend who works down here.’

‘Nice. Close friend, is it?’

‘Used to be. Actually an ex.’ Jodie didn’t need to tell him that, did she? But why wouldn’t she? No lies. Get it all out. ‘It’s a sort of apology visit. I messed things up.’

‘Trying to win him back?’

Jodie didn’t correct the pronoun. There was honesty and then there was self-protection in the company of red-faced men with tattoos on their knuckles. ‘No. Just a chance to say sorry.’ And prove her mum wrong. ‘Closure, you know?’

The driver nodded. ‘Closure matters. I had a cleansing ritual done when my ex-wife moved out. Woman from Perranporth came over and waved sage all about the place.’

Jodie reassessed her mental picture of her driver. ‘Did it help?’

He tilted his head. ‘Maybe. Mostly it made me want a roast. House stank of stuffing for days.’

‘Right.’

‘Your place is just up here. I’ll go down the drive and drop you at the end of the car park, if that’s all right?’

‘Thank you.’

She hopped out and paid the fare.

‘Good luck, my bird. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’ He handed her a receipt on the back of his card. ‘Ring if you need another ride. Yeah?’

The hotel in front of her had ivy around the door, and gardens extending out to the side, quiet in December but ready to burst into spring blooms as soon as the sun returned.

Jodie pulled her case behind her and pushed through the revolving door.

She wasn’t even sure Gemma worked here. Probably she should have asked the taxi to wait.

Even if this was the right place, she was probably way too important to be hanging around the lobby.

‘Jodie?’

Or maybe not. Gemma Bryant, the real Gemma Bryant, was right in front of her, behind the reception desk.

She looked the same as Jodie remembered.

But nothing was the same. The pull that Jodie had felt for weeks after Gemma left, the desperate phoning and texting, the need to contact her, was gone.

It was Gemma, but she wasn’t Jodie’s Gemma any more.

‘Hi.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to see you.’

‘How did you…?’ Gemma was glancing around, clearly looking for another person to come and intervene. ‘How did you find me?’

‘You did tell me where you’d got a job.’

‘Once. Months ago. Look, I don’t know why you’re here but you can’t just turn up at my work. That is so Jodie.’

Jodie held up a hand. ‘I’m not here to try to get you back or anything. I wanted to say sorry.’

Gemma’s perfectly made-up face crinkled into a frown. ‘You want to say sorry?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK. Well, I can take a break in a bit.’

The reality of turning up here and expecting Gemma to change her whole day around was creeping up on Jodie.

‘You can wait in the lounge.’

‘Thank you.’

While she waited she kept asking herself the same question.

She’d told the taxi driver she needed closure.

She’d told Gemma she wanted to apologise.

She was telling herself she was here to prove that she was right and her mum was wrong.

Gemma had been a great girlfriend and Jodie hadn’t deserved her.

That had to be true. If that wasn’t true then how could Jodie be sure that anything she knew, about who she really was, was true?

She kept asking herself the same question, and it was the same question Gemma asked the moment she sat down opposite her in the leather-backed chair in the corner of the hotel bar. ‘Why are you here, Jodie?’

And she knew the answer. It wasn’t Gemma’s face she saw when she closed her eyes any more.

It was Pavel’s. It was Pavel telling her she had to face up to the damage she caused.

Gemma was part of that damage. A big part.

Whatever Jodie’s mum thought, Gemma was one more person Jodie had broken apart. ‘To say sorry. I know I messed us up.’

‘Thanks?’

‘Is that a question?’

Her ex shrugged. ‘I don’t really know what else to say.’

‘You don’t have to say anything. I want you to know that I know that everything that went wrong with us was my fault.’ This was her truth. ‘I’m too impulsive. I don’t think things through and then I do crazy shit. Like when I took over the whole kitchen worktop cos I decided to get into bonsai.’

Gemma laughed. ‘That was a bit eccentric.’ She nodded indulgently. ‘But that’s just you. Scatty Jodie.’

Scatty. Jodie felt a prickle of tension. She was scatty. Gemma was poise and calm and competence, and Jodie was scatty.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s good that you’re trying to grow.’ Gemma smiled. ‘I always said you had potential, didn’t I?’

She had. Gemma had always encouraged Jodie to be better. She tried so hard to help her see where she was going wrong so she could work on it and be a better version of herself. It wasn’t Gemma’s fault she’d failed.

‘So anyway I wanted to say sorry. I know I drove you away.’

Gemma nodded. ‘You understand why I went no contact?’

Of course she did. Gemma had a whole new life. She didn’t need Jodie barrelling in and messing things up. And now she’d done exactly that. ‘I shouldn’t have come here.’

‘It’s fine. It’s good to see you actually.’ Gemma glanced down at the empty table in front of them. ‘Let me get you a drink.’

‘Thank you.’

Gemma came back from the bar with two glasses of wine. ‘I can’t remember whether you do red or white? Hope a nice Merlot’s OK.’

When she’d been with Gemma she hadn’t really done either. ‘Red’s fine.’

Did Gemma frown at that? Jodie put the thought out of her head. Why would she?

‘So you’re doing OK here?’ She looked around. The tone was less homely than Lowbridge, but a touch less in-your-face-corporate than McKenzie. ‘It seems like a nice place.’

‘Yeah. I mean since I got here I’ve really turned the place around. They were crying out for someone like me.’

Jodie believed it. ‘I’ve been sort of working in hospitality a bit.’ She’d thought about whether to tell Gemma about taking her job offer, but there wasn’t any point. Was there? Nothing she’d done was going to come back on to Gemma. Why hurt her even more?

‘I don’t think Di’s coffee shop is quite the same league.’

Jodie shook her head. ‘I went away for a bit. After you left. Big estate in the Highlands.’

Gemma narrowed her eyes. ‘I applied for a job in the Highlands.’

‘Maybe you mentioned it. I don’t know what gave me the idea. I wanted to get away, you know?’

Gemma nodded. ‘Probably no rhyme or reason at all, was there? Typical Jodie. Just barging in without thinking.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘It didn’t work out?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Well, you’ve come back to me. Tail between your legs.’

That was fair. Wasn’t it?

‘It was a good thing I didn’t get that job in the Highlands anyway,’ Gemma added.

‘Why?’

‘Oh, it was a ridiculous little place, and the people who ran it were total amateurs.’

That wasn’t right. Bella and Adam were full of enthusiasm and commitment, and they were trying to do what was best.

Gemma continued, ‘They kept spouting all this guff about community and preserving the natural environment and goodness knows what else. I sent them this plan for a Hogmanay Gala that wouldn’t have worked if you’d had a year to plan it.

’ She smiled at her own cleverness. ‘They didn’t have a clue obviously.

Thank God I didn’t end up having to try to pull that off. ’

Jodie’s memories of her time with Gemma shook again. None of what she was saying made sense. She was wrong about Lowbridge, but surely Gemma’s plan had been good. Not being able to make it work was down to Jodie.

‘Anyway, why are you really here?’

Jodie’s head was spinning. ‘Really to say sorry.’

‘Nonsense, Jodes. I can read you like a book, and it’s OK. I can see how much you’re trying. If you really want to try again then I could think about it.’

Jodie waited for the pull, the need to be back in Gemma’s orbit, the need to please her, the need to feel her approval.

It wasn’t gone entirely, but it wasn’t strong.

It was a speck of sand in the desert of all the other things she was feeling now.

She was confused. And angry. And she didn’t feel safe here.

She shook her head. ‘No. Thank you. I think I have to go.’

The taxi picked her up half an hour later from the tree stump she was perching on at the end of the hotel driveway. ‘Did you find your closure?’

Jodie thought she had. It just wasn’t the closure she’d been expecting.